Millionaire College Presidents Grow Along With the Soup Line for Their Graduates. When Will American Students Take a Stand?

Something you won't see in America anytime soon. Students in London protesting a tuition hike from - don't laugh - $9,600 to $14,400 in tuition a year. Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Things aren't going too well for the young people in the UK. Many of them are just like you and me; highly educated, overqualified, and underemployed. One unemployed masters degree student in the UK has resorted to standing on the street like a hobo asking for any type of work.

So I was very proud when I read that our British counterparts weren't just going to sit on their asses and do nothing about skyrocketing tuition rates whilst their nation goes to hell in a handbasket. Why isn't a tuition protest on a scale such as the one in London last week happening in America, land of the free and the home of the brave? Why aren't parents, students, and unemployed graduates storming the universities with pitch forks for raising tuition to pay its presidents more than $1 million each year?

Thousands of students in London are willing to be arrested and scuffle with armed policemen to stop the conservative party there from increasing tuition by a mere $5,264. That is chump change for American students nowadays. Isn't that how much American students spend to eat in the damn cafeteria?

I think we are pass the point of trying to be nice with these people. For those of you who attended one of the 30 colleges who pay their president close or more than $1 million per annum: ask yourself how much of your non-dischargeable student loan debt went to paying these scumbags along with their country club membership. Are you angry yet? You should be:

Thirty presidents received more than $1 million in pay and benefits in 2008, according to an analysis of federal tax forms by The Chronicle of Higher Education. More than 1 in 5 chief executives at the 448 institutions surveyed topped $600,000.

Most of the pay packages were negotiated before the full force of the recession. But even if the numbers dip slightly in next year's survey, executive pay is expected to keep climbing over the long term as colleges compete for top talent. And schools are rewarding executives while raising tuition, exposing themselves to criticism.

At large research universities, the median pay was $760,774; it was $387,923 at liberal arts colleges and $352,257 at undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities.

The highest paid executive in the Chronicle survey was Bernard Lander, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and sociologist who founded Touro College in New York in 1970. He died in February at 94.

Lander received a compensation package of nearly $4.8 million. In a statement, the college said $4.2 million of that was retroactive pay and benefits awarded after an outside consultant determined Lander had been "severely underpaid."

Several deals reported the Chronicle survey, which covers the most recent available data, included deferred compensation or other unusual circumstances. Comparisons to past years aren't possible because of changes in how data is reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Colleges were asked to report salaries by calendar year instead of fiscal year as in the past, so most dollar amounts overlap with what was reported the previous year.

Another change: Perks including first-class air travel, country club dues and housing are now included in reported pay.

In 2007-2008, 23 presidents received more than $1 million. As recently as 2004, no college president had broken the seven-figure threshold.

While some presidents on the latest list lead ultra-selective schools such as Columbia, Yale and Penn, executives from schools such as the University of Tulsa and Chapman University in Orange, Calif., are on it, too.

Not all the most elite schools are represented, either. The presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins all were paid in the $800,000s.

"Value is in the eyes of the beholder," said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of the Chronicle. "Some boards think these presidents, even at small institutions, are worth it. On the flip side, the prestige of serving at other institutions is enough of a paycheck for some."

Still, numbers in the tax forms don't always tell the whole story.

Chapman University President James Doti's $1.25 million compensation includes two "golden handcuff" deferred compensation deals worth almost $665,000, spokeswoman Mary Platt said. She said the board did not want to lose Doti, who since taking the job in 1991 has raised the school's profile and overseen expansive building projects.

He and other college presidents have donated a portion of the earnings back to the college. Doti gave a $1 million gift for an endowed chair in economics.

I knew America was headed downhill the moment the education system became a for-profit business as with our health care system and everything else that most developed nations cover for their citizens rather than having it privatized to greedy CEOs.

The real revolution against the corporate machine is now in Europe and I hope for the sake of humankind that people in other parts of the world will not allow what is happening in the United States to happen in their country. If this is the way to prevent the education scam from starting in the UK, then by all means these students should do whatever is necessary to stop it from happening. American students and recent unemployed graduates, this is how you get these leeches and swine to listen to your concerns.

