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Like their forebears in the 1960s, today’s students blasted university leaders as slick mouthpieces who cared more about their reputations than about the people in their charge. But unlike their predecessors, these protesters demand more administrative control over university affairs, not less. That’s a childlike position. It’s time for them to take control of their future, instead of waiting for administrators to shape it.
Ten years ago Brazil was beginning to enjoy the financial boom from China’s growing appetite for commodities and raw materials. The two countries were a natural fit. Brazil had what Beijing needed – iron ore, beef, soybeans, etc. and China had what Brasilia desperately wanted – foreign exchange to address budget deficits and cost overruns on major infrastructure projects. It was a marriage made in heaven – for four or five years.
“Tanking,” or deliberately trying to lose an athletic contest to gain a future competitive advantage, such as earning higher draft pick of prospective players, became the talk of the town or at least of many fans, in many US cities saddled with losing teams in such sports as hockey, basketball, and baseball. If actually practiced, however, tanking would exploit spectator, players, and coaches alike.
On Sunday, April 17, 2016, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved a motion to forward a petition to the Senate to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. What led Brazil to this moment? Looking back, the re-election of Dilma Rousseff to a second term as President of Brazil in October 2014 was viewed by her supporters in the Workers Party (PT) as confirmation of the rise of the working class to power in Brazil.
First isolated in Uganda in 1947, this normally mild, non-fatal mosquito-born flavivirus infection is characterized by transient fever, joint pain and malaise. The current explosive Zika virus epidemic in the Americas is, however, causing great concern because of what looks to be a sudden, dramatic increase in the incidence of microcephaly (small brain/head size) in newborns.
Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol, authors of the newly-published third edition of Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, provide insight into the legal challenges that the Affordable Care Act faced, including the Supreme Court ruling in 2015.
Earlier in the year, Greece faced some unsettling economic troubles. The country voted on a referendum that would decide whether they would pull their membership from the European Union (and thus, the union's currency and economic system). It's a wonder to think that this country, less than a decade ago, was among one of the richer nations.
Forty years ago today (20 November), General Franco, the chief protagonist of nearly half a century of Spanish history, died. ‘Caudillo by the grace of God’, as his coins proclaimed after he won the 1936-39 Civil War, Generalissimo of the armed forces, and head of state and head of government (the latter until 1973), Franco was buried at the colossal mausoleum partly built by political prisoners at the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) in the Guadarrama mountains near Madrid.
As with most other countries, the Ukraine we know today—with everything good, bad, and in-between about it—is a result of its history. It shares more than half its borders with Russia, accounting for the two countries' complicated history.
Many of us probably tend to take fish for granted, as it's a fairly sustainable resource—at least, that's what we'd like believe. It's difficult to imagine that we could even come close to depleting what seems to be limitless; after all, the earth is mostly covered in water. But as Ray and Ulrike Hilborn discuss in an excerpt from their book, Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, there is reason for concern in our flippancy towards our complex ecosystem.
With the world bracing for Greece's exit from the Eurozone, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, miraculously announced that a deal with the debt-crippled country had been reached. After nearly 17 hours of negotiations at the Euro Summit, Eurozone leaders extended a $96 billion bailout to Greece in what has proved to be the third bailout since 2010. As rumors continue to circulate regarding Greece's next steps, Stathis Kalyvas, leading expert and author of Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs, joined the international conversation, responding to the announcement of the recent bailout via Twitter.
Despite Bin Laden's death in 2011, the extremist group Al Qaeda has since survived and, some argue, continued to thrive. The effort and resources Bin Laden invested into Al Qaeda fortified its foundation, making it difficult, if not impossible, to disband or weaken the group after his death. But how did the terrorist group come to be what it is today?
The EPA recently released a report stating that while hydrofracking has not led to significant impacts on drinking water, contamination may occur with “potential vulnerabilities in the water lifecycle that could impact drinking water”. In this extract from Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know, Alex Prud’homme breaks down the cases for and against hydrofracking.
