Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future

by Mark R. Levin

A recent case in California directly tied teacher tenure and firing policies to a bad education. In June 2014, in a rare ruling, a state judge held in Vergara v. California that teacher tenure, firing, and layoff laws, which make it extremely difficult to remove bad teachers, violated the state constitution.19 Poor and minority students were denied equal protection because they were more likely to have “grossly ineffective” teachers.

  Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of the grossly ineffective teachers on students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience. Based on a massive study, Dr. Chetty testified that a single year in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher costs students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings per classroom. Based on a 4 year study, Dr. Kane testified that students in LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] who are taught by a teacher in the bottom 5% of competence lose 9.54 months of learning in a single year compared to students with average teachers.20

  The judge found the firing process “so complex, time consuming and expensive as to make an effective, efficient yet fair dismissal of a grossly ineffective teacher illusory.”21

  In addition to the problem of teacher competency there is the malignancy of statist-driven political conformity, ideological indoctrination, social engineering, and academic experimentation that have suffused public schools with such agendas as multiculturalism, global warming, and the distortion of American history, among other things.22 Furthermore, academic fads have been forced upon successive generations of elementary and secondary school students, including the “New Math,” the “Open Classroom,” “Values Clarification,” “Cooperative Learning,” “Outcome-Based Education,” “No Child Left Behind,” and more recently “Common Core” and “Race to the Top,” for which trillions of dollars have been and are being wasted on inferior educational outcomes. Even the once-heralded school lunch program is not safe from statist overreach, where billions of dollars are spent on federally mandated lunches that many students refuse to eat.23

  For those students who move on to a postsecondary education, the circumstances worsen. For starters, the price of a college education is often financially debilitating. Seventy-one percent who graduated in the last few years owe an average of $29,400 in outstanding student loans. As of 2012, the cost of a college degree had grown 40 percent since 2001.24

  The numbers are even worse when compared to a longer historical perspective. In 1963–64, the average tuition, room and board, and fees for a four-year institution—public, private, or for-profit—was $1,248. In 2013, the figure was $20,234.

  The cost to attend college is rising so fast that, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the amount of outstanding student loans in the United States, as reported on credit reports, grew to $1.13 trillion in the third quarter of 2014, an increase of approximately $100 billion from the prior year. And around 11 percent of the student loan debt was more than ninety days delinquent or in default.25 Overall, about one-third of borrowers with student loans owned by the DOE are more than five days late on their payments.26

  There is also something unique about college tuition debt that does not occur with other kinds of debt (credit card debt, auto loan debt, and so on). First, it is the fastest-growing type of indebtedness in the country. The Pew Research Center found that, in households headed by young adults, those without tuition debt had more than seven times the overall net worth of similar households with student loans ($64,700 to $8,700).27 Those with student loan debt also had nearly double the overall indebtedness of those who had no such loans ($137,010 to $73,250).28 The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, found that “student debt now burdens 41.4 percent of those under 35. In 2007, only 33.6 percent of people under 35 had loans and in 1998 it rose to 23.3 percent. The balances of those who borrow have been growing as well, to $17,300 in this survey, up from $13,000 in 2007 and $10,000 in 1998. For those beginning careers, thousands of dollars in debt can take years for net worth to climb into positive territory.”29

  Tuition, fees, and room and board costs for colleges and universities of all stripes rose faster than the rate of inflation each year for more than the last thirty years. These increases came whether in good economic times or bad, or whether the demand for college degrees was waxing or waning. Nevertheless, colleges and universities have established some of the most prodigious fund-raising operations in existence. The top twenty richest American universities all have endowment funds of about $5 billion or more. The richest, Harvard University, has an endowment fund in excess of $32 billion (down from more than $36 billion before the Great Recession).30 But most of these institutions are not eager to use their own funds to defray costs.

  America postsecondary education has become a huge industry. Colleges and universities employed about 850,000 people, or about 1.5 percent of the total workforce, in 1960, including administrators, faculty, and support personnel. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were about 4 million people working on the nation’s campuses as of 2009, or approximately 3 percent of the nation’s workers.31 Of those nearly 4 million people, 1.7 million were faculty, professors, and instructors. The rest were administrators and support personnel.32

  Employees at these institutions are also well compensated. As of March 2010, the average per-hour cost for employee compensation for college and university workers was $44.82. Just over $31.12 of that sum covered wages and salaries, and the remaining $13.70 per hour went toward benefits.33 According to the BLS, the average employer cost for employee compensation in March 2014 was $31.93 per hour, wages and salaries accounting for $21.96, with the remaining $9.97 going toward employee benefits.34

