Get 'im, Tiffany!

During a question-and-answer session with students at Kansas State University, sophomore Tiffany Cooper asked [PRESIDENT BUSH], "Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education, and I was just wondering, you know, how is that supposed to help our futures?"

"The education budget was cut?" Bush responded. "Say it again. What was cut? At the federal level?"

She repeated the question and clarified that she was referring to student loans.

"Actually," Bush finally said, "I think what we did was reform the student-loan program.

"We're not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren't going to be cut off the program. We're just making sure it works better."...

"Students and their parents will be paying their loans back at higher-than-market rates so that the government can pay for tax cuts for the very rich," said Luke Swarthout of the State Public Interest Research Groups' Higher Education Project.

Colleges Say New Grant Program Sucks

The new "academic competitiveness grants" which were the sole spot of good news amidst the $12.7 billion cuts to higher education turn out to be pretty terribly designed.
They give extra cash to Pell-eligible students (ie lower income) but only if:

--They maintain a certain grade point average (confusing the relationship between merit and need-based aid).
--They attended an "academically rigorous" high school. That lets out a huge proportion of poor students. And creates a new federal role in governing high school curricula.
--They go to school full time. Most lower-income and community college students go part time.
--They are American citizens. Guess which age group in this country contains the highest proportion of immigrants?

New York State Cracks Down on For-Profits

From Inside Higher Ed: New York State has put a moratorium on the establishment of new programs by for-profit colleges while officials examine perceived abuses and the state’s existing policies to combat them. The step is the latest in a string of actions suggesting that states and other regulators are ratcheting up their scrutiny of, and turning up the heat on, commercial colleges.

Michael Males& Boomergeddon

Great article in the LA Times Magazine about Michael Males, a sociologist whose work tracks the scapegoating of young people and the social pathologies of his own generation, the boomers.
I found his work and talking with him extremely helpful for my own book, and I'm coming to speak to his class in Santa Cruz next month.

Mike males is talking about his generation. They think they're going to live forever, he's complaining. They're in unbelievable denial about their vulnerability. Look at the numbers: dying of drug overdoses in this state at more than twice the rate documented in 1990. Fastest-growing age group for felony and violent felony arrests in California. Biggest demographic for HIV and AIDS cases. One in three not just overweight but obese.

He sets aside the pile of papers he is grading in his apartment near UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches. The street below bustles with young people, but they're not the issue—teenagers' markers of trouble have been declining for decades.
"No one wants to hear it," says Males, a gray-bearded sociologist whose latest project is a book tentatively titled "Boomergeddon," "but we're having a lot of problems with the middle-aged."

Hometown Paper

The Voice reviews my book, Strapped, and Generation Debt: Take Control of Your Money, a How-to Guide.

Overall, I thought Carla Blumenkranz' review was pretty fair, in that she brought up a lot of the obstacles I struggled with while writing the book. Once again, she acknowledges that the basic argument of the book is valid, while attacking me as the messenger:

It's not that Kamenetz's arguments are off base—higher education is in fact more difficult to finance than it was before the '90s, when student loans largely replaced federal student grants; freelance and temp jobs are indeed what most companies offer, given their newly discovered efficiency. It's just that, as a recent Yale grad, Kamenetz is uniquely unqualified to expound on these developments.

Be that as it may, now I am committed to these issues and I have to do my best to represent them, whether or not I was the perfect choice. I honestly only hope that whatever negative attention I draw by being an Ivy Leaguer, naive, overeager, etc...will only get translated into more attention onto the issues, which are real.

She was totally wrong about one thing though. When I talked about my bagel job, I was specifically dismissing the idea that those of us who work minimum wage jobs in a casual way (almost everyone middle class) know anything about the experience of those for whom that is their life.

p.83 :
As I say in the next graph after writing ' I was a minimum-wage retail slave,'(irony, by the way),
"Almost every American I know has low-wage memories like these. It's an American rite of passage to wait tables or bartend, babysit or work construction during your formative years. But generalizing from one's own experience can be deceptive. ... most minimum wage jobs provide income to those who really need it."

Interesting Perspective

From a socialist blog:

Yes, it isn't that the information in Strapped and Generation Debt is wrong. By this logic, the information simply does not warrant an exposition because the hardships facing young people today are facing older Americans as well; the hardships are so rampant, so obvious, so self-evident that to read about them induces ennui; and, most revealingly, the hardships faced by young people today are not unique and have in fact been a defining feature of American capitalism for generations.

Gross suggests that the problems confronting youth are a fact of life, growing pains in a bootstrap society, and that objecting to them is "whining." Our parents and grandparents had it rough; why should young people--or our children and grandchildren, for that matter--have it any easier? This sort of logic in fact defies human progress if taken another short step. Why should the lives of our children be any easier or more fulfilling or healthier or longer than ours?

Jews on Alito

I was quoted in this story for the Jewish Telegraphic agency:

While Alito's record and positions on key issues were of concern, activists said they took his confirmation, which is scheduled to come up for a vote in the Senate on Jan. 23, as a foregone conclusion.

Many said they, and the country, simply were preoccupied with other issues, from the congressional leadership shakeup to lobbying scandals to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's health crisis.

"I don't think it's on people's minds at all," said Anya Kamenetz, an associate editor at Heeb Magazine and author of "Generation Debt," a new book. "People are consumed with Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay."

Newsweek's Question

"here is the essay question: can a generation—reared in affluence, schooled in self-importance, comparatively ignorant of national sacrifice—admit that the country can't support it as grandly in its old age as it did in its youth?"

Or will they steamroll over another generation's youth to maintain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed?

Gen Debt Asia

From Singapore:
In the last four years, about 500 young people between the ages of 30 and 40 were made bankrupt each year, due mainly to credit card debt.
Credit counsellors call this group of debtors the "new poor" in Singapore. They earn more than the bottom 20% of the population but after deducting their loan repayments, their remaining disposable income sometimes puts them in dire situations.
For an in-depth look at this issue, catch "Generation Debt," the next episode of Get Rea! on Wednesday January 18 at 8.30pm on Channel NewsAsia.

In Japan they call them NEET (not in education, employment or training) (Thanks to Marc S. for the link); a British story here.

Scene of a Crime

Today, around the corner from my home, at the Ortiz Funeral Home on First Avenue, they held a wake for Nixzmary Brown, the seven-year-old girl who was beaten to death by her stepfather. When we walked down the avenue from dinner around 10:30, there were still a few news trucks with their lights up on poles, people clearing away the police barricades that were there to hold back the mourning crowds, a pink rose on the ground, a greeting card in the window calling her an angel.

Our Friends in Japan

From the New York Times Magazine this weekend, on how the economic downturn has affected the youth of Japan culturally, socially, psychologically:
The rate of "school refusal" (kids who skip school for one month or more a year, which is sometimes a precursor to hikikomori) has doubled since 1990. And along with hikikomori sufferers, hundreds of thousands of other young men and women are neither working nor in school. After 15 years of sluggish growth, the full-time salaryman jobs of the previous generation have withered, and in their places are often part-time jobs or no jobs and a sense of hopelessness among many Japanese about the future.
Also, this is a society where kids can drop out. In Japan, children commonly live with their parents into their 20's, and despite the economic downturn, plenty of parents can afford to support their children indefinitely - and do. As one hikikomori expert put it, "Japanese parents tell their children to fly while holding firmly to their ankles."

One result is a new underclass of young men who can't or won't join the full-time working world and who are a stark counterpoint to Japan's long-running image as a country bursting with industrious salarymen. "We used to believe everyone was equal," said Noki Futagami, the founder of New Start. "But the gap is growing. I suspect there will be a bipolarization of this society. There will be the group of people who can be in the global world. And then there will be others, like the hikikomori. The ones who cannot be in that world."

