I graduated HS in the mid 90s and I remember my government teacher telling us about how Sweden gave their students free college. We were shocked at that, of course asked why and he told us it’s because the government recognized that if they educated their population, they had a higher quality of potential workers to employ, meaning they would get good jobs with good pay and be able to pay back into the economy through taxes and purchase power. It’s seemed so straightforward at the time…and still does. The problem is we would need a government who actually wanted better for a majority of its population, not just the wealthy at the top of the heap.
@@robertmazurowski5974 It doesn’t, Swedens work environment is insanely better than the US, 70% of the workforce is unionized, etc, quality of life across the board is higher in most statistics
Look into how many educated/ skilled workers the US must import, now imagine if more Americans qualified for those highly compensated and developing roles.
@@robertmazurowski5974 Sweden beats the US in every important category for life happiness. Don't forget their citizens can also speak multiple languages, while some Americans can barely speak English haha.
@@StopCopCity1312 public education is always of lower quality than private paid education though, because under capitalism nobody's going to give people free stuff unless they ask the ruling class very politely, with a bunch of pitchforks and an angry mob. So yeah, while education should indeed be a human right, not a privilege, under the current socio-economic system we're going to be kept just smart enough to work, no more and no less.
@@steinarjonsson_ No. Whoever didn't write well in the last high school year of exams don't get into any university. Everyone else goes to a normal 4 year college or a 2 year community college, but you have to pay for it. Community colleges are like €80-100pm which is very cheap and yet again everyone can afford it. That's how it works in Greece.
$70B for free college: "That's to expensive. We can't afford that." $840B for the 2023 US Military budget: "No need to discuss, are you sure you don't want more?"
@@muhammaDEsmustafa only progressive like Bernie Sanders, AOC and others are the only few that really want to provide a social safety net so every American can have equal opportunity.
People don’t realize they’ll never allow unions in america because americas the last bastion of hope for capitalism/ an extractive economy, once you allow people to own their labor everywhere on the planet, capitalism is dead
USA is just like a parlamentary monarchy where the parlament that has most of the power are the companies and the monarchy is the goverment that can live a comfortable life without really working.
Saying that we shouldn't forgive current college graduates student loan debt since it would be unfair for previous college graduates that have already paid off their student loan debt is like saying we shouldn't find a cure for a disease people face today because people in the past died from that disease. Also, how can a country that spends close to a trillion dollars on it's military budget every single year be against spending a fraction of that amount to forgive student loans just once?
We should forgive all the debt and make universities government owned and free we shouldn’t just not forgive debt just because others had to pay it’s a positive move forward why not do it I’m sure everyone will benefit from high quality education especially in tech because we need those jobs 100 percent agree with you here
I'm realizing now that "get good grades and scholarships will let you go to any college you want practically free" was a lie that my parents fell for and just parroted my way since they came from a time where college *was* affordable. Game was rigged from the start
It's not a lie. It more like your parents just didn't know you doing all that would at best get you a lottery ticket chance to maybe become part of the ruling class.
Well imagine your someone who was placed in special education. And in your final years of school. You had no idea what to do ? So you just listen to your family and school to go to college. And it will be amazing. Well I was made from . A professor told me I don't belong in his school because I was still working on lower education math .
There's always a shortage of doctors, teachers, public defenders, etc. All jobs that help uplift poor communities and the shortage of which exclusively benefits the rich. All jobs which *demand* an increasingly expensive higher education. This is not a coincidence.
its because the jobs fucking suck and dont pay enough (excluding doctors they make enough). who wants to deal with kids and grading 3/4 of the year for 60k
It's especially frustrating when considering that professors, even full-time, tenured ones (very much the minority), get paid relatively poorly for their contributions. The highest paid professor in my field in all the universities I was at was about $200k, and that's only after about 50 years of work, about 200 peer-reviewed publications, patents, and millions in grant funding across industry and academics. Most full-time professors start at about $50k - $60k which is horrible for the unique expertise they bring, the hours they work, and what they contribute to every industry and humanity. Meanwhile, for example, high managers in insurance companies and financial institutions, which are largely counterproductive and directly harmful industries, are compensated much more.
@A B You would be surprised at how many people ARE interested in STEM, it's just that pursuing a career in research or teaching is considered a financial dead-end for most people. A huge portion of physics graduates end up working for finance corporations doing data analysis and modelling for them. Another big chunk end up working for the military-industrial complex.
@A B Yeah, nobody is learning to code, no engineers, not a single student enrolled in physics classes. Besides, it's not like we need anything else--like doctors. Are you high?
Faculty like professors have been deliberately removed from power in the university. They used to moonlight as the school administration before the right wing declared class war on the education system. Now the major of money in schools is being wasted on a self appointed administrative elite of dean's and dons who exist to protect their wealth and status above all else.
I study in Germany (because I live here) and I pay roughly 200€ per semester. This includes being able to use public transport as much as I like in my city, since student cards function as tickets as well.
I say to people who live in European countries “always be grateful that you live in a country that cares about the people. I’m living a nightmare here in USA. Never take things for granted.”
@@Perseus5 Europe isn't all equal you know. There's the relatively rich (in a capitalist way, of course) core, and a bunch of peripheral countries kept for providing cheap labor force and markets. Eastern Europe was deliberately turned into a third-world dump since the destruction of the socialist bloc in Europe.
i live in Macedonia and funny thing is, the right wing party dropped the price for college from 400 euros per semester to 200 euros (and if you're in the top 10% of the accepted students you pay 100 euros per semester and the 10 highest ranked students can attend for free, if you perform bad you can drop to 200 euros tuition). Everyone get's free public transport (i'm not sure about students from private uni), if your parents earn minimum wage you will get free dorm room + 1/2 of the tuition price. It's not perfect but for not so developed country it's good.
One thing I almost never hear people talk about when it comes to college costs and student debt is the way it plays into coercive recruiting strategies used by the US military. As a current college student in a state school, I get regular texts to my personal phone from military recruitment offices offering to pay of any loans I have and cover the rest of my tuition. Additionally many state colleges have checks to make sure any men of draft age are entered into selective service, especially if they are applying for loans or aid; and I’m sure you have all seen ads featuring young, attractive members of the military taking about all the things the military has allowed them to do and learn for free.
I remember when the student loan forgiveness bill was in the news some republican politician gave the game away a bit, saying that making higher education more available would negatively impact military recruitment. The people in power in this country know what they’re doing and know that what regular people usually consider “faults in the system” actually benefit the ruling class quite a lot.
@@KickinRadTopHat The military is not even an option for most people who have to take out student loans, considering that over 80% of all Americans ages 17-24 are ineligible to join. Getting into the military today can be more difficult than getting accepted into a prestigious university because of the strict medical screening process.
Iirc, you gotta add yourself to the list of potential draftees just to complete your FAFSA. Which is necessary unless you can afford to completely pay for the entirety of college out of pocket.
Former Director of Operations for a private university here. The thought that colleges waste huge amounts of money is ABSOLUTELY true. The biggest offender is sports programs; you will notice that America is just about the ONLY country where commercialized collegiate sports exists, and, as you can imagine, those commercialized sports programs are generally better-funded than anything else at the university. Even worse is that revenue made by and donations made to sports programs stay within those programs; so, if someone gets onboard with a fund drive started by the football team, even if they donate millions of dollars, none of that money will end up in the University general fund. As I'm sure you all know, it's common for coaches and other employees of university sports programs to be paid better -- frequently MUCH, MUCH better than the faculty and staff in academics. Universities spend much more on athletic scholarships than they do on academic ones, and Admissions is typically led by the nose by coaches who demand that certain coveted athletes be granted admission to the university, regardless of their academic performance. Making matters worse is the drive for bigger, better and more expensive amenities on campus. Extravagant student recreational facilities are becoming the norm, even while classrooms and other learning centers fall into disrepair. Universities are happy to fund the construction of restaurants for for-profit companies like McDonald's, Chick-fil-a, etc. to move in. The drive to "run everything like a business" has infiltrated these non-profit institutions, leading to more commercialized campuses and a reduced focus on academics. Having students pay tuition has led colleges to a place where their Admissions department is a salesforce, instead of a group of consultants who are working to ensure the right students join the next university class. The financial aid system is so convoluted and imposes so many conditions on funding that modern universities have entire departments dedicated to both managing it and helping students navigate the financial aid landscape. In short, money has made everything worse, as usual.
I went to a school where the place I worked was falling apart but the stadium was up to par no matter what. Also they paid 9.25 an hour for three years to everybody but finally made it 10.00 an hour due to low employment. I question if going to college was right for me and don’t get me started on a job in my field
As someone in a private college rn, I beyond agree. My college has asbestos in the music room's sound panels but would rather give the president a key to the city and put 22 million in a new football stadium that even the teachers think is a waste. I'm paying 200k for this? Atleast the food and people are better than back home
I am surprised that nobody has brought up the free college tuition New Mexico citizens receive (thats a state in America). Anyone who has not received a college education can get upto a Bachelors degree at either UNM or CNM or wherever so long as you're a NM citizen. I am one and I completed my full 4 year degree + minor, I have no student loan debt. In fact New Mexico is one of the most progressive states while also being one of the poorest in the nation, so how come we can afford to do this? Hmm.. really makes you think :)
@@daniellarson3068 Haha yeah there are alot more new yorker and texan license plates here in abq than ever. Not to mention NM state law gives free paid maternity leave and free childcare/support. The richest states say they could never give a hand out, we're people and a community is stronger if they stand together.
boomers are probably the most entitled generation considering how much progress the international proletarian movement made for the benefit of the workers i.e. our grandparents
15:21 - The grievance that I have with this assessment is that you aren't accounting for unionized labor. When you enter a craft trade, the divergence between union and non-union pay can be quite vast. And while I agree we do need more blue collar workers, let's also not forget that the people asking for more tradesmen are doing so on the condition that they never collectively bargain their labor. Because of course Conservatives wouldn't want another obstacle in the way of being able to exploit the workers when they have conned them away from higher education.
I was going to mention unions, since it wasn't talked about much in the video, but have the opposite opinion than your point: it seems like people are unnecessarily being pushed into college due to the destruction of unions. Unions used to guarantee even people without a degree would have a decent living, but, because unions have become so weak in this country, most people are forced to attend a college and incur debt because that has become the only option for social mobility.
@@robertbr249 Very good point. I didn't really learn about unions until AFTER college when I did an apprenticeship in the deep red state that I live. Didn't stick with it, but that's due to my degree and skills. If I wasn't as computer savvy as I am now, I'd probably have to be a 'road warrior' with my union ticket, signing traveler books just to get work due to how little the local union labor commands.
Price is a way to keep most of the poors out of higher education. Student debt makes sure the few poors who do make it through higher education don't use that book learnin to challenge the status quo.
The book "Fall of the faculty" Covers the deliberate take over of higher education by capitalism very well. Spoiler. Even if student loans were 100% forgiven. The higher education system is unilaterally run by out of touch rich people looking to protect their status and privileges.
@@Wiimeiser Loss aversion? This is about power. Power currently held by your economic elite. They will intentionally plunge all civilization into the dark ages if it means those same economic elite get to keep that power. It's not loss aversion anymore then you are loss averse to having your arms ripped off.
I'm a diesel mechanic and I got a few points on the bit on vocational training. Most people who work in the trades don't go to trade school. We usually get an apprenticeship and get on the job training. 60% of diesel mechanics wash out within 2 years. During those 2 years you probably won't make more than 15 an hour depending on where you work. The average pay for a diesel mechanic is around 35k a year because it includes the oil changers who just started and that is the majority of diesel mechanics. I imagine it's the same for welders.