It is easy enough for critics to trace America’s over-consumption of things like food and fuel to the excess power of our profit-making corporations. Americans consume more food and fuel than Europeans in part because these companies in America are better able to resist taxes and regulations.
With the recent uproar surrounding President Obama's executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat, it is worth reading up on how this Latin American country has changed since the end of the 20th century. This excerpt from Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know by Michael Tinker Salas examines the impact of the election of Hugo Chávez on Venezuelan politics.
I have ambivalent feelings about Easter. I am sure I am not alone in this attitude towards the greatest of events on the Christian calendar, especially among people who grew up, as I did, in intensely religious (and loving) families but who have long put their Christian beliefs behind them. As it happens, my family were Quakers and that religion does not mark out the church festivals. But I went to a school that had a great musical tradition and each year there was a performance of one of the Bach Passions, alternating the St Matthew with the St John.
In arguing that Greece—or modern Greece—is, in fact, a “trailblazer” of sorts, Stathis N. Kalyvas, author of Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know, gives us some very compelling answers for us to consider.
What do Glenn Beck, Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State, and Noam Chomsky have in common? They all place much of the blame for the current crisis in the Middle East on the so-called “Sykes-Picot Agreement,” a plan for the postwar partition of Ottoman territories drawn up during World War I.
Named after the two diplomats who negotiated the secret deal in 1915-16—Sir Mark Sykes of the British war office and François Georges-Picot, French consul in Beirut—the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire into zones of direct and indirect British and French control. It also “internationalized” Jerusalem—a bone thrown to the Russian Empire, a British and French ally, which worried that Orthodox Christians might be put at a disadvantage if the Catholic French had final say about the future of the holy city. Although Russia never officially signed the agreement, it acquiesced to it in return for its allies’ reaffirmation of postwar Russian control over Istanbul and the Turkish Straits and direct Russian control over parts of eastern Anatolia.
“I know I read about [the Sykes-Picot Agreement] years ago when we were at Fox,” Glenn Beck reported in September 2014, “and I put it up on the chalkboard….But it didn’t all fall into place until I learned about ISIS and ISIL…Now it all makes sense to me, and now you’ll be able to figure out what is really going on.”
Bashar al-Assad concurs: “What is taking place in Syria is part of what has been planned for the region for tens of years, as the dream of partition is still haunting the grandchildren of Sykes–Picot.”
So does al-Assad’s sometime enemy, the Islamic State, which wrote in its glossy magazine, Dabiq, “After demolishing the Syrian/Iraqi border set up by the crusaders to divide and disunite the Muslims, and carve up their lands in order to consolidate their control of the region, the mujāhidīn of the Khilāfah delivered yet another blow to nationalism and the Sykes-Picot-inspired borders that define it.”
The fact is, however, that it’s way too late for that. By the end of World War I, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was already a dead letter.
“MPK1-426 Sykes Picot Agreement Map signed 8 May 1916.” Photo by Royal Geographical Society (Map), Mark Sykes & François Georges-Picot (Annotations). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
“‘Political Middle East’ map from the CIA World Factbook Website.” Photo by Central Intelligence Agency. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Compare a map of the contemporary Middle East (right) with the map proposed by the Sykes-Picot Agreement (above). Is any area of the region under direct British, French, or Russian administration? How do the horizontally delineated zones of indirect control and the vertically delineated zones of direct control compare to the crazy quilt map of the Middle East today? Is Jerusalem (and the adjoining region) under international control? Do France and Russia directly control parts of Anatolia, and does Britain directly control parts of Iraq and the Arabian peninsula?
For the most part, the current boundaries in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia came about as the result of two factors. The first is the establishment of the mandates system by the League of Nations, which not only allotted Britain and France temporary control over territory in the region, but enabled the two powers to combine or divide territories into proto-states in accordance with their imperial interests. Thus, Britain created Iraq and Trans-Jordan after the war (Israel and Palestine would come even later); France did the same for Lebanon and Syria. Second, Anatolia remained undivided because Turkish nationalists fought a grueling four year anti-imperialist campaign that drove foreigners out of the peninsula.