Spying on Undergrads

Fascinating story about counterrecruitment activists at UC Santa Cruz --one of whom, Josh Sonnenfeld, I've interviewed before--who found themselves on a federal watch list, listed as a "credible threat." Shades of COINTELPRO.

How to Avoid Student Loan Debt...

The blog. Check it out. Thanks for the link!

Another great link from the US PIRG Consumer Blog gives some interesting context to my last column, about the decline of the direct loan program.

Student Loans as an Industry

Here is an early peek at my next Generation Debt column. I am working on a couple of related stories about the development of the student loan industry. Behind the students' experience of growing debt there is another story, of rampaging corporate growth and, ahem, extremely close ties between business and government within the student loan industry.

If you'll forgive a digression into policy/philosophy land.

It's not that I think that the interests of industry can't intersect with the interests of individuals. As customers, we all benefit from the revolutions of price, choice, and service that have come with the corporate growth and intensified competition of the last half-century. And yet allowing a private company, Sallie Mae, to have such a strong hand in setting education policy (determining who will get money to go to college, how much they will get, at what rates and under what conditions) seems to me contrary to the growth of our economy (students as human capital), the aims of government (students as citizens), and the ideals of our society (students as human beings with free will and aspirations).

Intern Hell

Internships are a fact of life for college students in every field, but they're a different sort of beast in the entertainment industry. Competition is so fierce that aspiring filmmakers will work for free to get a foothold. Contrary to the insistence of some of my superiors, learning the finer points of coffee brewing did not teach me how to be a better filmmaker. But anytime I felt the urge to complain, I glanced at the stacks of résumés piled around the office and realized that there were legions of would-be baristas just itching to take my place.

I don't actually hate boomers, but

I did a blog interview with ihateboomers.blogspot.com.
Check it out.

What originally inspired you to write "Generation Debt" ?
AK: My political awakening came literally the morning after the 2000 election when I, age 20, realized I'd probably spend most of my adult life dealing with the foolish, shortsighted or just plain evil decisions of the generation before us, like [WHICH WERE VERY SOON DEMONSTRATED TO BE ISSUES LIKE] deficits, global warming, and the war against terrorism.

The 300 Millionth Baby

Fun article about demography says the 300 millionth baby will be born this October, probably to a Hispanic family in LA County.

"The new baby is symbolic of America's new multi-ethnic demography of the 21st century, both urban and suburban, that will filter out from gateway cities like L.A., Dallas and New York, as white suburban boomers fade into the past," he said.
"The baby who's born this year, as they grow up, they may not know what we mean by diversity," Mr. Haub said. "And somewhere along mid-century the word majority will disappear."

Everyday Low Prices...on health care

The Maryland state legislature has overridden the governor's veto on a bill that will force Wal-Mart to spend at least 8 percent of its payroll on health benefits, or pay it into a state low-income employees insurance fund. Similar bills are on the way in 32 states (!)
It's satisfying and symbolic to single out the nation's largest employer for some accountability this way, but this problem needs more than a piecemeal approach.

Generational Warfare?

Ok, not such a good idea on the policy/politic front. But sometimes it feels good to vent.

Another Piece Calling Out Boehner et. al

by me, on Tom Paine:

Why on earth would the government, in a time of unprecedented cutbacks in social spending, want to squash the cheaper direct loan program in favor of the more expensive subsidized loan program? Why would students be made to take the brunt of these cutbacks when both ends of the political spectrum agree that a better-educated workforce is essential to America's future competitiveness? Well, you could ask Terri Shaw, the head of the Office of Federal Student Aid in the Department of Education, which administers both programs. She spent most of her 22-year career working for Sallie Mae. Or you could ask Rep. Boehner, who received $136,470 in contributions over the last election cycle from members of the student loan industry, $22,375 from the Sallie Mae PAC alone. Or Rep. Howard ("Buck") McKeon, also of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who got $77,750 from Sallie Mae. But you probably wouldn't get a straight answer from any of them.

CORRECTIONS: Luke Swarthout of the PIRGs says the $5800 figure, which I quote in the piece, is no longer viable because it pertains to the House bill, an earlier version. Also, the interest rate hikes from variable to fixed were apparently already in the law. I have asked Tom Paine to make the corrections online.

Great Piece on SL Legislation

From the Seattle Times: The Problem With Boehner

The federal student-loan program has been an open-pit gold mine for banks. The taxpayers guarantee the companies against both deadbeat borrowers and risks posed by rising interest rates. Uncle Sugar even offers a free hedge against changes in interest-rate spreads that could harm the lenders' bottom line. (Other businesses must go to Wall Street and pay for such services.)

"In American history, this is the most outrageous giveaway ever extended by the federal government to private lenders," says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Seems Fair

Boomers can take credit for the '60s if they accept blame for the '70s and '80s.

And perhaps the financial hardships of the '10s and '20s?

Spin from Spellings

An online chat with the secretary of education on Monday produced this exchange:

Laurie, from Richmond Virginia writes:
As a graduate student, I would like to know how cutting educational loans will strengthen the country. I realize that I am only a nurse, but I do not understand how cutting funding for the elderly and disabled and students will benefit our economy. Wouldn't cuts for special interest groups be more beneficial?

Margaret Spellings
Thank you for your question. The so-called cuts you have heard about in the news are cuts to special interests, not to students. No student will have their aid cut next year because of these very necessary reforms, and in fact more money will be made available by the Federal Government for student aid.

The Department of Education continues to work to make sure that all students in America have the opportunity to go to college. This year's budget included important reforms to the student-loan programs. These reforms included reducing unnecessary subsidies and payment to lenders, guaranty agencies, and loan consolidators. The fees a student pays when taking out a student loan will be eliminated over the next several years and students will be able to borrow more money if the need arises.

According to the state PIRGs, "Rather than cutting lender subsidies, the bill derives approximately 70% of its savings from higher loan interest rates for borrowers and redirecting excessive student and parent payments to private lenders."

Website is Live!

Check out gendebtthebook.com
or anyakamenetz.com
for the latest.

A More Elegant Response to Mr. "Moneybox"

Since it seems these days that if you have a blog and you get some bad press you must respond, here is my email exchange with Daniel Gross, of Slate, who finds me annoying:

Subject: You're a Very Mean Man
Dear Mr. Gross,
My book is not a memoir. You do it a disservice to treat it as such. I would hope that as a woman I would finally be beyond the position of being judged by my husband's job.
I say in the first chapter exactly how lucky I know myself to be. At least half of the people in my book are not "poor, self-pitying upper-middle-class types" like me but in the 72% of 25-29-year-olds with no bachelor's degree. Your piece has absolutely nothing to say about the actually poor kids, who are holding down the vast majority of minimum wage jobs while struggling to get through school, not to mention fighting in Iraq, but my book does have a lot to say about them. Perhaps you didn't have room to acknowledge more than one good point of evidence ("Now, today's twentysomething authors are clearly onto something...") in your quite amusing review?

----
Thanks for your note. A few points I'd make in response. One: I don't think I'm a very mean man.

Second, I don't treat your book as a memoir. Nowhere do I refer to it as such, and I explicitly state that these are books about the economic plight faced by 20-somethings.

Third, there's no effort to judge you by your husband's job. The larger point is this, which people in their early 20s generally fail to realize. Getting married, or forming a long-term relationship, is economically advantageous for a whole host of reasons, whether your partner works at Google or not. You save on rent, overhead, and taxes; you pay less for car insurance; and for those who lack benefits, you increase your access to health care benefits. And although people may be marrying later, most people do wind up getting married.