Credit: Dominic Lipinski/Press Association, via Associated Press

India a/k/a the Future

Just today our beloved President Obama visited the new world superpower, India.  President Obama and that Indian dude released a joint statement stating:

The two leaders welcomed the deepening relationship between the world's two largest democracies. They commended the growing cooperation between their governments, citizens, businesses, universities and scientific institutions, which have thrived on a shared culture of pluralism, education, enterprise, and innovation, and have benefited the people of both countries.

I argue that this unique relationship has benefited the people of India and the corporations of America.  As BIDER readers know, the lawyers today are the factory workers and computer programmers of yesteryear.  How so?  Because all of us have suffered the effects of outsourcing.  Law Firms have successfully overvalued and undervalued lawyers, all within a decade, and now see the Indian legal workforce as the wave of the future.

The growth of legal services outsourcing has been strong and is likely to remain so, particularly in India, the survey found. Legal services outsourcing is growing at a rate of 40 percent annually in India, with about 110 legal services providers in the country. The Philippines and Sri Lanka provide 20 percent of legal outsourcing.

Law Schools are not about to stand back and let that happen--not without getting in on it first.  University of Michigan Law School (ranked #7 in the nation) has joined forces with Jindal Law School (no relation to Bobby--I think) to form a Joint Centre for Global Corporate and Financial Law and Policy.  What the hell is that? I'm not sure.  Yes, for those of you that need it to be spelled out, JLS is in India.  I have no idea what the effects of this "Centre" will be, but I can't imagine it's good for you and I.  I guess they foresee a day when American law school grads won't be "good for the money" and they are trying to appeal to the affluent Indian attorneys.  Apparently it costs Rs 1, 300, 000 to attend Jindal, which is $29,000.00 a year.  I can't be sure of that figure, however, because they place commas in totally illogical places.  In any event, that's a pretty penny (even though some of those costs are one-time only fees).  So, definitely worth it for a school like Michigan.
The best part is, if you look at the Jindal Law School website--it's peppered with pics of white and black people (clearly Americans).  So, Michigan has postured itself to keep making money once the cash cow, formerly known as the dumb-as-bricks-American-grad-students, have stopped producing milk.  Here's to forward thinking.  Happy Monday!


Next it will be a show on Indian Attorneys doing Doc Review and Patents and Trademarks.

Two Million Americans Over 25 With At Least a BA Are Unemployed. Are You One of Them?

Illustration by Graham Roumieu for Good

If you are staying in this weekend and want to catch up on a real-life horror story, watch Frontline's College Inc. on the booming for-profit higher education system. I mentioned College Inc. to BIDER readers in the Spring, but never got around to embedding the video for those of you who missed it on television.













Some of the facts mentioned in this Frontline program are frightening. The University of Phoenix enrolls close to half a million students, more than the entire University of California system and all the Ivy League schools combined. Mass producing education doesn't make our country smarter or better equipped to compete in the global job market. All it does is sink our country further into debt to obtain a crappy education and a worthless degree. The only people who benefit from the higher education scam currently in place are the scam artists who run the system, their business partners, and their friends on Capitol Hill.

The law scam blogs received a lot of traffic this week from a Slate article that became the most read article on the site for at least several days. I received a letter from one person who found our blog through the Slate article:

Hi!

I stumbled onto your blogs from the Slate.com article today and thought I would write you both.

A little background first. I graduated spring of '08 in California and finished my thesis about 3 weeks before all hell broke loose. Just to let you guys know, jobs aren't better anywhere. I was unemployed for 8 months and got a job with a large defense contractor. I had to stand in line with 3000 other applicants for whatever they had; think 1930's soup line. The offered me one in Philly and off I went. At this point I think I had applied for about 250 jobs. About 3 weeks into that job, I realized it was largely fraudulent and so decided to continue looking elsewhere. 2089 job applications later, I got a great one out here in Colorado.

I want to highlight that for you. 2089 job applications. It took me 2K applications to get to an interview which was successful. I applied in every major metropolitan area in the US for every job that was even close to my experience in everything that was online or in the classifieds. I mean I cold-called, I faxed, I emailed, I worked it hard. My resume is alright, I can send it to you if you'd like to see. (hey, you never can stop looking these days) But it took 2000 applications to get another job.