  Another significant factor for the soaring cost of college tuition is the irresponsible and extravagant spending on major construction projects. In 2012, the New York Times reported that “A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities—some of them inordinately lavish to attract students—has left colleges and universities saddled with large amounts of debt. Oftentimes, students are stuck picking up the bill. Overall debt levels more than doubled from 2000 to 2011 at the more than 500 institutions rated by Moody’s, according to inflation-adjusted data. . . . In the same time, the amount of cash, pledged gifts and investments that colleges maintain declined more than 40 percent relative to the amount they owe.”35 The Times added: “The debate about indebtedness has focused on students and graduates who have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars and are struggling to keep up with their payments. Nearly one in every six borrowers with a student loan balance is in default. But some colleges and universities have also borrowed heavily, spending money on vast expansions and amenities aimed at luring better students; student unions with movie theaters and wine bars; workout facilities with climbing walls and ‘lazy rivers’; and dormitories with single rooms and private baths. Spending on instruction has grown at a much slower pace, studies have shown. Students end up covering some, if not most, of the debt payments in the form of higher tuition, room and board, and special assessments, while in other instances state taxpayers pick up the costs. Debt has ballooned at colleges across the board—public and private, elite and obscure. While Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country, it also has $6 billion in debt, the most of any private college, the data compiled by Moody’s shows.”36 As of 2011, colleges and universities have racked up a debt bill of $205 billion.37

  Indeed, “[o]utstanding debt at the 224 public universities rated by Moody’s grew to $122 billion in 2011, from $53 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2000. At the 281 private universities rated by Moody’s, debt increased to $83 billion, from $40 billion, in that period. Rather than deplete their endowments, some colleges borrowed to help pay bills after the financial crisis, but most borrowing was for capital projects. Since 2000, the amount paid in interest and principal has increased 67 percent at public institutions, to $9.3 billion in 2011, and it incre
ased 62 percent at private institutions, to $5 billion last year.”38

  The statist answer to this unmitigated financial disaster is, in part, the effective nationalization of student loan debt. Language added to the massive Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, or Obamacare, made the federal Department of Education the students’ loan officer. It will now make nearly 100 percent of future student loans, which will be federally guaranteed by the taxpayer. Of course, this does nothing to reduce the cost of postsecondary education. Nor is the federal government in a position to assume even more debt. Moreover, Politico reports that “buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed . . . that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever recorded for any government credit program. The main cause of the shortfall was President Barack Obama’s recent efforts to provide relief for borrowers drowning in student debt, reforms that have already begun to reduce loan payments to the government.”39 In fact, “direct government loans alone increased 44 percent over the last two years. . . .”40 Furthermore, “[s]everal reports by Barclays Capital have warned that Obama’s generosity to borrowers could leave the student loan program as much as $250 billion in the hole over the next decade.”41 Thus, rather than addressing the root causes of reckless “education” spending and borrowing, these efforts have ensured that the system will bloat further and eventually rupture.

  Then there is the matter of actual education. Despite claims of “academic freedom,” like the public school system postsecondary education is rife with the ideological viewpoints of utopian statists. In 2011, over 62 percent of faculty members who teach full-time at undergraduate colleges and universities in America identified themselves as either “liberal” (50.3 percent) or “far left” (12.4 percent) on the political spectrum, up from about 56 percent in 2008.42 In 2008, 47 percent of faculty members surveyed identified as “liberal” while 8.8 percent labeled themselves as “far left.” Conversely, only 11.5 percent of faculty surveyed self-identified as “conservative” and just .4 percent as “far right.” This was down from 2008, when 15.2 percent accepted the title of “conservative” and only .7% percent “far right.”43

  The statist ideological orthodoxy is reflected not merely in the content of professorial lectures, but also in the coursework and textbooks selected by the professors. This is particularly prominent in, although certainly not exclusive to, classrooms where the humanities and social sciences are taught. Here is but one example, from a textbook, You May Ask Yourself: Thinking Like a Sociologist, used at the College of William and Mary, and at universities and colleges throughout the country:

  By now you should be wary of any social institution that is hailed supreme because it is “more natural.” You should be skeptical of any family arrangement that is deemed more functional than another, and you should hold the traditional family at a critical distance, especially considering the experiences of women, African Americans, gays and lesbians, the poor, the mainstream, and the marginalized. Under the “post modern family condition,” as Judith Stacey calls it, clear rules no longer exist in our complex, diversified, and sometimes messy post industrial society (1996). Gone are the ruling days of the normative Nelsons. Families today take on many shapes and sizes that best fit their members’ needs and they are defined not by blood ties but by the quality of relationships. Let us count the ways.44

  Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, in an article in the Independent Review, A Journal of Political Economy, place much of the blame for this “groupthink” at the feet of specific departments and department heads, which perpetuate an ideological closed-mindedness. They argue that the faculty in a given department is less governed by the zeitgeist of the larger institutional community than by the modus vivendi of the specific department and, more broadly, the profession in which it operates. The values of the individuals at the apex of that department usually dictate the standards and norms under which the faculty functions. Most often, this means that ideas or opinions that contradict those held by the leaders of the department are less likely to be published or even expressed openly by faculty, and tenure may also be offered or denied based on loyalty to the predicates of the department. There is also an incestuous network of graduates from the top departments in different fields who hire fellow alumni as they move into the highest positions in departments at other colleges and universities. Klein and Stern cite a survey of the most prestigious two hundred economics departments around the world. “Graduates from the top five departments account for roughly one-third of all faculty hired in other departments surveyed. The top 20 departments account for roughly 70% of the total.”45