You know what is interesting 👀☝️🤔 I work as a ballet dancer and teacher and my education and first 2 years in my feild sound very similar to yours 🙂. I have a trade certification in teaching and the equivalent of BA from my trade program. Im suprised to know we have so much in common when it come to our work lives lol, pretty interesting 🤷♂️
I'm an enterprise software developer with absolutely no passion for enterprise software development. I'm actually really into metalworking, specifically TIG welding, 3D printing and CNC machining, which I do as a hobby in my spare time. However, where I live (the Baltics in Eastern Europe), people who work in material production earn peanuts, even when we're talking about relatively complex specializations like welding or CNC, so I'm stuck in IT because of the money (unless I consider moving to a country of the capitalist core, that is). Funny enough, I know a dude who's an excellent TIG welder, hates his job and desperately wants to learn programming, but can't afford it and doesn't have the time. So thanks a lot to capitalism for making the majority of people hate their jobs - I mean, life shouldn't be all sunshine and butterflies, ya just gotta have some suffering, right?
My university charges a $1000 extra dollars a semester in fees. I decided to look some of the fees up and found out we help pay for athletic scholarship, for maintenance of the on campus transportation buses, paying staff to clean the school, the up keep of the athletic center, the upkeep of parking decks (plus we pay $100 a semester for access to only one at a time), the schools internet bill, etc. Every new thing they build on campus you have to pay for regardless if you use it or not.
@@danagrey3534 all the money from the federal government goes to paying the administrators and all the money they make from the games go towards paying the coaches. That's why the students end up with ridiculous fees to pay for just about everything else. They literally create new fees based on whatever they need to generate money for.
I've seen people even in somewhat left-leaning spaces spreading the argument that "college is a scam" and talking like the only reason to go to college is just to get a good job, which is really upsetting to me. As someone who was raised in a conservative Christian bubble for the first 18 years of my life, going to college was a life-changing experience for me that allowed me to finally ask the questions I'd always wanted to ask, meet different kinds of people, and explore different worldviews. I'm a dirt poor English teacher now, and I've been asked on multiple occasions what the "point" of studying literature is. So many people have been brainwashed by our hyper-capitalist society that they have forgotten to value education for education's sake; if you can't justify something with a monetary payoff, then it's "worthless." That's why even though I myself don't believe college is necessarily for everyone, and I do support students wanting to learn a trade, I will always push back against anyone who argues that you shouldn't go to college or that it's a worthless experience. The issue is not that people are being sold a worthless product; the issue is that education is inherently valuable and should be free to everyone, period.
Our society has been so transformed by the capitalist idea of living that every must have an inherent productive value i.e IT or Engineering that the classical arts have really been lost to modern society. Speaking as a history major, that is a damn shame since with all the major political events over the past decade or so, we could really use more knowledge gained from those millenia old arts.
I agree I am an arts major which gave me tremendous life opportunities but very few that were lucrative. The nation has lost real interest in the function and purpose of the humanities. That said I believe the American college system is a scam and has been for decades. I don’t believe the German college system is a scam. I studied there. Free tuition for university. Zero interest student loans. And the private university I went to was affordable and had many grants to cover tuition, a fair pay it forward system and job placement. The US system is utterly dysfunctional. With bloated administrations, presidents with over a million dollar salaries, banks and loan derivative fund usury, and the schools don’t serve the students well. And the liberal faculties were often ignorant of history. As far as politics they often Considered themselves Left but they knew nothing of worker history, socialism or even basic liberalism and never rebelled because they liked their cushy jobs. The adjunct faculty did rebel and formed a union in my old school. But this was after decades of decline and poverty. Now many private schools are closing all across the country and no one can afford to go to them. So it’s up to us to teach without the college system because it is completely broken in the USA.
I dropped out of high school because I valued education for education's sake. I was teaching myself better than the school was. Most of my teachers were too busy helping my functionally illiterate classmates. My poor public school was never about educating, just making sure it kept students to receive more funding than the private school in my city. It was all about standardized testing. The lessons were monotonous and not in any teacher's control. I was a good student before high school but after discovering the systematic failures, historical propaganda, and having to answer really long drawn out math questions about talking pineapples 🍍 I couldn't take it seriously anymore. It was a joke and the adults in my lives were also jokes incapable of taking control of a seriously pathetic excuse for "education". There was much that I learned during that time but it was done through great teachers talking to me after class, nothing involving the class itself. I seriously respect your comment, but it is a scam. Why should I trust higher education when everyone involved in it is so full of shit? Why should I overload myself with debt that I wouldn't be able to pay for decades? I want to pursue education. I desperately want to leave this country forever because of it.
@@RIPKabosu2000 But your comment is the point: the problem is that public schools are underfunded, teachers are overpaid and overworked, and tuition costs for higher education are way too high. Unfortunately so many people seem to be taking the attitude that people should just not go to college at all because it's worthless, but that's not a good answer. That's exactly what the conservatives and Christian nationalists want: to make higher education inaccessible for most of the public so that they stay ignorant and keep voting against their interests, and to privatize education for everyone else so they can keep their rich white kids in a conservative Christian brainwashing bubble their whole lives. I happened to be lucky enough to go to a good college, and it made me who I am today in so many ways. I discovered joys, knowledge, people and experiences I may never have been exposed to otherwise. Honestly it scares me to think of what kind of person I would have turned out to be without that experience. I understand how your experience was very different though, and that makes me sad, because I think everyone should be able to enjoy the value of a GOOD education. If this country would just learn to value education for it's own sake rather than treating it just as a tedious step on the way to getting a job, maybe we would actually invest in trying to provide a good education for everyone. That may be a pipe dream, but I don't care, I will always advocate for that over dropping out of the system entirely.
@@Dachusblot I understand what the tactic behind leaving it as awful as it is. That's why I don't want to be involved in it. If even the system itself is complicit, I cannot win either way. I have grown a very strong hatred towards the institutions altogether, as I have no tolerance for ineffective systems. I would blow my brains out if I had myself stuck somewhere I have so much ire for. I almost did in high school. If it weren't for dogs I would have. I live in PA and the university of PA allows its faculty to use low income students as advertisements with their consent. Despite this they have managed to completely exaggerate some of their student's lives. Implying they were poor when they were most definitely not. Why would I involve myself with such disgusting filth who thinks they can use my life experience to further their career? It's so rotten I would rather just leave. It's a lost cause.
Isn't every institution a business, and almost every supposed socialist a capitalist? Who isn't primarily grubbing for more capital? The vocabulary used may be different, but they all seem to play the same game. I'm not seeing any socialists taking a vow of poverty.
@@Christmas-dg5xc most socialists don't need to, the capitalist class is such a small minority of people and they take almost all of the pie. You won't be a socialist if you're bezos, you can't become bezos if you're socialist. If you're referring to the Social Democrats like Bernie or AOC, they still believe in some kind of capitalism, they believe it can be made moral through social policy. I personnel disagree, but I likely wouldn't get a job in Congress
These are some thoughts I've had for a long time, and I'm wondering if I'm alone in them: "Work hard and get into a good college" = elite schools have to let some of the poors in "It's not where you go but what you do that matters" = good job getting into our school, but we're not telling you the secret recipe of activities, experiences, internships, etc. that you need to join our ranks, most of said opportunities we just hand to our children anyway "Grades don't matter" = we actively punish the poor kids who worked hard to earn high marks while elevating wealthy kids who have better "networking skills" "Oh hey look! We gave this person a full ride scholarship based on needs and they're doing great! We've done a good job"
This reads mostly as criticism of the elite nature of higher education and an appeal to "meritocracy". I think part of what this video is trying to communicate is that the narrative of meritocracy is a tool the elite use to justify their control and to reproduce their elite status. I can agree that the metrics of merit have evolved, in part to recuperate other critiques of US education such as racial inequality across all levels. However, whatever the metric, meritocracy still fundamentally serves to naturalize hierarchy and inequality and justify control of the majority by the elite class.
@@jinmushui1soul meritocracy isn't the problem with america or even capitalism. It's the nepotism and zero consequence actions the elite get to domineer. A world without meritocracy is a world with more nepotism, not less.
@@notpublic8961 I'm saying non-elite/affluent/wealthy/whatever students don't *know* which opportunities are needed to thrive. You can't just tell people to "work hard" or "strive" when those words are extremely ill defined in this context. But thanks for missing the point.
Singapore in a nutshell, my friend. I wish Second Thought could do videos on other nations too. While Singaporeans get free primary school education and heavily subsided secondary education, we have a culture of elite secondary schools and junior colleges, sorta like the USA's Ivy League. Too much for me to explain in a single comment 'cause there's a lot to it. In short, currently, Singapore's meritocracy is a lie. I wish one of the more well-known socialist youtubers could do a good takedown on that for Singaporeans (we aren't allowed to criticise our own government)
I went to MSU in KY. Ronald Eaglin was campus president then. He got from the school two homes and a car for his wife. Being a poor area, students depended on their refund checks to survive. The campus began rebuilding projects while "coincidentally" making students wait longer for skimpier refund checks. First, you had to wait till orientation day, then halfway through the semester, then at the end of the semester, then the next semester. And, no, apologists, I am not talking about special situations. Nearly the whole student body at those times. We were told it was like that "everywhere" but that of course was not true. Eaglin left under a gray cloud. MSU was a cheap school but had higher additional costs in a very poor area. I was on my own. I walked away with over a hundred thousand in debt. Now with interest (Stafford Loans), I owe over 200K.
jeese what a terrible story about American "higher ed". I hope you can find a way to deal with frickin terrible debts. This is no way that a country which wants its children to succeed in life should work. Plus, I can't even believe that they didn't teach you that MSU is in Michigan not KY- that alone should be enough to discharge your debt due to rank incompetence.
@@brokenrecord3095MSU was Morehead State University. It resides in Rowan County, KY. It was established in 1896 as a Normal School meaning teaching school before it expanded. Lol
@@DCMarvelMultiverse LOL the broken record is a troll. But I get what you mean, I'm actually fairly close to that college. I hate how its basically expected for you to go there after high school. I did try going a different route during the pandemic. It did confirm that I just don't like college, not that I found the classes hard. At least not in subject, it was more trying to extend the subject beyond a page. Basically it was high school but this time they wanted more pages vs quality.
Not only should college be free 100%, we need to build the conversation about the expectations of learning in higher education. I believe in abolishing the grading system as this plagues students to only adhere to passing courses and not actually learning. What’s the point of grades if all you care about was getting your gpa at a certain pointage.
@@StreetcarHammock it is not. A grade is not a reflection of what you learned. It is just a metric to how well you pass assignments/tests/etc. you can still fail a class and have learned a lot from that. You can get an A and learned nothing. Grades are not defined by how well you learned something
As someone in highschool right now, I think grades are fine. They are just a measurement of how much work you actually completed. It's exams and tests that need to go. They aren't helpful, and in the real world you are always going to have access to your notes or other resources if you don't know how to do something. Making us do things from memory, like how to solve a specific math problem is just plain stupid.
As a college student this topic always makes me furious! The idea that capitalist greed and systemic hatred prevents people from receiving the education they deserve drives me insane.
Of course, everything bad in America starts with Reagan, well most of everything. Just gives me another reason as to why he is overrated and was one of Americas worst presidents.
The same as thatcher in the UK. Boris and trump were very similar and would appear to be an easy answer to the question who was the worst but their incompetence limited the damage. Thatcher and Reagan (or his administration) were capable ideologues who's actions are reverberating still and the root of most of the shitstorm we are reaping now
@@Grandude77 It's always goes back to those two. If its a conservative/neoliberal troll that has doomed or harmed x,y,z. Then you have a safe bet in saying, "Wait is it Reagan or Thatcher?" and being right close to 50% of the time.
You’d think so , but Reagan the preverbal gut shot he was to our national interests was just another downstream consequence of our failures during reconstruction had we not went half measured / Been such libs and actually stripped the Slaver’s and confederate leadership of power and wealth if not out right exiled them or perhaps more then the we would almost certainly not be in the position we are in now . That money and power was handing the shotgun pointed at our gut to the enemy and has allowed the wealthy Robber barons to grow their gangrene on this nation beginning with allowing them to have seats at table for both policy , and privatization power starting with Neo slavery starting day one post civil war .
Honestly, learning stuff should be treated as a job. After all, those students will go on to do useful things with their knowledge. Why should they be punished for making society better?
