25 June 2011; Low self esteem edition

From the Daily Mail story referenced in the video above:

'Debt can be a positive resource for young adults, but it comes with some significant dangers. Young people seem to view debt mostly in just positive terms rather than as a potential burden.' But how debt affected young people depended on what other financial resources they had available, the study found. Results showed that those in the bottom 25 per cent in total family income got the largest boost from holding debt.
[...]
'The groups that most need the debt – the middle and lower classes – get the most benefits to their self-concept, but may also face the greatest difficulties in paying off what they owe.' Overall, Professor Dwyer said the results suggest that debt can be an important resource for young adults, allowing them to make investments that improve their self-concept. But the results may also have troubling implications for the future.

'Debt may make young people feel better about themselves in the short-term, but that doesn't mean it won't have negative consequences in the long term,' she said. 'We found that the positive effects may wear off over time, but they still have to pay the bills. The question is whether they will be able to. There needs to be additional research to answer this question.'

Emphases mine. Maybe seeing things in terms of questions that need additional research means never having to say you're sorry.


CNN,"My degree isn't worth the debt!"

Esther Quintero, "College For All, Profit For Some"

Gary North, The #2 Port in the Academic Storm Is About to Close

Charles Hugh Smith, An Open-Source Web-Enabled Revolution in Education

NYT,Burden of College Loans on Graduates Grows:

Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time last year and is likely to top a trillion dollars this year as more students go to college and a growing share borrow money to do so.

Department of Education officials break down Stockton(Ca) man's door


and, related to the Stockton story: SWAT team collections student loans, updated

5 June 2011

RSA video: Barbara Ehrenreich, "Smile or die"(above)

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa,"Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything?"

Paul Craig Roberts:"The Default Specter as Political Theater"


OBL video fake?

Doug Henwood and the Econo-misers

in "The Non-Crazy Left" Jonathan Schwarz over at ATR posts 3 Real News videos of a Paul Jay interview with Doug Henwood. I've posted the second of these above because I think it relates to yesterday's essay by Rob, "Tipping point." You should go see the 1st and 3rd parts of the interview at ATR as well.

I note, however, that neither Paul Jay nor Henwood touch upon the reasons for the Republicans screaming for austerity and Obama's tepid response to them. Maybe that's because if they honestly addressed this they'd have to acknowledge that the behavior of both the GOP and BHO are part of a generation-long project to dismantle the New Deal and the middle class it created. They don't want the economy to recover; their friends and masters are doing OK.

Let me be clear that I don't fault Paul Jay or Doug Henwood; the interview is well worth your time, more so than a lot of crud on CNN, CBS, and so forth. Jay is trying to maintain objectivity. It's not his fault if the facts have a strange liberal slant that makes neither the GOP nor the president(or his supporters) look good.

Edumacation: half full?

If Dead Horse site meter stats are accurate, very few people like to click on the links, although I suppose that we could be attracting hordes of people who hover over the links, right-click and open them in another window to see if it's more fun that way, but I'm guessing that's not happening. Anyway, this post only makes sense if you follow the links. Yeah I know, bummer.

(OK, I'll make it a bit easier for you; the MSNBC, CBS News, and Ft Worth Star Telegram stories are all the same, although only the Star Telegram is nice enough to name the AP writer, Big Jim Kuhnhenn.)

MSNBC: Student aid linked to health care gets a trim
Congressional Democrats reduce spending for community colleges

New York Times:"Bill Proposes Increased Aid to the Needy for College"
By TAMAR LEWIN
(Published March 18, 2010)

CBS News: "Student Aid Linked To Health Care Gets A Trim
Lawmakers Trim Student Aid Package Now Linked To Health Care Bill"

Inside Higher Education: "Revamped Aid Bill Boosts Pell -- and Provides $2B for Community Colleges"

Fort Worth Star Telegram: "Student aid linked to health care gets a trim"

Walter Bortz on FORA TV

This was posted very recently, although as far as I know Bob Graham is retired from the senate. The rest of Bortz's comments are posted here at the FORA website.

In medias res: welcome young 2009

The year is barely 24 hours old as I write this, and 3 notable persons have already passed on:

• Claiborne Pell, 90, American politician, Senator from Rhode Island (1961-1997)
  
• Nizar Rayyan, 49, Palestinian military commander for Hamas, air strike.
  
• Helen Suzman, 91, South African anti-apartheid activist, MP (1953–1989)

For some time me brain been percolating a post about American decline, and given this background preoccupation, inevitably I find myself thinking about how these three person's lives illustrate various perspectives on that topic.

Nizar Rayyan was by no means a choir boy, but he was the closest thing Gaza had to a secretary of defense, and in some ways his death and the stolid, "nothing-to-see-here" way the US press has dealt with it helps illustrate one aspect of US decline, as we juxtapose the IDF airstrikes against Hamas with the EU's condemnation and the US's official impassivity, as Bush, jnr insists he won't break off his last Christmas vacation as president to address the Israeli violence. and our new talk-show-culture president elect insists on framing the conflict in terms of how he thinks he would react if he was an Israeli parent, discussing hypothetical danger to his daughters whom we should see as people, unlike, say, your average no-good Palistinian kid. Americans have traditionally flattered themselves that their government leads the world, but the EU shows leadership while the US establishment, the Congress having voted to supply the bombs that destroy Gazan lives, hide behind the moral indolence of their shrub-clearing lame-duck president.


Claiborne Pell's death reminds me of how forward-thinking the US welfare state once was with respect to financing higher education, as we juxtapose the 1960s and the era of the Pell Grant, still around but endangered , with the current state of financial aid and higher education, as state and federal budgets put the squeeze on working-class and lower-middle class aspirants to a better life.

Helen Suzman was a civil rights pioneer-- from South Africa. She was one of Nelson Mandela's few white friends who visited him in jail and agitated for his release, years before hip Western kids identified him as a signifier of coolness, like the Dalai Lama or Coldplay or yes, Barack Obama. Her life, and those (several) dark chapters in South Africa's history remind me of how, here in the US, we once had a functioning left, one that successfully shamed many American institutions into divesting themselves of their South African holdings, something that might be impossible today, when so many people seemingly settle for voting as absolution in which a vaguely religious political leader forgives you for your civic laziness because you voted for him. And don't forget to help him pay off Hillary Clinton's debt to pollster Mark Penn. I hear he doesn't really need the money, but hey, a contract is a contract. Yes you can.


photos: Reuters


cross-posted at Hugo Zoom