I want you both to know that. It is bad out here, and you are not alone in the law profession. You decision to go into law made no difference. It is largely luck and contacts that get you work.The engineering job market is just as terrible, hell, all the job markets are terrible. Every week the Times comes out saying that it's ageism, or sexism, or reverse racism. Fact is, it just sucks period.

So don't get down. Getting discouraged does you no good, You gotta attack it every day. Insert pop-psychology statements. Really, though, it sucks, we all know, but you gotta go for gold.

Good luck to you both. I hope for the best for you and keep up the blogging, I appreciate the work and the words. Thank you.

Thanks to this new BIDER reader for taking the time to write and comment on our blog. I am glad to hear that hard work and perseverance still pays off for a few people out there. I encourage everyone to stay motivated and keep applying even though I know how difficult it is to maintain any energy or hope after being unemployed for a year, two years, or longer. But I also realize that some of our readers will send out thousands of job applications and still never get even an interview. Some will get lucky or have a contact that will help them, but I believe the majority will lose out and end up unemployed for years or in a menial job. That's the risk our generation takes when they invest $100-200k in an education that may or may not help them find a job after graduation.

I stumbled across an article,"Young, Educated, and Unemployed: A New Generation of Kids Search for Work in their 20s", at Good. It just shows that millions out there, even with a degree from a good school, cannot find an entry-level job suited for their level of education.

Since January, for 35 hours a week, at a rate of $10 an hour, Luke Stacks has been working for a home-electronics chain. He answers the phone and attempts to coax callers into buying more stuff. This is not how he imagined he would be spending his late 20s.

Like a lot of us, Stacks was given a fairly straightforward version of how his life would unfold: He would go to college and study something he found interesting, graduate, and get a decent job. For a while, things went pretty much according to plan. Stacks, who now is 27, went to the University of Virginia, not far from where he grew up, majoring in American Studies. He later enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa, with the eventual goal of becoming a professor.

Flash forward to the fall of 2008, when the stock market crashed. There were never enough jobs for newly minted Ph.D.s to begin with, and now the likelihood of landing a tenure-track teaching position in the humanities was slim. Academia stopped looking like such a sure bet and Stacks grew disenchanted with his program. Even if he were to finish his doctorate, he reasoned, a job was in no way guaranteed to follow. He wondered, “How bad could it really be out there?” Turns out, it’s pretty bad.

So, in May of 2009, equipped with a master’s degree and a decent amount of courage, Stacks changed course. Shortly after graduation, he moved back in with his mother, who lives in Chantilly, Virginia. And from a desk in his bedroom, still littered with childhood toys and posters, Stacks started over.

What confronted him was not exactly pleasant. What once thrilled him—curating museum exhibits, making comic books, being a curious person—now seemed to make little financial sense. “I’m not confident that schooling has a direct connection with employment anymore,” he says. “But if I hadn’t received the kind of education I did, I would be less of an active citizen and less engaged in the world in ways I would not have discovered on my own.” And while passion and intellectual curiosity can’t be measured in dollars and cents, he expected they might at least secure a paycheck.

...

Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Labor Market Studies, has discovered that many college graduates are falling back on jobs that don’t require a college degree: waiting tables, bartending, working in retail. Using federal labor statistics, Sum has found that of the more than 2 million college graduates under the age of 25, about 700,000 have a job that doesn’t require a degree. And while unemployment and the lack of full-time jobs are problems, Sum says that having a job for which one is overqualified is worse. People with a job that does not require a degree—even if they have one—earn up to 40 percent less than college graduates whose jobs require their schooling. What’s worse, the longer one spends in a non-degree job, the less likely one is to ever join the college-educated labor force.

And the economic effects aren’t temporary. Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale’s School of Management, tracked the wages of white men who graduated from college before, during, and after the 1980s recession. Over a 20-year period, those who graduated in the peak of the recession earned $100,000 less than those who finished college before or after the economic downturn.

“Young college graduates are vastly underutilized. They go ahead and complete school and we don’t have anything to offer them once they’re out,” says Sum, referring to the young college graduates who are without work. In the more than 20 years that he’s been studying the issue, Sum says that the current downturn has negatively affected young people the most—and not just in terms of their take-home pay. For some people, the recession has forever altered perceptions of how the world works, creating the impression that success has more to do with luck than with hard work.

