The GOP Education Agenda: Why earning a diploma will no longer buy you a job or a middle-class life

The turnout for the rally for higher education was dismal compared to the AARP and union rallies the week before

The common wisdom is that a college degree is your guarantee of a chance at the American dream. Over and over, we are told that young people who earn a college diploma will make $1 million more over their lifetimes than those who don’t.

Which is why many folks in Michigan felt so betrayed when Governor Rick Snyder’s proposed budget would cut funding for higher education by as much as 22%. Doesn’t a self-described nerd always support education?

David Waymire of Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications was a staunch Snyder supporter, but he is now concerned about the depth of his proposed cuts to our state’s college and universities. In his view, Michigan’s future prosperity demands investing in education as the key to attracting “knowledge industries.” Waymire’s recent Facebook post said, “Of the top 16 states in per capita income, all but two are in the top 16 in college attainment. The other two are oil states. College is the only path to prosperity…the cuts being proposed now, combined with diligent efforts to lower the quality of life in our cities, will ensure we never become one of those top 16.”

A college degree has long been the key to building a strong middle class, but the 2008 economic meltdown and the right-wing assault on public education and collective bargaining are conspiring to undermine Michigan’s prosperity for the foreseeable future. Just as NAFTA initiated a race to the bottom for Midwest factory workers, the new austerity promoted by the GOP will gut public education, while deflating the wages and benefits for college-educated workers and then, by extension, everyone else.

This chart ends before the economic meltdown - even worse since?

• The new normal – The first uncomfortable fact to confront is that the $1 million-over-a-lifetime statistic was always more fiction than fact, especially when you factor in race, gender, age and job choice. That statistic also ignores the hidden cost of the income you lose by being in college for four years or more. Then there are the two out of five students who fail to graduate within six years, many of whom are left with lots of debt but no degree. Moreover the relative benefit of a college diploma actually reflects the dramatic drop in the level of wages paid to people working in non-degree fields, not because people with degrees are doing significantly better over time. The Quick and the Ed found that since 1980 “real wages for Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher have risen $3,000, or 6.7 percent,” which is not much to brag about. During that same period, wages for Americans without a high school diploma dipped 23% and those with a diploma or GED dropped 17%. A college degree has so far provided a modest hedge against the decline that others suffered, but if the GOP succeeds in gutting education and driving down wages, even a college degree will not be enough to guarantee a middle-class life. The really bad news? The proportion of college-educated Americans in lower-skilled jobs has more than tripled since the 1960s, rising from 11% in 1967 to 34% today. We now have hundreds of thousands of new waitresses and clerks with college degrees wondering how they will ever pay back their college loans. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity reports that eight out of 10 college graduates in 2009 moved back in with their parents.

This cartoon on the Mackinac Center website portrays college-educated government workers as the enemy as part of its divide and conquer strategy

• Threats to collective bargaining will reduce the value of a college degree even more – Governor Snyder and the GOP-controlled Michigan legislature are joining forces with new Republican governors nationwide in efforts to weaken or destroy collective bargaining, demonizing public-sector workers in the process. Wage and benefit givebacks by private-sector unions such as those in the auto industry have already reduced the wealth of the middle class in Michigan. The right-wing-funded Mackinac Center in Midland has now taken aim at public-sector workers as the greedy folks who now makes more than workers in the private sector. The salient fact they omit, however, is that a far larger percentage of public employees hold college degrees compared to their private-sector counterparts. Indeed, Michigan public-sector workers are actually underpaid compared to what they would earn in the private sector with their educational credentials. The newly signed Emergency Financial Managers law drafted by the Mackinac Center allows the state to appoint individuals or corporations with the power to discard hard-won wage and benefit packages negotiated through collective bargaining. The inevitable effect of this new Michigan law and the dozens in the hopper that threaten public sector unions are a direct assault on the wages and wealth of all college-educated workers who heeded the call to go into debt for an education as a path to the American dream. Outsourcing and the elimination of jobs by technological innovation, hailed by the right as improved “productivity,” will only accelerate the trend toward lower wages, reduced benefits and a frayed social safety net.
• Rising college costs and student debt keep workers in line – A few years ago, a middle-aged woman in my class who had returned to school in the hope of changing careers confided that she was afraid to blog or to speak out in class because she could not risk having a future employer find out about her remarks. “I have to find a good job to pay off my school debt, so I cannot take a chance that they might not like what I say.” So much for free speech in academe. The Project on Student Debt reports, “College seniors who graduated in 2009 carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt. Meanwhile, unemployment for recent college graduates climbed from 5.8% in 2008 to 8.7% in 2009 – the highest annual rate on record for college graduates aged 20 to 24.”

