The Yoke of Student Loans

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Work, Youth

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Adult Learners, American Individualism, CMU, Debt Peonage, Financial Aid, Financial Literacy, First-Generation Students, HSBC, In Time (2011), Interest Rates, Loan Payments, Marine Midland Bank, Navient, Nontraditional Students, Perkins Loans, Pitt, Poverty, Sallie Mae, Self-Reflection, Stafford Loans, Student Loans

Time, money, debt, yoke = same difference, from screen short from movie In Time (2011), October 27, 2011. (http://collider.com/in-time-review/).

This week in July thirty years ago, I took out the first of what would be a series of student loans. Loans that would help cover eight of my ten years of undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. In three-and-a-half-months, I will be ending my twentieth year paying off those loans. If I had to do it all over again, I may have stayed in New York State to take advantage of the TAP award (need-based financial aid). That way, I wouldn’t have needed to borrow for my undergrad. But given my near desperation for wanting to escape grinding poverty, 616 and my family, Mount Vernon, New York, and the stigma that was my life living there among hostile and indifferent classmates, teachers, and neighbors, borrowing $2,625 on July 16 of ’87 didn’t seem so bad.

Yep, my first subsidized/unsubsidized Stafford student loan was a modest one. It was a set maximum based on the old laws limiting student borrowing (especially for college freshmen) three decades ago. I remember thinking to myself, “How the heck am I gonna pay this back?,” as I went through an hour of phone calls between Pitt’s financial aid office and Marine Midland Bank (now part of HSBC). The latter was where I had my first bank account, where I had deposited $500 of scholarship money from Mount Vernon’s Afro-Caribbean Club. That’s how little I knew about the process – I went with a bank that didn’t exist outside of New York State to work with a school in Western Pennsylvania!

Pact with the Devil, July 18, 2017. (http://evil.wikia.com/wiki/Pact_with_the_Devil)

Because I wasn’t yet eighteen, I needed my Mom to co-sign my loan. Because my Mom didn’t have collateral, she needed to add two relatives who did have assets to my first loan. In the end, Mom chose my maternal grandmother Beulah and my great-great-aunt in Seattle Inez (who just happened to be Johnny Gill’s great or great-great grandmother — didn’t know it at the time) as relatives with collateral who could be on the hook if I or she ever defaulted on our future payments. Of course, Mom didn’t actually seek permission from my then sixty-year-old grandma in rural Arkansas or my better-off, octogenarian, great-great aunt for this sign-off. Apparently, Marine Midland didn’t care, either. And that’s how it was for the next four years, having relatives whom I had never met (and in the case of great-great aunt Inez, who died at 101 years old in the early ’00s, would never meet) as collateral for my loans.

I’d also take out the smaller Perkins Loan for my undergraduate time at Pitt, an additional $2,000 per year, for three of my four years there. In all, I’d borrow more than $16,000 in four years, with a high of $4,000 in Stafford Loans in my junior year, 1989-90.

It bothered me every time I had to re-up for student loans. Not just because of the false notion of American individualism, the idea that I shouldn’t need anyone’s help to go earn a degree. It bothered me because I feared, sometimes to the point of nightmares, that I’d never be able to pay this money back.

Graduate school at Carnegie Mellon and the loosening of the student loan rules and amounts under President Clinton in 1994 made things better and worse. I barely borrowed my first two and a half years of grad school at both Pitt and CMU, to the tune of $1,800 in all. CMU paid me so little as a grad student that I had little choice if I ever planned on eating more than one meal a day but to borrow. And that’s how most of my borrowing occurred between January 1994 and January 1997, to either have to supplement my meager stipend (before the year of my Spencer Dissertation fellowship). Or, to use the funds to help support my dissertation research, the travel to/from and living arrangements while in DC in 1994 and 1995. Unlike many of my graduate school colleagues (especially the ones working on professional master’s degrees or a law degree), I didn’t use my loans to go on extended weekends to Bermuda or to take summer vacations in the Grand Caymans.

Of course, I graduated in May ’97, and lo and behold, I couldn’t find full-time work. And with the exception of the months of July, August, and September 1998, I wouldn’t have full-time or full-time equivalent work until I left Pittsburgh for work in the DC area in the summer of 1999. But, my consolidated student loans through the dispensations of Sallie Mae never took that into account when my first payment became due Thanksgiving Week 1997. I was able to get a reduced payment of $20 per month for the first two years. I didn’t default, but it made paying off my student loans that much harder. It didn’t help that Sallie Mae had locked in my interest rate at eight percent, retroactive to July 1987, and unchangeable under any circumstances. Even with consumer interest rates the way they have been for the past decade.