For Stacks in particular, the most severe toll hasn’t been a loss of income, but feelings of estrangement and isolation. It’s fair to say that Stacks doesn’t exactly have a lot in common with his coworkers. Many are still in high school. Most of the older ones haven’t gone to college. In general, Stacks veers away from conversations about his education or the number of degrees he has acquired, worried that they’ll think less of him because of it—or worse, think that he thinks he’s better than they are.

Despite his best efforts, the details of his past life have slowly seeped out. “People kept asking me, ‘If you have a master’s degree and you went to UVA, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be somewhere else? Shouldn’t you be more successful than you are?’” The answers don’t come easily. “My younger coworkers want my advice but they think my advice probably isn’t worth that much since we ended up in the exact same place and they don’t have a college education, let alone a master’s.”

This is a must-read, so go over to Good and read it in its entirety. Meanwhile, thousands of students unwilling to imagine that this will likely be their future in four years, continue to flood for-profit colleges and TTT law schools at $30k yearly tuition. This situation is like an ongoing nightmare that will never end.

Have a Happy Halloween.

Pompous Shill/Professor Disses Angel!

A Presumptuous Professor commented on my last substantive posting.  After I read it, I pondered the many ways that I could counter this "argument."  First off, I'm not a failed adult.  I didn't even do badly in law school.  I go out of my way to say that TTT grads are not failed adults as well.  We're all among the most intelligent of Americans with a college education and graduate degree.  Also, he accused me of being hungry for power, but came off as self-proclaimed royalty.  My professor was in need of a lay--a common colloquialism thrown around by all of my classmates.  I tossed my arguments around and around in my mind and I decided that my readers will speak up on my behalf... and they certainly did.  Thank you!

Here's what the Professor wrote:
You chose law to get power.

Yet you revile those with power over you. You vibrate with resentment that your professors had the power to ignore you. You deserved their attention and regard--after all, you are so much better/Deeper than they!

You make up sexual fantasies about them when they thwarted your expectations, which brought your ego weaknesses to the fore--and the best you can come up with is calling them women's body parts.

Hm, your failures and resentments and "disenchantment" (as though life is supposed to be enchanting) couldn't have anything to do with YOU, now, could it?

Well, it will be interesting to read your blog, and find out what happens when an obviously failed adult fails at the admittedly failed institutions of law school and law. I'm afraid there are all too many such people, blaming the world for their own failures and seething in resentment and anger. Particularly in your generation, which was told by its parents that it farted rainbows and would save the world.

Maybe you could try trade school. Though I do realize that someone as Deep as you, and as Gifted, and Special, would have a hard time with the humbling experience of fixing what's broken rather than complaining about it and expecting a reward.

****

THEN....Manatee Joe found this article wherein Obama's feelings about law school were covered in an interview of  David Remnick, the author of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama:

Then of course, you quote Obama as saying that he found the study of law “disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power!”

DR: At law school, some courses were dull; some had a sense of adventure that he appreciated. He studied with Roberto Unger who is a real radical. Obama took two courses with Unger, not one. This is a guy who is in the current Brazilian government and very much to the left. That’s not Obama’s politics, but he was certainly taken up with and fascinated by anything that was out of ordinary contracts and all the rest. Obviously constitutional law was where he lived.

FUNNY how our Nation's Leader was disappointed in law school as well.  It's not that interesting, it's not that intellectually challenging, it's not that impressive.  I stick by what I said.  Going to law school won't make your feel more enlightened, it will make you feel like you served prison time.  

Revenge is Sweet!

I hate to use this quote, because so many before me have, but it's so appropriate:
First they came for the law students and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a law student;
Then they came for the contract attorneys and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a contract attorney;
Then they came for the solo attorneys and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a solo.

Then they came for me, THE TENURED PROFESSOR, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
(in the fashion of Pastor Martin Niemöller)

Ha!  So, the ABA has its way with us regularly, all for the benefit of Biglaw and the For-Profit Law School Industrial Complex.  It was only a matter of time before they started to search for new victims.  And those victims are ironically the very professors that so inadequately prepare us for lawyerdom and the bar exam.
Brace yourself.

