Will adults join students in loan reform movement?

"Why have the right to a college education depend upon whether the father or mother is so well to do as to send a boy or girl to college?"

--Huey Pierce Long, "Every Man A King," 1935.

I was at an academic conference last Thursday morning when a lady announced to some sitting nearby, "Students have just occupied UCLA!" The reactions were mostly supportive of the actions taken by a generation of people so often demonized for what is believed to be widespread irresponsibility and nonchalance. It wasn't before getting back home later at night that I realized the magnitude of what had taken place only a few hours earlier. 

About 100 Students at the University of California (UCLA), Berkeley, had seized a couple campus buildings to protest the 32% tuition hike passed by the UCLA Board of Regents. Next January, they would have to pay an additional $585, right before a second increase of $1,344 scheduled for the fall. With that, most--those who can afford returning, that is--would end up forced to fork over more than $10,000 next year--triple the cost a mere decade ago. Approval of this proposal had been all but unanimous--with the lone vote against cast by the only student accepted among the other 25 members. How ironic?    

In no time, police officers, riot-gear-ready, had arrived on scene, equipped to take down any unruly, snot-nosed kid in sight--or the union members, parents, community leaders and activists who together formed a crowd of more than 2,000 outside in solidarity with the students. About 50 of the 100+ students inside ended up arrested.   

UCLA President Mark Yudof, in a prepared statement, bluntly defended the hike: "We're being forced to impose a user tax on our students and their families. This is a tax necessary because our political leaders have failed to adequately fund public higher education." Of course President Yudof, who rakes in over $800,000 each year, failed to mention the $200 million his university recently loaned California--never mind its $26.3 billion deficit--with a 3.2% interest payback. 

As I reflected over what should, but wouldn't, be universally championed as justified indignation against unfair and unprincipled decisions affecting the lives of an often marginalized and disposable population, I couldn't but be reminded of the adage, "A hit dog will holler!"

A College Board report released last month, "Trends In College Pricing 2009," found a 6.5% tuition increase, on average, at 4-year public colleges and a 4.4 % increase at 4-year private "not-for-profit" colleges, raising the cost of public higher education to $7,020 and private to $26,273.

A hit dog will holler!

These "trends" have left most students at the mercy of five options: 1) Drop out and transfer to a community college 2) Pick up a second job 3) Quit schooling altogether 4) Bear the brunt temporarily and hope a degree pays off in the long run 5) Take direct, non-violent action against the "trends."  

With a 10% or more increase, according to The American Association of Community Colleges, in enrollment at 2-year colleges, many students seem to have split their alliances between option 1 and 4; but if the UCLA incident offers any insight, it must be that a new "trend" is taking shape within college communities nationwide: civil disobedience to protest tuition increases and other elements of college life--e.g: exorbitant boarding and book costs--they find displeasing.   

This is the tip of the iceberg, not only in terms of boiling outrage, but also regarding a rise in consciousness. Students across the country, and in some instances the world, are starting to realize how powerless they truly are. I wrote a while back that, "As long as students are disconnected from the decision-making process of school policies, student governments and other such structures would continually be exposed for the farces and props they are"; and it seems this awakening as only just begun.

San Diego State professor Jerry Farber wrote a popular essay in 1969, "The Student As Nigger," in which he argued that most students were "politically disenfranchised. They are in an academic Lowndes County. Most of them can vote in national elections--their average age is about 26--but they have no voice in the decisions which affect their academic lives." And while Farber frequently gave to exaggeration and theoretical fabrication, his paralleling of the Black experience as metaphor for the conditions to which many students are consigned couldn't be more brilliant:    

The students are, it is true, allowed to have a toy government run for the most part by Uncle Toms and concerned principally with trivia. The faculty and administrations decide what courses will be offered; the students get to choose their own Homecoming Queen. Occasionally when student leaders get uppity and rebellious, they're either ignored, put off with trivial concessions, or maneuvered expertly out of position.

More than a niggerization of student life, I think, is a deliberate manipulation of the minds of students. So, if, for instance, a particular student feels a particular professor is "indoctrinating" him or her with a particular set of leftist or radical views, said student is encouraged to report immediately to the dean or chair of whatever department the professor operates within. The student is made to believe the school cares deeply about whatever concerns he or she may have, and with swiftness, depending on the amount of discipline the administration believes the professor deserves, this notion is confirmed. If the student is lucky enough, he or she might even be paid a special visit from David Horowitz, director of Freedom Center, whose organization funnels millions of dollars annually into college campuses--ostensibly to guard the "intellectual freedoms" of students.    