@@SabinStargem Because you dirty prole. Making "society better" to you probably means some communist nonsense improve the lives of poor's like you. The whole point of saddling you with debt is because it keeps you young people from doing anything your new education that in any way threatens the status quo. A lawyer with $100,000 in debt isn't going to spend their first 2 years out of school doing free legal aid for some non corporate cause. They will go work in the patient mines making the already rich slightly richer(so that new lawyer can pay down their massive debt ASAP).
So basically decisions to help regular US citizens is against the interest of the elite in the country. If it benefits the regular people then it will undermine the current status quo. Similar to our foreign policy. If other countries are doing well on their own (especially on their own and just existing ).... Then it's a threat. The constant need to step on others instead of getting better
@@Praisethesunson yes those guys. but I don't live in the US. and frankly I don't want to. and while it's not entirely free of those type of "being" I think it's better where I live.
this. the mentality of the New American Century is completely psychopathic. I heard a great analogy from a youtuber Jayoe Nation/Nuance: it used to be that Americans had an idea about healthy competition, if you're a father with a son, and your neighbor has a kid who is good at baseball, you tell your son that he should use that as a benchmark or rivalry to compete with the neighbor's kid and both get better at the sport. Now if you see a contender with your kid, if you see that kid on the field you boo him and as an adult bully a child, you delight when the neighbor's kid gets sick and can't make it to the match because it means less competition in the way for your kid, you might even go out of your way to take a bat to the neighbor's kid's ankles... act like the world is a zero-sum game and you have to be the greediest to win. Do anything and everything to take the #1 spot, WINNING above everything else, regardless of ethics/morality, above valuing truth, or any other "liberal/democratic" values that are supposed to espouse dignity and respect for fellow humans as equals. Sickening.
Remember. The institution you are going to is being run by out of touch rich people instead of faculty who actually do teaching. All to protect the class interests of people you will never meet
I graduated from college 4 years ago, but still owe tens of thousands in debt, I've lost 2 jobs during this pandemic (though I do have a job now), & rent for most places is almost what I pay in student loans a month so I can't afford to move out on my own. I would love to be a more active member of the U.S. economy if I could afford to do so without so much substantial student loan debt. Even if I only had 10% of my student loans forgiven that's still roughly 8 grand I don't have to worry about having to try to pay on time every month anymore. So, even though I don't I qualify for the loans President Biden forgiving (I got state & private university loans), I support this decision since it will still help millions of college graduates & it will help the U.S. economy as a whole.
Rent has gone up everywhere. Imo, there's no shame in living with one's family, since one contributes to the household. Today, it makes sense to do that.
@@ionae3440 Yes, it's supposed to be capped at 5% of your income. It was 10% before, so this is better. Now they just need to lower the damn interest, since that's why people owe so much
I knew this history before but it’s only watching this video that I realized the flaw in how we address the “I paid off my loans, so it’s not fair to me that others don’t have to pay theirs.” Instead of the (totally valid and logical) counter that this is like saying that finding a cure isn’t fair to people who died from a disease, we should tell them generations before them didn’t have to pay for school, so why should they have had to!? This is slightly more akin to stocking millions of monkey pox vaccines and letting people suffer and die in other countries rather than using (and replenishing) them so they don’t they expire right before an outbreak in your own country.
The greed of people with the "it doesn't help ME so nobody should have it" attitude is just sad. Some people need help, and some people don't; I'm doing well, so I'm mostly in the latter group, and yet I have no problem with actually helping the former group. I took some small loans (~$10k total) for a technical school that I went to, and I was able to pay them off about a year ago, and I was still very excited to hear that the gov had done at least *something* about the loan situation.
Those people should receive a tax rebate for what they paid too. College should be free, and anyone charged should get a refund to correct the mistake that Raygun did.
Fun fact: Public universities in Brazil, a pretry poor country, are completely free. The only way to join one is by taking the test "Enem", and students from public high school only compete with people from public high school. People that studied in private high schools compete only with themselves.
Brazil isn't a "poor" country, it just has rampant inequality and a lot of corruption (also classism). Similar thing with Mexico. I'm from (one of) the neighboring country Uruguay. We have the free and paid options. Udelar (Universidad de la republica) is one of the most prestigious universities in South America and it's free. Most careers also don't require entrance exams (most) but do require you took relevant courses in the second half of high school. Which after 3rd year of highschool, gets divided into a few categories (3 more years, we start highschool at 12 and finish by around 18). Like humanities, Engineering, Arts, Medicine, etc. Then you can choose careers based on your "major" (if you will) that you did in highschool. All this free or optionally paid if you went to private schools or universities.
I don't want to sound like a stereotype but being in my early 30s and holding a virtually useless bachelor's with a short time in the National Guard (to help pay for my college) I have been baffled, absolutely baffled by how blatant the strong arming is with the US college system. There's a million things wrong with it and it's wild so little is ever done about it but the thing that blows my mind the most and infuriates me the most is how textbooks have been used to control both students and professors alike EVEN NOW in this virtual age. Thanks for this video. Just a shame it won't do a whole lot of good because those that will listen, can't do anything about it, and those who need to listen won't.
I used to work with a professor who reviewed and selected textbooks for our department. The cost of each one of those textbooks surprised me, especially when I saw how little information was in them, compared to older books in the college library.
The fact that the poor get punished and are forced to serve in the military to kill other poor innocent people just to get crap benefits for college that doesn’t cover everything just makes me not want to have a family here. I’m 21 and I’m not going to college or have a family here. I’ll try my luck in Europe or even Canada. I just pray for the families who are affected by this vicious system in America.
@@altyrrell3088 one of my favorite psych professors made us buy his published text for our courses but I later went on to learn he had to write and publish a book as a requirement for his own career trajectory and used us students buying his book as a means of paying off the cost of doing it all. It was a vicious cycle. He was about as caught up in the puppetry as us students were.
@@nevertrumpfromthejump "Publish or perish" has been the unwritten rule for many generations. The unintended upside to it is that a lot of pretty exceptional professors work in colleges teaching students that never would have had the opportunity to learn the subject from someone so knowledgeable.
Of course not. They're the ones adding the value. If professors got the money, that would be socialism. Which would put us one step away from government forced labor camps.🙄
teachers deserve at least 10 times their current pay. They are literally raising and educating the next generations. They put a ton of work every single year. They deserve the best we can give.
@@americancommunist6076 Yes teachers deserve WAY more money but too bad the USA is run my money hungry politicians who want a idiotic population rather than an educated one
My goodness, when you lay things out about how access to universities can give people so many abilities, and then how various, even disparate, force can push that oppurtinity back down, it makes so much sense how the world works - this is so much, to see why these policies really happen, and now, what we have to do in response. Knowledge is power.
Tip for anyone applying to college: go to a “U” school. State schools are almost always cheaper and provide great quality education. If you want to do research go for PhD instead of masters because you get a higher level diploma and get paid.
Idk about that one with a masters relative to a PhD. If you want to be an analyst, you can qualify with a masters and get paid 6 figures. If you want to do academic work, then of course go for a PhD. A lot of PhDs lose work experience on resumes and struggle to get jobs out of academia. If anything, try to get a job and then get your job to pay for your PhD. It makes life easier in the long run, so you don t have to stress the "you have limited work experience" or "you are over qualified" commentary a PhD only can bring in interviews.
if money's tight consider going to a community college for the first year or two. Basic calculus or geography is taught the same at a an ivy league school , state school or a CC and those credits will transfer.
Also people need to have the conversation that the attrition rate of graduating with a PhD is 50% (meaning people drop out) and the rate that it takes to get a degree is average 7-8years of school. A masters is relatively quicker to obtain but…. People need to understand that higher education at this level isn’t easier, it’s more stressful and different compared to undergraduate and community college. Mental health is runned rampant at this level of education. Society shouldn’t value these degrees unless it becomes more about learning than profiting. People take more loans out of graduate/PhD level schooling than any other debt.
Something my professor said to me my freshman year always stuck with me: “Some people think that paying more for school means they’ll learn the REAL biology/physics/math, etc. and as someone who graduated from MIT, I can promise you I’m teaching you the same stuff.” Blew my mind because of the way we promote education in the US and I was not (surprise surprise) at a “Tier 1” school.
It's something I realized years ago. There was a very strong reason why I refused to go back and, for the longest time, did not make payments on my student loans. People called me lazy. But no, I knew: college was a scam. Something about putting a price tag on education, a VITAL NEED in any functioning nation, just didn't make sense. Come to find out years later that due to meddling political fools, education was barred to the working class. Purposely, to alientate degree programs to only the "best and brightest" so only THEY can compete in enterprise and government. At this point, if you are serious about your education, you should leave the United States, because we made the foolish mistake of commodifying it. It's essentially just a credential to put on an application and nothing more. It's meaningless.
The social aspect of it would be enough to make college free. I feel like having friends after college or high school is extremely difficult and that makes people like myself feel more lonely despite going to work and being surrounded by people.
I live in colombia, a very backwards third world country, and I went to college for free, as many hundreds of thousands have. US is a shame to the western civilization.
@@tastyanthoney true. It's also much more selective in Greece than in the US. Mostly only those who, well, actually have academic aptitude are urged to attend. It's very different from the US, where colleges offer remedial math/English courses (so anyone can get started), and student loans are handed out like candy.
Let's not forget that Milton Friedman served as Ronnie's economic advisor. The initiative may have started as a way to quell an educated proletariat but, as soon as reagan took office, its primary goal/motivation became profits. Predatory lending by the government (PLUS loan program, et al.) took off as soon as he took office.
I'm sick of the pundits who use skilled trades as a diversion from the topic of education funding. I called out a 70 year old at my local bar who was making that bullshit argument, and I refused to back down because I work in the trades right now and he never did. I was later told I'm not allowed to discuss politics in the bar, it's the bar's standing policy... but that guy has been doing it for 30 years and nobody behind the bar says a fucking word to him about it. I might have been the first guy to stand up to him in a long time, and the conversation actually ended on a friendly note before I got the gag order from the bartender. Fuck that place, this country was founded in bars and coffee shops, so anyone who claims to be a patriot should encourage, not squelch political discourse. No fists were thrown, just words. I guess that's more dangerous if your whole point is to support bullshit.
guessing the bartender/old dude would be the first to advocate how America is the bastion of free speech? the hypocrisy flying over their heads as usual or better yet, they define discussion of "how things are" aka the establishment isn't politics, but "how things should be" is 🤔
In Switzerland, I pay around 500$ to 700$ per semester. The student card gives you many reductions around the city, like in movie theaters, restaurants, museums. The libraries are free and excellent quality, that they’re the university or city ones, whether you study or not, or that you’ve got the Swiss nationality or not.
I hope that "paying vocational/blue collar workers the money they deserve for their well trained skills" is part of the conversation as well. As a blue collar worker myself, I see far too often companies that give raises and bonuses to their college educated administrative white collar workers, while all too often find any excuse not to increase the wages of the blue collar workers that make them their money in the first place. I'm not making the argument that white collar jobs are "useless", I just wish the conversation didn't stop at "don't do welding, it's not lucrative", when arguably it should pay more to learn a complex and dangerous skills like welding than it does to learn how to make spreadsheets, send emails, and use fancy language to explain why it's not cost effective to make blue collar raises a priority.
Completely agree. The problem is unionization, or the lack thereof. Corps are doing everything they can to kill unions, and sadly, corrupt unions haven't helped the cause. The average workers deserve more money and executives/shareholders less. Signed, white collar worker.
You can go into a “blue collar” trade for free and get a raise every 1 year until you cap at $40+ per hour (once you pass your exam for your license) or you can go into debt for a white collar job and literally have to work for free (see mandatory internships) and afterwards start getting paid roughly half of what a 5 year tradesman makes. The blue/white collar terms are very outdated. There are many hands on “blue” collar jobs that don’t require much physical labour at all and give you raises per 2000 hours, free trade school (and $$$ while in school) towards your trades license. Not to mention a chance at becoming what people call a “white” collar worker (see foreman) in a blue collar industry. So the choice is simple: get paid for 5 years with a raise every year and cap out around $45/hour (this is your hourly rate not your full package) or go to school, go into massive debt, work for free to prove yourself, and hope to land a 40k a year salary afterwards. Go into the trades people!!