A special committee of the ABA last week released the latest version of proposed guidelines on academic freedom — just days before an ABA committee met Saturday to discuss (but not alter) the draft language. In the weeks before the draft was released, many faculty leaders had urged the ABA panel not to do the two key things its draft does:

• Remove language from the ABA standards that has been interpreted by faculty members as requiring law schools to have a tenure system. (The ABA panel that wrote the revisions now says that tenure was never a requirement and that it is removing references to tenure for reasons of clarity — although that interpretation of current policy is being met with skepticism.)

• Remove specific language requiring law schools with clinical professors and legal writing professors to offer them specific forms of job security short of tenure.

Hmmm.  It seems, however murky the language was, it was a perceived requirement that law schools maintain systems of tenure.  I cannot be certain of the ABA's motivations, but I suspect it has to do with lining the pockets of the Deans the law schools, and perhaps their Board of Trustees--many of whom are in BigLaw. It is a paid position, is it not?

Or maybe this is a way to punish Law Professors for the recent backlash against them for not doing a good job educating the next generation of lawyers:

Law professors seem to have it pretty good. They teach a few hours a week, host office hours for an hour a week, and spend the rest doing whatever else they do out of students’ sight — write law review articles and blogs, attend conferences, interview potential colleagues and, well, frankly, we’re not entirely sure.

But lazy? Is it fair to call them lazy just because they don’t sweat and toil in an office or cubicle like the rest of us nine-to-fivers?

Absolutely.

So, Professors have joined the other victims of the ABA's plan to separate the rich from the poor, and eliminate the middle class.
They are pissed as hell and not taking it sitting down.  Professors like Mr. Gorman are writing letters galore in protest:

Robert A. Gorman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to the committee that tenure was particularly needed for law schools.

"The research, scholarship and teaching of the law professoriate commonly deal with matters of public moment and controversy, more so than is the case in most other parts of the university; and the style of teaching is typically more challenging, argumentative and indeed on occasion confrontational," Gorman wrote. "Reliance on tenure as a buttress for academic freedom is thus particularly justified for law faculty."

That may be true of a handful of law professors.  Most are not that exciting.

The ABA claims that there is nothing in this change that will compel law schools to drop tenure, but they are simply not requiring it of Law Schools--in order for them to obtain/maintain accreditation:

The push started several years ago, and was led by David Van Zandt, the dean of Northwestern University's law school. Van Zandt said at the time that characterizing the changes as an assault on tenure was unfair. He said that it was wrong for the ABA as an accrediting group to require a tenure policy — and that institutions should decide such matters. "Sometimes some people portray this as an attack on tenure," he said in 2007. "The real issue is whether or not you're required to have tenure by an outside body such as the ABA. Not that we don't want to have that institution."

Well, that's not surprising.  Currently, the requirements for accreditation are heat, water, a fax machine,  bluebook and four walls.  Why would they require anything more?

The tenured professors are rightfully scared.  Why would law schools offer tenure if they didn't have to? Any big business would rather have employees that are "at-will."  You know, so they can treat them like shit and owe them nothing.

This will also have an adverse affect on professors who teach clinics, who are offered limited protections short of tenure.  Because they take on big and powerful industries, (i.e. Maryland Law v. Poultry Industry), they are likely to bring heat to the law school and get axed as a result.  By eliminating this "limited protection," it will have a silencing affect on clinical professors.  They aren't afforded tenure, as it is--but a little bit of protection.

So, my prediction is that law school professors will become more like college professors. We will see more adjuncts and less tenured professors.  Frankly, there are many BIDER readers that would prefer adjuncts with real life experience to the painfully intellectual and reality detached professors of yesteryear.  But I'm certain that the profits margins for those in charge will increase drastically.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

From Aspiring Video Game Designer to Stripper

This is what a $70,000 college degree from a for-profit/Goldman Sachs college will get you. It's good to know that $12.9 billion in bailouts went to such an honest and wholesome company, don't you think?

Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all."

The Corporatization of Higher Education Has Made It Less Valuable to the Millenial Generation

We have received many comments, including a post at Corrente by ChicagoDyke, in response to Angel's post arguing against a college education.

Regular readers know that my opinion differs from Angel. I have stated in the past that I was very fortunate to have received financial aid and scholarships to attend a top ranked college. I enjoyed my experience and I think I am a better person because of it. I only wish the greedy people who run our country and our universities believed that all Americans were entitled to an education without having to go into life destroying debt. This is why I blog about the higher education and tuition scam and its destruction of both the education system and the people who once believed in it only to be left unemployed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.

