We Spent Six Years In Graduate School To Lose Our Health Insurance

"Leeanne" was beside herself.  Today I saw her for the first time since Memorial Day, when the Spring semester ended.  She had a "horrible" summer, she said:  the course she'd been slated to teach had been cancelled.  Since she is an adjunct, that left her without income.


As a result, she said, she has had to ask her father money.  That's led to friction because "he thinks I'm spending it all on shoes."  And, in the meanwhile, "I'm fighting with my landlord," she related.


On top of all of that, she spent the weekend "huddled in hallway" at a friend's house, waiting out a tornado warning  a couple of hours south of where we teach.  That, while this part of the country got lashed with the wind and rain from Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene.


But all of that pales in comparison to a piece of news we received:  We could lose our health insurance.  Yes, you read that right.  Adjuncts in the City University of New York (CUNY) system are eligible for basic health insurance if we teach two courses totaling six credit hours in a semester.  However, Barbara Bowen, the union representative, says that the adjuncts' health insurance plan has been underfunded and will, in essence, go broke by the end of this academic year.  


Leeanne's life literally depends on some medications she takes.  I am in a similar situation:  I don't know how I am going to afford my prescriptions without some sort of plan.  I'm sure that plenty of other adjuncts could say the same thing.  


Leeanne very astutely pointed out that the loss of health insurance benefits will have other "domino" effects.  Very often, department chairs who develop working relationships with adjuncts like me and Leeanne will give us two courses rather than to hire another adjunct so that we can have the health benefits--not to mention that doing so probably makes staffing and other logistical decisions easier for those chairs, who are not part of the union.


So, we could not only lose our benefits, we will have less income to pay for our own insurance--if we can find plans we can afford--or whatever medical expenses come our way.  And more of us will be competing for whatever courses are available in other colleges outside the CUNY system.  Many of those schools are also cutting back on the number courses they offer and, consequently, the number of adjuncts they hire.


To my knowledge, Leeanne hasn't been reading the scamblogs.  (I pointed some of them out to her, but I didn't tell her that I'm writing this one!)  However, she wondered, "Does any other country have an indentured servant class that includes its most educated people?"  


Few people fit the definition of that class better than adjuncts.  Nearly all of us are in debt from the degrees we pursued in the hope of getting one of those full-time faculty jobs that becomes more and more elusive with each semester that we spend as an adjunct.  Many of us are also what are often called "sensitive types" and have some of the health problems--physical as well as psychological--that go along with being who we are and experiencing the stresses of increasing workloads (Oh, did I mention that our class sizes were increased by 25 percent this year?) and other protracted demands.  


For their part, Barbara Bowen and the rest of the union "leadership," being the products of the higher education system that they are, act more and more like the overlords of a caste system.  So, this is not the first time they've thrown adjuncts under the bus: Neither she nor any of her tenured colleagues will take a pay cut or pay more into the health care plans because, they point out, they make twenty percent less than their counterparts in comparable university systems.  Last year, their "concession" in salary negotiations was to eliminate "overloads," in which department chairs claim that they need particular instructors to teach courses and give, with the university's permission, one more class to an adjunct than he or she is allowed.  Bowen claimed that chairs were "exploiting" adjuncts; the reality is that the full-timers in the union were afraid that the university was using "overloads" instead of hiring new full-time faculty members.  However, some of the chairs said that the very reason they needed the "overloads" was that their colleges weren't allowed to hire new full-timers.


Longtime adjuncts who depended on those "overloads" were suddenly scrambling for additional work in other institutions.  I can only imagine how much worse the situation will be if we lose our health benefits.  Therefore, while I am writing letters to legislators, the university and college administration and the union leadership, I am also making plans to get out of the system altogether. So is Leeanne. So, I am sure, are others.  And, as carefully thought-out as our plans may be, they still include crossed fingers, rosary beads and the like.


We have Bowen as well as those other renowned scholars and avatars of progressive, enlightened social thought to thank for our predicament.

After The First Day

Funny, how a storm could turn out not to be as advertised yet still take up so much of our time and energy for a couple of days.  After teaching the classes I so dreaded, I went shopping, along with practically everyone else on the East Coast, for food and other supplies. (I had to laugh at all of the young guys buying cases of beer.)  Then I taped my windows, readied my place for the possibility of a power outage and--it pains me to admit this--watched "storm porn" on the TV news programs.