I'm a disabled desert storm veteran. I qualified for a state scholarship because of this. I graduated this year with my MSW and MBA degrees. No cost, and I am old now. This year our state made college free. I'm happy because this is the poorest state and I would love to see us poor get educated and start changing things.
I remember the visceral rage against Vietnam. Tho a small child riding on the shoulders of my father. The sentiment was potent and not duplicated since.
Where I live, people always tell you to get a trade job. They will say something like, "we will always need plumbers". They don't care about the other sectors that are in need of people, but the barrier of entry is too high. The world needs more doctors, but the cost keeps people away from the educational pursuit.
PLEASE, my friend, keep this content up. It is so excellent to see people so tuned into the failings of our world, and helping to present solutions… It is minds and attitudes like yours that we may thank for our hopeful success over the current impending doom of our species.
Here in Europe I pay 1500$ per semester and then my union (from work, I work part time about ten hours per week) they pay half my tuition. USA sure is the greatest country in the world.
Make College Free Nationwide, Forgiving All Student Loan Debt, & Removing The Predatory Lending Practices of a College Education are major Reforms America needs to be making.
But if we did that how would the self appointed elite justify their rule over all you plebs? Worse still, what if you filthy proles use that college knowledge to change the prevailing status quo in a way that doesn't further entrench the wealth and power of the current elite? Can't have that.
@@Christmas-dg5xc Everything should be free Free Healthcare free housing free education free public transportation free child care free food free clothing free period products free internet free phones.
Land of the "free" and home of the brave everybody. It definitely is the home of the brave, but it's because you have to be pretty brave to WANT to live here in the US.
Really good point about how student loans are a form of modern-day debt bondage. Forcing people to pay off student loans for their survival for most of their lives is severely punishing and cruel.
I know you most likely won’t see this but thank you so much for making this! I don’t know if you already had this planned or if my suggestion of it a month or so ago you noticed was the inspiration but this is what I was looking for! Keep up the good work!
I get so annoyed when politicians push vocational school instead of just making both higher education AND vocational school free. Also, the narrative that is pushed with welding is that it's a "secure" job; therefore, if you stick with it, you'll be making the big bucks in no time! The fact is, however, that there is a high demand for welders but the starting wage is so low that most welders won't take the job. The employer knows that the welder has a very specific skill set and just sits back and says "That's the hourly rate we'll pay - take it or leave it" and won't negotiate. Another important thing to consider is that welding is NOT a fun job. You have to wear a ton of safety gear (which is uncomfortable and makes it so you can't talk to your coworkers, look at your phone, or use a bathroom without a ton of effort), your eyesight slowly gets destroyed over time, you will occasionally get a terrible burn, there will be a foreman screaming at you no matter how well you do your job, etc. Even if I was making $100 per hour, I wouldn't want to be welder - it just seems like a terrible, uncomfortable, back-breaking job.
Higher education in the US is so high. I wanted to school there but opted to go to Norway. Free education even for international students. And for someone like me from Africa, i know i made the right choice.
The most important part of the loan forgiveness actually is that it caps monthly payment to 5% of income and will forgive all debt after 10 years instead of 20
This 61 year old couldn’t agree with you more! True, I’ve got some experience and historical perspective, but it’s the younger folks around me who keep me learning and growing. I’ll occasionally make the “get off my lawn” joke as a reference to my status as a curmudgeon, but the truth is, I’d rather have them trample the (metaphorical) lawn, replant with native species, and then hang out with me making art and talking politics. The kids are very much alright!
I would love to go to collage and get a computer science degree, but I still haven’t because of the cost. I wonder how many professionals we have lost to the fact that collage is to expensive, and you have to constantly work just to provide for yourself.
This video needs to be shared more. And the main point needs to be stressed. We need free or affordable universal education for all again! We need to demand a new education bill that models after the state and federal funding model used before the late 60s and 70s. We need more of us educating ourselves, finding community, and gaining skills and purpose that we can use to correct the issues we face in our country. Can we start saying “Regan’s presidency was the era America’s lights got turned out, and we need to turn them back on! We the people and the planet depend on it!
I'm getting a second bachelor's currently, this time for a well-paid field (programming industrial controls), using savings I made teaching English in China--which I only got because I had a degree in any major and a US passport. I haven't actually finished paying off my first degree, and I'm counting on my future job to earn enough to pay for the degree I'm not using. I cannot stress enough how much my opportunity is due to luck. If I hadn't had the support of my family to get through that first degree, I wouldn't have been able to finish, and would still be stuck doing unskilled labor struggling to survive. That's how it is for most of my friends. I'm also lucky that I was mentally and physically able to live in another country on my own for so long and that I was suited for teaching. If any of that wasn't the case, or if I had a kid, or if a family member needed my care, none of this would be possible. There is nothing special about me that makes me deserve two degrees when people as smart or smarter than me couldn't finish one. I would happily stay in debt and pay higher taxes if it came along with free college for everyone that comes after me. It doesn't have to be this way.
I am so thankful that I grew up in Scotland where tuition is free. I get to go to a top 10 Uni in the UK for engineering while also being able to go on exchange with that paid for too. Its really unfortunate to see the English students paying 9k+ each year
I'm tired of "college is useless, learn to code or go to vocational school" advice. If anyone know how modern job application works at all, many are automated to cut cost (the programming for such automation is actually very simple and thus not requiring a lot of capitals), and it'll discard anyone without a degree in seconds, unlike humans, computers followed a strict set of rules and will not give a benefit of a doubt - people with decades of experiences can and do get rejected simply because they don't have a degree. And telling people to not go to college and study philosophy or something (just an arbitrary example) and learn how to weld (another arbitrary example) is a poor advice because if all else equal, people will choose to study things that they both love and are good at. People who would make a good philosopher may not make the best welder and people who is good at welding may not make a good philosopher, for example. And that's putting aside that trade jobs pay more than jobs that required a college degree is just a myth stemmed from survivorship bias, the labor statistics don't support that (this video already cover that). Trade jobs are undervalued not because of college, but rather because of capitalism. Because colleges are at some point being viewed as a way of becoming a capitalist themselves (and that colleges are de facto (and later outright) exclusive to children of wealthy families), it fits the narrative perfectly for a country where people are indoctrinated into thinking they're just a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire." In the current neoliberal economy, people will study a trade more if it's really paid as well as some advertised, but we know it's not the case. This college vs trade argument is just a way to divide most college students and people working in a trade job, they have far more in common. Poorer college students don't think in the same line as richer college students, poorer college students tend to be there with an intention learn while rich students tend to just be there to form connection with other rich kids to start a business.
Trade jobs are undervalued because they're low skill, which American culture has told us means they're sub-human and deserving of all suffering that comes with it. The thought doesn't enter their minds that trades also are almost universally unionized, and thus actually get fair pay for their work, meaning they're doing WAY better than almost everyone else in the country, let alone the rest of equal skill level.
@@dontmisunderstand6041That has nothing to do with the nature of either trade jobs or "white" collar work, and everything to do with the social politics of unionization. Everything should have been unionized and could have been, had there not been a coordinated decades-long campaign to suppress their formation. Once again, your argument is framing policy results as the cultural mistakes of individuals.
@@matthewcaldwell8100 Individuals have no influence or impact on culture whatsoever. Your strange assumption that I'm blaming individuals for the culture they live in is odd, to say the least.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Individual decisions meditated by a culture encouraging college education as the primary route to social mobility is half the story. The other half, which financial gurus and grindset fetishists love to omit, are the policy decisions constraining labor"s ability to collectively bargain.
@@matthewcaldwell8100 Inserting a blatant political agenda into a simple assessment of the reality we live in makes it less persuasive, as it reveals a bias that could skew the perception of your words, even if that bias has been specifically accounted for in your analysis. Yes, we all know that neo-liberalism is self-destructive at both a macro and micro level. You're not going to convince its supporters of that by framing the conversation in terms of a tribalistic confrontation. You should reflect on how best to actually achieve your ideals, rather than simply spreading awareness of your ideals.
Very good analysis, this video is well-done. My college was virtually free from 1970-1975. I paid the very, very meager tuition, low-cost housing, and meals with a simple part-time work-study job. I went to college four quarters per year with a full credit load. No full-time job needed, no loans needed.
I think even for those of us who are privileged enough to afford it, the idea that college is a privilege makes us feel indebted socially if not financially, which I think contributes to the feeling of imposter syndrome that many students get. I have some other issues with the education system (I don't agree with grading as it currently exists, and I think we should have more freedom as students in Montessori schools have), but I think the cost also adds to all those other faults.
I really feel happy for living in Denmark. My family is probably at the highest considered lower middle class, and that's not even so to say their fault. My dad has epilepsy and working a full job was so damaging to his health doctors to him to quit work and a apply for early pension, so even though he now goes at home, feeling bored, and has done for the last 30+ years, his body can't handle working even though he has the same build in mindset as he gave me, to work is to live, since when you work you do something and feel valued. Then there is my mum who's health is still good enough for a job, but she can't handle more hours even though we could use money, since her body ain't the best either. Even with all that stacked against me, I, with the help of some willpower and goverment funded education, goverment funded free libraries and hospitals that make it so if I get sick, I won't get so much debt that I need to start working, has made I possible for me to pursue higher education and I'm on my way to go to university coming from a family with nothing, pretty decent grades and everything. Imagine if I didn't have that opportunity, and if others in Denmark didn't have, they would lose so much potential in smart people who just couldn't afford the time to study, since when you are hungry, reading books won't feed ya
Just as an example. Even if you call some majors useless. I’d think medical, engineering, business, and more would be considered “important” in general society
Very enlightening. I honestly thought colleges in the US had always charged tuition, just based on assumption. It doesn't surprise me that conservatives are responsible for the current pay-to-win scenario with higher education. I was lucky enough to not have to get a loan for my undergraduate degree, but I really wanted a master's degree after that so I ended up having to take out a loan. The loan was for about $28k, and after 10 years of paying it off at $650 per month, my balance earlier this year was still $20k. Talk about the math not adding up... that damn interest is so predatory it blows my mind. I'm so thankful that Biden finally lived up to his promise and cancelled at least a big portion of everyone's student debt. Although it's not gone completely, the current debt is at least much more manageable now. I also appreciate so much how many other people that helped. I wonder though... how many people did the $10k of forgiveness significantly help? Most people I know owe many multiples of that amount.
It’s really problematic that people call humanities gen eds “useless” because they’re getting a STEM or business degree. It’s so important for everyone to understand politics and history
You're obviously a humanities major lol. They're useless in that they can't be used, not that they don't teach you about the world. And politics is worse than most, not worth studying in college.
@@silverscalederg8632 Most people won't do that. And some things aren't enough reading them for yourself, a good teacher/professor can really open your mind. A lot of STEM majors can barely read or have low reading comprehension, the same with writing, and that's not good.
@@MoonOvIce "A lot of STEM majors can barely read or have low reading comprehension, the same with writing, and that's not good. " Reddit and Twitter comments are certainly evidence of that..
@@silverscalederg8632 humanities are also important and vital to the health of society, not learning things like history is helping society go down hill very fast.
Wonderful video JT. I ask myself daily on if there's anything that reagan didn't ruin, and each day the answer continues to be "hahaha no, reagan was a monster"
@@Ihatebs Perhaps both, if by "dark forces" you mean capitalists that served as his advisors and confidants. However I also think that the degradation of all american institutions that we have seen since reagan are a direct result of his liberalization policies (reaganomic/trickle down economics). Things like the falling of unionization, stagnation of pay, increasing inflation, decreasing literacy and education, are all a result of the policies pursued by the nixon and reagan administrations, which were implemented by loyal advisors who thought cost cutting and liberalization were the solutions to the problems we saw in many of our underfunded social institutions. The dark force, really, was liberalization driven by capitalist think tanks and notions that the "free market" would somehow solve our problems, which it clearly didn't.
