Month: September 2004

Tomorrow is In a Dark Time’s third anniversary. Sometimes it seems like I haven’t been blogging that long; other times I can’t remember ever not blogging.

In that time, if my counter is to be believed, I’ve had 348,135″ “unique visitors” to this site, a number that’s hard for me to imagine.

More importantly, I’ve “met” people I would never have met without this site.

Overall, it’s been a rewarding experience which I hope to continue into the forseeable future.

Perhaps appropriately, I am going on vacation to Disneyland with Leslie and Gavin tomorrow night and won’t be posting the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, in order to protect the eyes of young high school students from spam, I am going to have to turn comments off until I can get back and edit them regularly.

I guess if you really have something you want to say, you’ll have to email me and I’ll post them in comments when I return. You can always email me at loren AT lorenwebster.net.

One of the biggest problem of trying to learn from history is that there are usually so many different factors involved that it is difficult if not impossible to isolate one factor and absolutely state its effects on society. Furthermore, when different people look at the same event, they often see it very differently depending on their own viewpoint.

For instance, although historians generally seem to regard the GI Bill of 1944 as one of the most successful and influential programs of the 20th century, libertarian economist
Thomas J. DiLorenzo argues that “In truth, the G.I. Bill was a budget-busting middle-class entitlement scheme that had destructive effects on higher education, and set the stage for virtually all our current educational problems.” According to DiLorenzo one of its most harmful effects was that “It served as a model for how politicians can grow the government without provoking public revolt, and caused an entire generation to regard government as a benefactor” and “It made the centralization of education possible for the first time in American history. That in turn opened the door to the ruinous politicization of higher education that has marked the past half century.”

A Department of Defense

article takes a rather different view of the bill:

Passing the GI Bill brought more than 16 million veterans into a peacetime economy. Since it provided education and home ownership opportunities to millions, some dubbed the bill the “Magic Carpet to the Middle Class.”

Historians say the GI Bill contributed more than any other program in history to the welfare of veterans and their families and to the growth of the nation’s economy. The bill is credited with preventing a post-war relapse into the pre- war Depression.

It seems to me that the key phrase here is “magic carpet to the middle class” because universal access to higher education allowed those who previously been unable to escape the bonds of poverty to find a new path to wealth.

The liberal Heartland Institute is even more generous in their praise of the GI Bill:

Whereas college in pre-war days had been regarded as just for “teachers’ kids or preachers’ kids,” the G.I. Bill opened higher education to all–including those who previously had been discriminated against. Quotas restricting admission of Jews and Catholics disappeared as schools were swamped with veterans. Previously all-white colleges admitted African-Americans. In fact, one-third of veterans at college between 1946 and 1950 were black; many went on to become leaders in the civil rights movement.

“The pursuit of higher education became considered normal for everyone, whether they were white or black; Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant; male or female,” notes Stephanie Swanson in a recent study of the effects of the G.I. Bill in The Concord Review.

Swanson points out the G.I. Bill also was instrumental in expanding the middle class in America beyond its previous predominance by white Protestants, making it accessible to people of other racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. As the number of blue-collar workers decreased by 4 million after WWII, the number of white-collar workers increased by 10 million. The result of the G.I. Bill was “the American Dream come true,” said political historian Milton Greenburg.

While I haven’t been able to find an entirely convincing estimate of costs and benefits, one article offers the following breakdown:

From 1944 for the next 30 or so years, about 70 billion dollars was spent on the GI bill. And what people have estimated is that, because of the income potential that people gained as a result of this training and education, that they have paid taxes 8 times 70 billion dollars. So well over 500 billion dollars in taxes paid on this 70 billion dollar investment, so that its paid of(sic) handsomely.

Many, myself included, would argue that it was the GI Bill and the influx of college-educated workers into our economic system that led to the technological leap forward for the United States in the second half of the 20th Century.

It’s probably not entirely coincidental that I deposited another $500 in my grandson’s Coverdell Education Savings Account (ESA) after reading The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education’s latest report on education, particularly the part that gave most states, including the one where I live, an “F” for affordability.

In the section of their report entitled “Measuring Up 2004: A Ten-Year Perspective: Higher Education Stalled Despite High School Improvements” the organization points out that “Although a larger number of high school students are better prepared for education or training beyond high school, these gains have not translated into higher rates of enrollment in higher education.” Certainly a major reason is that “Pervasively dismal grades in affordability show that for most American families college is less affordable now than it was a decade ago. The rising cost of attending college has outpaced the growth in family income.”