Why, then, have so many placed the blame for today’s instability on an agreement that was all but ignored once the Great Powers got down to business in Versailles in 1919? Certainly it is not because it was the first of the secret agreements that set the precedent for dividing Ottoman lands among the allies after the war. That honor belongs to the Constantinople Agreement of 1915. Nor was it the last: the Treaty of St. Jeanne de Maurienne, which gave Italy control over territory in western Anatolia, was signed in 1917.
Perhaps the reason people speak of the “Sykes-Picot boundaries” is that it assigns culpability to individuals rather than complicated historical events or faceless apparatchiks meeting behind closed doors. For Middle Easterners, “Sykes-Picot” became code long ago for imperialist arrogance and the illegitimacy of the contemporary state system, whatever the agreement’s actual historical significance. Once the phrase struck roots in the region, it spread globally, particularly after Al-Qaeda made it a focal point of its polemics.
Poor Sykes, poor Georges-Picot. Just as Arthur Balfour has, for more than ninety years, borne responsibility for an eponymous declaration written by others and approved by the British prime minister and cabinet, Sykes and Georges-Picot have become the obligatory villains in narratives that give pride of place to the imperialist perfidy that has frustrated Arab or Islamic unity and is responsible for the multiple failures of the contemporary Middle Eastern state.
Image Credit: “Yemeni Protests 4-Apr-2011 P01.” Photo by Email4mobile. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The New Atheists – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens – are not particularly comfortable people. The fallacies in their arguments beg to be used in classes on informal reasoning. The narrowness of their perspectives are remarkable even by the standards of modern academia. The prejudices against those of other cultures would be breathtaking even in the era when Britannia ruled the waves. But there is a moral fervor unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. And for this, we can forgive much.
Atheism is not just a matter of the facts – does God exist or not? It is as much, if not more, a moral matter. Does one have the right to believe in the existence of God? If one does, what does this mean morally and socially? If one does not, what does this mean morally and socially?
Now you might say that there has to be something wrong here. Does one have the right to believe that 2+2=4? Does one have the right to believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Does one have the right to believe that theft is always wrong? Belief or non-belief in matters such as these is not a moral issue. Even though it may be that how you decide is a moral issue or something with moral implications. How should one discriminate between a mother stealing for her children and a professional burglar after diamonds that he will at once pass on to a fence?
But the God question is rather different, because, say what you like, it is nigh impossible to be absolutely certain one way or the other. Even Richard Dawkins admits that although he is ninety-nine point many nines certain that there is no god, to quote one of the best lines of that I-hope-not-entirely-forgotten review, Beyond the Fringe, there is always that little bit in the bottom that you cannot get out. There could be some kind of deity of a totally unimaginable kind. As the geneticist J. B. S. Haldane used to say: “My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
(Clockwise from top left} Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. “Four Horsemen” by DIREKTOR. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
So in some ultimate sense the God question is up for grabs, and how you decide is a moral issue. As the nineteenth-century English philosopher, William Kingdom Clifford, used to say, you should not believe anything except on good evidence. But the problem here is precisely what is good evidence – faith, empirical facts, arguments, or what? Decent, thoughtful people differ over these and before long it is no longer a simple matter of true or false, but of what you believe and why; whether you should or should not believe on this basis; and what are going to be the implications of your beliefs, not only on your own life and behavior but also on the lives and behaviors of other people.
If you go back to Ancient Greece, you find that above all it is the moral and social implications of non-belief that worried people like Plato. In the Laws, indeed, he prescribed truly horrendous restrictions on those who failed to fall in line – and this from a man who himself had very iffy views about the traditional Greek views on the gods and their shenanigans. You are going to be locked up for the rest of your life and receive your food only at the hands of slaves and when you die you are going to be chucked out, unburied, beyond the boundaries of the state.