Also, I don’t know quite what to make of the people who have chosen to consume when they had no capacity to consume, like Stella, who maxed out her Citibank Visa by taking a trip to San Diego on her semester break from college, or Kyle, the Cornell grad who chose to have a car in college and hence took our more loans.

I know you probably thing I’m just a mean old man. But we actually have quite a lot in common. I, too, am the child of an English professor of modest means. I worked my way through Cornell, on student loans and crap jobs, then landed a year-long benefit-less internship at the New Republic for $200 a week while living in a shithole rowhouse in a part of town to which none of our girlfriends would venture, and then did two years of graduate study at Harvard, living on about $10,000 a year. My first job in journalism, which I took with my stellar degrees and experience at TNR was the ultimate crap job – coming in at 4:00 a.m. to Bloomberg news to summarize newspaper articles for the wire service and living in a shitty apartment. Of course, like everybody else, there were times when I was miserable and full of self-pity, and I even wrote about it sometimes.

I quit Bloomberg after nine months, and have been self-employed ever since, writing for magazines, writing books, etc. The point is not to impress you with my up from the bootstraps tale, or to look back wistfully to my youth. The point is that if you want to make it big, or relatively big, in New York journalism at a young age you have to take an awful lot of risks – which is precisely what you’re doing. At any point in my mid-20s, I could have taken a job with benefits, a 401(K), and a paid vacation at a crappy trade publication, or at the Daily News. I chose not to, because I thought I was capable of better and was prepared to deal with the insecurity for the sake of doing more interesting and satisfying work. I’m guessing you’re making the same calculation—and you’re right.

---------
Dear Mr. Gross,
Thanks for writing me back. Since you concede the main thesis of the book--
" College is more expensive today in real terms. There's been a shift in student aid—more loans and fewer grants. The Baby Boomers, closer to retirement, are sucking up more dollars in benefits. There's more income volatility and job insecurity than there used to be"--
I'm going have to declare victory on this one. I just wish I could get you to see that I didn't write it about me and my own choices. I'm lucky as hell to be doing what I'm doing.

By the way, if we have so much in common, why is it that you find me so especially annoying?

Crappy Companies--Crappy Jobs

Fortune is out today with its annual list of the 100 best companies in the United States to work for...Fortune parent Time Inc. — which just before Christmas laid off 105 employees and promises many more cuts are coming, where profit sharing was eliminated in 2001 and stock options last year,...— surprisingly did not make the list.

Feds Want their money-Now!

Willie Haynes Jr, a 59-year-old marble cutter earning $10 an hour, was just informed that his wages will be garnisheed to pay off a $434.52 student loan from 1964.


"He's a productive part of society, and you want to beat him down? It's sickening," said Cal Lincoln, a former boss. "Leave him alone."

Pension Pain

From the NYT: IBM to freeze pension plans to cut costs.

it would freeze pension benefits for its American employees starting in 2008 and offer them only a 401(k) retirement plan in the future.


Under 35? You're probably never getting a pension.

Words from The New Republic

This is happening awful fast...
(By Adam Kushner)
I'm reading my friend Anya Kamenetz's Generation Debt in galleys right now (it comes out in February, but you can pre-order on Powells.com), and I'm scared stiff. Kamenetz retreads some familiar, if frightening, ground about young people and Social Security, jobs, and health insurance, proposing some sane liberal solutions. But, as a twenty-something myself, her most interesting--and most terrifying--reportage shows that people of my generation must begin their careers with mountains of debt unlike what any other generation in American history has contended with. Average student loans from four-year colleges are approaching $20,000 (grad students average $46,000, law and medical students around $100,000), and these debts are creating social ripple effects: They're influencing young people's decisions about careers, when to marry and have children, how and when to buy houses and cars, and when to borrow from their families.

Mother Jones Review: "Sometimes Brilliant"

Read here :
They got the subtitle wrong, but that's cool.

Faced with lingering loans and credit card bills, too many young people feel they must, as one young grad tells Kamenetz, “go through your life doing something you don’t want to do…. If your only option is taking out loans, it sucks you right back into the system.” For me, the American Dream is still alive—it’s just under the table, hiding out from Sallie Mae and Citigroup.

I'll take $1,000,000

The Million Dollar Homepage guy is doing it to avoid student debt.

"The idea is simple: to try and make $1m (US) by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each. Hence, 'The Million Dollar Homepage". The main motivation for doing this is to pay for my degree studies, because I don't like the idea of graduating with a huge student debt. I know people who are paying off student loans 15-20 years after they graduated. Not a nice thought!"

Eretz Halav u'Dvash

I dashed off this short piece for the Voice website last night about Ariel Sharon's life and legacy. In the summer of 2003, I packed up and went to Israel to see what was going on, and published this story, about the unseen plague of poverty in the country, and this story, about Palestinian juveniles in Israeli military prisons. I grew up loving this country and now it seems too painful to even follow what's happening.

Trashing Teens

A running theme:
2005 saw a spate of alarmist stories trashing teenagers for sex, drug and booze abuse. The New York Times even upgraded the concern to a new “identity disorder,” in which teens are increasingly using illicit drugs, alcohol and sexual activity to remove themselves from reality. Don’t believe the hype. According to the University of Michigan’s long-term “Monitoring Our Future” study, sexual activity, drug abuse and alcohol abuse among teens are all down in recent years.

Generation Debt: Movie Star Version?

Ok, this is really "world's smallest violin" material. From the Sunday New York Times:

By the end of 2005, what just a year earlier had looked like the start of an upward climb toward Hollywood stardom began instead to read like a cautionary tale about the difficulty of minting movie superstars from the ranks of a 20-something generation.

Stardom came easier to the young only a decade or two ago. At 23, Tom Cruise grasped it with the release of Top Gun in 1986, and flaunted it two years later by turning a vehicle as slight as Cocktail into a major hit. Julia Roberts was a superstar at 22, after the success of Pretty Woman in 1990, and Leonardo diCaprio was just 23 when Titanic turned him into an international screen presence in 1997.

All quickly rose into Hollywood's top salary tier - the ranks of the $20 million actor, or thereabouts - and achieved bankable status with nervous executives who were willing to make a costly film because these actors were in it.

That kind of glitter has remained out of reach for Mr. Bloom's generation...

The Subsidy that Refused to Die

A Washington Post article breaks down the history of the loophole that has had the government guaranteeing lenders a 9.5% interest rate on certain loans--with market rates as low as 4 percent over the past decade, the supplement that the government pays lenders to make up the difference has amounted to a huge subsidy.

Only 38 percent of Female Harvard MBAs are working

In the American Prospect, a thoughtful essay by Brandeis professor Linda Hirshman--with data--about the unfinished work of feminism.

"Great as liberal feminism was, once it retreated to choice the movement had no language to use on the gendered ideology of the family. Feminists could not say, “Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.”"

I disagree that housekeeping and child-rearing are a priori boring, but I agree with the rest of the statement.
Here is the Generation Debt angle. Women are making up significant proportions of classes at elite colleges, graduate and professional schools. They have all the student loan debt that goes with that, but if few of them end up in the full-time workforce, they won't have the same earnings to pay it off. As the education finance crisis continues, how long before women start to receive a lower proportion of the scarce aid available? How long before they stop going to school at all?
A private student loan company I am writing a story about calculates loans based on a students' expected future income. That would probably mean that they loan women money at worse rates than men, because the risk is higher.
PS: Today's NYT Sunday Styles section features an anguished personal essay on the same question.

Thptt!

