Student Loans and "Free" Higher Education (Updated)

Go here to read a post by friend Colin Chan Redemer titled "Minerva Has Left the Building." In even more unpleasant detail than the piece by Patrick Deneen (below the fold), Redemer explains that 

It is not the few tenured radicals, or the vocal woke students. It is not a few elite institutions. Rather the whole enterprise is rotten. From financing, to administration, to recruiting, to instruction, to accreditation, there is a tunneling wound in American higher education that I fear is fatal.

Just what is this tunneling wound? For an answer Redemer turns to history:

To understand a beast we must look to the head that guides it. In higher education that head is the administration. In the beginning, “administration” meant the servants of the university. The actual university was the faculty and the students.

But now: 

Is it an exaggeration to say that in the modern university the students and faculty exist for the benefit of the administration? Think about it in terms of sheer numbers. People think quite a lot about the student-to-faculty ratio when they are looking into investing in their higher education. But they should be asking about the faculty-to-administrator ratio. According to Forbes, a 2014 Delta Cost Project report shows that “the number of faculty and staff per administrator declined roughly 40% at most types of colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, now averaging around 2.5 faculty per administrator.” In other words, in the span of just two decades, universities became 40% less efficient at providing instruction to students, if you measure efficiency by the number of administrators you hire per faculty member.

There's much more of value in Redemer's piece but little of hope so I will leave readers with his conclusion:

For now it is enough to say that as parents and students gain clarity on what they want and on what universities now are, the demise of what we think of as higher ed in America is certain. New institutions that kindle the fires of philosophia—the love of wisdom—will rise not because of a billionaire’s vision or bequest, but because humans, by nature, reach out to know. And when their desire to know profound truth touches the cold reality of the modern university, like a root growing on concrete, they will turn aside to deeper, more fertile soil. Granted, billionaires could help this along by donating to already nascent projects; but these will have to be projects run by people who understand that higher ed is dead, at least to its original purpose

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I've posted many times about America's student loan problem. I've addressed the law that student loans are well-nigh impossible to eliminate in bankruptcy (here), although I've also observed that there may be some cracks in the nondischargeability wall (here). I've also written about the peculiar way in which the student loan programs subsidize foolish choices, educational scams, and ultimately drive up the cost of higher education (here, here, and here).

Higher education has become part of the battlefield in the race for nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for president. To the best of my knowledge, the Republican candidates aren't talking about education or student loans but Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton certainly are.

But here's the rub: whether it's Clinton's easier loan-payback terms or Sanders's free higher education for all, what are students and taxpayers getting for their money? Rather than wading into the swamp myself, I'll direct folks to two blog posts that address these concerns in significant detail.

First, go here to read Patrick Deneen's post "Res Idiotica" that painfully illustrates the un-education for which we pay billions.

My students are know-nothings.  They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.

Deneen is not a crank (he currently teaches at Notre Dame and has taught at Princeton), and his observations of students at elite American universities rings true. Modern-day college graduates are not stupid but they are the products of a federal "No Child Left Behind" program of primary and secondary "education" to learn the skills of taking standardized multiple choice tests as well as undergraduate programs that do little more than train for evanescent jobs in the service economy.

Well, one might ask, if what passes for education is such thin gruel, why does college cost as much as it does? Why does the cost of education continue to rise while its quality continues to decline? Why are students incurring such inordinate student-loan debt?

As James K.A. Smith writes in USA Today here, the educational-industrial complex spends ever-growing sums for "experiences" instead of education:

The story behind the story of student debt inflation is the inflation of the university into an expanding behemoth of goods and services that have little to do with education and more to do with expectations of coddled comfort. Rather than being an institution centered on education, the university now aspires to be a total institution that meets every felt need. The campus is now a sprawling complex of fitness centers and cineplexes, food courts and gargantuan coliseums. Students aren’t taking out loans to pay for an education; they’re effectively borrowing money to pay exorbitant, short-lived taxes for the privilege of living in a scripted, cocooned city.

I would appreciate learning what our candidates for America’s highest elective office have to say about this. Could any of them provide any rationale for education beyond the utilitarian? Could any of them specify what it is that an educated person should know? I am not, however, holding my breath for any answers.

The Tragedy of Donald Trump. Or, Dordt College Helps Make News

Over the years, several of my posts have mentioned my undergraduate alma mater, Dordt College. (Check here and here for some examples.) Given its location in Iowa, Dordt has offered the B.J. Haan auditorium to all candidates running for their party's nomination in the Iowa caucuses. Of this year's Democrats, only Larry Lessig took advantage of the opportunity (bonus points for anyone who can honestly say he or she even knew Lessig was running) and that the day before he dropped out. (Lessig was the only person who could make Martin O'Malley look like a serious candidate.)