Not that this stopped people from bringing up a host of arguments against God and gods, whether or not they thought that there truly is nothing beyond this world. Folk felt it their duty to show the implausibility of god-belief, however uncomfortable the consequences. And this moral fervor, either in favor or against the existence of a god or gods, continues right down through the ages to the present. Before Dawkins, in England in the twentieth century the most famous atheist was the philosopher Bertrand Russell. His moral indignation against Christianity in particular – How dare a bunch of old men in skirts dictate the lives of the rest of us? — shines out from every page. And so it is to the present. No doubt, as he intended, many were shocked when, on being asked in Ireland about sexual abuse by priests, Richard Dawkins said that he thought an even greater abuse was bringing a child up Catholic in the first place. He is far from the first to think in this particular way.
Believers think they have found the truth and the way. Non-believers are a lot less sure. What joins even – especially – the most ardent of partisans is the belief that this is not simply a matter of true and false. It is a matter of right and wrong. Abortion, gay marriage, civil rights – all of these thorny issues and more are moral and social issues at the heart of our lives and what you believe about God is going to influence how you decide. Atheism, for or against, matters morally.
Featured image credit: “Sky clouds” by 12345danNL. CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The world is more interested in issues surrounding agriculture and food than ever before. Questions swirl around the safety of our food, how it’s made, and what we can do to ensure we eat the best food. We asked F. Bailey Norwood, one of the authors of Agricultural and Food Controversies: What Everyone Needs to Know, to answer some of today’s most pressing queries.
Why has agriculture become so controversial?
There are many reasons, but a major one is the fact that agriculture today involves both big corporations and big government. Individuals with left-leaning political beliefs are hostile towards big corporations, whereas those on the right feel the same way about big government. This creates political tension that is not easy to resolve. Big corporations exist because there are economies-of-scale in agriculture, and there are extensive government regulations due to the many ways agriculture affects human health and the environment. Rather than lament the politicization of food, perhaps we should view it as a sign of a healthy democracy.
How do regulators know whether the pesticides we apply are safe?
The same way kings and popes would make sure their food wasn’t poisoned: they had official tasters who ate the food first. Our tasters are laboratory animals, who are exposed to varying amounts of pesticides, to determine at what level exposure to pesticides are unsafe. Humans are obviously not laboratory animals, so there is a safety-factor built into regulations, such that humans will not be exposed to even 1/100 of the amount that would impair the health of a lab rat.
What is the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of the food I eat?
Some foods emit more greenhouse gases than others. Beef, for instance, has a higher carbon footprint per-calorie than most other foods. Vegans are often found to have smaller carbon footprints than their omnivorous counterparts. Rather than concentrating on which foods you eat, an alternative strategy is to buy cheaper food and use the savings to purchase carbon offsets. Although this may not have the cultural appeal as Meatless Mondays, it is arguably the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of your food.
Are foods made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) safe to eat?
The most prestigious scientific organizations like the National Academy of Sciences believe so. Those who both understand the science of genetic modification and fear such foods usually do so because they believe the corporations creating GMOs have excessive political influence. What is so interesting about the GMO debate is that the practice of cutting genes out of one organism and placing them into the DNA of another organism has become so controversial, yet the practice of altering plant genes by zapping their DNA with radiation has not. At my university, opposition to GMOs has discouraged us from improving wheat by genetic modification, but some of our best wheat varieties were created by inducing genetic mutations in wheat through chemicals. It is not clear why one of these is feared and the other one is ignored.
Should I join the local foods movement?
If you believe you can acquire better food from local sources, whether it be higher quality or lower prices, then yes, buying local foods is a great idea. The local food movement might also help induce a cultural change such that people begin eating healthier foods. That said, there is little validity to the argument that buying local foods is good for economic growth, and there is no guarantee that local foods are better for the environment.
Headline image credit: Ecologically grown vegetables by Elina Mark. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Oxford Dictionaries has selected vape as Word of the Year 2014, so we asked several experts to comment on the growth of electronic cigarettes and the vaping phenomenon.
Vape is a fascinating Word of the Year. Not only is the word new and important, but so is the actual activity. That’s different from merely coining a cute new label for a longstanding practice.