The classes  themselves weren't bad:  For my first day, I had two sections of Freshman Composition, full of kids in their first day (and, in some cases, their first class) in college.  Some seemed to have enthusiasm, or at least were faking it very well.  I hope it doesn't get beaten out of them, for their enthusiasm seemed to extend to other things besides school.  


Much about teaching Composition is tedious, even dull.  But at least I know that I am teaching real skills.  I recall talking with a mechanical engineer who, before I revealed what I did for a living, told me that in college, he took two courses that, as it turned out, were useful on his job.  One of them was English Composition.  "It's allowed me to write more effective memos and reports," he explained.  The other useful course, he said, was Intro to Psychology.  


Now, I am not against teaching things that don't have direct vocational relevance.  Literature, art and such help to give us a culture that's worth working with and for, and I am the sort of person who takes history personally and encourages others to do the same.   However, I also realize that force-feeding those things to uninterested, unmotivated students rarely does them or anyone else any good.  


If I were going to continue teaching (which I don't plan to do after two years from now), I would want to give the students the means, if not the motivation, to learn those things for themselves.  That, I believe, will do more to make more people more literate--and more productive in their jobs--than turning out another PhD in English or Philosophy or some other such field, especially if said PhD is interested only in training another PhD in the same field.  


I just hope I don't destroy whatever desire to learn they may still have after all the years of schooling they've already endured.  I hope I don't lose whatever I still have, either.

It Hasn't Even Begun Yet

When you're a kid, you say "School sucks."

Then you go to college, and you realize that school actually does suck.

In graduate school, if you haven't drunk the Kool-Aid, you start to understand why school sucks.

And, after you teach for a while, you realize that it can only suck.

That's how I felt today in getting ready for the semester that begins tomorrow.  The news media are telling us that the storm of the millenium is barreling up the East Coast and will end civilization as we know it.  

And I'm trying to put together a syllabus that I've pulled apart a few times, and trying to make the best of a textbook that I hate more and more as I work on this course.  I can't believe how bad the reading selections actually are.  No wonder the population is getting dumbed down!

Frankly, I think I'd be doing something far more useful if I were to help stack sandbags along the East River or spend the time with an elderly woman I know who lives by herself.

I don't think she even finished high school.  But she probably learned more than anyone ever will from that textbook I'm supposed to use.

Ironically, she thinks it's wonderful that I teach in a university.  Maybe if I'd done her shopping or walked her dog or something, I wouldn't have been crying as I did practically nonstop from the time I had lunch until the time I had dinner.

Hey, I didn't even do that during my first year, when I didn't know what the hell I was doing and didn't think I ever would. Then, people told me it would get better.  It seemed to, for a while.  Or at least I didn't feel like I was fumbling alone in the dark. And some students actually seemed to benefit from some of what I did.

But now I'm more tense and anxious than I have ever been on the eve of an academic year.  I don't even remember feeling this way when I was a student, not even when I was starting my sophomore year of college after a disastrous freshman year.

And it's only the first day.  What will the rest of the semester, or year, bring?

Why I Didn't Pursue A PhD

The academic year has begun, or is about to begin, in most post-secondary institutions in the US.  And, in much of the southern part of this country, elementary, middle and high schools have already been in session for a couple of weeks; in New York, where I live, those schools will open immediately after Labor Day, two weeks from now.


So, I thought this might be a good time to talk about the schooling I didn't pursue, and some reasons why I made this choice.


When I'm asked whether or not I pursued a PhD, I usually say "no," mainly for the sake of convenience.  The truth is, I took two courses at that level and decided that I'd sooner slit my wrists than to have another piece cut from an innocent creature's hide or a majestic tree's trunk for another useless and overpriced degree for--for what, exactly, I couldn't say.


Nando, JD Painterguy and others have written many posts on how worthless their law and other advanced degrees turned out to be.  In sheer dollars-and-cents terms, pursuing most advanced degrees is a losing proposition.  The bloggers I've mentioned, and others, have discussed this at length; I have little to add to what they've said and most likely will continue to say.  However, you might be interested to hear about an exchange I had with a deputy chair in the department in which I'd been teaching.


DC:  You know, you really should continue and get that PhD.


Me:  Why?  


DC:  You need it to get a regular job.  (Note: She meant, of course, a regular faculty job.)


Me:  But, there are so few openings.  And, at my age, I have to think about discrimination.