More Republicans have taken advantage of the opportunity afforded by Dordt, perhaps because it's located in Sioux County, 80% of whose residents reliably vote Republican in presidential elections. A few days ago those interested in one of the leading Republican contenders, Donald Trump, managed to fill every seat in the auditorium as well as several remote viewing locations. Known more for his rhetoric than his insights, Trump managed to leave even a supportive audience scratching their heads with this well-reported remark:

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible.

For news reports about his remarks check the Sioux City Journal (here) and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (here). A recording is available on YouTube here.

Two matters about Trump's remarks cause some regret. First is the risk that some folks who don't know about Dordt's open-door policy for presidential candidates will mistakenly conclude that the college in some way support Trump or his views. Such were the concerns express in Jason Lief's blog here. I frankly don't think that's likely to be the case, especially in light of the remarks of Eric Hoekstra, Dordt's president:

Each time a candidate comes to campus, I have a certain sense of “cringe” for what it says to our students—political speeches are always full of broad-brush promises about what the candidate will do. There isn’t a candidate or party that can be 100% biblical or reformational—at least it seems that way to me. Opening our facilities to political candidates in no way implies an endorsement of their views.
Our choices are:

1.    To invite no candidates and have none of them on our campus
2.    To allow every candidate in good standing with their party equal access to our campus
3.    To pick and choose those who are worthy of having access to our campus and those who are not

We’ve chosen path no. 2. To fulfill our mission (equipping students, alumni, and the broader community to work effectively for Christ-centered renewal), this seems the best path with regard to political candidates. Certainly, option no. 1 would be to abdicate our mission. I don’t believe option no. 3 would be obediently responding to our calling as an educational institution. It would also violate our status as a nonprofit institution because it would be considered political speech.

The vitriolic nature of Trump's remarks and the vacuous nature of his "solutions" causes me greater regret. On a variety of issues Trump speaks to matters that are very real to a large number of Americans. The decline in numbers of jobs for working class Americans is real. The shrinking middle class is real. The ever-deepening penetration of the national-security state is real. Yet, Trump's bombast and undisguised opportunism means that discussions of new solutions to these concerns are (and certainly will be) shunted aside when the Trump balloon bursts.

Populism has a long and storied history in American politics (e.g., William Jennings Bryan, Wisconsin's "Fighting" Bob La Follette, and, more recently, Ross Perot). While its leaders were serious, populism as a movement failed to provide practical solutions to the problems its leaders identified.

More invidious than previous populists, however, is Donald Trump who is not serious. He is a corporatist who has used the power of the government to line his own pockets and is now masquerading as a friend of the people. Frauds regularly populate American culture (and sometimes American politics) but the real damage Trump will leave in his wake is a discrediting of non-liberal solutions to the problems animating his followers.

American political life is currently dominated, on the Left, by Progressive (state-centered) and, on the Right, by neo-liberal (corporate-centered) approaches. Neither a top-down nor a side-over approach to human society fundamentally addresses the real concerns of many real people. Neither is likely to cultivate communities in which human flourishing can grow and thrive.

Thus, Trump's flamboyant personal aggrandizement will in the end serve only to promote more of the same. A same that in which we see a withering of virtue and community and a never-ending growth of social atomism and end-less consumption.

Fred Siegel puts it well in the New City Journal here:

Trump’s a big-city guy with a big mouth who made his money from casinos and TV shows and went bankrupt twice. His appeal lies in his brashness—his willingness to violate politically correct conventions that are widely despised. It was said in mistaken defense of Joe McCarthy that, unlike the liberals, he at least understood that the Communists were our enemies. True enough, but as Obama understands, liberals dined out for decades on the inanities of McCarthyism. Obama hopes that Trump will serve the same purpose. (Emphasis added.)

A Consuming Corruption

Go to page four of the Fall 2009 issues of Ministry and Leadership, a quarterly publication of Reformed Theological Seminary: http://www.rts.edu/Site/Resources/M-L/issues/ML-Fall-2009.pdf.  (Disclosure: I'm a 1997 grad of RTS-Orlando.)

There you'll find an article by Bruce Baugus, "A Consuming Corruption."  Baugus defends two assertions as well as can be done in a short (1100 word) essay: consumerism is not identical to capitalism (God calls us to a life of self-denial, not one of self-indulgence) and the free market is legitimate (private property is lawful and goods and services can freely--and justly--be exchanged).

Dr. Baugus was kind enough to send me his Word file; my Contracts students will see it soon.  You can see it even sooner if you click on the link above.  A fine meditation for Labor Day.