From Reason:
College Kids Need to Hear the World's Smallest Violin

Neal McCluskey relies on a very selective reading of the statistics to determine that students are living "higher on the hog." For example, he says that aid dollars are increasing: "Between 1994–95 and 2004–05, total inflation-adjusted student aid provided through state and federal grants and subsidized loans ballooned from $37 billion to almost $69 billion." Well, to most students, especially poor and minority students, loans don't really function as aid, because they have to be paid back, with interest.And the proportion of grants to loans has reversed since the 1980s, to 58% loans and 41% grants.

He also pulls out the old saw that a BA provides a lifetime "million-dollar payoff"--"That means after factoring in loan debt, the average bachelor's degree holder will turn a huge $982,400 profit on college!" To me, this "point" betrays such a narrow view of the purpose of higher education. I'll borrow the words of Bob Shireman here: Yes, it is true that a college graduate, on average, earns close to a million dollars more over a lifetime than a high school graduate. But there are two trick words in that sentence. First, you have to graduate from college, a feat that barely half of those who start college currently achieve within six years. Second, the high economic returns to education are an average. Actual salaries of college graduates vary enormously because of career and life choices, skills, geography, fluctuations in the economy, and plain old luck.

A college education is not an expensive painting that you buy to turn a profit on. It's an investment in America's future growth--each person with a BA contributes more in taxes and in productivity than a person without one. To cut off access at the start by forcing students to borrow their way through is an extremely short-sighted use of funds.

English Professors Know: The Word is "Debt"

From "Inside Higher Ed":
Professors who specialize in language can probably draw from a vast reservoir of choice words to describe the current fiscal climate of academe. And based on one small sample, few of those words are good.

For Jeffrey J. Williams, an English professor at Carnegie Mellon University, the word is “debt.” Williams was one of the professors who shared his choice at a session called “Academic Labor: Keywords for Current Conditions” at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention in Washington Tuesday.

Professors who went through college in the 1970s and 1980s may not have dealt with student debt, Williams said, but they’d better start talking about it now. “Sex is not the great forbidden,” he said. “People talk about it all the time. Money is the great forbidden.”

New Orleans at Xmas

I'm no photographer, but if you go here you can see some pictures I took of New Orleans this Christmas. My personal favorite is Santa's Ghetto Sleigh.

Pension Pain

Wrote this quick piece for the Voice about the link between pensions and the MTA strike...

In a quaint phrase, the Social Security Administration has long described the current retirement system in America as a three-legged stool. One pictures Grandma sitting on that stool, perhaps next to the coal stove, working on some mending.

Kevin Smith: Poet of Gen Debt?

Mr. Smith, 35, is working on "Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks," tentatively scheduled for release in the spring. "All I can say about 'Clerks 2' is that it deals with what happens to this angry young man when he becomes 35 and is no longer relevant to society since he's not in the age group targeted by corporations anymore."

That message, Mr. Smith said, will resonate with his most dedicated audiences. "My Web sites tell me my fan base is overeducated, underemployed slacker college kids like my two 'Clerks' characters and generally myself," he said.

One Third of Entire Budget Cuts come from Students

"Nearly one-third of all the savings in the final budget bill comes from student aid, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday."


I bet you students didn't realize you were the single most financially healthy sector of society, most able to bear the sacrifice for everybody. Not CEOs. Not the banking industry. Not millionaire retirees. Twenty year olds who live off student loans and low-wage jobs while trying to finish a bachelor's degree at a public university.

There's Time to Protest this Vote

From the State PIRGS:

This morning, the Senate voted 51 to 50, with Vice-President Cheney casting a tie-breaking vote, to cut $12.7 billion out of the student loan programs. Rather than cutting lender subsidies, the bill takes approximately 70% of its savings from higher loan interest rates for borrowers and redirecting excessive student and parent payments to private lenders. These cuts are not only the largest in the history of the student loan program, but also the largest single cut in the budget reconciliation package. This budget bill will make student and families pay more for their loans so that Congress can direct new tax cuts to some of the wealthiest Americans.

BUT:

Before the vote, Senator Conrad used a procedural maneuver to strip two non-germane provisions out of the bill. As a result the newly amended reconciliation bill must return to the House to be approved. Members of the House will now be able to reconsider their votes from early Monday morning, made mere hours after the final bill was introduced. In the coming weeks, students will continue to make the case to Congress that they should stop this raid on student aid.

How did your representative vote?

Publisher's Weekly Review: Livelier

Here's my second review, from Publishers Weekly:
Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to Be Young
Anya Kamenetz. Riverhead, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 1-59448-907-6

Surveying the economic realities facing today's 20- and 30-somethings, 24-four-old Kamenetz decides, "It's not too dramatic to say that the nation is abandoning its children." Thanks to skyrocketing tuition and changes in federal funding, college students are graduating with an average of almost $20,000 in loans at the same time that jobs have become scarcer, real wages have dropped and the cost of health care has soared. Is it any wonder that kids are boomeranging home and racking up credit card debt? Kamenetz, who first wrote about these issues for the Village Voice, intertwines an analytical overview of the new economic obstacles with interviews of the financially strapped and descriptions of her own experience struggling to make ends meet as a freelance journalist. Her book is livelier than Tamara Draut's similarly themed Strapped, but lighter in its analysis of law and policy. Most interestingly, Kamenetz documents how our perception of the crisis is shaped by self-centered boomers who have lost touch with their children's plight. More of a white paper than a guidebook, this volume doesn't offer under-40s much personal financial advice (that job is taken up by Gener@tion Debt, see review below). It does, however, make clear how imperative it is that we find solutions to these problems as quickly as possible. (Feb.)

From Teach for America to FEMA

My latest Gen Debt column is up and in the Voice today. It's a profile from my time in New Orleans about a guy who took a job with Teach for America and ended up working as a contractor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Look out for my next column which will contain some surprising info about the relationship between Sallie Mae and Congress.

Merry Xmas, Student Borrowers

The latest on the student loan bills.

From the state PIRGs:

The House and Senate budget conferees returned a bill with a net cut of $12.7 billion to the student loan programs. Rather than cutting lender subsidies, the bill derives approximately 70% of its savings from higher loan interest rates for borrowers and redirecting excessive student and parent payments to private lenders. While Congress directs several billion dollars to pay for grant aid and some student borrower benefits, the bulk of the cuts will be sent out of the program to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

From Representative George Miller's office:

Over the next five years the bill raises $14.9 billion from excessive student and parent interest payments and higher interest rates on parent loans. This figure includes about $13 billion in excessive payments made by student and parent borrowers. Under current law, when borrowers pay more than a fair market rate on their college loans, lending institutions are allowed to keep this windfall, even though it represents excessive payments made by student and parent borrowers. Rather than return these excessive interest payments to student and parent borrowers, this budget bill simply shifts them to pay for additional tax breaks for the wealthy.

Sallie Mae: Making a Fortune

Fortune Magazine on Sallie Mae: a "stock market superstar" and a "predatory lender."

Sallie's dividend has risen at an average annual clip of 18 percent over the past ten years. And thanks to hefty helpings of stock options, Sallie's top executives have earned fortunes. From 1999 to 2004, just-retired CEO Al Lord -- now the lead investor in a group trying to purchase the Washington Nationals -- received total compensation of $225 million. New CEO Thomas "Tim" Fitzpatrick made $145 million over the same period.

To produce those sorts of numbers, a company usually has to be obsessed with the bottom line, and Sallie is certainly that (a big chunk of its executives' bonuses is based on Sallie's profits). As good as that may be for shareholders, a growing number of critics contend that those profits are coming at the expense of Sallie's other constituents: students and taxpayers.

