3.3 - Neoliberalism and Defunding Public Education

Hi, we're going to continue to talk about teaching like it's 1992, and better ways of teaching for 2014. And, what I'd like to talk about now is neoliberalism, and the defunding of state education.

Neoliberalism is a kind of a confusing term. It harks back to the late 18th and early 19th century idea of liberalism, which is an idea that everything should be privatized; that, in fact, the best state, is no state at all. The most radical liberals of the 19th century, especially people like Herbert Spencer and the social Darwinians, actually believed that there shouldn't be state money spent on roads; hospitals; prisons; or education. Throughout the course of the 20th century, more and more functions that are social goods and social functions have been taken over by the state. And then, starting in the 1980s, with the so-called Reagan Revolution, there was a massive change back-- at least in the United States, but also globally; certainly in the United Kingdom, certainly in Europe, and even in Asia, too-- of neoliberalism. More and more taking of public goods and public services and transferring them to industry corporations and private hands. The famous strike of the air traffic controllers very soon in President Ronald Reagan's presidency where he simply refused to listen to the air traffic controllers brought in so-called "scab workers" to take the jobs, and basically said, "This is the end of unions; this is the end of state control," as much as possible. And our whole philosophy of neoliberalism-- or it's also called neoconservatism-- arrived where more and more defunding happened.

President Emeritus James Duderstadt-- he's President Emeritus of the University of Michigan, one of the great, great public universities in the United States-- at one point quipped that state universities used to be "state supported", then you'd have to say they were "state assisted", now you had to say they were "state located". That's how much federal funding and state funding for public education has declined, even in his lifetime as a long-running president. He later added to that and even said, "We might have to say 'state molested'". That, in the United States right now, there are many, many state governments that are trying to dictate the terms of the curriculum of higher education without fully-- or even partially, or even substantially-- supporting higher education.

There are lots of social negatives that happen from a defunding of public education. And I'm just going to talk about three-- two in the U.S. and one in South Asia.

The first is 4.1. I think 4.1 is a symbol of the GPA: it's the GPA of the median student entering the University of California this year. On a 4.1 and a 4.0 average means that the students are, not just perfect in their grades, not just perfect in their test scores, but they're also taking advanced placement course to be better than average. If you have to be better than perfect to get into your state university, something is very, very, very, very wrong with publicly-funded state education and the concept behind it.

Second another figure to keep in mind-- and we will put up graphs and pie charts and lots of data that you can look at on the website, so you can read more about this-- a second figure to keep in mind: 450,000: that's the number of students on the waiting list to get into community colleges courses in the state of California. That's a tremendous number of students who would love to go to community college, who simply can't get in. There's too many students.

This is an American problem, but its also a world problem. For example, in South Asia-- right now-- only the top 2 percent of the top 1 percent that's being even allowed to take state entrance exams to get into the technical universities in India make it into those universities. That's a travesty. There are so many hundreds of millions-- not just millions, but hundreds of millions-- of students around the globe who need education for the high tech complicated; legally; socially; morally; ethically complicated world we live in now, but who are not able to get the higher education they need.

I'm not a specialist, an expert, in education outside the United States. So, I hope you'll use the forums to write in and tell all of us, to teach us all about state funding, public funding of education in the country; state; or municipal government that you live in right now. That would be such a wonderful service: to help all of us be better informed about the process of state funding in the United States and in the world, and in the municipality that you live in.

Let me throw out a few other figures. The U.S. spends 2.6 percent, less than 3 percent, of its GDP on higher education. Of that tiny bit of money spent on higher education, 55 percent of it comes from private support: foundations, private universities and tuitions. The rest is what comes from state, federal, and municipal governments. According to the O.E.C.D., federal; state; and municipal governments make a profit-- listen to this: a profit-- of $231,000 on each American who graduates from college. I'm going to repeat that, because it's such an eye-popping and important statistic: according to the O.E.C.D., federal; state; and municipal governments make a profit of $231,000 on each American who graduates from college. What they mean is, if you invest in an American's college education, you will earn back, not only that amount of money, but a profit of $231,000 for each dollar spent. That's astonishing. There's nothing that yields quite that kind of profit: "for each American who graduates from college". That comes from tax dividends, from not being on unemployment rolls, since a college degree greatly increases your chances of having a job, from not being on welfare, and not being in prison. The single biggest correlative of those entering the prison system are actually not college but dropping out of high school. Being a high school dropout correlates with income level, and it also correlates with a future in crime, because there are just no jobs available for high school drop outs. We also know that the cost of a college education is one of the three most important factors in what precipitates high school students in the United States from dropping out of high school. If you know that getting a high school degree doesn't lead to anything, won't get you into college, you have, you lose relevance of the importance of studying and greatly increases your chance of dropping out of school.

There's some other O.E.C.D. figures that are really interesting and important to think about-- and again, we'll be putting these up on the website so you can look at them in more detail and really parse these numbers-- The O.E.C.D. says that it's a great investment for individuals, even in the United States where tuition is twice as high; even at public schools, as it is in most other countries, and for private schools, astronomically higher. For individuals in the United States, men earn $365,000 profit-- even taking out the cost of indirect and direct costs for tuition-- $365,000 profit in the course of their life for having a college degree. For women, it's considerably less: $185,000; and that's because of the income disparity between men and women in our country. But still, even at $185,000, and certainly at $365,000, that's a good investment of your money in college. That's important, because there's been almost a campaign lately to say that college isn't worth it: that college graduates don't have jobs, and that debt is at an all-time high and that there's a tuition bubble. All of those things are true, and yet it is still-- even with all of that-- a good investment to get a college degree. Saying that, again, those figures are for the U.S., and I very much hope that those of you internationally will add your own figures.

At the same time, the U.S. is now only 11th-- the richest nation on the face of the earth is only 11th-- in college graduates worldwide, in the number of college graduates it produces relative to our population. We used to be number 1; now 11th. So, the decline in the support for higher education has had a true effect on the numbers of Americans going to college.

So that brings us to one final point: are MOOCs the answer? MOOCs are trying to deal with this education crisis. All of those numbers that I've said throughout this segment of people who want to go to college but who aren't able to, MOOCs trying massive online open coursework, the massive is the key figure there. MOOCs are trying to massively scale low cost education so that greater and greater numbers of people can attend university. What we'll be talking about in our next segment, though, is, "Are MOOCs the answer?" "Is something else the answer?" "What is the best way to massively scale education?" This class is called "The History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education", or, "How We Can Unlearn Our Old Patterns, and Relearn for a More Socially Engaged, Successful, Fruitful, Satisfying, Productive, Humane, Happy, Beautiful, and Socially Conscious Future." So that's the question: "Is massively scaling teaching, is massively scaling learning a way to achieve that very, very happy objective?" I don't have the answers to that; I don't think anybody does. Please use the forums to give us your own opinion about what you're learning from this class, and whether this is making your future a more socially; engaged; successful; fruitful; humane; happy; satisfying; beautiful; productive; and socially conscious future. Thank you, see you next time.