Perhaps worst of all if you’re at all concerned about the growing split between the rich and the poor were their findings that “The nation’s gaps in college participation between affluent and poor students have widened,” hardly an unexpected finding when you consider the rapidly rising costs of higher education and the failure of financial aid to keep pace with those costs.

According to CollegeBoard.com the average costs for 2003-2004 for two-year public schools are $1,905 (up 13.8 percent from last year) while four-year public colleges are $4,694 (up 14.1 percent from last year). Considering that these rising costs are taking place when salaries have remained static or fallen for the poor and lower middle class, the outlook for future costs seems bleak.

How does one account for such steep rises in college tuition? While there seems to be few attempts to explain such increases, USA Today’s suggestion that they “stem from state cutbacks in higher-education budgets to close gaping shortfalls in recent years” seems to coincide with what has happened in my own state. Federal cuts in aid to the states accompanied by increasing demands by voters to eliminate “unnecessary” taxes have forced states to decrease college budgets and cut the number of students admitted.

Personally, I agree with the USA editorial that “While the savings may help balance the books for now, they will cost states dearly in the long run. An investment in higher education today produces a handsome return in taxes, as employers are drawn to the state to take advantage of a highly skilled workforce.” In other words, once again society is tempted to sacrifice long-term gains for short-term gratification in the form of tax cuts.

If international companies continue to outsource jobs to third world countries, it will become increasingly important that our own workers are better and better educated. As USA Today points out, “Not only do college graduates earn $20,000 a year more than high school graduates, but they’re more likely to find jobs in an increasingly demanding global economy.”

Though it would be foolish to deny that part of America’s industrial growth has been fueled by the exploitation of cheap labor from waves of immigrants and abundant resources, it’s equally hard to deny that the country’s educational level has been a major factor in our industrial success. In fact, perhaps the greatest difference between third-world economies and ourselves is the educational level of our workers.

Although I’m sure one does not need a college education to become part of the middle class or even the upper class, it has increasingly become one the most important ways to attain and maintain that status.

Previous generations could rise to the top through intelligence and hard work. My dad only went to college for one year but ended up running the entire northwest area for his company, a job that quite likely qualified him as upper class. When he retired, two college graduates took over his responsibilities. Two of his older brothers who had to quit school before finishing high school to support the family ended up as well-paid supervisors at Boeing. Such success is still possible, but is becoming rarer and rarer. My older brother who never attended college owns his own company and probably makes more money in a single year than I made in five years.

My younger brother, on the other hand, never went to college but started working at my dad’s company before he graduated from high school. Unlike my dad, though, he didn’t end up working his whole lifetime for that company. Instead, he got downsized when the company decided to run most of the plants in the nation from a single computer network in Pennsylvania. He has never entirely financially recovered from that setback. Without a college degree to fall back on and with limited opportunities in his area of expertise, he has spent the last few years working as a truck driver. In doing so, he lost his house when he relocated, and several times has had to do without health insurance.

My son lost his job in the great dot.com crash about the same time, and, despite having to spend several months stacking Pepsi displays to support his family, with the help a college degree in math he has finally gotten another well-paying job in the computer industry.

Obviously such examples don’t prove anything. Still, I suspect they are indicative of general trends in our society. Surely there are fewer high-paying blue collar jobs whether because of the loss of unions, automation, or the more recent shipping of jobs overseas.

The loss of these high-paying blue collar jobs, the foundation of a large middle class in American in the past, has created a crisis of sort. Increasingly, the best paid jobs require a degree. The statistics seem to bear this out: “According to the Census Bureau, over an adult’s working life, high school graduates earn an average of $1.2 million; associate’s degree holders earn about $1.6 million; and bachelor’s degree holders earn about $2.1 million (Day and Newburger, 2002).” In other words, a college graduate earns about twice the income of a high school graduate.

One would assume, then, that a country committed to a thriving middle class would insure that anyone who has the ability and desire to go to college should be able to do so. Unfortunately, recent trends in society show the very opposite to be true. In fact, as the gap between rich and poor widens and as the middle class is pressed more and more on all sides, the cost of sending a student to college has skyrocketed, particularly in public colleges, those most apt to serve those with the least money.

I’ll look at the latest reports from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education next time.