DC:  Well, if you get your PhD, there are a lot of things you can do with it.


Me:  Like what?


(Long silence)


Me:  Tell me, what can I do with a PhD in English that I can't do now?

DC:  Well, you can always get work as an adjunct.


Me (just barely containing my exasperation):  That's what I did for years.  And that's what I'll be doing after this year.  (Note: I was in my second year of a two-year full-time position.)  So why should I spend seven to ten years of my life, and more money than I've ever seen or will see, so that I can do the same thing I've been doing?


DC (Clearly getting flustered):  I have a meeting to go to.  


What I didn't tell her, though, was that my reasons for not continuing toward a PhD weren't only about job prospects and finances.  In all honesty, the two courses I took were two of the least intellectually stimulating experiences I've ever had.  


Part of my dissatisfaction with those courses had to do with the reading material.  Note my use of that term.  That is what you read in PhD-level seminars in English:  reading material, not literature.  In fact, what nobody told me--and what I would have learned had I done some research--is that for studies in English (or Comparative Literature, for that matter) at that level, one doesn't read the actual works of literature.  So there's no Macbeth, no Divine Comedy, no Les Miserables.  Instead, in PhD studies that are ostensibly about those works and others, one reads essays and books in critical theory.  


While I have never fancied myself as a critic or theorist, I can see the value of those endeavors, when they're done in an intelligent, commensensical way and communicated clearly.   Paul Fussell, one of my undergraduate professors, did much to elucidate such works as The Waste Land  and other seminal literature of the twentieth century in The Great War and Modern Memory.  The man has read, and knows, as much as twenty average people and expresses his ideas in language so plain and concise that it's elegant.


The professors I had in my PhD courses seemed to think it was their job to ensure that nobody ever wrote like Fussell, or the writers he critiqued, ever again.   The writing in the assigned readings of those classes was the sort that would 
cause a freshman to flunk a basic composition class.  At the very least, I'd make any student who wrote that way re-write his or her papers to get rid of the verbosity and needless complication.


Now, as you've probably seen in this and other posts of mine, I'm not averse to the complex sentence.  However, I'm not a fan of complication.  Here's the difference:  the human body is complex because it needs to be in order to keep the human that occupies it alive.  On the other hand, we've all seen Rube Goldberg-type contraptions:  the ones that take the most convoluted route from A to B, for no good reason. They're examples of complication.


Perhaps I learned something in those two classes after all--namely,  why so much writing in areas like critical theory, and other things studied at the PhD level, is so convoluted.  


It has to do with the pressure of novelty:  In academia, you make your reputation by having a seemingly-new idea or "take" on something or another.  So you read Dream Songs from the perspective of disability studies or some such thing, and you come up with an idea that can be expressed in a couple of sentences, or maybe a couple of pages.  But, of course, in academia, that won't do.  You have to puff it up, first to essay, then to book, length.  


It's practically impossible to do anything like that without resorting to pointlessly complicated sentence structures and circular reasoning.  However, even those things aren't enough: A reasonably intelligent reader, whether or not he or she has ever read Dream Songs or has any idea of what disability studies is, won't have to read very far into your work to realize how lacking in substance it actually is.  So what's someone aspiring to the tenure track to do?


You guessed it:  The aspiring academic learns to fill his or her work with mumbo-jumbo.  "Accessibility" is a derisive term in academia, particularly in the humanities.  Imagine what the world would be like if computer makers had the same attitude about user-friendliness.  For one thing, you probably wouldn't be reading this post right now!


Some will claim the dense language and obscure terms are necessary to accurately communicate what they are trying to say.  I say that if some of the most important notions in the history of the human race--such as those in The Ten Commandments or The Bill of Rights--could be expressed in ordinary language, what reason does anybody have to write about the "performativity" of anything?  (Not having to see or hear that word is, for me, almost reason enough not to pursue a PhD!)  Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in the English people of his time actually spoke (only better); Emily Dickinson expressed some of the most enigmatic feelings people have in some of the plainest language you'll ever find in poetry.  


So, if academics want to dismiss me or anyone else for using language my mother (an extremely intelligent woman who has practically no formal education) can understand, let them.  At least my students understand me; they tell me as much, and I can see it in what at least some of them write.  And I'm writing things that, I hope, will be read far beyond the confines of the ivory tower.

On Veterans And For-Profits

After a week and a half in Prague, I'be come back to the good ol' U S of A and an internet connection that flickers like the so-called economic recovery.  Oh joy.