  Even worse, “of the 430 full-time faculty employed by the top 20 sociology departments . . . only 7 (less than 2 percent) received their PhDs from a non-top 20 department.” “In the field of law,” Richard Redding finds, “a third of all new teachers (hired in law schools between 1996 and 2000) graduated from either Harvard (18 percent) or Yale (15 percent); another third graduated from other top-12 schools, and 20 percent graduated from other top-25 law schools.”46

  The enforcement of ideological groupthink extends beyond the faculty. College and university campuses are now among the least tolerant institutions for inquiry and debate. Too frequently they accept or even encourage an atmosphere of discomfort, intimidation, or militancy in promotion of the statist orthodoxy. The purpose is primarily political indoctrination of the sort that is hostile to the civil society and America’s heritage. And toward this end, the campus and classroom atmosphere narrows the scope of what is considered legitimate thought or opinion, dismisses or derides more traditional viewpoints that challenge statist convention, and disregard outright the perspective of individuals who are not identifiable members of a politically preferred group—either by birth or by belief.

  Even as students graduate from colleges and universities, most are treated to one last speech from a statist spouting ideological boilerplate. According to Young America’s Foundation, as reported by Fox News, in 2015 “liberal speakers outnumbered conservatives by at least 6 to 1 at the nation’s top 100 schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Among the top 10 of the list, none hosted conservative speakers.”47

  At the end of his book, The Closing of the American Mind, the late philosopher, educator, and author Allan Bloom questioned whether the nation’s failing educational system, most notably higher education, could “constitute or reconstitute the idea of an educated human being. . . .”48

  This is the American moment in world history, the one for which we shall forever be judged. Just as in politics the responsibility for the fate of freedom in the world has devolved upon our regime, so the fate of philosophy in the world has devolved upon our universities, and the two are related as they have never been before. The gravity of our given task is great, and it is very much in doubt how the future will judge our stewardship.49

  There are salient realities that very few in the academy will acknowledge. The most prominent is that education is not supposed to be about administrators and educational bureaucrats, labor unions, tenured educators, improvident construction projects, and statist indoctrination. It is supposed to be about the enrichment and improvement of young people and society. Students are not lab rats to be subjected to endless educational experiments; they are not Pavlov’s dog to be conditioned as societal malcontents; and they and their families (and the taxpayers) are not cash cows for reckless spending and debt assumption. The failure of American education is an unforgivable dereliction of one generation to the next.

  SIX

  * * *

  ON IMMIGRATION

  WHEN THE ISSUE OF immigration is raised or debated, the one group rarely considered or consulted is the group most adversely affected by current immigration policies—the rising generation. Therefore, it is pivotal to examine the nation’s immigration affairs in the context of the well-being of younger people and future generations.

 
For more than two centuries, the United States has attracted immigrants from all over the world. America’s civil society, in which societal and cultural traditions and values have served as a beacon to humanity, has historically inspired millions to come to America in search of a better life. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, immigrants from Europe came to the United States seeking, among other things, religious freedom. In the nineteenth century, immigrants from countries such as Ireland, Italy, and Germany were mostly escaping famine and oppression. In the twentieth century, America welcomed those fleeing communism and despotism. However, as the late Harvard professor Dr. Samuel Huntington explained in his book Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, “America has been a nation of restricted and interrupted immigration as much as it has been a nation of immigration.”1 It may surprise some to learn that in the past, each successive wave of immigration was followed by a period of time where the flow of aliens ebbed as more recent arrivals assimilated into the American way of life.

  For example, from 1901 through 1910, approximately 8.8 million people immigrated to the United States. The United States Census Bureau reports that between 1911 and 1920, there were 5.7 million immigrants, and between 1921 and 1930, there were a little over 4 million immigrants.2 The 1930s through 1970s experienced periods of immigration followed by integration and assimilation. About five hundred thousand individuals immigrated into the United States between 1931 and 1940; between 1941 and 1950, a little over one million; between 1951 and 1960, approximately 2.5 million came to America; and between 1961 and 1970, there were some 3.3 million immigrants.3

  However, today there is no period of assimilation between immigration flows. Rather, the flow of immigrants coming to America for more than forty years has been unprecedented and uninterrupted, with no end in sight. In the last decade and a half alone, from 2000 through 2014, 14 million new permanent legal immigrants were admitted to the United States in addition to the surge of millions of illegal immigrants.4 The Migration Policy Institute reports that 2013 estimates from the Census Bureau put the U.S. immigrant population at more than 41.3 million, or 13 percent, of the total U.S. population of 316.1 million. Between 2012 and 2013, the foreign-born population increased by about 523,000, or 1.3 percent. U.S. immigrants and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 80 million persons, or one-quarter of the overall U.S. population.5