@@DougMed Capitalists do not value the free market. If they did, they'd recognize that outside intervention is the only way a theoretical free market can ever exist. Economists even have a name for this undeniable fact, they coined the term "market power", the ability to influence a market through purely economic forces (in other words, the ability to prevent a market from being free in the first place).
"It wasn't always like this" is the most important angle American citizens, most of whom are woefully illiterate on history, should be targeted with in every political argument. Once they are given factual knowledge on how the neoliberal work precarity, the rich paying minuscule tax, deregulated industries, etc are historical contingencies stemming from specific decisions by specific people at specific points in time, and are taught the history of The New Deal, 19th century mill workers seeing ownership of their workplace as the default normal, etc, you immediately notice how they enter a confused state where they can't find words anymore to keep justifying the "well this is the reality I guess" state of things. That state is step one on their road to countering narratives that serve the status quo.
I graduated HS in the mid 90s and I remember my government teacher telling us about how Sweden gave their students free college. We were shocked at that, of course asked why and he told us it’s because the government recognized that if they educated their population, they had a higher quality of potential workers to employ, meaning they would get good jobs with good pay and be able to pay back into the economy through taxes and purchase power. It’s seemed so straightforward at the time…and still does. The problem is we would need a government who actually wanted better for a majority of its population, not just the wealthy at the top of the heap.
@@robertmazurowski5974 It doesn’t, Swedens work environment is insanely better than the US, 70% of the workforce is unionized, etc, quality of life across the board is higher in most statistics
Look into how many educated/ skilled workers the US must import, now imagine if more Americans qualified for those highly compensated and developing roles.
@@robertmazurowski5974 Sweden beats the US in every important category for life happiness. Don't forget their citizens can also speak multiple languages, while some Americans can barely speak English haha.
@Robert Mazurowski
In addition to that not happening in Sweden, what you’re describing is already the norm in the US and has been for decades lmao
While true to a certain extent, it is not really through taxes but through stimulating the economy. Taxes don't fund government programmes.
My coworkers asked me "So you think student loans should be forgiven?" I said college shouldn't have been that expensive in the first place🤣💸
It should be free like every other country in the world.
@@StopCopCity1312 In Greece universities are free. Only colleges need to get paid for.
@@StopCopCity1312 public education is always of lower quality than private paid education though, because under capitalism nobody's going to give people free stuff unless they ask the ruling class very politely, with a bunch of pitchforks and an angry mob.
So yeah, while education should indeed be a human right, not a privilege, under the current socio-economic system we're going to be kept just smart enough to work, no more and no less.
@@NikosM112 So in order to get to a free university, you first have to pay for college? LOL
@@steinarjonsson_ No. Whoever didn't write well in the last high school year of exams don't get into any university. Everyone else goes to a normal 4 year college or a 2 year community college, but you have to pay for it. Community colleges are like €80-100pm which is very cheap and yet again everyone can afford it. That's how it works in Greece.
$70B for free college: "That's to expensive. We can't afford that."
$840B for the 2023 US Military budget: "No need to discuss, are you sure you don't want more?"
@@grimaffiliations3671 bitter truth my friend, there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
@@muhammaDEsmustafa Yup, Biden made it so student loan debt couldn't be dispersed with bankruptcy.
And that's $70B at the current, bloated capitalist version of higher education. It could be far leaner than that without a profit motive in place.
@@muhammaDEsmustafa only progressive like Bernie Sanders, AOC and others are the only few that really want to provide a social safety net so every American can have equal opportunity.
@@muhammaDEsmustafa exactly what i was going to say
"America is not a real country, it's just a collection of corporate interests"
-Some Turkish Himbo
I’m fucking saying it dude .... that guys name is code for union .😂
People don’t realize they’ll never allow unions in america because americas the last bastion of hope for capitalism/ an extractive economy, once you allow people to own their labor everywhere on the planet, capitalism is dead
And student loan forgiveness is just one
More bail out for those corporations.
USA is just like a parlamentary monarchy where the parlament that has most of the power are the companies and the monarchy is the goverment that can live a comfortable life without really working.
@@moisesrosario9716 you’re on it! we need socialism, we need titiosim. Put them all to work!
Saying that we shouldn't forgive current college graduates student loan debt since it would be unfair for previous college graduates that have already paid off their student loan debt is like saying we shouldn't find a cure for a disease people face today because people in the past died from that disease. Also, how can a country that spends close to a trillion dollars on it's military budget every single year be against spending a fraction of that amount to forgive student loans just once?
I’m using this analogy. Thanks
Stop researching a cure for cancer now!!!11!
We should forgive all the debt and make universities government owned and free we shouldn’t just not forgive debt just because others had to pay it’s a positive move forward why not do it I’m sure everyone will benefit from high quality education especially in tech because we need those jobs 100 percent agree with you here
Ironically they don’t fine cure for disease
@@drsebiii2592 , actually. Gene editing companies are now doing that.
Research:
VRTX
NTLA
EDIT
BEAM
CRSP
I'm realizing now that "get good grades and scholarships will let you go to any college you want practically free" was a lie that my parents fell for and just parroted my way since they came from a time where college *was* affordable. Game was rigged from the start
It's not a lie. It more like your parents just didn't know you doing all that would at best get you a lottery ticket chance to maybe become part of the ruling class.
Spawn trap my dude. It's just too good
Well imagine your someone who was placed in special education. And in your final years of school. You had no idea what to do ? So you just listen to your family and school to go to college. And it will be amazing. Well I was made from . A professor told me I don't belong in his school because I was still working on lower education math .
There's always a shortage of doctors, teachers, public defenders, etc.
All jobs that help uplift poor communities and the shortage of which exclusively benefits the rich.
All jobs which *demand* an increasingly expensive higher education.
This is not a coincidence.
its because the jobs fucking suck and dont pay enough (excluding doctors they make enough).
who wants to deal with kids and grading 3/4 of the year for 60k
Exactly. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
It's especially frustrating when considering that professors, even full-time, tenured ones (very much the minority), get paid relatively poorly for their contributions. The highest paid professor in my field in all the universities I was at was about $200k, and that's only after about 50 years of work, about 200 peer-reviewed publications, patents, and millions in grant funding across industry and academics. Most full-time professors start at about $50k - $60k which is horrible for the unique expertise they bring, the hours they work, and what they contribute to every industry and humanity. Meanwhile, for example, high managers in insurance companies and financial institutions, which are largely counterproductive and directly harmful industries, are compensated much more.
Sadly, too many people are paid according to status, not according to skill or contribution...
@A B You would be surprised at how many people ARE interested in STEM, it's just that pursuing a career in research or teaching is considered a financial dead-end for most people. A huge portion of physics graduates end up working for finance corporations doing data analysis and modelling for them. Another big chunk end up working for the military-industrial complex.
@A B
Yeah, nobody is learning to code, no engineers, not a single student enrolled in physics classes. Besides, it's not like we need anything else--like doctors.
Are you high?
@@aynrandfan7454 Well duh. They are serving the interests of the corporate "donors" that pay for their department.
Faculty like professors have been deliberately removed from power in the university. They used to moonlight as the school administration before the right wing declared class war on the education system.
Now the major of money in schools is being wasted on a self appointed administrative elite of dean's and dons who exist to protect their wealth and status above all else.
I study in Germany (because I live here) and I pay roughly 200€ per semester. This includes being able to use public transport as much as I like in my city, since student cards function as tickets as well.
I'm studying software engineering at a community college in Greece and I pay €80pm. Still nothing tho. It's quite cheap.
Same
I say to people who live in European countries “always be grateful that you live in a country that cares about the people. I’m living a nightmare here in USA. Never take things for granted.”
@@Perseus5 Europe isn't all equal you know. There's the relatively rich (in a capitalist way, of course) core, and a bunch of peripheral countries kept for providing cheap labor force and markets. Eastern Europe was deliberately turned into a third-world dump since the destruction of the socialist bloc in Europe.
i live in Macedonia and funny thing is, the right wing party dropped the price for college from 400 euros per semester to 200 euros (and if you're in the top 10% of the accepted students you pay 100 euros per semester and the 10 highest ranked students can attend for free, if you perform bad you can drop to 200 euros tuition). Everyone get's free public transport (i'm not sure about students from private uni), if your parents earn minimum wage you will get free dorm room + 1/2 of the tuition price. It's not perfect but for not so developed country it's good.
One thing I almost never hear people talk about when it comes to college costs and student debt is the way it plays into coercive recruiting strategies used by the US military. As a current college student in a state school, I get regular texts to my personal phone from military recruitment offices offering to pay of any loans I have and cover the rest of my tuition. Additionally many state colleges have checks to make sure any men of draft age are entered into selective service, especially if they are applying for loans or aid; and I’m sure you have all seen ads featuring young, attractive members of the military taking about all the things the military has allowed them to do and learn for free.
Almost signed up years ago for solely this reason.
I remember when the student loan forgiveness bill was in the news some republican politician gave the game away a bit, saying that making higher education more available would negatively impact military recruitment. The people in power in this country know what they’re doing and know that what regular people usually consider “faults in the system” actually benefit the ruling class quite a lot.
Text them back with a big “ FUCK YOU “
@@KickinRadTopHat The military is not even an option for most people who have to take out student loans, considering that over 80% of all Americans ages 17-24 are ineligible to join. Getting into the military today can be more difficult than getting accepted into a prestigious university because of the strict medical screening process.
Iirc, you gotta add yourself to the list of potential draftees just to complete your FAFSA. Which is necessary unless you can afford to completely pay for the entirety of college out of pocket.
Greed. It's always greed. And our inability to stand up for ourselves.
In the case of higher education that Greed is for maintaining power
Former Director of Operations for a private university here. The thought that colleges waste huge amounts of money is ABSOLUTELY true. The biggest offender is sports programs; you will notice that America is just about the ONLY country where commercialized collegiate sports exists, and, as you can imagine, those commercialized sports programs are generally better-funded than anything else at the university. Even worse is that revenue made by and donations made to sports programs stay within those programs; so, if someone gets onboard with a fund drive started by the football team, even if they donate millions of dollars, none of that money will end up in the University general fund.
As I'm sure you all know, it's common for coaches and other employees of university sports programs to be paid better -- frequently MUCH, MUCH better than the faculty and staff in academics. Universities spend much more on athletic scholarships than they do on academic ones, and Admissions is typically led by the nose by coaches who demand that certain coveted athletes be granted admission to the university, regardless of their academic performance.
Making matters worse is the drive for bigger, better and more expensive amenities on campus. Extravagant student recreational facilities are becoming the norm, even while classrooms and other learning centers fall into disrepair. Universities are happy to fund the construction of restaurants for for-profit companies like McDonald's, Chick-fil-a, etc. to move in. The drive to "run everything like a business" has infiltrated these non-profit institutions, leading to more commercialized campuses and a reduced focus on academics.
Having students pay tuition has led colleges to a place where their Admissions department is a salesforce, instead of a group of consultants who are working to ensure the right students join the next university class. The financial aid system is so convoluted and imposes so many conditions on funding that modern universities have entire departments dedicated to both managing it and helping students navigate the financial aid landscape.
In short, money has made everything worse, as usual.
Very eye-opening. Thanks for sharing.
I went to a school where the place I worked was falling apart but the stadium was up to par no matter what. Also they paid 9.25 an hour for three years to everybody but finally made it 10.00 an hour due to low employment. I question if going to college was right for me and don’t get me started on a job in my field
As someone in a private college rn, I beyond agree. My college has asbestos in the music room's sound panels but would rather give the president a key to the city and put 22 million in a new football stadium that even the teachers think is a waste. I'm paying 200k for this? Atleast the food and people are better than back home
College football teams amount to a free publicly subsidized farm system for the NFL
@@dingusdingus2152 well when most colleges allowed people to come to football and cancelled a graduation due to Covid, yeah this makes sense
I am surprised that nobody has brought up the free college tuition New Mexico citizens receive (thats a state in America). Anyone who has not received a college education can get upto a Bachelors degree at either UNM or CNM or wherever so long as you're a NM citizen. I am one and I completed my full 4 year degree + minor, I have no student loan debt. In fact New Mexico is one of the most progressive states while also being one of the poorest in the nation, so how come we can afford to do this? Hmm.. really makes you think :)
@@daniellarson3068 Haha yeah there are alot more new yorker and texan license plates here in abq than ever. Not to mention NM state law gives free paid maternity leave and free childcare/support. The richest states say they could never give a hand out, we're people and a community is stronger if they stand together.