Anyway, I haven't "known" C.Cryn Johanssen for two months yet, having discovered her blog only in June. However, she has already become someone I respect for her dedication to the cause of student loan indebtedness and other problems that follow in its wake.


To wit, I want to discuss two related issues I found in two recent posts of hers.  One is for-profit schools; the other is veterans in colleges and universities.


Having experience with both, I can say they are intimately related.  


I have taught, and may teach again (Gotta pay the bills, ya know?) in a for-profit university that is generally considered one of the better ones in the business.  I will try not to draw too many and too broad generalizations about for-profits from my experience at one school; however, that school has much in common with other for-profits, and the thoughts I will express in this post will be based, in part, on those commonalities.


And, in my many years of teaching, I've had a number of students who were veterans of the US Armed Forces.  During my first year, I taught young men who'd just returned from Gulf War I (a.k.a., Desert Storm); since then, I've worked with veterans of Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to students who served but didn't see combat.


Most of my teaching has been in public institutions (mainly in the City and State University systems of New York), where there are usually more veteran students than there are in private institutions.  In the two private universities in which I've taught--New York University (NYU) and Long Island University--I didn't see any veterans.  However, it seemed that there were disproportionate numbers of former members of the military in the for-profit college in which I taught.


I've since learned that the other for-profits also enroll large numbers of veterans, particularly those who have recently been discharged or are on inactive reserve status.  And I've wondered why this is so.


One explanation has to do with the nature of veteran students and their lives.  Now, what I'm going to say comes from great respect for those students.  Although I have opposed American involvement in all of the wars I've mentioned, and I think the only real advancement the human race can make is to get rid of war, I have always enjoyed having current and ex-military personnel in my classes.  They offer perspectives that most other college students (and faculty and administration!) don't have, and they are invariably polite, respectful and thankful for any help you give them.  Plus, if there's anything good to be said about the military, it's the task-orientation it instills in its recruits; if they missed class or an assignment, they had extenuating circumstances.  


On the other hand, students who are, or who have recently been, in the military tend not to have very strong academic backgrounds, to put it mildly.  I'm not saying they don't have the ability to make it through college; some simply don't yet have the skills.  Most of the time, I believe, that is a result of their non-academic backgrounds:  Most were poor and many were jobless when they joined the Armed Forces.  Being poor, whether in the projects or in the landscape of abandoned silos and smokestacks, they attended poorly-funded and -staffed elementary and high schools that couldn't or didn't detect, much less address, some of the problems they had.  Those problems, for some, include learning disabilities such as dyslexia, but more commonly, other things induced by the dysfunction of their families and communities.


I am not simply repeating stereotypes here; everything I've said, and will say, about military and ex-military students comes from what they themselves told me.  


In any event, those students, some of whom entered the military with G.E.D.'s (which, everyone knows, aren't, in spite of the name, equivalent to regular diplomas), would find it difficult, if not impossible, to go to the more prestigious (whether or not that prestige is justified) colleges and universities.  Also, some of them may have had a specialty, like electronics or security, in the military and want to parlay it into a lucrative civilian career.  For-profit schools sell themselves, in part, on actual or implicit promises that they can help their students do exactly that.  Thus, those schools are very attractive to current and former members of the military.


Now, I don't see anything particularly wrong with a school marketing itself in such a way.  However, those for-profit schools--including the one in which I taught--are, as often as not, padding their employment statistics.  For example, the school in which I taught claimed that something like 90 percent of its graduates were working in the field in which they studied within six months of graduation.  The rub is that many graduates--including members of the military--were already working in jobs in their fields while they were in school, or returned to positions they held before they started attending school.  Also, as we know, a job "related to the field of study" can be very, very broadly defined, to say the least.


In addition to the fact that for-profits take in students other colleges won't touch and make actual or implicit claims about employment, there is another way in which the for-profits scam vetarans in particular.  While the schools may be approved by the Veterans' Administration (how, I don't know) and their benefits may cover the tuition, the students who come in uniform, or just after having traded said uniforms for "civvies," have to pay fees of one kind and another that are not covered by their VA benefits.  Those fees are often steep:  As an example, students in the for-profit in which I taught had to pay nearly a thousand dollars a year in "technology fees"  (The nearest community college had much more advanced and user-friendly systems!) as well as "student activity" and other fees.  That, of course, is in addition to various materials students have to buy.  And then there are living expenses.  If the GI student is out of work, that means borrowing in order to live.