First, some clarification. Various drugs can be “smoked” or “vaporized”. Smoking involves combustion, as in “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” By contrast, when something is vaporized it is heated – using heat from an external source – to volatilize the molecules. Water vapor is the familiar example; steam is not produced by burning water.
The distinction matters for many drugs. Burning cocaine decomposes it into byproducts that are not psychoactive. Vaporized cocaine base is crack.
Burning tobacco releases smoke that is full of not only nicotine but also carcinogens. The nicotine is addictive but not carcinogenic. E-cigarettes provide the nicotine – and nicotine addiction – without those tars or hot gasses. (Nicotine evaporates at a much lower temperature than is created when tobacco burns.)
It’s not that e-cigarettes are healthy. Constant dosing with nicotine is bad for your heart. However, compared to the most deadly consumer product in history, e-cigarettes aren’t as bad. When I polled a number of medical colleagues, their best guesses – and they stressed at this point they are only guesses – were that all things considered, e-cigarettes will kill at something like one-tenth the rate per year of use as do conventional cigarettes. That could make e-cigarettes a life saver – unless they become a new gateway to nicotine addiction for adolescents who later convert to combusted tobacco products.
With marijuana, people traditionally mostly smoked the flowering tops (“buds”) of the cannabis plant in a joint (cigarette) or bong (water pipe). However, the recent liberalization of marijuana policy has made consumption of THC “extracts” more common. (You can also vape buds, but the trend is toward concentrates.)
Vaping is a boon to both the old tobacco and the new marijuana industries because it solves their fundamental problem: how to ensure long-term demand when these days almost no mature adult initiates use of a new dependence-inducing psychoactive. The vast majority of people who smoke tobacco or marijuana start before the age of 21; indeed, usually by age 16. Kids know cigarettes are deadly, and have lagged in the recent upsurge in marijuana use.
Cue the cavalry to the rescue in the form of all these fruit flavors, such as bubble gum, caramel candy, root beer, and mango, that appeal to kids. Originally tobacco companies were indifferent to e-cigarettes. Originally they were used mostly by established smokers, and it wasn’t clear whether they were more of an aid for those quitting (akin to nicotine gum) or a way to retain smokers by making hours spent in smoke-free restaurants and workplaces more tolerable.
The marijuana industry was not similarly conflicted because much of the THC in a cannabis plant is locked up in leaves and other parts that are not desirable in today’s market as “usable marijuana”. It has always been technically possible to extract that THC, but doing so efficiently requires a moderately large extraction machine – something whose presence used to be difficult to explain to the police or nosy neighbors. But once producing marijuana products became legal (albeit still only under state law), there were no qualms about owning an extraction machine and recovering all that additional THC.
Cheap THC extraction created a new problem: how to sell it to a marketplace that was focused on joints and bongs. A certain amount could be baked into brownies, mixed into beverages or ointments, or sold as dabs to hardcore users, but the killer app was vape pens. Vape pens are close to odorless, letting kids use at home without their parents knowing; they are easy to flavor; and they create an element of style. The same creativity that went into filling head shops with endless variations on the basic bong has been channeled into vape pens with features such as puff counters, batteries that plug into USB ports, and LED temperature indicators, as well as styling features ranging from classy gold plate to ninja turtle figurines and Snoop Dog endorsements.
The word vape itself is also key to this transformation. The scary word cigarette is part of the phrase e-cigarette, but vaping is new, chic, and as-of-yet decoupled from associations with cancer and heart disease.
All of this has made vaping trendy in a way it hadn’t been when e-cigarettes first hit the market, and now the big tobacco companies are jumping in with both feet, buying up small e-cigarette companies and putting their marketing muscle behind the trend. They smell opportunity; whereas it is illegal to flavor tobacco, there is no barrier to marketing kid-friendly fruit-flavored nicotine for e-cigarettes.
What remains to be seen is how the industry will evolve if and when marijuana is legalized nationwide. Will tobacco companies buy out the still small marijuana firms? Will they – or the marijuana companies – sell cartridges that come with nicotine and THC premixed? Or will this vaping fad disappear like a puff of vapor?