"Sallie advocates policies we believe are frequently contrary to the interest of students," says Luke Swarthout, a higher-education advisor to the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. He charges that Sallie used its political clout to shape new legislation that will increase the cost of student loans.

That classic capitalist dilemma: this is immoral, but really, really profitable!

Colleges brace for For-profit takeovers

Last year, there were at least 10 for-profit takeovers of nonprofit colleges. Some see a coming changeover process akin to what happened in the last decade when hospitals were bought up by for-profit companies, and we all know how well that worked out. Just another way in which education is coming to resemble the health-care crisis (sorry for the self-quote.)

The First Review of Generation Debt: "Decent"

I hear that Kirkus (one of the trades that publishes pre-publication reviews) is tough, and this review is good to mixed. :

Kamenetz focuses her first book on the increasing economic difficulties of today's American youth. Her primary aim here is to figure out exactly how the baby boomers financially
screwed generations X and Y and to describe how the victims are trying to dig themselves out of the holes they're in. She devotes the bulk of her readable though scattershot text to examples of young people trying to get by in an America of diminished employment prospects and little financial security.
She identifies many contributing factors: the gargantuan loans necessary for all but the very rich to get a college degree, which often doesn't pay for itself in post-graduation income; the shrinking federal safety net; rampant consumerism fueled by too-easily accessible credit cards with ruinous interest rates. This is worthwhile material, and many readers will feel embarrassed complaining about their own lives after plowing through tales of grinding borderline poverty, but Kamenetz doesn't satisfactorily string it all together...Kamenetz is at least able to make the strong point that the young can't look to people in power
for help: "It is time for all of us to start living for the future."

A decent guide to the coming financial reckoning.

New Orleans: Reports of Death Exaggerated

My latest Voice "Note from New Orleans" on why the city is not dead yet:

Do I think the Times is wrong? Not exactly. It's absolutely true, as the Editorial Board wrote, that if this city doesn't get the federal help it needs, and soon, the recovery will be crippled. It's true, as they say, that stalling out on this aid, needed for the levees and the rebuilding, in Washington is a great wrong and a great shame and shows our nation's weakness-"a feeble giant indeed." It is a weakness most of all, as they say, that we appear, as a nation, to accept our leader's violation of promises made a mere three months ago. It's true, as they do not say, that the city's black diaspora is having the most trouble returning, and that what is really at stake is the death of a major black American city.

But they are wrong to suggest that it is within the realm of possibility to abandon this city. They don't understand how much of its spirit has already revived, that this absolutely devastated place already has 10 times the charm of your Houston, your Detroit, your Scottsdale, and even more so because it feels like a small town for the moment. They haven't driven the miles of abandoned streets in Mid-City only to come upon a FEMA travel trailer wrapped in white Christmas lights. They haven't heard the indignant tone of a woman with 13 grandchildren evacuated to Texas when she says, "Of course we want to come home. This is home."

Need a House? Add Grandma

A long piece in New York magazine about a couple in their 20s who can't afford to buy a house in Brooklyn unless they take in their elderly grandma.

Read All About It

I had an Op-Ed column in THE NEW YORK TIMES today.
I'd be lying if I tried to play it cool and say I wasn't very, very excited about this opportunity. Let me know what you think, i've gotten a dozen emails already.

Op-Ed Contributor
Robbing Joe College to Pay Sallie Mae

THE higher education financing system in this country, like the health care system, is broken. In both cases, costs spiral out of control while millions of people, especially the poor, are not served. And in both cases, a few corporations are making hefty profits.

From the 1950's to the 1970's, college attendance grew along with federal student grant aid. Then, as tuition mushroomed and loans replaced grants, educational attainment stagnated. Today, those lucky enough to graduate from college end up with an average of $17,600 in loans, a burden that shapes decisions like buying a house or having children. But most young people are not so lucky - half of those who start college do not graduate at all, in part because of the financial burden of staying in school. As a result, Americans aged 25 to 34 are less educated than 45- to 54-year-olds - and more to the point, less educated on average than the citizens of several other industrialized nations.

The federal student aid system fails students, but it does a great job of delivering profits to private lenders, which issued $65 billion in loans last year. When it created the loan program, Congress assumed that banks would not lend to young people without extensive guarantees and incentives. So they guaranteed a certain rate of return on student loans, made up their losses on defaulters, created a secondary market for student loans by chartering the Student Loan Marketing Corporation (Sallie Mae) and allowed state lending authorities to issue tax-exempt bonds to raise loan capital. Student lending has grown into a highly profitable and low-default market, yet these special privileges persist.

Sallie Mae, the private company that makes, buys and sells the most student loans, boasted the second-highest return on revenue in the 2005 Fortune 500. Sallie Mae also happens to be the largest contributor, by far, to members of the House Education Committee. The Chronicle of Higher Education found that the committee chairman alone, John Boehner of Ohio, received $172,000 from student lenders and loan consolidators in 2003 and 2004.

It's thus no surprise that lawmakers are apt to protect lenders and not students. On Oct. 26, Mr. Boehner's committee approved more than $14 billion in cuts over the next six years, which would be the largest reduction in the history of the federal student aid program. Mr. Boehner defended the cuts by saying they mostly came from corporate subsidies to Sallie Mae, Bank One, Citibank and the rest. But that gets to the heart of what is wrong with this program - and the way to fix it. The best way to reverse the shocking trends in debt and educational attainment would be to switch from loans back to grants. Given ballooning deficits, though, that's a nonstarter. Instead, why not cut off subsidies to banks and give that money to needy students?

One way to do that is to expand a program begun in 1992 in which the government makes loans directly. A recent Government Accountability Office report showed that direct loans cost the government one-fifth as much as subsidized loans over the past 10 years. Mr. Boehner, however, kept the report under wraps for 30 days, and it was released just hours before the House committee vote. Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, estimates that the aid program could save $60 billion over the next decade by switching entirely to direct loans - enough for almost a 50 percent increase in Pell Grant money.

A group of students has also proposed a National Tuition Endowment, which would preserve an estimated $30 billion for need-based grants by cutting loan subsidies and finally closing an infamous loophole that has lenders collecting 9.5 percent interest from the government on certain loans.

Yet Mr. Boehner is heading in a different direction. He told an audience of commercial student lenders earlier this month that "I've got enough rabbits up my sleeve" to make them happier with the bill.

With the higher education budget scheduled for passage next year, this is a great occasion for a public debate on the values that conservatives claim, like individual self-determination, free markets and international competitiveness. Do we want to keep robbing from our future?

This Train they Call the City

The New York Times has run 2 good editorials about the fate of New Orleans, where I went to high school and where I have been for the past 4 weeks. Both of them say the right things, but with a ring of defeatism and fatalism that I find extremely hard to accept. I write this post from a cafe packed with (local) customers on a beautiful December day. A core of this city has already come alive, and I believe it MUST be saved.

Editorial today:
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

Krugman on Friday:

Now we're losing another window of opportunity for reconstruction. But this time it's at home.

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush made an elaborately staged appearance in New Orleans, where he promised big things. "The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region," he said, "will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen."

Such an effort would be the right thing to do. We can argue about details - about which levees should be restored and how strong to make them - but it's clearly in the nation's interests as well as local residents' to rebuild much of the regional economy.
the private sector can't rebuild the region on its own. The reason goes beyond the need for flood protection and basic infrastructure, which only the government can provide. Rebuilding is also blocked by a vicious circle of uncertainty. Business owners are reluctant to return to the gulf region because they aren't sure whether their customers and workers will return, too. And families are reluctant to return because they aren't sure whether businesses will be there to provide jobs and basic amenities.