Everything I've described wouldn't be quite so galling if it weren't for the fact that veterans finish (and don't finish) college at about the same rates as civilians.  And, as you all know, once you're out of school, you have to start paying those loans.  But what makes things worse for veterans who attend for-profit schools is that their courses and degrees aren't held in the same esteem by employers as those of other colleges.  Indeed, a veteran--or nearly any other student--who attends a for-profit college can get (arguably) a better education and have better prospects for gaining employment or continuing his or her education by attending almost any community college.  Plus,  he or she wouldn't owe as much money, if any at all.

Back From A Future

Having just got home from Prague, I can practically feel my blood pressure rising already.  Granted, I was on vacation and am now thinking about the upcoming academic year:  something I'm not looking forward to.   And New York, where I live, is a much bigger and, in many ways, more intense city than Prague.  


But I can now see much more clearly how tense people are here, and have begun to understand some of the reasons why.  I had one of those "aha!" moments in Prague when I talked to the American co-owner of a shop from which I rented a bicycle.  When he said that his shop didn't accept credit, or even debit cards, he explained--as I had already discovered--that many other Czech shops don't, either.  "The fees are much higher here than they are in the States," he said, "so the store owners don't think it's worth it."  People accept that, he said, because "they're used to paying for things a la carte."  


An example of what he said can be seen when you eat in a Czech restaurant:  almost all menu items--whether the meat, potatoes, salads or bread--are charged individually.  That doesn't make dining there more expensive than it is in the US; in fact, I found that I could have a very tasty and satisfying meal for a very reasonable price, and that I could afford to "splurge" far more than I ever could in New York, let alone Paris or London.


And, in contrast to France, Italy and other European countries, in the Czech Republic, a service charge is not included in the bill.  However, Czech wait staff and bartenders are accustomed to smaller tips than their counterparts to the west:  The custom is to round the total up to the nearest 10 crowns if the bill is less than 200, and to the nearest 20 if it's over 200.  (While I was there, the exchange rate fluctuated between 16 and 17 crowns to the dollar; I gave more generous tips than the custom normally dictates.)  


So, while the overall standard of living is clearly lower (though well above the standards of the so-called "third world"), people I met didn't seem unhappy.   A few of the young talked wistfully about coming to the United States; their notions of this country have been shaped by videos and movies.  However, I simply couldn't feel the same level of tension in the air in Prague that still, at times, jars me in New York, even after decades of living in this city.


Another striking contrast I noticed between Prague and New York, not to mention Paris (where I lived during the early 1980's) and other western European cities, is the number of young people with babies and small children, and the number of visibly pregnant women in their early twenties, or thereabouts, I saw.  There is little, if any, objection to birth control or other kinds of family planning and, if anything, less objection to abortion (which is legal in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, and in the first twenty-four weeks if there's a medical emergency) than there is in much of the United States.


Now I'm realizing that the Czech attitude toward money and family planning are absolutely congruent with each other.  That is because in walking the streets of Prague I was, for the first time in many years, taking in the energy and attitudes of a future-oriented society.  Of course, it's quite ironic to see that, to such a degree, in a place many people--like yours truly--visit because its beauty comes, in large part, from its ancient streets, castles and cathedrals, and the Second Empire and Beaux Arts townhouses along its residential streets.


Young Czechs--in Prague, anyway--seem to have a belief in the future, and in their own futures.  And, given the choices many of them, and the city's and country's ruling powers, are making, that confidence is justified.  While their per-capita income is about a third less than that of the United States, according to a report I read, their level of debt is even smaller than that of what Americans and most western Europeans now carry.  


One reason for that is, of course, that people don't use credit cards, or credit generally, as we Americans do.   And, while a much smaller percentage of young people are attending colleges and universities, almost none has to take out any debt to further their educations.  And, finally, the young seem to be more accustomed to thinking about how their educational and other choices will fit into a plan for their lives.  They don't get advanced degrees in Film Studies and hope for the best; their educational system and their families encourage, or in some cases prod, them into thinking about practical ways of using their talents.  So the young person who likes to draw may still pursue his or her dream of becoming the next Mucha, but he or she is also likely to be steered into studying graphic design or other areas that have clear career applications.  And, while professors are respected (as I discovered whenever I said I teach in a university) for their perceived education and intelligence, the academic life is seen as simply one kind of career.