What to do?

We must begin a conversation about what we do as citizens of this country and voters in Michigan. We also need to think about our public and personal choices.

A few suggestions for Michigan:

• Forget civility and bi-partisanship and protest like crazy – If our past experience with NAFTA proves anything, it is that that the time to fight is before new laws go into effect. In Michigan, that means doing everything we can to prevent the budget cuts to education and the laws that threaten our ability to negotiate decent wages and benefits. If you haven’t attended any of the rallies at the Capitol, make plans to do so. When fewer than 200 students show up at the Capitol for the rally to protest cuts in higher ed, is it any wonder that the Republicans feel bullet-proof? Kyle Melinn wrote a piece in Lansing City Pulse called “Do these protests really make a difference.” Even though the headline sounds hesitant, the story concludes probably yes, protests matter. We will try to keep you informed about upcoming rallies at the Capitol. Also make sure to sign up for the Michigan Stands for Democracy group on Facebook that is becoming a clearinghouse for protests around the state. I am sure that our new Governor and his Republican friends have persuaded themselves this backlash was to be expected. But if the numbers at the Capitol continue to grow to the size of Wisconsin’s rallies, then maybe our elected officials and the national media will recognize this is a grassroots movement beyond anything the Tea Party can muster.
• Recall the Republicans – Protests alone aren’t enough. Voters are beginning to understand that the Republicans have pulled a bait and switch in the last election, promising to focus on jobs while instead passing laws that will make the rich even richer. Ballotopedia shows how difficult it is to recall elected officials in Michigan, but it’s time to prepare for June when we can start the process of circulating certifying and circulating recall petitions.
• Amend the state Constitution to enshrine collective bargaining – Democratic Rep. Richard Hammel and State Senator Gretchen Whitmer have introduced a resolution urging passage of a new amendment to the state Constitution. The goal is to get this referendum on the ballot: “Every person shall have the right to form, join, or assist labor organizations and to bargain collectively through representatives chosen by the members of the labor organizations as to wages, benefits, and conditions of employment.”
• Demand a commitment from our friends or find new ones – The Democratic party in Michigan has some bright stars, including the two listed above. However, it also has some deadwood that needs pruning – or we must find the courage to plant a new tree. From President Obama on down, it’s time for the Democratic leadership to take a stand. With us or against us? All too often, the response has been to ignore if not insult the progressive base. Some of my Dem friends think the last election should have taught us “purists” a lesson. After all, where else can we go? (How about the Green Party?) But the issue isn’t electing Democrats, especially when they take us for granted. It’s making sure our elected officials fight for us in and out of office. And if they will not join us in fighting for our human rights, including collective bargaining, then it’s time to find or form a party that will.
• Re-think the purpose of a college degree – There was a time in the Sixties when people touted college not as job training but as a place to grow and learn – about the body of knowledge, about the world and about yourself. Even then, that claim was more dream than reality, and a college degree was also expected to pay off in better job opportunities. The question now is whether higher education achieves either goal, enlightenment or economic enrichment. From Wall Street to Wal-Mart: Why College Graduates Are Not Getting Good Jobs inform us that fully 60% of the students who graduated from college since 1992 are underemployed or overqualified for the jobs they hold. Maybe contemplating Plato while you bus tables is what you expected from your college years. But if you endured intellectually stultifying job training, while sinking deeper in debt, only to find yourself mired in a dead-end job at the other end, perhaps it is time for all of us to have that long-delayed conversation about what college is and should be.
• De-credential jobs that don’t need a college degree – One of the reasons that today’s college degree has become the equivalent of yesterday’s high school diploma is that more and more jobs that shouldn’t require one now demand at least a bachelor’s degree. That might have been acceptable when college was more affordable and you were assured a liberal arts education as part of the package, but it sure isn’t now. It will be hard undo the prevailing system but we cannot justify burying people in debt to pay for a degree that bears little or no relationship to what the job really entails.