Relationship between lenders and payees, July 27, 2015. (http://forbes.com).

Flush or not, full-time or underemployed or somewhere in between, the student loan payments, deferments, and forebearances have been non-stop for two decades. Even credit card companies will leave folks alone if they make regular minimum payments. Not so with student loans or with Sallie Mae (now Navient, which must mean assholes in financial aid-speak). Despite everything I’ve been through financially over the years, I finally paid off the original principal of my consolidated student loans about two years ago. Great. It still means that I have left another decade of payments on accumulated interest before I can be forever free of this nearly endless cycle.

Here’s the real thing that I think I’d do over again, that should be done about this corrupt and serfdom-like process. Sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen years old is way too young to be making financial decisions that I or anyone else will have to live with for four decades or more. Even deciding to serve in the military isn’t a decades’ long commitment (unless one chooses to re-up or goes to officer’s school). At the very least, no one under twenty-one should have to commit themselves to debt peonage, including student loans. As for me, working thirty hours a week on or off campus between 1987 and 1997 to cover costs and necessities would’ve been preferable to this iron collar.

The real problem, of course, is that adult learners are taking out many of these loans these days. Even though they may be old enough to know better, they aren’t experienced enough. Lumina Foundation and other organizations have concentrated on “financial literacy” as the way out. This is wrong-headed, as it does nothing to change this financially enslaving system. Really, it would take free and significantly-reduced undergraduate tuition to do the trick. But where’s the fun, profit, and human misery in that?

Responses to My Piece in The Atlantic

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"Why Making College Free Isn’t Enough for First-Generation Students", Assumptions, Class-Based Assumptions, Comments, First-Generation Students, Higher Education, Hillary Clinton, Intentions, Nitpicking, Racial Assumptions, Responses, Stories, The Atlantic

On Labor Day last week, The Atlantic ran my piece “Why Making College Free Isn’t Enough for First-Generation Students.” It was a culmination of thoughts I had gleaned from the latest, research, from working on education issues in the nonprofit world, from my time as a professor at various universities, from my own college journey, and is in some ways, a summary of Boy @ The Window.

The response over the past week has been much more than I expected. It was definitely overwhelming in terms of the number of people who shared their own first-generation stories. I found myself wading through emails, nodding my head in agreement or shaking my head at the crap that some of my readers had to put up with to attend and graduate from college. These emails — as well as comments on the article on The Atlantic website — made all of the work putting the article together worth it.

A couple of stories stuck out for me. One was from a first-generation student who attended college a few years before my own 1987-91 run at the bachelor’s.

I read your article in the Atlantic, I was shocked at the similarity of our college experience. I like the Columbia investigation tale, they told me they didn’t believe me that my family income was so modest…Georgetown offered me the most money. I went to Georgetown in 1982, graduated in 1987, was homeless for a time, embarrassed about my modest financial background, grew up very fast in all areas, to enable completion of my studies.

Among the things that struck me was the shame of poverty the person felt then and years later. Living in a country like the US, with the constant mantra of hard work, faith, and ability all lead to prosperity, means that anyone not doing well might as well be a laughingstock standing naked in front of their high school graduating class. Or should contemplate committing suicide. It shouldn’t be purely on first-generation students to open up about their experiences before universities and states put resources into leadership and youth development organizations, mental health services, and fully-funded, need-based aid beyond tuition (covering food, housing, and books) to maximize opportunities for this increasingly larger group of college students.

I know the unofficial rule about not reading comments sections for articles, especially if the article happens to be your own. But given the personal nature of “Why Making College Free Isn’t Enough for First-Generation Students,” I wanted to see what folks had to say. Some accused me of self-aggrandizement, of “patting myself on the back” for having graduated with a degree from Pitt in four years. Another went on to call me “exceptional,” that most “sixth-generation” students couldn’t have done what I did. Both comments seemed vaguely envious. I took no joy in writing about being homeless for five days. Especially since I knew so many others under similar circumstances haven’t completed their degrees.