In other words, I came to realize that, as someone told me a long time ago (Did I listen? Naah!), when people strive for status, it means they know they don't have any, and when a culture emphasizes it, nobody has it.  How much more status can one person have than another, really, in a country where the wealthiest ten percent of the population is making only twenty percent of the income (less than half the proportion America's wealthiest take in) and the homeless, while present, don't seem nearly as numerous or desperate as they are in American cities.

Why The Velvet Revolution Won't Happen In America, And Why We Will Wish Things Were That Good

My long-awaited and much-needed vacation has brought me to the beautiful city of Prague.  It cost me less than I thought it would, and on top of that, I received an unexpected gift.  I suppose if I were more responsible, I'd have applied it to my debt.  But, after interest, it would not have made so much of a dent in my old loans.  And I really needed a break, and wanted badly to see some place I'd never seen before.  I feel I made a great choice.


It's a wonderful place, for all sorts of reasons.  If you are interested in art, literature, history, music or architecture, it goes without saying that this is a city worth seeing.  But it also has a nice "feel" to it:  I find myself thinking of it as Paris (where I lived and which I have re-visited several times) without the attitude.


If anything, I'd say that this city is shedding a skin, or a shell, it grew during its decades of occupation by Hapsburgs, Nazis, among others, and the Soviet invasion.  You can see how this city is opening itself as when you look at the wizened but intelligent faces of the older people and when you watch, on Wenceslas Square, a generation who had yet to be born when Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek appeared on the balcony of Number 36 (the Melantrich Building) to announce the end of Communism.  

The events leading to the so-called "Velvet Revolution" began on 17 November 1989.  The date was deliberately chosen because, on the same date fifty years earlier, the Nazis invaded Prague's university dormitories and arrested 1200 students.  The Nazis did this in reaction to a rally thousands of students staged to protest the killing of Jan Opietal, a medical student who was part of an anti-Nazi rally held on 28 October, the anniversary of Czech independence.  


Although Havel deserves the credit he has received for his leadership of the Velvet Revolution, it was, as he has acknowledged, the students who made it happen.   


Now, since you're reading this blog, you're probably reading All Education Matters, Esquire Painting, Third Tier Reality and Do as I say, not as I do.  So, you probably know the answer to this question:  What did all of those Czech students (and Jan Palach, the Charles University student who protested the 1968 Soviet invasion by immolating himself just steps from where Havel and Dubcek would make their historic announcement) not have that more than half of today's American college students and recent graduates have?


You guessed it:  non-dischargable student loan debt.  The Paris students who protested in 1968 didn't have it, either.  American students who protested the draft and social injustice at around the same time weren't saddled with the kind of debt that grinds down today's graduates, and those debts were dischargable in bankruptcy--an option graduates almost never used in those days when well-paying jobs were relatively plentiful and tuitions were more in line with what most middle-class families could afford.


Think of all of the major social movements that were led by, or got their fuel from, students.  All of them occurred in times and places in which university students didn't have the  equivalent of six-figure debts and salaries in the low five figures.  Of course, the flip side of that is that, with the exception of the United States in the 1960's, all of the countries that had student-led or student-fueled rebellions had relatively small student populations that were drawn from very limited segments of their societies.  The ruling Communists in Czechoslavakia, as elsewhere, decided who would go to their universities, while in France (as in most of western Europe) at the time, most students came from a small number preparatory schools which were attended mainly by the sons of the socio-economic elites.


Still, it's hard not to wonder whether today's American students and graduates will ever rebel as their parents or grandparents did, or those Czech, French and other students did.  The graduates who are working are often laboring at more than one job and are worried about losing even one of them.  


Of course, the Czechs under Soviet and Nazi rule were worried about losing what few freedoms they had, not to mention their lives.  And while the French students didn't have to face consequences as serious, they were still no doubt worried about potential employers and, in some cases, their communities and families, looking unfavorably on their activities, especially if said activities resulted in their getting arrested.

But at least the Czechs, French and others could hope for some sort of better life for themselves, their peers and their countries.  And, if they died trying to bring those things about, others could--and did--carry on their work.  On the other hand, there really is no such hope for students who can't pay off their loans.  Things can never get better for them  (Just ask JD Painterguy!);unlike the protagonist of Woody Guthrie's song, death cannot set them free.


