"Public education as a whole came under brutal attack as part of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the burden of the financial crisis onto the backs of the working class."
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reverses Obama-era decision on student loan debt
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reverses Obama-era decision on student loan debt
By Kayla Costa and Genevieve Leigh
21 April 2017
21 April 2017
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos signed an order last
Tuesday halting plans made under the Obama administration regarding the
national student loan servicing and debt collection system.
In a memo to James Runcie of the Federal Student Aid
Office, DeVos formally withdrew three Obama-era memos calling for the federal
government to select a single vendor to build a new system for servicing its
student loans.
Currently the Federal government has $800 million in
contracts with nine different loan servicing companies to carry out the tasks
of sending bills, collecting payments, and dealing with borrower issues for the
more than $1 trillion of student loans. Under this setup the federal government
has directly profited from the student loan crisis to the tune of about $10
billion per year.
The Obama-era plans to consolidate the vendor contracts
into one did not represent a genuine effort to address the student loan
collection scandals or reform the exploitative loan system more generally. The
memos were the product of a damage control campaign following a series of
lawsuits and scandals involving the Department of Education and the explosion
of the student debt crisis following the 2008 financial crisis.
Public education as a whole came under brutal attack as
part of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the burden of the financial
crisis onto the backs of the working class. Major cuts were made to spending on
education and consequently public universities compensated for the loss by
increasing tuition nationally by 33 percent over the course of the first six
years of the Obama administration. These costs, paired with the rising costs of
living and stagnating wages, resulted in a sharp spike in student debt.
As the situation was seized upon by the loan companies
with the backing of the Department of Education, the government agency became
the target of growing anger for employing and protecting the predatory student
loan collection agencies.
The token measures offered under by the Obama
administration, and only after enormous pressure, did nothing to curb the loan
collectors’ scandalous behavior. While consolidation of the loan agencies may
appear to have been a progressive step, it is doubtful that this move would
have made any positive difference at all to students. This is supported by the
negotiating process leading up to the plan’s implementation.
Bidding for the single vendor contract to service student
loans, which would have been the largest federal contract outside of the
military, started about a year ago. The largest student loan servicer in the
country, Navient, quickly emerged as the frontrunner.
Navient oversees roughly $300 billion in student loans for
more than 12 million borrowers, 6 million of whom are under contract with the
Department of Education. In total, the Delaware-based corporation, formed out
of the split of student loan servicer Sallie Mae in 2014, accounts for nearly
one-fourth of all student loan borrowers.
Navient is among the most notorious student loan agencies.
The company paid $97 million in a settlement in 2014 alone for illegally
maximizing late fees on the student loans of military personnel. Over 60,000
loans were affected by the violation of the 6 percent interest rate cap which
is afforded to active duty service members. It was this company which the Obama
administration was prepared to task with overseeing great “reforms.”
Any attempt to paint the Obama administration as an ally
of students or good for education falls flat in the face of the facts. However,
this is not to say there is anything positive about DeVos’ reversal.
Last week’s withdrawal of the Obama-era reforms indicates
a further shift to the right by the new Trump administration. DeVos’s actions,
in line with the Trump administration’s moves on foreign policy, immigration,
and environmental protections, mark an escalation based on the framework
established by the Obama administration.
DeVos has repeatedly expressed plans for the Department of
Education to slash federal funding and regulations—as weak as they were to
begin with—shifting the weight of public services into the hands of state
officials and ultimately private investors.
The recent order claimed that the previous plans lacked
“proper management cohesion,” in addition to being too costly. Without laying
out a new policy agenda, DeVos stated that an effort was underway to “acquire
new federal student loan capabilities that will provide borrowers with the
tools necessary to efficiently repay their debt.”
DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan, is a well-known ideological
opponent of public education. She and her family have donated millions of
dollars to politicians and lobbying groups that support the funneling of tax
dollars to private and religious schools through voucher programs and removing
oversight of education spending through the establishment of charter schools.
Her inner circle is filled with some of the most
right-wing conservative figures in the US. There is no question as to her
intentions as head of the Department of Education: to destroy public education
in the service of private interests.
