The right to a great public education
By Alvaro Huerta, November 19, 2009
We’ve got to stop cutting public education.
To ease the budget crisis, one state after another is taking an ax to higher education.
This is cruel and shortsighted.
Cruel because it denies students the right to a decent education. Shortsighted because how will this generation of students get prepared to compete globally or even to clean up the financial mess brought about by Wall Street?
I’m a product of the worst and best public education California has to offer.
I grew up in an East Los Angeles housing project in the 1970s and 1980s.
I attended overcrowded public schools located in the inner city. Like many racial minorities from America’s barrios and ghettos, I received an inadequate education.
While I excelled in mathematics, I was never taught to read or write at a competent level throughout my K-12 schooling. To complicate matters, the longest paper assigned to me in high school was two pages long.
I taught myself how to properly read and write while going through college to compensate for my poorly funded K-12 education. But what will happen to those without this same self-drive that I learned from my Mexican immigrant mother?
Fortunately, I also benefited from affirmative action and from numerous educational outreach programs and policies like Occident College’s Upward Bound — a preparatory program for students from disadvantaged communities.
If not for such programs, I wouldn’t have made it to UCLA as an undergraduate. I wouldn’t have earned a master’s degree in urban planning there. And I wouldn’t be pursuing my doctorate at Berkeley.
So I worry about those who grow up in poor neighborhoods without the same educational safety nets that allowed for me, along with my three siblings and my wife Antonia, to attend some of the best universities in this country. I can’t help but be concerned about the plight of my wife’s elementary school students in East Los Angeles today.
Those who fight against affirmative action and against government-sponsored early educational outreach programs conveniently wash their hands of any responsibility toward those who lack the financial resources and access to human capital to go to college.
And fewer and fewer have those resources, with one state after another raising tuition and other fees.
These fee hikes couldn’t come at a worse time.
If we care about equality of opportunity, if we are concerned about our ability to compete in the global economy, it’s time to give everyone, including those from America’s barrios and ghettos, a shot at a great public education.
Alvaro Huerta is a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.
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Comments
1. Taxpayers are indeed forced to pay. Your idea that I can vote against taxes is where we are getting hung up. I do, in fact, vote against candidates who will raise taxes. Fat lot of good it does me.
You are pretending that the group "voters" is the same as the group "taxpayers". You are also pretending that "voters" is a single entity and that those who vote want higher taxes. Both are logically wrong.
Reply: No, I'm saying that you as a citizen give consent to taxation by virtue of your status(e.g., suffrage). Do you reject all taxation? Given what you have written you must but you haven't replied to this question yet.
I do not get to choose my level of taxation. That is decided by all voters as a group. You are arguing that if the group goes along with tax hikes, then I have somehow consented. I made the analogy to slavery - a majority can exploit a minority, enforced by law. (And it is irrelevant for this point whether slaves were allowed to vote.)
Of course I don't reject all taxation, and nothing I wrote would suggest that red herring. But I do object to unwise taxation and I especially object to redistribution of earnings.
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2. "Marginally good for society" means that the pluses outweigh the minuses. That's all. Here, the bugaboo may be extent. You want to argue that college is so valuable that we should increase subsidies. But value does not imply subsidies. You need to make an argument for why a valuable thing should be subsidized.
It suggests you do indeed believe that anything good for society should be subsidized by the taxpayers. It also suggests that you don't give much weight to taxpayers' interests.
Reply: My argument--and the studies show--that a robust higher educations sector benefits society greatly. Do you have evidence it doesn't? One of the biggest government tuition programs was the GI Bill: it educated millions and brought them into the middle-class after WWII.
Again and again and again. And again.
Look, we agree that a well-educated society is good. Your task is to defend subsidies, not a well-educated society. You seem to believe that since college is good, it deserves more subsidies; it deserves the confiscation of earnings from some for the enrichment of others. But it isn't enough to say college is good and therefore should get more subsidies. Are you able to explain why it should? I have asked you to defend that point, but you never do.
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3. I wrote that loans should be the type of support that we give college students. I realize that many students take out loans. I did so myself. The fact that many already use loans does not have a bearing on our argument.
Reply: The problem with depending just on loans is that the debt burden on young people would be too great and it would damage state economies. Do you have evidence (i.e., actual studies) that it would not?
a) Why shouldn't college students have debt after college - after receiving expensive enrichment that helps them earn much more throughout their lives? It is still a good deal for them, and there is no shortage of people taking advantage of it, as you wrote.
Or are we just back to your notion that others should be forced to pay for your enrichment in order to give you even more spending money after school? Maybe a good deal isn't enough and you expect a fantastic deal?
b) I've asked you what you mean about "state economies". It sounds bogus, but I'm willing to consider if you'll ever explain.
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4. I do not need to "put some empirical evidence on the line" because it isn't yet relevant to the discussion. First you need a second valid premise to make a valid argument. Evidence that could be germane, depending on what you choose for your missing premise, is that college enrollment is sufficient for our needs. Actually, enrollment is at an all-time high:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/education/30college.html
But you haven't given your needed second premise so I'm not sure if that evidence is relevant to our debate.
Reply: Wow--that's a weird argument! You are making a large claim about how we should radically alter public policy and you don't think you have to offer any proof? Good luck in a college course.
I think the NYT article proves my point--more people are going to college (especially community college) but they need financial help.
Why is it weird? You are still stuck on a conclusion with a missing premise. When you identify a premise for why we should subsidize good things, I can evaluate your argument. Until then, I can only guess at your reasoning.
And how could the NYT piece "prove" your point? There is a fundamental lack of reasoning in that assertion.
The article counters one possible reason to subsidize - to overcome shortages. But the evidence shows there is no shortage of college students. As I wrote, I don't know whether this is relevant because you still haven't given your reason for more subsidies. Will you ever?
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5. You are faulting me for not accepting your faulty initial premise and then arguing consistent with that. I reject your assertion that a thing should be subsidized if it is marginally good for society and I have laid out a rational argument for why.
You have not yet laid out a rational argument.
Reply: You had the initial premise, not me--you are the one proposing a new system of funding higher education. As the "negative" in this debate I just have to defend the status quo (which I have done with the studies and the GI Bill example of how govt. support helped educate millions of new dentists, engineers, and school teachers).
What makes you think that I need to defend keeping my earnings and you do not need to defend confiscating them? Laughable.
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We all would like to acquire things of value without expending a lot of effort. In a nutshell, you are arguing that it would be good to give college students a lot of wealth that is confiscated from others. You never explain why it is wrong to expect college students to finance their enrichment with loans, or why it is better to make others pay. You just take for granted that it is.
This is getting rather tedious. I suspect you know your argument is weak and you are just jerking me around. If you will not address the holes in your reasoning, I see little reason to continue. Please, no more circular "arguments".
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