A credible reconstruction plan could turn that vicious circle into a virtuous circle, in which everyone expects a regional recovery and, by acting on that expectation, helps that recovery come to pass. But as the months go by with no plan and no money, businesses and families will make permanent decisions to relocate elsewhere, and the loss of faith in a gulf region recovery will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Restless with Anticipation

A friend sent me this Seattle P-I fluff piece on intergenerational conflicts as the Boomers turn 60.

It's all about "young adults - members of generations known as X and Y - wondering what will be left for them, especially as the cost of living rises, national debt increases, and as the huge population of aging boomers begins to devour Social Security and company pensions." ... and student loan debt, credit card debt, temp/low-wage/low benefit jobs...

"Young adults also are ready to wrestle away their piece of the pie from boomer politicians, from "helicopter parents" who hover over their adult kids, and even from aging rockers who have yet to give up the stage.

The question is: will boomers let them - and recognize they can't rule forever?"

Bankrupt? Have a Credit Card!

New York Times:
Under the new [bankruptcy] law, which the banking industry spent more than $100 million lobbying for, [the newly bankrupt] may be even more attractive [to credit card companies] because it makes it harder for them to escape new credit card debt and extends to eight years from six the time before which they could liquidate their debts through bankruptcy again....

...Consumer groups say the new law has put millions of Americans at risk of being in a continuous debt loop through their credit cards.

Million Dollar Babies

Women in their 20s gain 10 percent in lifetime earnings for every year they wait to have a child. A woman who has her first child at 25 earns 10 percent less over her entire life than a woman who waits until 26. If you have a child before 30, it will reduce your earnings on average for the rest of your life. (The wage hit is smaller in your 30s). I read this entire article out loud to my fiance.

Youth Represent at Climate Conference

And get a nice story in the Times:

"Major social changes start with a shift in philosophy, and then a new generation is born with that at their core," said Josh Tulkin, 24, who works for a group focused on climate issues in the region outside Washington, D.C., and also for a network of youth organizations called SustainUs. "That generation is us."

Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with a message aimed at delegates: "Stop asking how much it will cost you and start asking how much it will cost us."

A good slogan for Generation Debt.

Coming Back to Bite You

The Supreme Court says the federal government can seize an old, disabled man's Social Security payments to pay for 20-year-old student loans.

Outstanding student loans total about $33 billion, $7 billion of which is delinquent debt.

Student Loans and Slavery Reparations?

Wow:

Decrying a refusal by banks implicated in the US slave trade to pay reparations to the descendents of enslaved blacks, a collection of religious, community, student and political groups yesterday called for a boycott of student loans backed by finance companies with historical ties to slavery.

The banks named are JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia and Bank of America, all of whom are accused of having accepted slaves as collateral on loans; JP Morgan apologized and put up $5 million in scholarship $, Wachovia apologized, Bank of America denied it.

Complicated. I was on a panel about slavery reparations this fall at Medgar Evars College. The African-American individuals in attendance expressed the view that reparations are an explosive issue representing their hope for an end to their continuing economic and social disadvantages and a powerful and successful future for their community--perhaps even a revolutionary ideal. This was totally news to me because for the white people I know, the issue of reparations is a nonissue--considered only in the abstract, easily dismissed. A serious disconnect, to say the least.

Should Federal Aid Depend on Allowing Military Recruitment?

Today the Supreme Court heard the question of whether the federal government can withold student aid from universities that even symbolically restrict access to military recruitment, on anti-discrimination grounds (because the military, unlike other employers that must abide by equal-opportunity laws, openly bans gays and lesbians. )

I'm disturbed by the way the state's lawyers equate the federal government with the military. The military is set apart when it suits their purposes--we are asked to support the troops even when we oppose the war, and quite rightly. The very existence of the ban on gays supports the idea that the military is a separate estate. By the same token, I believe that the operation of the federal student aid program ought to be kept separate from the desire of the military for new recruits.

Say it with me: Pri! orities!

"At the end of the day, I believe you'll be at least satisfied, or even perhaps happy," with the new higher education appropriations bill, Representative John Boehner, chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, told an appreciative audience on Monday. "Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands."
Was he speaking to students? Of course not. It was an audience of student lenders unhappy with the proposed cuts in their federal subsidies. Cuts to higher ed are now up to $20 billion in the Senate bill.
According to the Chronicle of Higher ed (sub. req.):
"In his speech to the bankers, Mr. Boehner said he would push to roll back some of the proposed cuts. He wasn't specific but said, "I've got enough rabbits up my sleeve" to produce a bill that would not be harmful to lenders."

Notes from New Orleans

I've been down in New Orleans for about two weeks, doing a mix of reporting and volunteering. Here are two very rough reports I've filed for the Voice.

Relief at the Point of a Gun

Black Out: New Orleans Getting More White? Sure, By Locking Out African-Americans

The one thing I would like to convey that I think is not coming across in the news is just how hard folks are working to get the city back up and running, whether it's individuals, local businesses, or community institutions like the zoo, parks and museums. The city has never been so small, personal and friendly. If the recovery stalls out, it will absolutely be a failure of our government to get us the aid we need, not of the initiative and spirit of this place.

Burning up the Future

My friend Billy Parish of Energy Action is in Montreal making sure that the voice of the future (ie, youth) is heard at the current UN climate change summit. They're blogging the conference anad they issued a Youth Declaration calling for minimum binding emissions reductions of 30% by 2020 and "a just transition to low-impact renewable energy."

From where I sit right now, in a post-K New Orleans, the growing danger of global warming does not look theoretical. This is a whole other angle of Generation Debt. Here you have a group of wealthy, mostly over-50 leaders and business execs who are furthering the status quo for their own gain, to the untold detriment of those of us who have our whole lives ahead of us.

Or as Bush likes to say: "And he said, ‘History,’ and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, ‘History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead.’”

Our For-Profit Future

A small private college goes for-profit and, one year later, eliminates all liberal-arts programs.

Jon Jay De Temple, president of Post for the last five years, said that he believes the institution needs focus. “We’re not big enough to do everything for everybody,” he said.

De Temple said that based on that view, administrators and board members believe that majors that don’t “lead to a job” should be eliminated. He stressed that there would still be history and English instruction at the university, but said that there would not be any upper-level courses. “We’re probably not the best institution to turn out an English major,” he said.

The college hopes to shift resources to expand offerings in high-growth fields such as criminal justice, health services, and sports and entertainment. Post also wants to improve its well regarded equestrian program.

Ooh, equestrians! Maybe this will be the training ground of the next Michael Brown.

Living Together

My newest Generation Debt column is about the economic advantages and drawbacks of cohabitation.

SUNY anti-Tuition Action

Press Release from NYPIRG today:

COLLEGE STUDENTS TO DELIVER SOME 15,000 POSTCARDS TO GOVERNOR URGING OPPOSITION TO TUITION HIKES

HOLD NEWS CONFERENCE TO ADVOCATE FOR “STUDENTS’ HIGHER ED BUDGET”
Dozens of college students from across the state will travel to Albany tomorrow, Tuesday, November 29, to deliver thousands of postcards to Governor Pataki urging him not to raise tuition and to increase funding for higher education when he proposes his Executive Budget in January.

Don't Forget About Consolidation

In all of the talk about student loan program cuts, says this Albany Times-Union editorial, don't forget that the ability to consolidate loans --refinance at a lower interest rate--is also at stake:

But when it comes to a double whammy, students and former students who are paying off their loans are in a special class. The House is said to favor making permanent a provision in current law that prohibits borrowers from renegotiating interest rates more than once in the lifetime of a loan. That contrasts with the flurry of refinancing whenever mortgage interest rates decline.