Some of the comments I received on Twitter were of the nitpicking variety. One was from an education professor whom told me to “read her book” because I didn’t nuance the fact that non-financial aid programs for first-generation students cost money and other resources. Really? No kidding! Another pointed out there were more aspects to Hillary Clinton’s higher education plan than free college tuition, while a third commented that I didn’t discuss Pell Grants as part of my financial aid packages. All true, but given the comprehensive nature of the piece, I didn’t think it necessary to write a magnum opus or someone else’s version of combining my experiences with today’s data on first-generation students.

Many of the comments in The Atlantic’s Comments section, though, were of the more stereotyping variety. Comments about my Mom as undeserving of welfare because of the number of kids she had. Comments about my father’s alcoholism. Assumptions that because my father wasn’t in the household, that I lived in a “broken home.” Stereotypes about affirmative action, about “big government,” about “welfare cheats” versus law-abiding “tax payers.” I could address all of these well-meaning race-baiters one-by-one, but I’ve challenged these assumptions in the piece and even in my blog, anyway.

One of my readers emailed me in expressing their assumptions about me and about first-generation students in general.

What makes sense is for first-generation students to go to colleges more oriented toward their needs, even if those colleges are less ‘competitive.’

Navigating a huge bureaucracy isn’t easy for anyone. What it takes is the emotional strength that comes from being raised in a functional, intact home…But rising up the ladder has to be seen as, for most, a gradual process, not a “rags to riches” one.

I guess this person missed the part where I noted that 50 percent of all first-generation students are White, and that technically, I did live in a home with either my father and my Mom or my idiot stepfather and my Mom growing up. Part of the problem in understanding the needs of first-generations students, though, are people like this reader, many of whom are college administrators who also make sweeping assumptions about students who aren’t middle class and White. Heck, the main indicator of success for students is parent’s income and wealth, not hard work, ability, or whether their parents live together or face substance abuse issues.

And that’s kind of the point another emailer made about her own college journey as a first-generation student.

I went off to a private college — which I picked without any idea about getting a job or learning a profession. My mother…naively believed that a degree would guarantee I would be more employable. I was one of maybe 2 scholarship students on my small campus and I was miserable. None of my friends there worked and for them, living “poor” was hip. I was the only one desperate not to be broke (because mom and dad couldn’t bail me out). I stayed there for 2 years even though I did poorly academically because I didn’t even know I could transfer schools. I thought if I left, I was giving up on college altogether. In reality, it took me almost 10 years to finish college (finally, at a state school) and I lived in poverty in the meantime…I still can’t eat ramen noodles because I grew so ever-loving sick of having them all the time.

In her case, I would eat ramen noodles any day over canned tuna fish. Twenty-eight years later, the smell of it still makes me queasy.

So, thanks to all of you who read the piece, disagreed with some or all that I said, shared your stories, commiserated with me, and/or misinterpreted my article and why I wrote it. Much appreciated!

K-16 Education Reform and the Unlevel Playing Field

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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Adult Learners, College Affordability, College Success, Degree Attainment, Dr. Steve Perry, Economic Inequality, Education Inequality, Employability, First-Generation Students, High-Stakes Testing, Higher Education, K-16 Education Reform, Michelle Rhee, Poor Students, Private Foundations, Student Loans, Students of Color, Teacher Accountability, Two-Tiered System, US Department of Education, Wendy Kopp

President Barack Obama speaking college affordability and a rating system, University of Buffalo (NY), August 22, 2013. (http://sfgate.com).

The shape and direction of education reform in America’s public schools and in US higher education is such that one can only conclude that this is the century in which social mobility will be limited to a precious and lucky few. With high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind on the K-12 side, and the rise of for-profit online institutions in postsecondary education, we’re well on our way to a two-tiered system of education. One tier for the affluent, who will attend private schools and elite colleges, and a much lower tier for the rest of us, who will increasingly receive a watered down public education and have ever more limited higher education options.

The Problem With Mainstream K-16 Reformers:

The problem is, though, most reformers actually believe that their efforts at reform will result in a fairer and more level playing field for our kids and for first-generation college students of every stripe. They have an unwavering desire to make testing the cornerstone of curriculum revisions and the key determinant in measuring teacher effectiveness, and thus, tying future funds to school performance levels. Or, in the case of for-profit online higher education, they believe that financial aid in the form of student loans, accelerated classes with a curriculum strictly geared for current job market trends and lack of academic support is the shape of their river. Leaving vulnerable millions of first-generation students — particularly low-income adult learners (many of whom are of color) — to dropping out of college with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to pay off and with few good career prospects.