Hard to say. But right now, vape is the Word of Year.
Marine pollution has long been a topic of concern, but what do you really know about the pollutants affecting the world’s waters? We asked Judith Weis, author of Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know, to delve into the various forms of pollutants, and the many ways they can harm our environment and bodies.
(1) Marine debris is much more than an aesthetic issue. In the United States, over 100 species of marine mammals, sea turtles, birds, fish, and invertebrates are injured or die after getting entangled in marine debris. Lost fishing nets are the biggest culprit. Seals are often affected by marine debris. For endangered species such as Hawaiian monk seals, entanglement in marine debris can cause declines in the already low population. In addition to entanglement, marine debris can cause problems when animals consume it. The ingested debris consists largely of plastics from industrial and recreational products, or personal care products. Clear plastic bags are often eaten by sea turtles, who mistake them for jellyfish.
(2) Some chemical pollutants are gender benders, altering the sexual development of marine animals. Hormones in birth control pills are not broken down by sewage treatment and find their way into water bodies where they exert their effects on fishes. Some fish living near sewage treatment plants are intersex with male testes producing eggs as well as sperm. The chemical TBT, which was a popular anti-foulant used in boat paint to keep barnacles off boat bottoms, caused female snails to grow male reproductive structures. When the contamination was high, the male ducts blocked the ability of eggs to go down the female duct, preventing reproduction. The snail populations plummeted but recovered once this chemical was banned for use in boat paints.
(3) Ocean acidification, a side effect of climate change, is affecting marine life by impairing the ability of young shellfish to make their shells (which could have major economic consequences for fisheries and aquaculture), and affects the homing and prey detection behavior of fishes. Much of the CO2 we release into the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean, which reduces the effects of global warming. However, once in the ocean, it reacts to form carbonic acid, which makes the ocean more acidic.
(4) Nutrients are essential for all life, but in excess they become one of the most serious and widespread pollutants. Nutrients come from human and animal wastes, and as fertilizers applied to agricultural crops and suburban lawns. Nutrients stimulate blooms of algae which can’t sustain themselves and die. When the dead algae sink to the bottom of oceans they are decomposed by bacteria. The decomposition uses up the oxygen in the water creating a zone of low oxygen that stresses or kills the animals living at or near the bottom. Such “dead zones” are becoming more prevalent around the world.
Heavy Sediment along the Queensland Coast. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
(5) Harmful algal blooms, frequently associated with excess nutrients, have become more prevalent in recent years, and have been found along the shores of many continents, as well as in freshwater. These harmful algal blooms (HABs) are the result of blooms of algal species that produce toxins. One example is paralytic shellfish positioning, caused when toxins are accumulated in shellfish that eat the algae, and then get passed up to animals that eat the shellfish – including humans. It can result in paralysis and even death.
(6) Water pollution gets worse after a severe rain storm. In rural areas the water that doesn’t soak into the ground runs off into streams, rivers, and estuaries, carrying whatever it encounters along the way, including litter, silt, animal wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, oil, etc. In many cities, storm sewers that collect rain water lead directly to local water bodies, carrying the pollution collected from the streets. In other cities, where the storm sewers combine with the sewer pipes coming from houses and industry, the combined sewers overflow after large rainfalls, which overload the capacity of the treatment plant so that raw sewage gets discharged. This often results in beaches being closed for several days after a major storm.
(7) Invasive species, a type of biological pollution, can have a major impact on biological diversity, fisheries, human health, and economics. Brought into the ballast tanks along with the millions of gallons of water that is needed to stabilize ships that transport goods all over the world, these species are then released in a new location when the ship arrives in port. At this new place, they may be able to reproduce rapidly and thrive because they have no natural enemies here. As their populations grow they often cause problems for the native species. But ballast water is not the only source of marine invasive species. The lionfish (native to the Indo-Pacific), one of the most devastating invasive species, has been eating up enormous numbers of coral reef fishes in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and South Atlantic ever since it was released from aquariums in Florida in the early 1990s.
