denied loans

Still Denied: How Community Colleges Shortchange Students by Not Offering Federal Loans, an April 2011 report from The Project on Student Debt is an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success, which works to make higher education more available and affordable for people of all backgrounds.

For the record, citizens don't need Federal loans: they need free college. Citizens used to have free high school and that could get you a job that provided for a family. Before that, and for most of US history, schooling wasn't related to a job for most people. Paying for a job isn't how it has been done in the past.

And it isn't clear  that we actually need the additional training of college for jobs. Gossip punditry usually attributes the need for college to problems with K-12 schooling. More schooling is needed to fix problems caused by schooling. Think it will work? Standards committees are not sitting around figuring out how to compress and improve and get K-12 into K-10 so everyone can garden and exercise more. The structure of mass schooling has become an unresponsive behemoth that has its own weird internal logic impervious to reality or even kids and their health and well-being. That's why the citizen movement of homeschooling sprang up and why it represents real change.

There isn't a jobs creation committee out there anticipating employment trends and making a focused plan. And if there was a committee like that, it would be staffed by the those at the top of the schooling pyramid (scheme) who would be just like the majority of academically-trained economists who didn't foresee the financial crisis. Sure, corporateers at retreats talk about what they anticipate and since they have pirated half the world's money, what they do affects us all. So people listen up if a corporateer says he's hiring XYZ and they try to do or be XYZ.  That's the current jobs plan. Schools weed people out and that helps, too.

All that said, we are all in the current dysfunctional situation and some young people want to go to school and can't get the loans other easily get. That's unfair.  And considering the generous loans extended to the banks that they parlayed into bigger salaries and speculative cash, it is strange that people who want to go to community college cannot get a loan to do so.  From the report:

About nine percent of community college students nationally – more than one million students in 31 states – are enrolled in colleges that summarily block their
students’ access to federal student loans.
In 12 states, more than 10 percent of community college students lack access to federal loans, and in eight states more than 20 percent lack access. 

Community college students’ access to federal student loans also varies considerably by race and ethnicity. African-American and Native-American community college students are the most likely to lack access.

This issue brief can be reproduced, with attribution, within the terms of this Creative Commons license.  This brief was researched and written by Debbie Cochrane and Laura Szabo-Kubitz.  Lauren Asher and Diane Cheng also made significant contributions.  The issue brief was designed by Shannon Gallegos.

mass higher ed and the dropout problem (too much math)

You can listen to the Leon Levy Lecture by Paul Attewell entitled Mass Higher Education and the Dropout Problem up at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Attewell touches upon the US math-obsession (see list below, bold) deriving from devotion to the liberal arts core, not exactly what you would expect in a talk at the famous Institute, located on Einstein Drive.  Einstein, of course, would be pleased as he hated traditional pedagogy and rote schooling.

Paul Atewell, Leon Levy Foundation Member, School of Social Science. In the United States, ever-increasing proportions of high school graduates continue into college, and more and more undergraduates continue into master’s programs. One concern with educational expansion is that many students do not complete their degrees; they “drop out.” Some read this as proof that too many students are going to college, but other scholars argue that not enough Americans are receiving degrees. In this talk, Paul Attewell, Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will consider the reasons behind the dropout phenomenon, examining individual factors but also highlighting government policies and institutional practices that undercut students’ progress toward graduation.

summary points (my transcription) 

Brief:  Entire structure of aid and services penalizes the working-class and aids affluent families

• Financial aid favors traditional dependent students and penalizes working students 
• Conclusion: Rethink curriculum, transfer and financial aid policies
• Huge issue with tax rewards going to affluent parents paying for traditional students and penalizing students who work
• The US is math obsessed and we require math for lots of degrees where it is totally unnecessary: math is required for every degree, even 2-year massage therapy degrees or medical transcription, unlike Europe where they do not require this. The speaker is emphatic at how unnecessary this is and how it accounts for endless remediation courses. He suggests it is an American cultural thing, an obsession we need to change.

More:

• In 2004 about 80% of high school grads go on to college, up from 50% in 1972; perhaps today about 86% will at some time go to college
• Average time to a BA is 6.77 years and a mean age of 26, about 64% graduate after 6 years at 4-year institutions and less about 32% at 2-year institutions
• Most BAs are transfers, 60%
• Partial college completion does boost earnings and isn't worthless to students
• Partial college completion happens when students get a good job through their study
• Not all drop-outs are not all failure and ineptitude
• The Expected Family Contribution isn't really useful and most kids do not get that help
• Not all drop-outs are failures or inept; 41% of weak students in high school do get degrees
• Inadequate financial aid is a huge factor in partial completion
• Financial aid is awarded more generously to those who attend expensive institutions that those who attend less expensive institutions or community colleges
• Moderate work helps graduation rates; excessive work hurts graduation
• At community colleges, excessive work is the main cause of non-graduation
• Too little aid goes to community college attendees
• Giving more work-study aid to community college would boost grad rates
• Most of the Federal work-study budget in the US goes to private colleges
• Racial gaps are clearly present in the data and not accounted for by other factors
• The Expected Family Contribution is not working: students are not getting it from their parents even when the EFC is low. The speaker suggests that many parents are giving some money but less than the Feds anticipate. Students themselves are working and choosing to pay and this affects
• Over 20% of students cannot navigate the paperwork: it is far worse than taxes.
• Paperwork needs parental input to complete and they may not have a good working relationship with family to get this information easily
• One experiment paid to have FAFSA filed when taxes were done for low-income families, and a 20% jump in college attendance occurred.
• The paperwork is so onerous that when the FAFSA was included with tax returns, a 20% jump in filing was achieved: people simply are too overworked and tired to cope with more paperwork, which after all is yet another filter that ensures those with more time and money get through
• Students take a year off and work and that disqualifies them for aid the next year when they won't be working: aid is poorly done. Student earnings are penalized.
• Students cycle in and out to work, work summers, come and go, working constantly and the system penalizes that even though we do not have free college as many industrialized countries do

National Day of Action to Defend Public Education

Democracy Now! on the student protests about public education.  From the show:

ANANYA ROY: Well, we are beginning to look at a systematic destruction of the system of public education in California. And I think we’re feeling the effects of this. So, yes, much fewer students are able to join the community college systems, to enter the UC system, not only to be able to afford a college education in California, but to even be able to get into college. The community colleges turned away 40,000 students this year. And, of course, the K-through-12 cuts have a huge impact on whether or not students are able to get into colleges that they deserve to be educated at. So we have seen a horrible slide in California’s position in education in both the country and internationally. California now is forty-ninth out of fifty states in the number of adults with high school education. Its position in terms of the number of adults with college education continues to slip. And this does not bode well for California’s future.

So, if Californians care for nothing else other than economic competitiveness and job creation and economic recovery, then they have to pay attention to these trends. Many of us care for much more. We care about issues of social justice. We care about equality of opportunity. And when one cares about those issues, one has to pay attention to who is able to get into college, whether education has become a privilege for the minority or whether it is a widely held right.

colleges are corporations, too

The 32% tuition increase in California accompanied by bonus and salary boosts to top-tier employees, from Democracy Now! (I am at SOA Watch tonight a story on that is also at the DN! website)