Higher Education Inquirer : Search results for Let's pretend

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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

The US Working-Class Depression: "Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming."

How is the working-class Depression of 2020 similar to the other 47 financial downturns in US history?

Downturns are frequently precipitated by poor economic and cultural practices and preceded by lots of signals: over-speculation, overuse of resources, oversupplies of goods, and exploitation of labor. What I see are many poor practices brought on by corruption--with overconsumption, climate change, growing inequality, and moral degeneration at the root.

The "disrupters" (21st century robber barons) have enabled an alienating and anomic system that is highly dysfunctional for most of the planet, using "algorithms of oppression." And this cannot be solved with data alchemy, marketing, and other forms of sophistry.

Put down your iPhone for a minute and ponder these rhetorical questions:

How did people not know that another economic crisis was around the corner?
Doesn't anyone have a sense of US economic history?
Doesn't anybody read? Even a little?
Wasn't it only a dozen years ago that we faced a similar crisis?

Warm Koolaid (2016) signified corporate America's use of myths and distractions to sedate the masses.

How long have we known about all of this dysfunction? Academics have known about the effects of global climate change and growing US inequality since at least the 1980s. The Panic of 2020 should be a lesson so that we don't have a larger economic, social and environmental collapse in the future.

Who will hear the warnings and do something constructive for our future? Or is this Covid crisis another opportunity for the rich to cash in on the tragedy?

The answer lies, in part, to an ignorance of history and science, and oversupply of low-grade information, poor critical thinking skills, and lots of distractions. That's in addition to the massive greed and ill will by the rich and powerful.

US downturns are baked into this oppressive system. And crises are used to further exploit working families. With climate change and a half century of increasing inequality, these situations are likely to worsen.

"An economy based on mass deception, exploitation, degradation and oppression, violence, war, and massive environmental destruction...is unsustainable."

Workers will resist and fight oppression; they always do, but will they have a voice as the US faces another self-induced crisis, as trillions are doled out to those who already have trillions?

Here are the dates of the largest economic downturns.

1797-1800

1807–1814

1819–1824

1837–1843

1857–1860

1873–1879 (The Long Depression)

1893–1896 (The Long Depression)

1907–1908

1918–1921 (World War I, Spanish Flu, Panic of 1920-21)

1929–1933 (Stock Market Crash, Great Depression)

1937–1938 (Great Depression)

Feb-Oct 1945

Nov 1948–Oct 1949

July 1953–May 1954

Aug 1957–April 1958

April 1960–Feb 1961

Dec 1969–Nov 1970

Nov. 1973– March 1975

Jan-July 1980

July 1981–Nov 1982

July 1990–March 1991

Mar-Nov 2001

December 2007 – June 2009 (The Great Recession)

March 2020-

We live in an economic system that is unsustainable, unjust, and exploitative. While many of us in academia and the thought industry have known this for decades, those with greater wisdom have known for centuries. Techies and disrupters think it can all be solved with technology, not with profound wisdom. The ultimate in hubris and reductionism. We have to change the system politically, socially, and culturally. We have to be wiser.

How do we do that, radically change society, when our economic system has driven us in the wrong direction for so long? Some of these lessons can be learned from working class history, but they have to be applied with wisdom.

Thursday, February 3, 2022

"20-20": Many US States Have Seen Enrollment Drops of More Than 20 Percent (Glen McGhee and Dahn Shaulis)

In 2013, Futurist Bryan Alexander aptly talked about peak college enrollment in the United States. And over the last decade or so, higher education enrollment has declined in almost every state. Now at least 18 US states have experienced enrollment drops greater than 20 percent--and five more are close to that threshold.

People can watch the College Meltdown in real time at thelayoff.com.

Enrollment declines are the result of several interrelated economic and demographic shifts. Reduced populations of college age people, economic distress, growing inequality, and migration are some of the interacting factors. College is expensive and time consuming for working folks.

While programs like College Promise can help with shoring up community college enrollment, they cannot make up for deep social and economic problems. Online learning has made school more convenient, but the quality and value of several of America's robocolleges (colleges largely free of full-time instructors) is often substandard.

For many working-class families, college is no longer perceived as the golden ticket to upward social mobility. And a growing educated underclass, based on their own personal experiences with underemployment and student loan debt, are skeptical about the value of higher education for their children--if they choose to have children. Many are not.

Without significant change, we estimate that the 2026-27 enrollment cliff is likely to put almost every US state above a 25 percent decline over the last 15 years. With another economic meltdown, the numbers could get worse without major reform--smart social reform--not reform that lines the pockets of the rich and powerful.

Though consumer demand for college has declined significantly, college costs have not. Increasing federal funding, though, especially to subprime robocolleges like Purdue University Global, Liberty University, University of Phoenix, and University of Arizona Global Campus may not lead to lower college prices, better quality curriculum, or better jobs at the end of the pipeline.

*major colleges' data missing from the chart

(Source: National Student Clearinghouse)

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Higher Education Inquirer Selected Archive (2016-2023)

In order to streamline the Higher Education Inquirer, we have removed the HEI archive from the right panel of the blog; information that could only be seen in the non-mobile format.

The HEI archive has included a list of important books and other sources, articles on academic labor, worker movements, and labor actions, student loan debt, debt forgiveness, borrower defense to repayment and student loan asset-backed securities, robocolleges, online program managers, lead generators, and the edtech meltdown, enrollment trends at for-profit colleges, community colleges, and small public and private universities, layoffs and closings of public and private institutions, consumer awareness and organizational transparency and accountability, neoliberalism, neo-conservativism, neo-fascism and structural racism in higher education, and strategic corporate research.