Opposition to DeVos and the attack on education will not
come from the Democratic Party despite the theatrical campaign they waged
during her senate confirmation. Behind their nominal defense of “struggling
families” from “unnecessary financial burden,” as leading Senators have put it,
lies the Democratic Party’s own legacy of attacking public education and
promoting charter schools, extending back decades. The Democrats’ complicity in
the corporate-driven school “reform” is well documented in cities like Chicago
and Detroit.
AMERICA’S
YOUTH STARVE
FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT DEM POLS HAVE SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS.
What
is left for Legals is only the tax bills for La Raza's looting!
The
new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of
skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly
forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money
in a struggle to eat properly.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY: MUCK AMERICA’S YOUTH…. WE’VE GOT OUR ILLEGALS
CLIMBING THE BORDERS, JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS!
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS
pounds America’s youth as they build a border to border Mexican welfare state
on our backs!
AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE
…… ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE… they also get our
jobs!
The new reports show that in addition to
“traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these
teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling
drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat
properly.
AMERICA STUDENTS STARVE:
Report on the impact of
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS-TRUMPERNOMICS
THE GIG JOB – In America, No Legal Need Apply
"Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the
Millennial generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more
than half of those under age 25 participate in independent work, not
just in the United States but throughout the European Union
as well."
One in eight community
college students in the United States are homeless
By
Bryan Dyne
One in eight community
college students in the United States are homeless
By
Bryan Dyne
31 March 2017
A new study by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab has revealed that about half
of community college students in the United States, which make up 46 percent
college students in the country, do not have consistent housing and that 13
percent are homeless. In absolute terms, this means at least one million people
trying to receive postsecondary education do not have a roof over their heads.
These results confirm and expand upon previous studies that have
looked at college student homelessness, including earlier work by the HOPE Lab
and studies done by the College and University Food Bank Alliance.
This estimate is an order of magnitude higher than the official
homeless statistic of the US, which is 0.5 percent of the population, and more
than twice the rate of youth aged 10-19 which face homelessness at least once
during a year, which is just under five percent. It is also more than 29 times
the official student homelessness rate recorded by the Federal Application for
Student Aid (FAFSA), which is the only federal body that collects data on
homeless students.
In order to clarify the disparity between the official statistics
and the HOPE Lab survey, the World Socialist Web Site spoke to the Wisconsin HOPE Lab
founder, Sara Goldrick-Rab. She noted that “The FAFSA is notorious for
undercounting homeless students. First, students have to fill out the FAFSA,
which many do not. Furthermore, since a homeless student counts as being
financially independent, and thus is eligible for more money, FAFSA requires
that they fill out a large amount of paperwork, essentially to prove that they
are homeless. Since we just asked the students themselves, we captured a much
better picture of the problem.
“Even our results, however, are undercounting the problem. Since
it’s a voluntary survey, we are going to miss some people. We also do not count
things like couch surfing as being homeless because that’s often considered
something which college students just ‘do’. As a result, we include that in our
housing insecurity statistics, which includes about half of all community
college students.”
The latest HOPE Lab survey is the most widespread study of
homelessness amongst college students and, according to the research done by
the authors, is likely the only study that looks specifically at the plight of
community college students.
One of the few comparable studies was done by the California State
University (CSU) system, which included more students but only looked at
California schools and achieved its estimates based on interviews with CSU
staff, faculty and administrators rather than asking the students directly.
In contrast, the Wisconsin HOPE Lab sent a survey to more than
750,000 students across the country with a monetary incentive to garner
participation. The final survey response was 33,934 students, making it the
largest national study which focuses on food and housing insecurity among
college students to date. While the nature of the study does not immediately
lend itself to broad generalizations, the agreement between this study and all
other studies looking at hunger and homelessness on US campuses suggests that
the data collected do represent trends throughout all 50 states.
One thread which supports this hypothesis is that housing
insecurity, which includes the inability to regularly pay utilities or rent or
the need to move frequently as well as those without a permanent place to live,
is not a problem isolated to urban or high-poverty community colleges but a
largely uniform problem across the areas studied. Rural and urban community
college students are equally likely to be housing insecure, but homelessness is
actually higher for those students living in cities (15 percent) than those
living in suburbs (14 percent), rural areas (11 percent) and small towns (9
percent).