A few suggestions for you and me:

• Solidarity forever – The right has always been brilliant at pitting one group against “the other” – whites against blacks and browns, white collar against blue collar, straight against gay. Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? shows how people can be manipulated by resentment into voting against their own economic self-interest. Meanwhile, the rich just get richer. Michael Moore warns us that the gap between rich and poor is so out of whack that the top 400 of our richest families now control more wealth than the bottom 150 million citizens. Our real “enemy” is not the guy across the street who makes a few dollars more. The Koch brothers, the Waltons and their ilk want to break unions and pillage government through privitization because it will make them even more fabulously wealth. It’s time for the rest of us to stick together and push back against trickle-up economics where investing in an education and working hard no longer guarantee a middle-class life.
• Bring back the free university movement – The free university movement of the Sixties provided many of us access to wonderfully provocative and important classes at little to no cost. In addition to enriching our lives, it lead some of us to new careers. Wanda Degen of the East Lansing Arts Festival was a student at MSU when a free university class in the mountain dulcimer inspired her to become a musician. It’s time to revive education as something people do for free and for fun. At the end of the day, it’s about the joy of learning.
• Avoid drowning in school debt – Most of us are smart enough to decide against buying a Cadillac on a Chevy income. Yet too many of us think nothing of putting yet another Study Abroad on the credit card. Or when we find ourselves unable to get a good job with a bachelor’s degree, we plunge deeper in debt for a master’s, deluding ourselves that more debt is the answer and not a new problem. A recent article in the Lansing State Journal about the rally pictured above protesting cuts in higher ed quoted a 34-year-old Michigan State University graduate student saying he will be $160,000 in debt when he graduates with his master’s this year. I checked, and he’s majoring in anthropology, which mean he will probably go even further in debt for a doctorate degree to have a shot at a job in his field. Without a winning Lotto ticket, I am not sure how he or any of my other friends with six-figure school debt will ever pay off their loans. Remember that you cannot discharge your college loan obligations by going bankrupt. Even more bad news is that the IRS will apply any income tax refund to your college loans before sending a check to you. Yes, education is more of an investment in your future than blowing your money on a trip to Cancun. But only if you can afford it. If you want to be a poet, write poems – and avoid the temptation to acquire a six-figure school debt in the process.
• Do something else – Before you send little Johnny off to college – or sign up for college yourself, consider investing the same amount in starting a business instead. Maybe you should consider becoming a baker, a carpenter or an electrician instead of becoming yet another college grad with no good job in sight. The electrician who fixed my failing sockets yesterday began telling me how our new war in Libya relates to France’s need for light sweet crude oil because of its limited refining capacity. Not only is he smart as a whip and better informed that I was about French and Middle Eastern politics, he seemed far happier than the folks I know who are stuck in cubicle world Monday through Friday. He sets his own schedule. He can avoid taking jobs with people he doesn’t like. And he’s far more relaxed than the friends I know in their 40s who are still paying on their school debt.
• Invent new models of local barter and exchange – There are new neighborhood-level enterprises rippling below the surface of the mainstream economy. Young artists in Detroit, lured by cheap housing, are exploring ways to sell goods and services to each other using barter and local scrip. One woman holds concerts where she offers food gathered from dumpster diving. It is encouraging to see young people creating new models of Community Support Agriculture where they buy a patch of land and raise food for sale at local markets. Some of these enterprises raise questions about protesting the public and tax fairness. But for young people whose prospects are otherwise dim, the benefits far outweigh the risks. Michigan’s new Cottage Law encourages new micro-enterprises for food products. With the mainstream economy unwilling or unable to make the changes required to generate enough good-paying jobs, we must support ways to allow people to build small-scale enterprises where we sell to each other.

The disconcerting reality is that mature capitalist economies around the world are faltering in their efforts to create enough good jobs for the college graduates already in the system. Electing Republicans whose free-market ideology has already brought us the Savings & Loan debacle, NAFTA, tax cuts for corporations and the rich and the recent Wall Street disaster threatens to make a bad situation far worse.

The bottom line for me is that I don’t need any more lectures from greedy millionaires and billionaires about how we need to shrink government by slashing school budgets to the point where high school kids in Detroit will soon be warehoused in classes with 60 kids in them. Would Governor Snyder let his kids go to school there?

Democrats used to fight for job programs as a hedge against growing inequality. Government hiring is supposed to act like a bellows, inflating in bad times to suck in enough of the educated workers who are being discarded by the private sector when the inevitable downside of the business cycle hits. Keynesian economics argues that you keep the paychecks flowing to teachers, police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel, since those dollars churning through the state economy would help make the recession shorter and shallower, thereby benefiting us all.

But instead we have Republican free-market ideologues controlling all the levers of power – the Michigan House and Senate, the Governor’s office and the Michigan Supreme Court. Even more dangerous is that today’s Democrats seem all too eager to adopt the Republican worldview as a way to attract corporate campaign contributions. This is a recipe for disaster not only for higher education but for the future of our state as a place where people can make a decent living doing work that matters.

We cannot wait for 2012 to take action. It is time for all of us to stand up against efforts to decimate government, crush public education, shift the tax burden onto our most vulnerable citizens and kill collective bargaining in the process. Let’s show them we’re quick learners who will not stand idly by while our country slips further into decline.