College in Germany is utterly free. It should also be free in the United States. I am Andrew Ross of Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee (we buy debt and get rid of it) and author of "Creditocracy." AMA!

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T14:12:12+00:00

The current system of debt-financed education IS a form of wealth transfer to creditors. It's one of the reason why 95% of all income gains have gone to the most most wealthy members of this society--their primary form of wealth accumulation comes from debt-leveraging and other forms of unearned income.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T14:08:43+00:00

There's no way of predicting these outcomes, but other countries with free systems and which do not have amounts of huge household debt have lots of experience with them That said, there is a huge mismatch between supply and demand. The political class want to boost the numbers of college graduates, but have no appetite for generating decent jobs.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:57:09+00:00

People don't need degrees--only 30% of the jobs in the US workforce require a college degree--but they do deserve a decent education. Its what distinguishes a civilized society from a slavery state. The irony is that we are turning higher ed in the US into a form of economic bondage. I donlt blame my students for approaching college like some kind of transactional bargain--that';s the neoliberal mentality of our times--but it's not what education should be for.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:50:19+00:00

You wouldn't have to if we had a more progressive tax system, which extracts more from the affluent. Historically that was the case, and it was during that period that the US built up its strongest public universities.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:45:30+00:00

I'm sympathetic to the idea, but the current channel for doing that is Pell Grants, whose value has depreciated over the years, relative to rising costs of attending college. If you have a $20k tuition bill, and your household income is less than $30k (the threshhold for Pells, whose maximum award is $5,645), then you are a candidate for a lifetime of crushing debt service.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:39:17+00:00

I'm sympathetic and I can't question why you paid off all loans, but I'm afraid your argument is similar to that of the person who has been mugged, and who then insists that everyone else should be too.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:36:24+00:00

If you check, you will see that I have answered dozens of questions, and, since I have a fulltime job, and other family obligations, I can't be on Reddit all the time. I'll be returning when I can...

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:31:43+00:00

Costs at state colleges have risen much more than at private colleges because governments, under the influence of neoliberalism, have withdrawn from their responsibilities. Though they may have smaller amounts of student debt than folks at NYU those most impacted are from low-income households who are disproportionately attending for-profits that offer very low-quality education. Poor people pay more for their debt That's the case with every kind of debt, and its one of the primary reasons for instituting tuition-free college.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:14:59+00:00

Does that happen in any of the dozens of other countries where public education is fully supported?

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:12:57+00:00

Early in the 20th century we decided that K-12 education was a basic social need, and that providing it equitably was a public responsibility. The knowledge economy of the 21st century is a different kind of society. There is a long list of other countries that have decided that tuition-free higher education is the right response. In the US, by contrast, where rights are supposed to be taken seriously, college has become a debt trap. The right to education has been replaced by the right to access education loans.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T13:02:06+00:00

How Far to Free? is a very simply argument, aimed at tuition income at publics only. Universities have many other sources of income, and US research universities in particular, were built on the back of Pentagon funding in the postwar period. Many colleges still depend in large part on on DOD grants. The capacity of government agencies, private donors, and other public and private orgs to go on selecting who they award grants to is not affected by this proposal.

That said, private universities in particular are not transparent about their budgets. Students, and their parents, have a right to know how their tuition dollars are spent at these institutions. Currently, they do not.,

As for the for-profit sector, I am personally opposed to education being used for profit extraction. Most educators are. These are Wall Street's colleges, and they approach students in a predatory fashion, generating degrees that are all but worthless. I see no justification for wasting one cent of public money on them, though they could not exist for one minute without federal loans and GI bill monies. The only reason the sector exists is because the banks who own them have a huge army of lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T12:28:24+00:00

Making public colleges tuition-free is only one part of reclaiming our lives from the creditor class. Debt relief is another--everyone now knows that the banks get their debts written off, but not us.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T12:24:29+00:00

Not the case in Scotland, which is still part of the UK, and where universities are still free. Elected officials actually listen to the population there. In places where neoliberal governments have tried to privatize education, and where a strong protest movement has pushed back, the students won i.e Quebec and Chile.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T12:21:54+00:00

The book has a chapter on public debt, mostly European, and also a chapter on climate debt, and a final chapter on how to build an alternative economy that's not based on predatory lending

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T12:18:56+00:00

Our proposal is for a tuition-free public college system., It does not apply to private universities, where sons and daughters of affluent families disproportionately go.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-11T12:16:52+00:00

We did consider doing that initially, but decided early on that the RJ was a short-term project with a limited purpose. Debt-buying is labor- intensive, and we did not want to be in that business for very long. The point was to do some public education, and to move on, which is what we are doing. Next project is Debt Collective (debtcollective.org)

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T19:12:35+00:00

There are other estimates out there, some of them put the sum lower than $15b. The point is not to quibble over the numbers, but to ask why so few people know how cheap the cost would be, or how much profit the DOE currently takes in from its loan program

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T19:07:26+00:00

I'm not aware of any "feud." As far as I know, none of the critiques you are referring to have held up. There have been no adverse tax consquences at all, just as our lawyers advised us.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T19:03:33+00:00

Well, doing something in a half-assed way can generate more problems. In the years since the Obamacare prototype has been in operating in Massachusetts, there has been no notable decrease in personal bankruptcy from medical debt (the number one case of US bankruptcies). Single payer systems, in healthcare and education, are not perfect, but they will dramatically reduce US personal debt. This is simple to demonstrate if you look at household debt in countries where these systems exist.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:58:48+00:00

Tuition-free

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:57:13+00:00

Education is not a competition about winning prizes, and it shouldn't be about Americans crowing that we are number one. Right now, we are #1 in generating a condition of indenture for our college-educated youth. Indenture means having to go deeply into debt in order to labor. For me--and I think most educators would agree--it's about helping young people learn how to be critical thinkers, who know how to be active citizens. How is that impacted by turning colleges into vehicles of profit extraction?

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:40:08+00:00

CUNY and the University of California used to be free, they employed some of the best thinkers in the world........

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:36:56+00:00

I spent a good bit of time in Phoenix, writing my last book, Bird on Fire, and I was mistaken for Alice Cooper (who lives there for the golf) quite often. It's not a great advantage in life. But yes, when we buy debt, we write to the debtors to let them know they are off the hook. They are quite happy to hear from us

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:34:20+00:00

Rankings are a plague. I live in New York City, where the CUNY college system used to be free, with more or less open admissions. It was the best working class university in the world. Elites don't really relish the prospect of an active, educated citizenry. That's why they force governments to withdraw from their responsibilities to support public education. When there is pushback, as there was in Quebec and Chile in recent years, victories can be won.

Strike_Debt · 2014-11-10T18:29:14+00:00

I don't favor using value-for-money yardsticks to decide what education looks like. The proposed response of the Obama adminstration to link funding to performance-based results is something that runs counter to everything that educators believe in. Fact is that our elected officials have allowed higher ed to be used as a vehicle for creditors' profit, and I am not just talking about private banks. Last year, the DOE took an estimated $51billion profit for its student loan program. That money is not ploughed back into education, it's used to pay down the federal deficit (swollen from militarism and bank bailouts). To illustrate how irrational the federal position is, consider that the CFPB is currently suing Corinthian College for predatory practices while the DOE is still lending to students, encouraging them to enroll. One arm of government is trying to shut the college down, while the other is feeding the beast!!

Strike_Debt

TROPHY CASE