Millions of people my age are rightfully bitter about their return on a $200,000 investment that has destroyed them emotionally and fiscally. I come from a working class family where I was denied a lot of the material objects that the majority of my well-to-do college and law school classmates were fortunate to have growing up. Part of the reason I went to college and later to law school was to not only become more wordly and enlightened but to also improve my life and help my parents and the rest of my family who continue to struggle to this day. I'm sure that most working and middle class students go to college for similar reasons.

So I absolutely hate it when these same well-to-do people, or older people who went to college when it didn't cost $50k a year to attend, tell me that money isn't important compared to intangible things like having an education. Well, you never really had to experience a single day being dirt poor living on food stamps or have Sallie Mae call you everyday demanding their student loan payment, have you? I'm not talking about not being satisfied with just having enough to survive and have a roof over your head and food on the table. I mean bottom of the barrel poor, scared to death that any day now you could be on the street and eating at a homeless shelter. Well, that is the situation millions of Americans are in right now including millions of college educated graduates who thought they did everything right only to have half of their wages garnished to pay for that oh so joyful college experience. And, of course, there is the law school scam that uses fraudulent employment statistics to convince their students that taking out $150k in loans in a field that continues to outsource jobs to India is a good investment.

I do not have rose colored glasses on when I listen to people my age with $200k or $300k in student loans regret never being able to go on a vacation, or treat themselves to a nice outfit, or have children because of this "mistake". When the cost of an education hinders your ability to build a life for yourself: get married, start a family, buy a house, or even qualify for an entry level job - that is when the pro-education crowd must take these complaints against a college education seriously rather than blame the victims for being bitter or resentful. This is not their fault. You wouldn't have people like Angel warning against an education if the expenses weren't so high.

I respect Angel's opinion because her criticisms are valid and many people from the X and the Millenial Generation, which I am a part of, feel the same way because of the corporatization of higher education. Here is part my response to Angel's post earlier this week:

HardKnocks said...
The majority of Americans would be able to go to college IF colleges weren't so damn expensive, and that is largely the fault of greedy tenured professors and money hungry deans. I also believe that college shouldn't be 4,5,6 years. Most students would be able to graduate in 2 to 3 years if it weren't for ridiculous money making requirements set by their college. It's the same money making scheme that forces law students to spend three unnecessary years in law school.

There is no such thing as a "cheap college" if you are looking to go to most of the schools listed in the top tier of USNWR unless you get a ton of scholarships and financial aid. And the goal for most ambitious and academically gifted is still to get into the highest ranked school they can get into.

Most 18 year olds have no concept of savings and debt. They are just brainwashed by parents, teachers, the media, and USNWR to believe that a higher ranked school equals more prestige and better job opportunities to pay off the high tuition.

Anyway, what is the point of getting good grades so you can attend Podunk University with someone who got a 2.0 in high school? The US does not reward good students who aren't rich. Poor and middle class students are punished either with life crushing debt to go to a prestigious school, or they are told that despite all of their hard work they will never reach the coveted top tier school or Harvard because they weren't born into a rich family. That is NOT how the higher education system should work. The Ivy and top public universities should be accessible to anyone with the grades to get in, not just the rich.

This is what I said last month in response to critics of blogs such as BIDER that criticize the current education system:

As a starting point for any new readers joining us, I recommend reading Jobless Juris Doctor’s post about a day in the life of an unemployed graduate working a $10/hour part-time job with loans to pay back. Many of the comments are just a small window into the large numbers of young people who are depressed and on the verge of suicide because of student debt, especially in this new jobless era that could last for decades.

Please also read Cryn at Education Matters and put her under your blogroll even if your blog has nothing to do with education issues. Cryn is one of the few education advocates trying to change the system and fight for student loan victims. She regularly posts absolutely heart wrenching stories of educated American families being destroyed by student debt compounded by unemployment and our country not having a national health care system. Cryn herself attended an Ivy League and is now working in South Korea to pay off her student loan debt. Yes, many of us are being forced to flee the country to find anything resembling a respectable and decent paying job to pay off our student loans.

...We are not against education. We are against a system that devalues the importance of education by turning it into a money making scheme. To swindle millions of dollars from hard-working Americans using fraudulent data and myths in order to convince parents and their children that taking out hundreds of thousands in private loans is worth it to become more self-enlightened is despicable and should be stopped.