Mock Time Magazine cover with Michelle Rhee alleging her full knowledge of cheating scandal in DC Public Schools, April 14, 2013. (By a college student whose mom is a 7th grade teacher -http://www.susanohanian.org/)

These reforms go further in providing an unlevel playing field. One where only a privileged few get to go down Mount Everest in a helicopter. The rest of us, meanwhile, must climb up Everest, ill-equipped for the climate while dodging rock slides, avalanches and other land mines all along the way.

An Unasked Question About K-12 Reform:

That reformers don’t see this is one thing. That they don’t even ask the questions that they should about their reform endgame has been the real problem for years. For example, they don’t ask the simple question, “Will high-stakes testing and teacher effectiveness measures close the achievement gap and make it so that students regardless of race and family income will be well prepared after graduating high school for college or for workforce training?”

The answer to this, of course, is no. High-stakes testing cannot and will not close the achievement gap or lead to students graduating high school better prepared for college and the 21st century working world. Teachers and administrators will continue to devote more of their time and efforts to testing than to other aspects of their jobs, for fear of losing their jobs. Reformers will continue to use the mantra of testing to siphon those precious and limited taxpayer dollars out of state legislatures and school boards to cover the costs of test development and test-based teacher evaluations. And students attending the allegedly worst performing schools will continue to lose good teachers and move from school to school in search of the promise — but not the reality — of a quality K-12 education.

Reformers like Michelle Rhee, Wendy Kopp and Dr. Steve Perry (not to be confused with Journey’s lead singer) don’t ask this question. They are too busy procuring funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, the Wallace Foundation and the US Department of Education to discuss the shape of their reform river. They are much more interested in proving a strong correlation between teacher effectiveness and student achievement via test scores, because they believe this is the way, truth and life for K-12 reform. And pretty soon, we will know that this correlation either doesn’t exist or is a weak one at best, under some rather ideal circumstances.

An Unasked Question About Higher Education Reform:

Futurama poster “A Mindless Worker Is A Happy Worker,” August 23, 2013. (http://d3.ru)

For-profit institutions involved in online higher education do no better in asking fundamental questions about their endgame. University of Phoenix, Kaplan University and Capella University don’t ask, “Is an accelerated online college format that is highly dependent on underprepared first-generation college students, provides few or no academic support services and is heavily subsidized by federal student loans the best possible postsecondary education for these students?” Of course it isn’t. Over the past 20 years, these institutions have been too busy figuring out ways to increase the enrollment of low-income students to ask this question. They have been more interested in drawing in as much federal student loan aid as possible to cover the costs of student enrollment to ask whether they are providing the best services.

For those not-so-lucky students attending these institutions, they face a great distance between the promises of this new higher education regime and its brutal reality. For-profits promise an online education that is tailor-made for students’ job and career aspirations, one even more alluring because it is an allegedly convenient fit for the demands of any adult lifestyle. For-profits seem to be proud of the fact that fewer than 20 percent of their students complete a degree eight years after they first enroll in one of their courses. For those few students who do manage to complete a degree, many are finding that their narrowly focused degrees don’t match up with their career aspirations.

Irony and Shame:

The irony is that for-profit online higher education has all but moved away from testing at a time when the only thing that matters in K-12 education is testing, from a child’s first week in kindergarten to his or her last day of 12th grade. The ironic shame of it all is that reformers in both K-12 and higher education never ask the question of what we should expect at the end of the reforming rainbow. Their reform efforts are purely about making a profit, for themselves or for others. The rest of us, meanwhile, can’t wait for Superman, with reformers stealing his powers on both ends of the K-16 spectrum, and placing kryptonite for real reform at every turn.

—-

I wrote all this months ago. Now, with President Barack Obama offering a formalized version of accountability for higher education institutions that connects market-relevant degrees and employment to college success, him and his administration are pushing the two-tiered agenda even further. Private elite colleges can easily opt out of this Race to the Top-esque rating system for higher education costs-to-employability ratios, and create their own measures around affordability, degree-attainment and career pathways. Or not, for that matter.

Public institutions — the ones tied most directly to US Department of Education funds — will have little choice but to go down this money-wasting path. One that in the end will do nothing for first-generation students, students of color, older students, heck, any student who comes from a humble background. “It’s a shame and a pitiful,” as my father would say.