Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Assholocracy Porn: "I Have Very Little Tolerance For People With Student Loan Debt"


Awhile back, I adopted the phrase "assholocracy" for use as a tag here at TDS, and since then I have already used it on an incredible 52 different posts. Back in the 1970s glory days of Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine, he used to have a regular feature called "Asshole of the Month" (and yes, I only read that particular publication for the articles....really). Not having picked up an issue in more than 20 years, I don't know if Flynt is still running that always amusing feature, but if he is I would humbly suggest that for April 2012, he consider making it cretinous North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx. Here is the Raw Story with the details:
If someone is looking for sympathy for their high student loans, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) would not be among those providing any support.

According to audio obtained by Think Progress, the congresswoman appeared on G. Gordon Libby show Friday afternoon, saying she “never borrowed a dime of money” during her time in college before lashing out at those burdened with heavy loans.

“I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that,” Foxx said. “We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that.”


Despite her disgust for high student loans, Foxx is somehow content with high mortgage notes. Think Progress reported that Foxx owed two individual notes up to $250,000.
Here are a few fun facts that Representative Foxx might want to consider before ever again opening her big fat fucking yap about student loans. According to her Wikipedia page, old battle axe Foxx was born in 1943, which means she would have graduated college around 1965 or so. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost for one year of undergraduate tuition, room and board at a public university in 1965 was: $950. By 2007 (the last year for which statistics were available from the NCES), tuition, room and board had risen to a whopping $11,034. At private schools, tuition had risen from $1,907 to $28,384. What's even worse is that since 2007 many public universities have have imposed large tuition hikes on students as cash-strapped state governments have cut back funding.

So it doesn't take a whole lot of fucking imagination to understand how graduates are being burdened with such impossibly huge student loan debts and at a time when there are few good paying jobs with decent benefits waiting for them when they graduate. Unless you are addle-brained asshole North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx that is.

Addendum: But wait, it gets worse. Right after I wrote this post, I came across another article in Salon about Virginia Foxx, who is not only an asshole, but a fucking hypocrite as well:
Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a bill with the impressive, everybody-can-get-behind-this title “Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.” Sponsored by the ultra-conservative North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, the bill ostensibly took aim at an issue close to small-government-loving hearts: intrusive federal regulation of for-profit colleges — fast growing, highly profitable outfits like DeVry University or the online-only University of Phoenix.

Like so many of the bills passed by the House since Republicans gained the majority in the 2010 midterm elections, the bill was designed to repeal specific actions taken by the Obama administration. In this case, the issue at hand was the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure greater “program integrity” in the for-profit educational sector. Specifically, a new federal definition of what constitutes a legitimate academic “credit hour” and a new requirement that all online providers of post-secondary education be accredited in each and every state in which they do business.

Foxx’s bill repealed both measures. (The Senate has yet to address the measure.) According to Foxx, the new federal regulations threatened “innovation” in the educational sector. As reported by InsideHigherEducation, Foxx is on record as declaring that for-profit colleges do a “a better job of being mindful about efficiency and effectiveness than their nonprofit peers.” By, for example, flexibly providing online education when and where low-income working Americans want it, the for-profit free market delivers the kind of quality higher education that Americans so desperately need. The government should just stay out of their business.

I stumbled upon this story while researching the student loan crisis and at first I was perplexed. I didn’t understand why Republicans were opposed to higher academic standards for the for-profit sector, and I didn’t get the connection to student loans. But it didn’t take much research to discover what was really going on: an example of blatant hypocrisy sufficient to outrage even the most jaded observer of American politics.

The for-profit educational sector is an industry almost entirely subsidized by the federal government. Around 70-80 percent of for-profit revenues are generated by federal student loans. At the same time, judging by sky-high dropout rates, the for-profit schools do a terrible job of educating students. The Obama administration’s efforts to define a credit hour and require state accreditation were motivated by a very understandable desire: to ensure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth when federal cash pays for a student’s education. In contrast, Foxx’s legislation is designed to remove that taxpayer protection. So here’s a more accurate title for her bill: “The Protecting the Freedom of For-Profit Schools to Suck off the Government Teat Without Any Accountability Whatsoever Act.”

