[Peace-discuss] Letter to N-G on 'higher (priced) education'

[C. G. Estabrook]

Somewhat to my surprise, I’m coming up to my 50th college reunion - I was in college and graduate school in the Sixties. It seems to me that since those years – and as a result of them - one of the main effects of the sharp increase in college tuition has been to entrap students.

People who come out of college with $50,000 of debt are stuck. It's no accident that there hasn't been an outcry on campus against the current wars in SW Asia as there was against the wars in SE Asia a generation ago.

One perhaps had to be deeply embedded in the university system in the 60s as I was to appreciate how frightened it was - and how much it was willing to do to prevent a recurrence.

But it's been pretty successful.

Economist Doug Henwood points out that it would be quite easy to make higher education completely free. The personal share of the cost equals about 1 percent of gross domestic product - about equal to three months of Pentagon spending, and less than four months of wasted administrative costs of the privatized healthcare system, which is an international scandal.

So it's not that the society can't afford free higher education. But high costs (and debt) are an important way of indoctrinating the young. People who are in a debt trap have very few options.

--CGE [much of the above from Chomsky]