[From DSC: In the posting below, when I say higher ed, I’m thinking here of traditional 4-year colleges and universities, whether for-profit or non-profit.]
Years ago…President Obama said to higher ed: “You’re getting too expensive. Please take steps to address this, will you?” And student debt continued to mount that year. Many families struggled with how to make getting degrees work within their budgets.
But the year passed, higher ed did little to nothing to address the issue of accessibility and pricing, so President Obama had to once again address higher ed: “Heh…did you all hear me, I said that you’re getting too expensive. Please take steps to address this, will you?”
Higher ed responded, “Yeh, yeh, yeh…we know…we’ve heard you say this before. Thanks…and have a nice day.” And what was unsaid — yet what was lived out — was “Let us run our own show. Please don’t bother us again.”
So another year passed, higher ed again did little to nothing to address the issue of accessibility and the rising cost of attending college. Therefore, even more families and students went into debt (an invisible reality that folks on campus often don’t really “see” being played out in real peoples’ lives). The amount of student debt continued to increase on a national level. At this point, more students and families started to question whether they wanted to go into that kind of debt — would they be ok with the decision to delay the start of their families? Would they be ok with not being able to purchase a home for a while after graduating? Or not being able to save for their retirements for a long while? (Re: this last item, financial advisers often stress how important time is — advising folks to put away money early on in their lives so that time and compound interest can be on their side, working positively on their investments.) So families and individuals begin to ask, “Is college really worth it?” (And I believe it is in most situations today, but that’s not the point of this posting.)
Yet again, higher ed doesn’t respond much…at least not for the most part. While a handful of experiments begin here and there, most of the traditional institutions of higher education pursue the status quo…all the while believing, “The gold ol’ days will return. The period we’re going through is an aberration. Let the status quo continue — it’s working very well for us.” But it wasn’t — and isn’t — an aberration. Student debt continued to mount. More families and students found higher education now out of reach for them.
Meanwhile, higher ed institutions said things like, “Our tuition increases were the smallest within our peer group” or “Our tuition increases were the smallest in years” or “We didn’t increase tuition nearly as much as the other institutions in our state.”
So fast forward and once again, President Obama had to address higher ed: “Heh!!! You’re too expensive! Are you guys hearing me or what?! If you don’t take steps to address this, the Federal Government’s going to get involved. Got it?!”
Then higher ed essentially responded in the same manner, “Yeh, yeh, yeh…we know…we’ve heard you say this before. Thanks…and, again, have a nice day.”
And so it went for the last several years.
Therefore, does anyone blame the President for taking matters to the next level? If traditional 4-year colleges and universities aren’t going to do much to address the accessibility/cost situation, then he and the Federal Government have to get seriously involved.
For others, a federal government that spends more than $140 billion a year on higher education is justified in attempting to get the right bang for its buck.
— from Ry Rivard’s article, New Higher Ed Federalism, at insidehighered.com on 1/12/15
So on January 8th, 2015, President Obama introduced his proposal for free community college for responsible students across the nation who are willing to work hard (see here , here, here, here, or here).
If this moves forward, it could have an enormous impact on those traditional 4-year colleges and universities who blew him off all of those years.
January 8, 2015
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Also see:
- ‘Nontraditional’ but increasingly common barriers to higher education –from huffingtonpost.com by Abby Miller
Excerpt:
At the heart of this country’s vast income inequality — an issue which has at last been gaining the urgent attention it deserves — is a growing educational divide. A college degree is the ticket to employment and better quality of life, yet it is more than ever unattainable for those who need it most: the growing number of low-income, first-generation college-going, adult, and immigrant populations; college students who until recently were referred to as “nontraditional”.