The for-profit educational sector has been growing extraordinarily rapidly for the past decade: 12 percent of all post-secondary students are now enrolled in for-profit schools, up from 3 percent 10 years ago. But the main beneficiaries of the growth appear to be the shareholders and executives of the largest publicly traded for-profit schools, not the students.

In 2008, for-profit schools registered a a graduation rate of 22 percent. (Public and private non-profits registered 55 percent and 65 percent respectively.)

54 percent of the students who enrolled in 2008-2009 in 14 publicly traded for-profit schools had withdrawn without a degree by 2010.

The biggest player in the for-profit sector, the University of Phoenix, graduated only 9 percent of its B.A. candidates within six years.

The pathetic performance of the for-profit sector in delivering actual degrees becomes all the more alarming when you realize that most of the students who are dropping out paid for their educations with student loans that have to be paid back: According to a report released in the summer of 2010 by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, “Emerging Risk?: An Overview of Growth, Spending, Student Debt and Unanswered Questions in For-Profit Higher Education,” in 2009, the five largest for-profit schools reported that government grants and loans accounted for 77.4 percent of their revenue.
Really, North Carolina, on this blog I have facetiously asked, what's the matter with a lot of different states, but you really have some 'splaining to do as to how you managed to elect someone as purely odious as Representative Virginia Foxx.


Bonus: "But you say that we're the assholes...because we bitched about the hassles...while you're sleeping in your castle"

13 comments:

  1. Ha Great rant....amazing how once one connects the dots about the whole sordid higher education for profit mess and follow the clues....it does take long to see that money is indeed in the back of it all.

    Not to mention how it underlines the fact that Congresscritter's are completely divorced from reality 2012 style.


    Oh and for those that are interested.

    http://foxx.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=3


    :D

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  2. Bill, I agree, this one is indeed an asshole. What was the economy like back in her day? Pretty good if I remember correctly, Viet Nam was just getting going and the military industrial complex was just starting to milk that puppy. The US was at the top of the world and everything was dirt cheap.

    However, I have to wonder about the accuracy of just putting out numbers for tuition as it increased year over year. My first year in a public college cost me $2230. Given that I earned $2 an hour that summer (at what amounted to a full time job, they didn't know I was leaving) it would have cost me 1115 hours to pay that bill. Taking your figures for 2007, of $11,304 per year, divide that by the same number and you come up with a tad less than $10/hr. I would think that $10 an hour is a reasonable pay for a young kid working full time in a warehouse or factory. So really the numbers for public schools was really not that much different on a year by year basis. Its the private ones that well and truly bone the students. Having gone to DeVry Institute in Toronto and Phoenix in 94-98, one thing that shocked the hell out of me was the GPA for Americans I met while in Phoenix. Here I am with a 3.83 GPA, paying for my last semester, and I'm looking at a lot of my fellow students who are bragging about their 2.2-2.5 GPAs and wondering why the interviewers were not even talking to them. Every single foreign student(none of whom had less than a 3.8 GPA) who I met at DeVry Phoenix was hired in the first half of the semester and had several jobs to pick from. Our American counterparts were struggling to get one job. Hell, the 3 fellows that I went down with all got hired at one job fair by the same company on the same day.

    Seems to me that not only are the kids paying through the nose for the education (quality of which is declining), but they are not working their asses off to make something out of that mountain of debt. So, in addition to a mountain of debt, they are shooting themselves in the ass by not getting the best scores they can.

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    1. "I would think that $10 an hour is a reasonable pay for a young kid working full time in a warehouse or factory."

      --it's a shame that a lot of corporate executives don't seem to agree with that...

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    2. They'd love to get that knocked down to free.

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  3. What a stupid woman. So friggin' dumb she can't even figure out that it COSTS a shit ton more to go to college today, people like that really should be dumped on a desert island somewhere.