Back when Sallie Mae, a major education finance company, was a quasi-public agency, this provision made sense. But Sallie Mae is now in the private marketplace and, by some estimates, is enjoying profits of some $1 billion a year. At the same time, the government shields lenders from bad student loans by denying borrowers the right to write them off by declaring bankruptcy.

Starbucks Union Marches On

Last May, I wrote for New York magazine about the efforts of young Manhattan Starbucks workers to unionize as members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, the most storied union in American history.
Well, they've now organized the workers at a third Starbucks on Union Square. Their demands include a guaranteed 30-hour workweek; they point out that it's tough to make rent when you can be cut down from 30 to 10 hours on a week-by-week basis.
Millions of young people are working low-wage jobs like these for years as they struggle to get through college, or instead of college, or after college. It seems to me that everyone would benefit if these workers had more solidarity and if the jobs were of a higher caliber when it came to wages, benefits, and stability.

Hunting the Hunters

This website, Student Loan Justice, sheds light on the cruel practices and obscene profits of student loan collectors.

According to Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren in a Wall Street Journal piece by John Hechinger last year, "Student-loan debt collectors have power that would make a mobster envious."

A refreshingly militant air to their language as well.

Not My War

Today is the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition National Not Your Soldier Day of Action.
(A cool Google Map of the actions across the country at colleges, high schools and even junior highs.)

Why Your Punk Waitress is Angry

Andrew Leonard's long, navel-gazy, but ultimately fascinating essay in Salon about Richard Lloyd's book about "Neo-Bohemia" as personified in the apparently happenin' neighborhood of Wicker Park in Chicago contains this great snippet:

Wicker Park's economy, which depends largely on its hip, young residents either working long hours as bartenders or waitstaff, or long hours in various digital design occupations. This is fascinating, original and deeply humane sociology at its finest; he demonstrates that in the name of freedom, young people working in allegedly relaxed service-sector jobs waste years of their lives in a whirl of drugs, alcohol and deceptively low wages. It's a classic example of a circular economy: While a bartender at an upscale Wicker Park club may earn $250 or more in tips from a shift, he or she is likely to go right out to an after-hours club with friends and spend it all on lavish tips to another bartender on the circuit. To anyone who's ever worked in the nightlife business, all this will ring sad but true.

The book sounds very meta: a theoretical dissection of the nostalgia and "performance of cultural distinction" of hipsterism is exactly the type of book best discussed loudly in a cafe over microbrews and free trade coffee.

For-Profit Colleges

My first piece for Slate magazine went up today. It's about what I consider to be the worrisome growth of for-profit colleges--a corrupt, variable-quality, expensive choice targeted at low-income and minority students with little experience in higher education.

I worked really hard on the piece. My first draft(s) had too much information in it and not enough of an argument, which I struggled to refine; it's not perfectly there yet, I feel like I could write a whole series on the subject. For example, I didn't really go into the way that class issues come to bear on the quality of education offered to people. I have been reading Slate for a long time but I haven't mastered the way their writers give a neat fillip to an argument. It seems you need a provocative thesis or partisan slant or at least amusing writing--preferably all three--to maneuver boring information over the threshold of an increasingly sated and jaded audience. Who knew?

Who's the Dope Fiend--You or Dad?

It's already a Most-Emailed story in the New York Times:
For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take - in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications - is becoming the norm.

Provocative! Those irresponsible kids!

Except, the generational frame of this story has no basis in fact, and is probably wrong. Witness this LA Times story from last month (based on actual statistics):

Californians age 40 and older are dying of drug overdoses at double the rate recorded in 1990, a little-noticed trend that upends the notion of hard-core drug use as primarily a young person's peril.
Indeed, overdoses among baby boomers are driving an overall increase in drug deaths so dramatic that soon they may surpass automobile accidents as the state's leading cause of nonnatural deaths.
In 2003, the latest year for which the state has figures, a record 3,691 drug users died, up 73% since 1990. The total surpassed deaths from firearms, homicides and AIDS.
Remarkably, the rate of deadly overdoses among younger users over that period has slightly declined, while the rate among those 40 and older has jumped from 8.6 to 17.3 per hundred thousand people. Since older people are more likely to have health coverage, use more presecriptions, and have more money to spend, AND are more likely to abuse drugs, doesn't it follow that this pill-trading behavior is at least cross-generational?

Village Voice on NYU Grad-Strike

A piece by Tom Robbins.

Give it to the Needy and not the Greedy

This week's GenDebt column is about the National Tuition Endowment, a plan by and for students to take money from student lenders and give it out in scholarships. As you can guess I think this is a terrible idea. Just kidding.

Student Debt Alert

A new project from the state PIRGs, Student Debt Alert features the personal stories of 500 kids at 10 schools. Similar to what the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations has been doing for a couple of years, except their Wall of Debt is physical, is built in the capital, and has 4,000 people on it.

A Bit of Good News

The Raid on Student Aid was postponed yesterday after Republican lawmakers admitted they didn't have the votes to pass the $51 billion in cuts to social programs, which includes $14.3 billion in cuts to student loan programs.

Seattle P-I : Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., said the budget bill "is still a work in progress" and he still opposes some of its provisions. But he acknowledged that resistance to ANWR drilling unified the GOP moderates in challenging the leadership. "One thread that held us together on this was ANWR. We knew if we could hold together on ANWR all these other provisions would be subject to much closer scrutiny,"

Inside Higher Ed: Several lawmakers noted that they’d heard from students or college officials concerned about the cuts. Way to go, guys!

And now, the bad news: There's one more week in the session, meaning the Higher Ed Act has little or no chance of being reauthorized this year (The last "five-year" reauthorization was in 1998.) Pell grants will continue to be underfunded.

France Eats its Young? What about US?

Thought-provoking piece on the economic roots of the French riots--specifically, the lack of job opportunities for young people, especially minorities. "Among the young, immigrant men who live in satellite slums, unemployment reaches 40 percent."

I disagree with Elisabeth Eaves' diagnosis, though. She says the problem is that the minimum wage is too high--about $10/hr--and there are too many social protections; those already ensconced within the system keep voting for benefits for themselves, even if it strangles productivity. I'm no economist, but we don't have either of those "problems" here in America, and we're not exactly bursting with opportunities for youth either: Half the Black men in New York City aged 16+ are unemployed. Actually worse than these boys who are out burning cars.

Quit Lit

My acquaintance Izzy Grinspan delves into this subgenre of chick lit ,aka "job horror," which exposes the crappy working conditions so many 20somethings have to deal with, albeit as the background of glamour-obsessed frothy romance. Not exactly Sister Carrie, but a bit of social realism nonetheless.

NYU Grad Students Strike

Here's an amateur photo album of the NYU grad students ON STRIKE TODAY. They had the only grad student union at a private college until their contract expired August 31. In my interpretation, a 2004 decision against students at Brown emboldened the university to ask for a lot of concessions in the new contract, prompting this strike.


Is a union the best solution for graduate student teachers and adjuncts? I confess I'm torn on the issue. I think they deserve better pay and working conditions, but what everyone really wants is to go back to the apprenticeship system with tenure jobs for everybody at the other end, and that's just not going to happen.

A More Diverse, Less Educated, Poorer Future

This new report, "As America Becomes More Diverse: The Impact of State Higher Education Inequality," proves a simple syllogism. 1) By 2020 there will be twice as many minority workers (Hispanic and black), or 37 % of the workforce. 2) Blacks and Hispanics are far less educated than whites. 3) Either we close the racial disparities OR we get ready for a less educated, less competitive workforce with lower earnings.