Dammit I knew I should have taken that left turn at Abq.....
My brother in Christ shoulda researched this before factoring in tuition costs for Walt jr. and Holly
I just graduated from a NM university, and I am starting a new state government job on Monday. Go Monarchs!
How tho?
Boomers: Can't afford college? Just get a part-time summer job. You'll even have enough left over to buy a house!
out of touch with current reality, im telling you
🤣
Literally what I've been told by older people
Had this conversation yesterday.
boomers are probably the most entitled generation considering how much progress the international proletarian movement made for the benefit of the workers i.e. our grandparents
15:21 - The grievance that I have with this assessment is that you aren't accounting for unionized labor. When you enter a craft trade, the divergence between union and non-union pay can be quite vast. And while I agree we do need more blue collar workers, let's also not forget that the people asking for more tradesmen are doing so on the condition that they never collectively bargain their labor. Because of course Conservatives wouldn't want another obstacle in the way of being able to exploit the workers when they have conned them away from higher education.
you make an excellent point.
I was going to mention unions, since it wasn't talked about much in the video, but have the opposite opinion than your point: it seems like people are unnecessarily being pushed into college due to the destruction of unions. Unions used to guarantee even people without a degree would have a decent living, but, because unions have become so weak in this country, most people are forced to attend a college and incur debt because that has become the only option for social mobility.
@@robertbr249 Very good point. I didn't really learn about unions until AFTER college when I did an apprenticeship in the deep red state that I live. Didn't stick with it, but that's due to my degree and skills. If I wasn't as computer savvy as I am now, I'd probably have to be a 'road warrior' with my union ticket, signing traveler books just to get work due to how little the local union labor commands.
Facts 👀☝️🤔
Education is power. The price of higher education is atrocious compared to European countries where college is either affordable or free.
Price is a way to keep most of the poors out of higher education. Student debt makes sure the few poors who do make it through higher education don't use that book learnin to challenge the status quo.
The book "Fall of the faculty"
Covers the deliberate take over of higher education by capitalism very well.
Spoiler. Even if student loans were 100% forgiven. The higher education system is unilaterally run by out of touch rich people looking to protect their status and privileges.
@@Wiimeiser Loss aversion? This is about power. Power currently held by your economic elite. They will intentionally plunge all civilization into the dark ages if it means those same economic elite get to keep that power.
It's not loss aversion anymore then you are loss averse to having your arms ripped off.
Facts!!!
I'm a diesel mechanic and I got a few points on the bit on vocational training. Most people who work in the trades don't go to trade school. We usually get an apprenticeship and get on the job training. 60% of diesel mechanics wash out within 2 years. During those 2 years you probably won't make more than 15 an hour depending on where you work. The average pay for a diesel mechanic is around 35k a year because it includes the oil changers who just started and that is the majority of diesel mechanics. I imagine it's the same for welders.
Good points!
It was the same for welders. I still made less money than some of those older guys made digging ditches as teens...
You know what is interesting 👀☝️🤔 I work as a ballet dancer and teacher and my education and first 2 years in my feild sound very similar to yours 🙂.
I have a trade certification in teaching and the equivalent of BA from my trade program. Im suprised to know we have so much in common when it come to our work lives lol, pretty interesting 🤷♂️
Related: my brother is an electrician and said the same most apprentices last a year before realizing climbing around in attics for 12$ sucks.
I'm an enterprise software developer with absolutely no passion for enterprise software development. I'm actually really into metalworking, specifically TIG welding, 3D printing and CNC machining, which I do as a hobby in my spare time. However, where I live (the Baltics in Eastern Europe), people who work in material production earn peanuts, even when we're talking about relatively complex specializations like welding or CNC, so I'm stuck in IT because of the money (unless I consider moving to a country of the capitalist core, that is). Funny enough, I know a dude who's an excellent TIG welder, hates his job and desperately wants to learn programming, but can't afford it and doesn't have the time.
So thanks a lot to capitalism for making the majority of people hate their jobs - I mean, life shouldn't be all sunshine and butterflies, ya just gotta have some suffering, right?
My university charges a $1000 extra dollars a semester in fees. I decided to look some of the fees up and found out we help pay for athletic scholarship, for maintenance of the on campus transportation buses, paying staff to clean the school, the up keep of the athletic center, the upkeep of parking decks (plus we pay $100 a semester for access to only one at a time), the schools internet bill, etc. Every new thing they build on campus you have to pay for regardless if you use it or not.
@@danagrey3534 all the money from the federal government goes to paying the administrators and all the money they make from the games go towards paying the coaches. That's why the students end up with ridiculous fees to pay for just about everything else. They literally create new fees based on whatever they need to generate money for.
Exactly. I don't want to pay for black gibs either. They are useless and I don't use them. Why should I pay?
I've seen people even in somewhat left-leaning spaces spreading the argument that "college is a scam" and talking like the only reason to go to college is just to get a good job, which is really upsetting to me. As someone who was raised in a conservative Christian bubble for the first 18 years of my life, going to college was a life-changing experience for me that allowed me to finally ask the questions I'd always wanted to ask, meet different kinds of people, and explore different worldviews. I'm a dirt poor English teacher now, and I've been asked on multiple occasions what the "point" of studying literature is. So many people have been brainwashed by our hyper-capitalist society that they have forgotten to value education for education's sake; if you can't justify something with a monetary payoff, then it's "worthless." That's why even though I myself don't believe college is necessarily for everyone, and I do support students wanting to learn a trade, I will always push back against anyone who argues that you shouldn't go to college or that it's a worthless experience. The issue is not that people are being sold a worthless product; the issue is that education is inherently valuable and should be free to everyone, period.
Our society has been so transformed by the capitalist idea of living that every must have an inherent productive value i.e IT or Engineering that the classical arts have really been lost to modern society. Speaking as a history major, that is a damn shame since with all the major political events over the past decade or so, we could really use more knowledge gained from those millenia old arts.
I agree I am an arts major which gave me tremendous life opportunities but very few that were lucrative. The nation has lost real interest in the function and purpose of the humanities.
That said I believe the American college system is a scam and has been for decades. I don’t believe the German college system is a scam. I studied there. Free tuition for university. Zero interest student loans. And the private university I went to was affordable and had many grants to cover tuition, a fair pay it forward system and job placement.
The US system is utterly dysfunctional. With bloated administrations, presidents with over a million dollar salaries, banks and loan derivative fund usury, and the schools don’t serve the students well. And the liberal faculties were often ignorant of history. As far as politics they often Considered themselves Left but they knew nothing of worker history, socialism or even basic liberalism and never rebelled because they liked their cushy jobs. The adjunct faculty did rebel and formed a union in my old school. But this was after decades of decline and poverty.
Now many private schools are closing all across the country and no one can afford to go to them.
So it’s up to us to teach without the college system because it is completely broken in the USA.
I dropped out of high school because I valued education for education's sake. I was teaching myself better than the school was. Most of my teachers were too busy helping my functionally illiterate classmates. My poor public school was never about educating, just making sure it kept students to receive more funding than the private school in my city. It was all about standardized testing. The lessons were monotonous and not in any teacher's control. I was a good student before high school but after discovering the systematic failures, historical propaganda, and having to answer really long drawn out math questions about talking pineapples 🍍 I couldn't take it seriously anymore. It was a joke and the adults in my lives were also jokes incapable of taking control of a seriously pathetic excuse for "education". There was much that I learned during that time but it was done through great teachers talking to me after class, nothing involving the class itself. I seriously respect your comment, but it is a scam. Why should I trust higher education when everyone involved in it is so full of shit? Why should I overload myself with debt that I wouldn't be able to pay for decades? I want to pursue education. I desperately want to leave this country forever because of it.
@@RIPKabosu2000 But your comment is the point: the problem is that public schools are underfunded, teachers are overpaid and overworked, and tuition costs for higher education are way too high. Unfortunately so many people seem to be taking the attitude that people should just not go to college at all because it's worthless, but that's not a good answer. That's exactly what the conservatives and Christian nationalists want: to make higher education inaccessible for most of the public so that they stay ignorant and keep voting against their interests, and to privatize education for everyone else so they can keep their rich white kids in a conservative Christian brainwashing bubble their whole lives. I happened to be lucky enough to go to a good college, and it made me who I am today in so many ways. I discovered joys, knowledge, people and experiences I may never have been exposed to otherwise. Honestly it scares me to think of what kind of person I would have turned out to be without that experience. I understand how your experience was very different though, and that makes me sad, because I think everyone should be able to enjoy the value of a GOOD education. If this country would just learn to value education for it's own sake rather than treating it just as a tedious step on the way to getting a job, maybe we would actually invest in trying to provide a good education for everyone. That may be a pipe dream, but I don't care, I will always advocate for that over dropping out of the system entirely.
@@Dachusblot I understand what the tactic behind leaving it as awful as it is. That's why I don't want to be involved in it. If even the system itself is complicit, I cannot win either way. I have grown a very strong hatred towards the institutions altogether, as I have no tolerance for ineffective systems. I would blow my brains out if I had myself stuck somewhere I have so much ire for. I almost did in high school. If it weren't for dogs I would have. I live in PA and the university of PA allows its faculty to use low income students as advertisements with their consent. Despite this they have managed to completely exaggerate some of their student's lives. Implying they were poor when they were most definitely not. Why would I involve myself with such disgusting filth who thinks they can use my life experience to further their career? It's so rotten I would rather just leave. It's a lost cause.
JT can just make a playlist of what has been ruined by privatization and he will never run out of contents if things stay as it is.
"Say the line Bart!" - *sigh* "Capitalism ruins everything."
Isn't every institution a business, and almost every supposed socialist a capitalist? Who isn't primarily grubbing for more capital? The vocabulary used may be different, but they all seem to play the same game. I'm not seeing any socialists taking a vow of poverty.
@@Christmas-dg5xc No, it isn't.
@@Christmas-dg5xc Socialism is not a vow of poverty though.
@@Christmas-dg5xc most socialists don't need to, the capitalist class is such a small minority of people and they take almost all of the pie. You won't be a socialist if you're bezos, you can't become bezos if you're socialist. If you're referring to the Social Democrats like Bernie or AOC, they still believe in some kind of capitalism, they believe it can be made moral through social policy. I personnel disagree, but I likely wouldn't get a job in Congress
These are some thoughts I've had for a long time, and I'm wondering if I'm alone in them:
"Work hard and get into a good college" = elite schools have to let some of the poors in
"It's not where you go but what you do that matters" = good job getting into our school, but we're not telling you the secret recipe of activities, experiences, internships, etc. that you need to join our ranks, most of said opportunities we just hand to our children anyway
"Grades don't matter" = we actively punish the poor kids who worked hard to earn high marks while elevating wealthy kids who have better "networking skills"
"Oh hey look! We gave this person a full ride scholarship based on needs and they're doing great! We've done a good job"
This reads mostly as criticism of the elite nature of higher education and an appeal to "meritocracy". I think part of what this video is trying to communicate is that the narrative of meritocracy is a tool the elite use to justify their control and to reproduce their elite status. I can agree that the metrics of merit have evolved, in part to recuperate other critiques of US education such as racial inequality across all levels. However, whatever the metric, meritocracy still fundamentally serves to naturalize hierarchy and inequality and justify control of the majority by the elite class.
@@jinmushui1soul meritocracy isn't the problem with america or even capitalism. It's the nepotism and zero consequence actions the elite get to domineer. A world without meritocracy is a world with more nepotism, not less.
@@notpublic8961 I'm saying non-elite/affluent/wealthy/whatever students don't *know* which opportunities are needed to thrive. You can't just tell people to "work hard" or "strive" when those words are extremely ill defined in this context. But thanks for missing the point.