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  4. This is an issue that hits close to home. I attended a small private community college style school out of high school, it was inexpensive per credit hour, strove to meet standards, and was designed for transfer. I ended up with a scholarship, so it didn't cost me anything, but I decided to do a second major and took out about 5k in student loans to finish it. This was in 2000 ish range of time. Since then, they have become a 4 year school, and their tuition has gone up 3x-4x per credit hour, as they have become for profit to the max.

    Anyway, I ended up working for a few years before going back for my bachelors. I ended up going to DeVry without doing all my homework and letting them talk me into it. Bad move. They did not discuss the caps on federal student loans at all. They only touted their high placement rates and great name recognition.

    After getting started in the evenings and weekend courses for working adults and non-traditional students, I soon realized based on how every single coarse was taught and the grading worked, that while you had to work fairly hard for an A, a very modest effort with frequent attendance could easily net a C, and you almost had to try to fail to get an F, or miss lots of class.

    As I went, I realized the insanely high credit hour price of $500+ when I found out the local state run community college (Columbus State) was only $71 per credit hour, had many of the same adjunct faculty that teach the nights and weekends, and had better facilities. It even had a better online class platform, with the added advantage of your classmates and teachers being a short drive away if you needed some face time. I ended up taking every class that would transfer from columbus state to DeVry to lower the cost, so I really did experience both schools at the same time to compare. It wasn't close, Columbus State won without considering price.

    I ended up over 40k in student loan debt, barely avoiding maxing out the subsidized and un-subsidized Stafford loans. I paid cash for the columbus state classes (6 in all). I did a class or two more than 50% of a 4 year program at DeVry, the rest of my credits transferred in.

    Furthermore, there were almost no good job opportunities offered at the career fairs via DeVry. I kept the same job I had before starting, so I counted as placed. They never had a good job for me to even apply for. Others who had no experience in their field going in were lucky to get the kind of crappy jobs that high school graduates could get in call centers and stuff like that. Of the 20 or so people I went through the program with that graduated, I am only aware of 4 that got an improvement in their employment situation, and this was when the economy was still going strong in 2006-2007 timeframe.

    I knew plenty of people who started, made it to the end of the federal student loans, and had to drop out because they couldn't get any other loans. There were others who dropped out because I tried to alert them to what would happen when the federal loans ran out.

    I give advice to everyone I can to avoid DeVry and for profit universities like the plague. The reason you here about them is because they use their money to advertise instead of improving the education. Stick with your public universities and their feeder community colleges, or just don't go to college at all.

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  5. Reading this stuff just adds fuel for my hatred of Baby Boomers. The assholes enjoyed 35 goddamn years of uninterrupted post-war economic prosperity and government funded initiatives for higher education. Now, after having stabbed blue collar laborers in the back, they want to completely destroy the middle class so they can fund Medicare and SS. You wouldn't believe the number of times I've come across Baby Boomers who complain about government spending, student loans, and mortgages with "back in my day" antidotes but still insist that they've "earned" medicare and SS. I can't wait for that generation to drop dead.

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    1. Wise Baby Boomers (they do exist) don't spout off like Virginia Foxx.

      For what lies ahead, we will need all of the wise people we can find from all generations.

      I think it's best to ignore the arbitrary labels, and simply surround ourselves with people who have compassion and wisdom.

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    2. ...so few wise Baby Boomers...and so little time left...

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  6. "Innovation" is becoming the scariest term ever applied to anything involving money...

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  7. I went to the BLS . gov website to calculate the cost, 950$ in 1965 is the equivalent of $6,253.17 in 2007.

    So if the cost of tuition, room and board had risen to $11,034 in 2007 then school costs have nearly doubled on an inflation adjusted basis.

    I wonder if books have gone up much too, most of which are one time use due to some activation code in the cover gimmick.

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=950&year1=1965&year2=2007

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  8. My mother, born in 1942, was able to fund her education to become a medical doctor by using the money earned at a summer job typing the telephone book or working in a department store to pay for that year's full expenses. At the beginning of every summer her father would buy her a car for $100 and at the end of the summer he would sell it for $100.

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    Replies
    1. don't forget about the having to walk 10 miles - in.the.snow.

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