Moreover, the data collected show that housing insecurity is
unrelated to things like eligibility for Pell Grants or immigration status.
Of students ineligible for Pell Grants, 12 percent were homeless,
compared to 16 percent for those who did receive a Pell Grant. The difference
in homeless rates between US citizens and permanent residents was less than one
percent. And while students who are African American or Hispanic both were
overrepresented among homeless undergraduates in the study, the largest single
racial category among homeless community college students in the study is
non-Hispanic white.
Even the cost of attendance, which includes tuition as well as
food, room and board, books, supplies and transportation, does not greatly
affect the rates of housing insecurity. The community colleges studied with the
lowest cost of attendance ($11,934 per year) had a housing insecurity rate of
50 percent while the most expensive colleges ($26,563 per year) had a housing
insecurity rate of 46 percent.
The one factor that the study did find that impacts the
homelessness rate is whether or not a given student was a former foster youth.
Almost 30 percent of community college students among this demographic who were
surveyed are homeless.
Similar to the previous studies, which looked primarily at the
levels of hunger amongst college students, the current research shows that
working or receiving financial aid does not alleviate the stress of finding
adequate housing.
More than 40 percent of homeless students have a job, and more
than half of those work between 20 and 40 hours per week. One-third of homeless
students are receiving student loans. And, in another indicator of the
financial distress among these students, one-sixth of homeless students are
getting through college through credit card loans.
There is also little federal assistance for homeless students. To
quote the report, “among students experiencing housing insecurity or even
homelessness, less than 13 percent received any form of assistance with housing
costs, and only about six percent got assistance with utilities. Even though 28
percent of students in this study have children, and of those 63 percent were
food insecure and almost 13 percent were homeless, barely five percent received
any child care assistance. Instead, the most common forms of support these
students received were tax refunds (likely from the Earned Income Tax Credit)
and Medicaid or public health insurance (e.g., via the Affordable Care Act).”
April 21, 2017
Report: More millennials live at home than with spouse
An interesting study released by the US Census Bureau shows that about 1/3 of millennials 18-34 live at home or in a college dormitory. A quarter of 25-34 year olds living at home are either not employed or not going to school.
What's striking about these figures is the difference between young adults today and those in 1970.
More 18- to-34-year-olds live with a parent than with a spouse, according to the report, The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood: 1975–2016 (pdf). That's a major shift from the 1970s, when young people were more than twice as likely to live with a spouse. Young adults today are also likelier to be enrolled in college or graduate school than their counterparts in the '70s.Most of those who live at home but neither work nor study have a high school diploma or less, and about a fifth have a child. Half are white, and the majority are male. About a quarter have a disability."Almost 9 in 10 young people who were living in their parents’ home a year ago are still living there today, making it the most stable living arrangement for young adults," the report said. "In 2005, the majority of young people lived independently in their own household (either alone, with a spouse, or an unmarried partner), which was the predominant living arrangement in 35 states. By 2015—just a decade later—only six states had a majority of young people living independently."
Making sweeping generalizations that reflect badly on young adults today is probably unavoidable. But I think it more important to look at the underlying causes that are forcing young people to live with their parents.
It comes down to an economy that is not creating entry level jobs that pay a living wage. A college degree used to be a gateway to a white collar job in the 1970's. Those jobs not only paid enough for a young adult to live alone, but also put the worker on a management track.
Even high school graduates with few skills could find employment at a factory or shop that paid a decent wage.Those jobs are all gone now, never to return. Employment has become specialized to the point that graduate school is almost a necessity for finding a job after college that would allow a young adult the independence to live by themselves.
An even more radical change is the refusal of young people to get married. This is a titanic cultural shift, the consequences of which are still not fully understood. Clearly, at least part of the reason for young adults to shy away from marriage is economics. But there is also far less emphasis placed on sex and marriage by young people today than there was in the 1970's. Most millennials don't see an upside to having a spouse and a family, and with housing prices what they are, even a two income family will have a hard time affording one.
I think there's a chance that, with a better economy, the number of young adults living with their parents will drop. But attitudes toward marriage may have been permanently altered. The priorities of young adults would have to change for most of them to once again, look to fall in love, marry, and raise a family.
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