After the budget fiasco, and with the US involved in three wars in which it shouldn't be, one would expect that the time would be ripe for protest, or even more.  However, with the student loan situation, the government/military/financial plutocracy may have come up with a way of keeping young people in line the Hapsburgs, Nazis, Communists and the Gaullists could only dream of.  


Perhaps it will take losing even the prospect of low-paying jobs for the student debtor class to bring about any hope of change.  If that happens, things could get really ugly for, as James Baldwin wrote half a century ago, "The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose."  And, as Bob Marley sang, "A hungry man is an angry man."

What Nando And I Talked, And Turde Wrote, About

Hmm... Maybe there is some sort of cosmic convergence.  Maybe the great minds are thinking alike.


All right.  I'll stop aggrandizing myself.  If anything, the glory should go to people like C. Cryn Johanssen, Nando, JD Painterguy and Turde.  They have experienced the scams perpetrated by the Higher Education Cartel and government to an even greater degree than I ever have, and have been writing about them for some time.  Just a few weeks ago, I didn't even know they existed!


Anyway, I was talking to Nando today, and one of the topics of our conversation was how most students--whether in law, graduate or undergraduate schools--have absolutely no idea of what work and life will be like after school, and how few professors, advisors and deans talk about it with their students.  Lo and behold, I checked my blogroll tonight, and Turde has a post on that very subject.


I am all for people learning as much as they can about literature, history, art and science.  I love those things.  But even though most of my academic career has been spent stringing together adjunct positions, I am in a very distinct minority of people who has done paid work related (however remotely or peripherally) to the subjects I studied.  Some might say I'm lucky. I wouldn't deny it.


I am also fortunate enough to have gone to school at a time when, through a combination of partial scholarships and part-time work, I was able to complete my undergraduate studies without debt.  Eleven years after getting my BA, I started graduate school.  The cost of higher education, even then, was rising at several times the rate of general inflation.  Still, tuition and other costs were not nearly as ruinous as they are now; although I am still in debt from graduate school, I am still in the hole for less than nearly any law student is at the end of his or her first year of study.


The profs and deans never talk about those debts, or about the jobs students actually get, and the salaries they make, after graduating--assuming, of course, that they actually get a job.  If students can't see the sheer folly of paying $40,000 a year in tuition for a program that leads to certification in a saturated field in which the starting salaries are $30-35,000 a year, the so-called educators aren't going to point it out to them.  


To be fair, the profs aren't necessarily being dishonest.  The ones who've spent all of their working lives in academia really have no clue as to what's outside the ivory tower.  One prof in a college in which I taught admitted as much; he said that he had never been outside of school since he was four years old.  And he had been teaching in that college for more than twenty years.  On top of that, his parents had been professors, too.  


I mean, if someone started graduate school in 1970, got a tenure-track job in 1978 and tenure in 1985, he or she probably isn't aware of how much more difficult it is to, not only enter academia, but to start almost any other kind of career today than it was in his or her day.  And he or she probably doesn't know how much more expensive school is.


On the other hand, I would expect administrators, at least some of them, to know something about the world outside academia.  While it's true that most of them come from the ranks of faculty, they still have to deal with it in order to get funding.  And they sometimes hire firms to do various work for them, including public relations and recruitment campaigns.  So I do fault them for not only preying upon the hopes and dreams of young people by admitting them into programs that hold few employment prospects, but also for starting new programs (such as the ones in journalism) in dying fields. Equally unethical are those who charge Ivy League tuitions for second- and third-rate programs in fields in which the starting annual salaries are two-thirds of a year's tuition.  


Now, it's true that students have the Internet, which we didn't have in my day, to do research on different careers and schools.  However, the young are driven by their passions and dreams.  The lords of the academic cartels know this.  They also know that, for all of their gestures of rebellion, most young people fundamentally trust authority figures because that's what we're trained to do.  So, the kids figure, if the college is starting a program in something, and getting students to enroll in it, they must know it's a good thing.  And if one of those kids is offered a scholarship, he or she thinks it's a ticket to a shining future.


Of course, they will never tell those students that those scholarships, those high GPAs in Political Science and Sociology and Cultural Studies majors, will mean nothing the day they graduate.  And they will mean even less to Sallie Mae when she mails that first "Payment Due" notice.


Note:  During the next two weeks, my posts will be less frequent, as I will be away, on my first vacation in years.  But I am not going away!