Singapore in a nutshell, my friend. I wish Second Thought could do videos on other nations too. While Singaporeans get free primary school education and heavily subsided secondary education, we have a culture of elite secondary schools and junior colleges, sorta like the USA's Ivy League.
Too much for me to explain in a single comment 'cause there's a lot to it. In short, currently, Singapore's meritocracy is a lie. I wish one of the more well-known socialist youtubers could do a good takedown on that for Singaporeans (we aren't allowed to criticise our own government)
I went to MSU in KY. Ronald Eaglin was campus president then. He got from the school two homes and a car for his wife. Being a poor area, students depended on their refund checks to survive. The campus began rebuilding projects while "coincidentally" making students wait longer for skimpier refund checks. First, you had to wait till orientation day, then halfway through the semester, then at the end of the semester, then the next semester. And, no, apologists, I am not talking about special situations. Nearly the whole student body at those times. We were told it was like that "everywhere" but that of course was not true. Eaglin left under a gray cloud. MSU was a cheap school but had higher additional costs in a very poor area. I was on my own. I walked away with over a hundred thousand in debt. Now with interest (Stafford Loans), I owe over 200K.
jeese what a terrible story about American "higher ed". I hope you can find a way to deal with frickin terrible debts. This is no way that a country which wants its children to succeed in life should work. Plus, I can't even believe that they didn't teach you that MSU is in Michigan not KY- that alone should be enough to discharge your debt due to rank incompetence.
@@brokenrecord3095MSU was Morehead State University. It resides in Rowan County, KY. It was established in 1896 as a Normal School meaning teaching school before it expanded. Lol
At least all that extra money you spent was unilaterally used by a carde of already wealthy administrators on nonsense that in no way benefitted you.
@@DCMarvelMultiverse huh huh he said "more head" huh huh huh
@@DCMarvelMultiverse LOL the broken record is a troll. But I get what you mean, I'm actually fairly close to that college. I hate how its basically expected for you to go there after high school. I did try going a different route during the pandemic. It did confirm that I just don't like college, not that I found the classes hard. At least not in subject, it was more trying to extend the subject beyond a page. Basically it was high school but this time they wanted more pages vs quality.
Deserving = willing to toe the conservative line. Which explains why nobody with an MBA can see the obvious benefits of labor unions…
Exactly. Finally someone says it out loud.
Not only should college be free 100%, we need to build the conversation about the expectations of learning in higher education. I believe in abolishing the grading system as this plagues students to only adhere to passing courses and not actually learning. What’s the point of grades if all you care about was getting your gpa at a certain pointage.
If your grade reflects what you learned, then what is the problem with grades?
@@StreetcarHammock That's a really big if
@@StreetcarHammock it is not. A grade is not a reflection of what you learned. It is just a metric to how well you pass assignments/tests/etc. you can still fail a class and have learned a lot from that. You can get an A and learned nothing. Grades are not defined by how well you learned something
@the official white girl I definitely agree with you 100%. I just wonder what would the alternative be.
As someone in highschool right now, I think grades are fine. They are just a measurement of how much work you actually completed. It's exams and tests that need to go. They aren't helpful, and in the real world you are always going to have access to your notes or other resources if you don't know how to do something. Making us do things from memory, like how to solve a specific math problem is just plain stupid.
As a college student this topic always makes me furious! The idea that capitalist greed and systemic hatred prevents people from receiving the education they deserve drives me insane.
Couldn't agree with you more!
Of course, everything bad in America starts with Reagan, well most of everything. Just gives me another reason as to why he is overrated and was one of Americas worst presidents.
The same as thatcher in the UK. Boris and trump were very similar and would appear to be an easy answer to the question who was the worst but their incompetence limited the damage.
Thatcher and Reagan (or his administration) were capable ideologues who's actions are reverberating still and the root of most of the shitstorm we are reaping now
Facts
@@Grandude77 when you are saved because of incompetence, something is wrong, same thing in québec btw!
@@Grandude77 It's always goes back to those two. If its a conservative/neoliberal troll that has doomed or harmed x,y,z. Then you have a safe bet in saying, "Wait is it Reagan or Thatcher?" and being right close to 50% of the time.
You’d think so , but Reagan the preverbal gut shot he was to our national interests was just another downstream consequence of our failures during reconstruction had we not went half measured / Been such libs and actually stripped the Slaver’s and confederate leadership of power and wealth if not out right exiled them or perhaps more then the we would almost certainly not be in the position we are in now . That money and power was handing the shotgun pointed at our gut to the enemy and has allowed the wealthy Robber barons to grow their gangrene on this nation beginning with allowing them to have seats at table for both policy , and privatization power starting with Neo slavery starting day one post civil war .
not only should all colleges be 100% free in fact students should literally receive free room and board while attending.
Honestly, learning stuff should be treated as a job. After all, those students will go on to do useful things with their knowledge. Why should they be punished for making society better?
@@SabinStargem Because you dirty prole. Making "society better" to you probably means some communist nonsense improve the lives of poor's like you.
The whole point of saddling you with debt is because it keeps you young people from doing anything your new education that in any way threatens the status quo.
A lawyer with $100,000 in debt isn't going to spend their first 2 years out of school doing free legal aid for some non corporate cause. They will go work in the patient mines making the already rich slightly richer(so that new lawyer can pay down their massive debt ASAP).
An lot college force u to stay on campus ur 1st year got make sure they make that money lol
There’s no way free room and board gets abused by people who don’t really care about the education anyway, no chance
@@StreetcarHammock that's ok. Housing should be free because we're not fucking barbarians
So basically decisions to help regular US citizens is against the interest of the elite in the country. If it benefits the regular people then it will undermine the current status quo.
Similar to our foreign policy. If other countries are doing well on their own (especially on their own and just existing ).... Then it's a threat. The constant need to step on others instead of getting better
You are 100% correct.
sounds like a "why improve our self if we can club the others down" mentality embodied in a government.
@@kleinerfarmer1 If by government you mean your ruling class. Cause clubbing others down is literally how they make profit.
@@Praisethesunson yes those guys.
but I don't live in the US.
and frankly I don't want to.
and while it's not entirely free of those type of "being" I think it's better where I live.
this. the mentality of the New American Century is completely psychopathic. I heard a great analogy from a youtuber Jayoe Nation/Nuance: it used to be that Americans had an idea about healthy competition, if you're a father with a son, and your neighbor has a kid who is good at baseball, you tell your son that he should use that as a benchmark or rivalry to compete with the neighbor's kid and both get better at the sport. Now if you see a contender with your kid, if you see that kid on the field you boo him and as an adult bully a child, you delight when the neighbor's kid gets sick and can't make it to the match because it means less competition in the way for your kid, you might even go out of your way to take a bat to the neighbor's kid's ankles... act like the world is a zero-sum game and you have to be the greediest to win. Do anything and everything to take the #1 spot, WINNING above everything else, regardless of ethics/morality, above valuing truth, or any other "liberal/democratic" values that are supposed to espouse dignity and respect for fellow humans as equals. Sickening.
The way that this was posted literally four hours before I leave for college
Remember. The institution you are going to is being run by out of touch rich people instead of faculty who actually do teaching.
All to protect the class interests of people you will never meet
@@Praisethesunson yes, I am well aware. I hate the system too but I’m basically being forced to go by my parents.
The way I'm in college and listening to this
@@TheLastJack Just remember to organize a union(or join and take over an already existing union) when you get out.
We have nothing to lose but our chains comrade.
I graduated from college 4 years ago, but still owe tens of thousands in debt, I've lost 2 jobs during this pandemic (though I do have a job now), & rent for most places is almost what I pay in student loans a month so I can't afford to move out on my own. I would love to be a more active member of the U.S. economy if I could afford to do so without so much substantial student loan debt. Even if I only had 10% of my student loans forgiven that's still roughly 8 grand I don't have to worry about having to try to pay on time every month anymore. So, even though I don't I qualify for the loans President Biden forgiving (I got state & private university loans), I support this decision since it will still help millions of college graduates & it will help the U.S. economy as a whole.
Haven’t lost two jobs, but in the same boat in terms of owing a lot. We need to make noise. We in this together. Peace brethren
I heard that, as well as the forgiven amounts, repayments were to be capped to a percentage of monthly income. Is this true?
Rent has gone up everywhere. Imo, there's no shame in living with one's family, since one contributes to the household. Today, it makes sense to do that.
@@ionae3440 Yes, it's supposed to be capped at 5% of your income. It was 10% before, so this is better. Now they just need to lower the damn interest, since that's why people owe so much
A reduction to 5% should hopefully relieve some of the pressure for the most desperate.
I knew this history before but it’s only watching this video that I realized the flaw in how we address the “I paid off my loans, so it’s not fair to me that others don’t have to pay theirs.” Instead of the (totally valid and logical) counter that this is like saying that finding a cure isn’t fair to people who died from a disease, we should tell them generations before them didn’t have to pay for school, so why should they have had to!?
This is slightly more akin to stocking millions of monkey pox vaccines and letting people suffer and die in other countries rather than using (and replenishing) them so they don’t they expire right before an outbreak in your own country.
The greed of people with the "it doesn't help ME so nobody should have it" attitude is just sad. Some people need help, and some people don't; I'm doing well, so I'm mostly in the latter group, and yet I have no problem with actually helping the former group. I took some small loans (~$10k total) for a technical school that I went to, and I was able to pay them off about a year ago, and I was still very excited to hear that the gov had done at least *something* about the loan situation.
More like sucks to be u. Lol enjoy ur retirement we won’t get but we get all our student loans paid off
Those people should receive a tax rebate for what they paid too. College should be free, and anyone charged should get a refund to correct the mistake that Raygun did.
It’s almost an expensive in Canada, damn neoliberalism
Except Quebec 😁
@@technofanatic01 lol, I love Quebec 😄
Fun fact:
Public universities in Brazil, a pretry poor country, are completely free. The only way to join one is by taking the test "Enem", and students from public high school only compete with people from public high school. People that studied in private high schools compete only with themselves.
For like the gem test
Brazil isn't a "poor" country, it just has rampant inequality and a lot of corruption (also classism). Similar thing with Mexico.
I'm from (one of) the neighboring country Uruguay. We have the free and paid options. Udelar (Universidad de la republica) is one of the most prestigious universities in South America and it's free. Most careers also don't require entrance exams (most) but do require you took relevant courses in the second half of high school.
Which after 3rd year of highschool, gets divided into a few categories (3 more years, we start highschool at 12 and finish by around 18).
Like humanities, Engineering, Arts, Medicine, etc.
Then you can choose careers based on your "major" (if you will) that you did in highschool.
All this free or optionally paid if you went to private schools or universities.
I don't want to sound like a stereotype but being in my early 30s and holding a virtually useless bachelor's with a short time in the National Guard (to help pay for my college) I have been baffled, absolutely baffled by how blatant the strong arming is with the US college system. There's a million things wrong with it and it's wild so little is ever done about it but the thing that blows my mind the most and infuriates me the most is how textbooks have been used to control both students and professors alike EVEN NOW in this virtual age. Thanks for this video. Just a shame it won't do a whole lot of good because those that will listen, can't do anything about it, and those who need to listen won't.
I used to work with a professor who reviewed and selected textbooks for our department. The cost of each one of those textbooks surprised me, especially when I saw how little information was in them, compared to older books in the college library.
The fact that the poor get punished and are forced to serve in the military to kill other poor innocent people just to get crap benefits for college that doesn’t cover everything just makes me not want to have a family here. I’m 21 and I’m not going to college or have a family here. I’ll try my luck in Europe or even Canada. I just pray for the families who are affected by this vicious system in America.
@@altyrrell3088 one of my favorite psych professors made us buy his published text for our courses but I later went on to learn he had to write and publish a book as a requirement for his own career trajectory and used us students buying his book as a means of paying off the cost of doing it all. It was a vicious cycle. He was about as caught up in the puppetry as us students were.