Low-income, minority, and single parent (usually women) students bear the brunt of the higher education scam. Too many of them end up in for-profit schools or low ranked, third tier schools that offer a crappy education and few job opportunities at the same tuition rates as the Ivy League. Many must gamble with the possibility of absolute financial ruin for life by taking out huge loans to attend college. So when someone asks whether or not college (or graduate school) is worth it, they are asking a very serious question that no one in higher education is willing to answer directly. Is taking out $50k, $100k, $150k, $200k – even $300k (I know an Ivy League and T14 graduate who owes more than $300k) in loans worth the risk? Is anything that doesn’t offer a money back guarantee or an absolute guarantee of a good paying job worth taking such a huge financial risk?

Anyone who can justify not questioning these exorbitant costs is either rich, clueless, or profits in some way shape or form from the system currently in place.

I have also recently blogged about university presidents who receive money from BP, Goldman Sachs, and Nike. These presidents are paid millions of dollars each year while their students drown in student debt. Why should the "little people" even take universities and the crooks who run them seriously anymore? These crooks obviously do not believe in access to education for all if it means their salaries are cut in half so that colleges can once again become affordable places of learning for the masses.

More of our critics need to open their eyes, stop blaming the indentured educated class of my generation, and start demanding accountability and change from the higher education industrial complex. Until this ends, the education gap between the rich and the poor will only become wider and there will be more critics besides Angel arguing against college and graduate school.

Giveaway Time: No Sucker Left Behind

Do you know a high schooler who is applying to college?  Are you applying to college?  Do you hate your alma mater and you can't put your finger on why?  Well, you need to read this book.

Even though I went to college a hundred of years ago, No Sucker Left Behind: Avoiding the Great College Rip-Off was a real education. It was an education on how my beloved college ripped me off and continues to rip off students every year. Had I known about some of the scams that colleges engage in to rip college students off, I may have broadened the scope of this blog. I actually was so focused on the big Law School Scam, that I had not thought about colleges and their lies that much at all.  

After reading this book, I realized that I had witnessed several of the scams first hand.

1. Bait and Switch Scholarship: The first year that I attended FYU (Fuck You University), I was given a scholarship based on ... hell, I didn't know. I had good grades in high school, so I assumed it was based on merit.  I filled out a FAFSA, and I got a scholarship.  At the end of first year, I filled out another FAFSA. I had a 4.0 (all of college actually)--so I assumed I would get the same financial package, but the scholarship was gone--POOF.  It was gone. I asked about it and I was told that it just wasn't available to me anymore. Classic bait and switch.  Give the freshman a great financial aid packages and pull out the rug from under them and they are stuck.  What are they going to do, transfer?

2.  FYU had an average sports team.  One year, the school made it to finals or playoffs or whatever they are called, and the next year, tuition went up by 20%.  As it turns out, the reason why schools give a shit about their sports team is NOT school spirit.  Rather, it's the greatest marketing tool ever.  If the team is doing great, then you can justify a hike in tuition.  Oh yah, alumna love to donate money to their schools when the sports team is doing well.

3.  Did you ever wonder why vital classes were offered only once a year, and not in the summer?  Why can't organic chemistry be offered every semester when it's the prerequisite to so many majors?  It's not JUST because the professors are lazy shits.  It's also because, if you don't fix your schedule perfectly, you're forced to enroll for one additional semester. I was wondering why so many people graduate from college in 5 years, rather than 4.  That's why!

These are just three of the scams that I found out about by reading No Sucker Left Behind.  It was a really enlightening book.  It's a must read for high school seniors!

So, here's the contest:  Think about college long and hard and write a blurb, in the comments, about how your college scammed you.  Be creative.  Or, if you can't think of a scam that applies to you specifically, just write about a college scam that you have identified.  If you become a follower of this Blog, then I will give extra consideration to your story.  If you don't feel comfortable telling me about your scam in the comments, then please email me your story and I will post it without your name--if you're the winner.   If I select your scam, I will post it and send you the book.  No restrictions on the age or location of the winner.  Anyone can enter.  Oh yah, no need to name your college.  

I will select a winner on July 30, 2010.  Good luck!