Summarizes the Chronicle:
if the current educational gap continues, the proportion of the work force with a college education, or even a high-school diploma, would decrease, the report says. The proportion of the work force with less than a high-school diploma would rise to 18.5 percent from 16.1 percent in 2000, and the proportion with a bachelor's degree would fall to 16.4 percent from 17.1 percent....The drop in the share of the work force with college degrees would also lead to a 2-percent fall in personal per-capita income, from $21,591 in 2000 to $21,196 in 2020, in constant dollars. During the previous 20-year period, that figure grew by 41 percent.

Women "To Come"

Ratio of male to female writers at "general interest" magazines: 324 to 99 (i.e. 3:1). Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a deputy editor at Glamour, is taking names, at The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and Vanity Fair.
These are the five biggies, the ones that can make or break you as a serious freelance writer, and they pay seriously as well. Personally I have pitched and been shot down at 3 of them, with various degrees of respectfulness.
What does worry me is the lack of an old girl's network. When I look at my personal network of journalistic colleagues and contacts, my own ratio of men to women is about 5 to 1. Many of the women are editors; many have been extremely helpful, even sisterly. Yet of the journalists I personally know around my age who are trying to get taken a little seriously and build a multifaceted career (as opposed to writing sex, fashion, celeb profiles), nearly all of them are men. This dates back to college when my close journalism pals were all boys.
Maybe I need to do a little Maureen Dowd-style friend-making.

Lake Woebegone Kids

Another great media-crit piece from Jack Shafer about stupid, groundless press characterizations of generations. On this USA Today story on Gen Y in the workplace:

"They're young, smart, brash. They may wear flip-flops to the office or listen to iPods at their desk. They want to work, but they don't want work to be their life."

A quick scan of buzzwords will tell you all you need to know, really: "multitasking," "tech savvy," "child centered," "high maintenance"...

Shafer adds:
The piece rolls out one generational cliché after another. Scream if you've ever heard one of these gems applied to a previous generation:

[T]his generation—whose members have not yet hit 30—is different from any that have come before. …

This age group is moving into the labor force during a time of major demographic change. …

Unlike the generations that have gone before them, Gen Y has been pampered, nurtured and programmed with a slew of activities since they were toddlers, meaning they are both high-performance and high-maintenance. …

Uncle Sam persecutes old, sick student loan borrower

An online piece for my Gen Debt column:

James Lockhart is a 67-year-old man with diabetes and heart disease currently living in public housing in Seattle. According to the brief before the Supreme Court, between 1984 and 1990 he borrowed $80,000 in federal student loans to attend various college programs. He never graduated nor found employment except for a few months in 1987. In April 2002, the Department of the Treasury officially informed him that his Social Security disability payments, then $874 a month plus $10 in food stamps, would be cut—“offset”--by 15 percent to pay his old student loans. Lockhart found legal help from the nonprofit group Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader.
...
If these trends persist, and if Lockhart loses his case, the Bush administration won’t have to bother with its plans for reforming Social Security. Benefits will be slashed anyway in 20 years to pay off everyone’s old student debt.

UPDATE: According to the Seattle P-I, "Skeptical Supreme Court justices on Wednesday sharply questioned a Seattle man's claim that the government was wrong to tap his Social Security benefits to pay off long overdue students loans.

The justices appeared unmoved by arguments that James Lockhart, who is disabled, needed all of his $874 monthly check to pay for food and medication."

Workplace? Fairness?

Great, comprehensive site about employee rights and fairness issues, run by a nonprofit of employment lawyers. They'll also help you decide if you have a case to sue your boss.

The evidence that the vast majority of Americans are giving more and getting less from their jobs isn't just clear, it's overwhelming.

The Private Loan Problem

Another great story from Business Week, this one on the growth and danger of private loans. What's up with these guys? Do they take seriously the concept of young people as human capital or something?

For cash-strapped undergrads like Jesse, though, often the biggest problem is securing a loan in the first place. Many haven't yet established good credit, and the majority of private loans require a credit check. And even if "credit-risk" students manage to procure a private loan at a high interest rate, a low-paying first job could mean that monthly student loan repayments gobble up 50% of their salary.

Nevertheless, private loans have proven a valid option for students facing the increasing financial demands of higher education. But it's important that students go into the process with both eyes open -- as well as their wallets.

Thirty and Broke

A great, detailed article in Business Week
gets to the heart of the Gen Debt problem. In fact, it reads like a precis of my book. The only difference is, I also write about the 75% who don't get a college degree. This article, like many, focuses on the 25% who do.

In myriad ways, the economics of being 30 have changed for the worse. A college degree is now the minimum required to find a place in the working world that affords some job satisfaction and material comfort. But it doesn't offer protection against turmoil in the labor market, as it once did. Nor does it guarantee such things as health insurance or a retirement plan. And real earnings for college graduates without an advanced degree have fallen four years in a row, for the first time since the 1970s.

Paige belongs to the first generation that came of age with the Internet, grew up marketed to at every turn, is too young to remember the Vietnam War, Watergate, or the Beatles: There are all kinds of ways to describe today's 30-year-olds. But what may really come to distinguish them is that they could be the most indebted generation in modern history.

Two new economic realities are at work. Many had to borrow serious money to attend colleges that are ever more costly. And as soon as they entered school, they were offered credit cards; by 30 many have accumulated thousands of dollars of that very expensive debt, too. Imprudent choices sometimes have compounded their troubles. The consequences can be profound: Many of those 30-year-olds feeling unduly burdened by their financial obligations have had to make compromises on some of life's vital decisions.

National Tuition Endowment Premieres Legislation

"Students nationwide mobilize to return the $30 billion dollars of waste in the federal aid system to students by writing the National Tuition Endowment Act."

This project started at Columbia U. Lots of info/background research at the site, and
find the full text here:

A BILL

To establish a National Tuition Endowment using the income and savings generated from the federal student financial aid system to provide grants to students. ..

Counter-recruitment Resources

I got some rather angry emails for my counterrecruitment column, I guess from the 37% of Americans who still support Bush and the war in Iraq. Apparently it is "socialist" of me to think that high school kids in Washington Heights should have something to do after school besides dressing up and playing Army.
Anyway, a few people also wrote asking for more information on counterrecruitment. Here are a few links:
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (objector.org) is a great place to start.
Also try the Campus Antiwar Network (campusantiwar.net), Leave My Child Alone (leavemychildalone.org) which is for the opt-out campaign for high schoolers, and the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, which is having a national Not Your Soldier day of action November 17.

LINKS FIXED-Thanks

Washington Post editorial on student loan & the budget

"The Senate is likely to vote today on a budget reconciliation measure in which the largest source of "savings" by far comes from the student loan program.
...
Should anyone on the Hill care to point it out, there is an obvious source of genuine savings in the student loan program: Offer students small incentives to choose direct over subsidized loans. But are there fiscal conservatives, in either party, who are willing to risk the wrath of lenders and say so?"

Dream World

Bush says: "What's the biggest threat to the American way of life? It's not terrorism--it's having an uneducated and undercompetitive population floundering in the global economy!"

Student Loan Resistance

These two sites, Student Loan Hell and Student Loan Slave, are great grassroots community resources for those angry/depressed/can't-take-it-anymore about student debt.

That's good, but we'll need millions

"WASHINGTON, D.C. - Hundreds of college students rallied on Capitol Hill today in opposition to a plan by Republican leaders in Congress to make over $14 billion in cuts - the largest cuts ever - to the nation's student aid programs. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House education committee, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a member of the education committee, joined the student rally."