But if, for a moment, this student thinks he or she would be just as fortunate when raising issues relating to tuition costs, book costs, infantilizing curricula, departmental outsourcing, or school infomercialization, the result might be far from enthralling. The student would discover that the academy's ear is mostly open only to cries about bad teachers or activist educators--rather than more concrete concerns like the erosion of the public character higher education vows to embody. More and more, this false sense of empowerment is being stared down and wrestled with, nationwide, by students witnessing their colleges turn into educational shopping malls, academic boutiques, and research firms for private companies.      

The history of student-led movements is probably best remembered in the '60s when one set of students was standing up in opposition to segregationist policies that barred Blacks from academic upward mobility, and another set presenting just as strong a case against the Vietnam War ambitions of Lyndon Johnson's administration. In some instances, both sets intertwined and overlapped.

Currently, the vacuum of student-led mobilization against corporate infiltration remains largely unfilled, but with mounting student loan and tuition costs, it shouldn't take long before that scene at UCLA last Thursday is replicated en masse around the country--from city to city.    

Earlier this year in August, Congress passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (253-171), which terminated the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, effectively eliminating private lenders from the equation of federal student loans. Since 1965, when FFEL was introduced under the Higher Education Act of 1965, private companies have increasingly gained grounds in the student loan business, generation profit of over $56 billion last year.

Last year, according to a National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, two-thirds of students seeking a Bachelor's Degree borrowed more than $23,000 from the federal government. Another 13% were forced into private student loans, putting more than $11 billion in private companies' pockets. With congress eliminating bankruptcy protection from the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, giant private lenders like Sallie Mae are having a field day sticking-up overburdened students whose lives are usually too preoccupied with academic work or social functions to meticulously track the inflating interest rates bolstering their loans.  

Another pertinent issue is the Pell Grant which thirty years ago covered up to 77% of a public 4-year education. Today it only covers 35%.  Students with family incomes below $50,000 would ordinarily qualify for the Grant, but, in such times of economic encumbrance, many are finding it increasingly difficult to meet the criteria.  

As the student loan reform movement picks up steam and takes center stage, a number of outcomes can be expected and, to some extent, guaranteed. If the recent health insurance brouhaha is any indicator, students can expect private loan companies to play the victim. Lenders like Sallie Mae, which complained last year of 72% profit loss but reported an 8% profit gain last month, would argue, against all rules of reason and reality, that any attempt on the government's part to cut out the private middleman is "Un-American," "Anti-Capitalism," and an assault on the founding fathers' free-market-fundamentalist vision. The private companies can also be expected to use their employees as human shields whose jobs, it would be argued, might be jeopardized if the government interrupts the free-flow of the market.     

Students can also expect a cantankerous, right-wing opposition to any form of reform. 12 months ago, very few believed the movement to ensure coverage for the 43 million or 10 million children currently uninsured would be at all considered controversial or partisan politics, but, as seen with the numerous "Tea Party" rallies, fueled unabashedly by powerful, well-funded conservative institutions like FOX News and FreedomWorks, any shift from market-based mechanisms is interpretable as full embracement of Socialistic and Communistic principles. Students would likely also find a Democratic Party leadership inept in crafting engaging language to communicate directly to, and win over, the many students and parents who would be misled into believing reform has no righteous intentions. In addition, they would find themselves betrayed by neo-conservative, so-called "blue dog" democrats whose voting records indicate anything but democratic values and visions.  

Students can also expect the "Wall Street-controlled public press," as that troubled but triumphant soul Huey Long once described it, to make a circus of an issue as critical as the future of deliberative democracy. They can expect the flippant infatuation with every fringe movement supported by a mainstream personality--a la Sarah Palin.  

But, most importantly, students must brace up in preparation for what is sure to be an explicit validation of everything written in Youth in a Suspect Society, a provoking new text by renowned cultural critic Henry Giroux. Students would be portrayed as indifferent and aloof to their responsibilities and the implications of adult life. They can depend on the neoliberal politics of unconscionable individualism to deem them "pansies" and "softies" who, unlike their parents, expect to coast through life unhindered. The young of today, it would be said, shouldn't be "bailed out" of foolish choices made to assuage their frivolous pursuits. It wouldn't matter that in 1984 nationwide net state funding for higher education was 4.1 % of total state government spending, but by 2004, it had dropped to 1.8%; students would be ridiculed as greedy and gullible. They would witness a total trivialization of real-life stories like that of "Gina Moss," a social worker and single mother raped in college (kept the baby), who was recently evicted and has since seen her student loan debt balloon from $50,000 to $70,000 in only a few years.       

But the struggle to lift the burdens weighing heavy on the backs of students would have to involve more than young people: It would take the sympathy and sensitivity of adults working hand-in-hand, side-by-side with tomorrow's leaders. It would take the empathy and energy of courageous intellectuals to step outside of the academic bubble and stand for something worth more than a corporate handout. It would take the unwavering support of parents, community leaders, and educators to make good on the hopes harbored in the minds of young people--hope that the society in which they live cares deeply about the future awaiting them.