HEI Resources
Rutgers University Workers Waging Historic Strike For Economic Justice (Hank Kalet)Borrower Defense Claims Surpass 750,000. Consumers Empowered. Subprime Colleges and Programs Threatened.I Went on Strike to Cancel My Student Debt and Won. Every Debtor Deserves the Same. (Ann Bowers)
Erica Gallagher Speaks Out About 2U's Shady Practices at Department of Education Virtual Listening Meeting
An Email of Concern to the People of Arkansas about the University of Phoenix (Tarah Gramza)
University of California Academic Workers Strike for Economic Justice
The Power of Recognizing Higher Ed Faculty as Working-Class (Helena Worthen)
More Transparency About the Student Debt Portfolio Is Needed: Student Debt By Institution
Is Your Private College Financially Healthy? (Gary Stocker)
The College Dream is Over (Gary Roth)
"Edugrift": Observations of a Subprime College Lead Generator (by J.D. Suenram)
The Tragedy of Human Capital Theory in Higher Education (Glen McGhee)
Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming (US Working Class Depression)
A preliminary list of private colleges at risk
The Growth of Robocolleges and Robostudents
A Letter to the US Department of Education and Student Loan Servicers on Behalf of Student X (Heidi Weber)
The Higher Education Assembly Line
College Meltdown Expands to Elite Universities
The Slow-Motion Collapse of America’s Largest University
What happens when Big 10 college grads think college is bullsh*t?
Coronavirus and the College Meltdown
Academic Capitalism and the next phase of the College Meltdown
When College Choice is a Fraud
Charlie Kirk's Turning Point Empire Takes Advantage of Failing Federal Agencies As Right-Wing Assault on Division I College Campuses Continues
Navient and the Zombie SLABS Meltdown (Bill Harrington)
College Meltdown at a Turning Point
Charting the College Meltdown
Colleges Are Outsourcing Their Teaching Mission to For-Profit Companies. Is That A Good Thing? (Richard Fossey)
Rebuilding the Purpose of the GI Bill (Garrett Fitzgerald)
Paying the Poorly Educated (Jack Metzger)
Forecasting the US College Meltdown
College Meltdown 2.0
State Universities and the College Meltdown
"20-20": Many US States Have Seen Enrollment Drops of More Than 20 Percent (Glen McGhee and Dahn Shaulis)
Visual Documentation of the College Meltdown Needed

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Capital One-Discover Merger: Another Blow to the Educated Underclass

Capital One and Discover Financial Services have publicly announced plans to merge. The deal worth a reported $35B would give this new entity greater power, competing (or colluding) on a higher level with JP Morgan Chase, Visa, and Mastercard.

For working people who know anything about finance and debt, and have debt themselves, this should be frightening. Together, both banks hold about 400 million credit cards.

Capital One and Discover are both banks and high-interest credit card lenders. That means they are issued cheap money from the US Federal Reserve and lend it to naive and desperate consumers.

Discover student loans are used by college students who have used up their Pell Grants and federal loans and are working (and borrowing) to graduate or extend their education. The interest rates can exceed 12 percent.

Nelnet is the student loan servicer for Discover private student loans, but their $10.4 Billion portfolio is for sale.

Discover also bundles student loans and sells them as securities, student loan asset-backed securities or SLABS. Institutional investors, like retirement and investment funds, buy the debt up as stable investments.

Capital One does not have student loans, but college students use credit cards from both of these companies to make their way through school, paying the price later.

While there may be regulatory challenges for the Capital One-Discover deal, it's not likely that the merger, or any other financial consolidation, will be prevented--no matter how onerous it is to consumers.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Have Revenues Peaked For US Public Higher Education?

Student higher education enrollment has been headed in a downward trajectory for about 14 years. So, at some point we should have expected revenues to drop. This revenue decline, according to the US Department of Education statistics, finally happened in 2022, the last year reported.

But until ED updates higher ed revenue numbers, we won't know if we are seeing a statistical blip or something bigger and more long-term. These are numbers that some in the higher ed business may deny, hide, or rationalize for years to come.

Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming had similar looking revenue drops in 2022. States with years of consistent declining enrollment, and there are many of them, are difficult to assess without more data. Some states, like Pennsylvania, have long flat line revenue trajectories that show obvious trends of stagnation. States with growing populations (aside from Texas) appear to have upward revenue trends.

Did federal money received during the Covid crisis artificially lift revenues, leading to an eventual short-term correction, or is there something more to look at? Saying it's a short-term correction would be a simple answer that higher ed industry proponents could use on the front stage, whether or not it's completely true. But it may be too simple.

In the future, we will drill down into these numbers and examine revenues in subsets of public higher education, to include community colleges, HBCUs and other minority serving institutions, state universities, and flagship universities in various regions of the US. Private schools (which we will discuss later) may be in a deeper revenue decline. There are few apparent patterns, other than that the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer (this too we will discuss in another article).

If higher education revenues continue to decline, as they appear to be doing for 2024-2025, what will we see on the ground level? Will there be budget cuts and layoffs? The California State University System is already bracing for a $1 Billion shortfall, and they are not alone.

What happens with higher education revenues as the enrollment cliff approaches and states are considering higher education budget cuts? What happens to schools that rely mostly on tuition and fees with few other sources of revenues? Should institutions expect to receive more federal funds again in the next (inevitable) economic downturn?

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