Featured image credit: “Maldives – Kurumba Island” by PalawanOz. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
American higher education is at a crossroads. The cost of a college education has made people question the benefits of receiving one. To better understand the issues surrounding the supposed crisis, we asked Goldie Blumenstyk, author of American Higher Education in Crisis: What Everyone Needs to Know, to comment on some of the most hot button topics today.
A discussion on the rising cost of higher education.
What does the future of higher education look like?
Are the salaries of university presidents and coaches too high?
A look into the accountability movement in higher education today.
American higher education is at a crossroads. The cost of a college education has made people question the benefits of receiving one. We asked Goldie Blumenstyk, author of American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know to help us separate fact from fiction.
True or False? It doesn’t pay to go to college.
False: Generally speaking, college is still worth the money in the long run. According to the latest figures from the College Board, the median earnings for a person with a bachelor’s degree was 65% greater than those for someone with just a high-school diploma over a 40-year working career. Those with associate degrees, typically earned in community or technical colleges, had earnings that were 27% higher. What’s more, the job market of the future will continue to offer more opportunities to those with post-secondary education. By 2020, experts predict two-thirds of jobs will require at least some education and training beyond the high school level. Forty years ago, only about 28% of jobs required that higher level of education.
It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to college.
False: While there are colleges that charge upwards of $50,000 a year for tuition, room, and board (at least 175 of them, counting the half-dozen or so public universities that charge their out-of-state students that much) most colleges cost a lot less. Last year half of all four-year public-college students attended an institution where the annual in-state tuition rate was below $9,011. Some 85 percent of them attended a college where tuition charges were below $15,000. Private colleges charge more but with student aid from the federal and state governments and the colleges themselves, the price students actually pay is often substantially lower than the “sticker price.” Last year the average “net price” at a four-year private college was $12,460. And the average tuition at community colleges, where about four out of ten undergraduates now attend college, was about $3,300 a year.
Student debt is unmanageable.
True (and False): About 40 million Americans now carry student-loan debt and for many of them, particularly recent graduates struggling to get established in a tough job market, student-debt burdens are a real challenge. That’s evidenced by the rising rate of defaults on student loans. But according to the latest data from Project on Student Debt, for students graduating from college with debt, those who attended four-year public colleges had an average debt burden of $25,500. For comparison sake, a new Ford Focus automobile costs anywhere from about $17,000 to $35,000, depending on the options. The average debt level for graduates from four-year private colleges was $32,300. About 40% of student debt is for balances smaller than $10,000, according to the College Board.
Of all the factors that have propelled college prices up faster than the costs of most other goods and services over the past for 40 years, the cost of all those tenured professors isn’t one of them.
True: Actually, while college costs have been rising, the proportion of faculty members who are tenured professors, or on track to be considered for tenure, has shrunk precipitously during the same period. In the mid-1970s according to the American Association of University Professors, about 45% of all faculty members were tenured or on the tenure track; today only about one-quarter of them are. Full-time professors are well paid, but colleges now increasingly rely on faculty members who they hire annually, adjunct professors who they pay only about $2,700 per course, on average, and graduate teaching assistants. Meanwhile, factors that do seem to more directly drive up costs and prices include: growing numbers of administrators, new facilities, major reductions in state support, and the costs for student aid.
Online education takes place primarily at for-profit colleges like the University of Phoenix and DeVry University.
False: For-profit colleges like those were among the first to use distance education-technologies to expand their enrollments, but online education is now increasingly commonplace in more traditional public and private colleges. According to the latest available data, more than five million students — about a quarter of the student population — took at least one course that was fully or partly online in fall 2012. About half of them took a class that was exclusively online. The medium, however, still seems more popular for certain fields of study. For both graduate and undergraduate education, the most common courses and degrees offered via distance education are in business, marketing, computer- and information-technologies, and health-related fields. In the future, students can expect to see more and more classes that use distance-education technology in a hybrid format, mixing face-to-face instruction with online components. Headline image credit: Graduation By Tulane Public Relations, CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