@@nevertrumpfromthejump "Publish or perish" has been the unwritten rule for many generations. The unintended upside to it is that a lot of pretty exceptional professors work in colleges teaching students that never would have had the opportunity to learn the subject from someone so knowledgeable.
Have faith, friend. The tide is turning. The ones who listen are not so powerless anymore.
I'll tell you one thing, professors SURE AS FUCK don't see that money🙃
Of course not. They're the ones adding the value. If professors got the money, that would be socialism. Which would put us one step away from government forced labor camps.🙄
teachers deserve at least 10 times their current pay. They are literally raising and educating the next generations. They put a ton of work every single year. They deserve the best we can give.
also innovation is basically capped by speed of learning (and lifespan)
@@americancommunist6076 not just that, but they also act as bullet sponges to protect their students
@@americancommunist6076 Yes teachers deserve WAY more money but too bad the USA is run my money hungry politicians who want a idiotic population rather than an educated one
My goodness, when you lay things out about how access to universities can give people so many abilities, and then how various, even disparate, force can push that oppurtinity back down, it makes so much sense how the world works - this is so much, to see why these policies really happen, and now, what we have to do in response. Knowledge is power.
this topic is so complicated but you did a great job man, always happy to see you upload JT
Why dont you want every students go to college?
Simple government answer:-everyone doesn't deserve to to think..
Tip for anyone applying to college: go to a “U” school. State schools are almost always cheaper and provide great quality education. If you want to do research go for PhD instead of masters because you get a higher level diploma and get paid.
Cheap is relative of course.
Idk about that one with a masters relative to a PhD. If you want to be an analyst, you can qualify with a masters and get paid 6 figures. If you want to do academic work, then of course go for a PhD. A lot of PhDs lose work experience on resumes and struggle to get jobs out of academia.
If anything, try to get a job and then get your job to pay for your PhD. It makes life easier in the long run, so you don t have to stress the "you have limited work experience" or "you are over qualified" commentary a PhD only can bring in interviews.
if money's tight consider going to a community college for the first year or two. Basic calculus or geography is taught the same at a an ivy league school , state school or a CC and those credits will transfer.
Also people need to have the conversation that the attrition rate of graduating with a PhD is 50% (meaning people drop out) and the rate that it takes to get a degree is average 7-8years of school. A masters is relatively quicker to obtain but….
People need to understand that higher education at this level isn’t easier, it’s more stressful and different compared to undergraduate and community college. Mental health is runned rampant at this level of education. Society shouldn’t value these degrees unless it becomes more about learning than profiting. People take more loans out of graduate/PhD level schooling than any other debt.
Something my professor said to me my freshman year always stuck with me:
“Some people think that paying more for school means they’ll learn the REAL biology/physics/math, etc. and as someone who graduated from MIT, I can promise you I’m teaching you the same stuff.”
Blew my mind because of the way we promote education in the US and I was not (surprise surprise) at a “Tier 1” school.
It's something I realized years ago. There was a very strong reason why I refused to go back and, for the longest time, did not make payments on my student loans. People called me lazy. But no, I knew: college was a scam. Something about putting a price tag on education, a VITAL NEED in any functioning nation, just didn't make sense. Come to find out years later that due to meddling political fools, education was barred to the working class. Purposely, to alientate degree programs to only the "best and brightest" so only THEY can compete in enterprise and government.
At this point, if you are serious about your education, you should leave the United States, because we made the foolish mistake of commodifying it. It's essentially just a credential to put on an application and nothing more. It's meaningless.
College has finally reverted to what it was before industrialization. A tool for the rich to justify their continued rule over everyone else.
The social aspect of it would be enough to make college free. I feel like having friends after college or high school is extremely difficult and that makes people like myself feel more lonely despite going to work and being surrounded by people.
"An educated proletariat? That's dynamite!"
more like C6H2(NO2)3CH3
I totally didn't look that up on wiki^^
@@kleinerfarmer1 🤓🤓🤓
I'm glad I live in a country where I can get into college for free
Which one?
I live in colombia, a very backwards third world country, and I went to college for free, as many hundreds of thousands have. US is a shame to the western civilization.
Taxes must be higher in that country.
@Zaydan Naufal Greece has one of the highest unemployments in Europe kinda odd.
@@tastyanthoney true. It's also much more selective in Greece than in the US. Mostly only those who, well, actually have academic aptitude are urged to attend.
It's very different from the US, where colleges offer remedial math/English courses (so anyone can get started), and student loans are handed out like candy.
As was mentioned (and what many people fail to appreciate) is that learning a skilled trade can be just as challenging as academic study.
And can easily land you in debt just as quickly.
Another week, another banger from JT
There's an alternative universe where Reagan didn't ruin everything
The universe where John Hinckley Jr. didn’t miss.
And where even you have a girlfriend
Yet many americans still adore reagan just because he was "charismatic"
@@Yoohooo654Its okay if your hurt buddy.
one of the best channels out here. i like that you started showing your face too.
Let's not forget that Milton Friedman served as Ronnie's economic advisor. The initiative may have started as a way to quell an educated proletariat but, as soon as reagan took office, its primary goal/motivation became profits. Predatory lending by the government (PLUS loan program, et al.) took off as soon as he took office.
Profits and the quelling of an educated working class go very much hand-in-hand.
I just got an ad from the Arizona Corporation Commission during this 🤔
I'm sick of the pundits who use skilled trades as a diversion from the topic of education funding. I called out a 70 year old at my local bar who was making that bullshit argument, and I refused to back down because I work in the trades right now and he never did. I was later told I'm not allowed to discuss politics in the bar, it's the bar's standing policy... but that guy has been doing it for 30 years and nobody behind the bar says a fucking word to him about it.
I might have been the first guy to stand up to him in a long time, and the conversation actually ended on a friendly note before I got the gag order from the bartender. Fuck that place, this country was founded in bars and coffee shops, so anyone who claims to be a patriot should encourage, not squelch political discourse. No fists were thrown, just words. I guess that's more dangerous if your whole point is to support bullshit.
guessing the bartender/old dude would be the first to advocate how America is the bastion of free speech? the hypocrisy flying over their heads as usual
or better yet, they define discussion of "how things are" aka the establishment isn't politics, but "how things should be" is 🤔
Debt The first 5000 years is such an excellent book, great shout out.
Seconded! I love Graeber, and also enthusiastically recommend his recent book with coauthor David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything.
Totally randomly clicking right as you upload
In Switzerland, I pay around 500$ to 700$ per semester.
The student card gives you many reductions around the city, like in movie theaters, restaurants, museums.
The libraries are free and excellent quality, that they’re the university or city ones, whether you study or not, or that you’ve got the Swiss nationality or not.
I hope that "paying vocational/blue collar workers the money they deserve for their well trained skills" is part of the conversation as well. As a blue collar worker myself, I see far too often companies that give raises and bonuses to their college educated administrative white collar workers, while all too often find any excuse not to increase the wages of the blue collar workers that make them their money in the first place.
I'm not making the argument that white collar jobs are "useless", I just wish the conversation didn't stop at "don't do welding, it's not lucrative", when arguably it should pay more to learn a complex and dangerous skills like welding than it does to learn how to make spreadsheets, send emails, and use fancy language to explain why it's not cost effective to make blue collar raises a priority.
Completely agree. The problem is unionization, or the lack thereof. Corps are doing everything they can to kill unions, and sadly, corrupt unions haven't helped the cause. The average workers deserve more money and executives/shareholders less. Signed, white collar worker.
You can go into a “blue collar” trade for free and get a raise every 1 year until you cap at $40+ per hour (once you pass your exam for your license) or you can go into debt for a white collar job and literally have to work for free (see mandatory internships) and afterwards start getting paid roughly half of what a 5 year tradesman makes.
The blue/white collar terms are very outdated. There are many hands on “blue” collar jobs that don’t require much physical labour at all and give you raises per 2000 hours, free trade school (and $$$ while in school) towards your trades license. Not to mention a chance at becoming what people call a “white” collar worker (see foreman) in a blue collar industry.
So the choice is simple: get paid for 5 years with a raise every year and cap out around $45/hour (this is your hourly rate not your full package) or go to school, go into massive debt, work for free to prove yourself, and hope to land a 40k a year salary afterwards.
Go into the trades people!!
We still need none trade jobs though and they shouldn't cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars
Pretty much!!
You're failing to note the political ramifications of an increasingly uneducated populace.
I'm a disabled desert storm veteran. I qualified for a state scholarship because of this. I graduated this year with my MSW and MBA degrees. No cost, and I am old now. This year our state made college free. I'm happy because this is the poorest state and I would love to see us poor get educated and start changing things.
Just out of curiosty, what state are you in ?
I remember the visceral rage against Vietnam. Tho a small child riding on the shoulders of my father. The sentiment was potent and not duplicated since.
Where I live, people always tell you to get a trade job. They will say something like, "we will always need plumbers". They don't care about the other sectors that are in need of people, but the barrier of entry is too high. The world needs more doctors, but the cost keeps people away from the educational pursuit.
this is one of the most infuriating things I've ever heard, if there's a hell Raegan's in the 9th circle
PLEASE, my friend, keep this content up. It is so excellent to see people so tuned into the failings of our world, and helping to present solutions…
It is minds and attitudes like yours that we may thank for our hopeful success over the current impending doom of our species.
Here in Europe I pay 1500$ per semester and then my union (from work, I work part time about ten hours per week) they pay half my tuition. USA sure is the greatest country in the world.
Make College Free Nationwide, Forgiving All Student Loan Debt, & Removing The Predatory Lending Practices of a College Education are major Reforms America needs to be making.
But if we did that how would the self appointed elite justify their rule over all you plebs?
Worse still, what if you filthy proles use that college knowledge to change the prevailing status quo in a way that doesn't further entrench the wealth and power of the current elite? Can't have that.
Should Woemn's Stuides be free? typos deliberate
@@Christmas-dg5xc Everything should be free
Free Healthcare free housing free education free public transportation free child care free food free clothing free period products free internet free phones.
@@I.C.Weiner Awesome. I'm thinking time should also be free. Nobody should be required to work to provide us with all that good stuff.
Lol I got an ad for a student loan company during this video, right after the part where he talked about how predatory student loans are.
You should make an entire video titled "as usual, we can blame Ronald Reagan".
Land of the "free" and home of the brave everybody. It definitely is the home of the brave, but it's because you have to be pretty brave to WANT to live here in the US.
One of the best videos I've seen in a while. Amazing work as always JT!
Really good point about how student loans are a form of modern-day debt bondage. Forcing people to pay off student loans for their survival for most of their lives is severely punishing and cruel.
well I don't think ur supposed to be able to pay them off.
for some "institutions" the term "lifelong debt" sounds like "longtime fixed income".
Also poor people in bondage aren't free enough to effectively rebel against the status quo.
so smart! Thank you!
The timeline in which Reagan kept being an actor is probably much, much better than ours
I know you most likely won’t see this but thank you so much for making this! I don’t know if you already had this planned or if my suggestion of it a month or so ago you noticed was the inspiration but this is what I was looking for! Keep up the good work!
I get so annoyed when politicians push vocational school instead of just making both higher education AND vocational school free. Also, the narrative that is pushed with welding is that it's a "secure" job; therefore, if you stick with it, you'll be making the big bucks in no time! The fact is, however, that there is a high demand for welders but the starting wage is so low that most welders won't take the job. The employer knows that the welder has a very specific skill set and just sits back and says "That's the hourly rate we'll pay - take it or leave it" and won't negotiate.
Another important thing to consider is that welding is NOT a fun job. You have to wear a ton of safety gear (which is uncomfortable and makes it so you can't talk to your coworkers, look at your phone, or use a bathroom without a ton of effort), your eyesight slowly gets destroyed over time, you will occasionally get a terrible burn, there will be a foreman screaming at you no matter how well you do your job, etc. Even if I was making $100 per hour, I wouldn't want to be welder - it just seems like a terrible, uncomfortable, back-breaking job.
Debt that shouldn't even exist. So much greed.
Higher education in the US is so high. I wanted to school there but opted to go to Norway. Free education even for international students. And for someone like me from Africa, i know i made the right choice.
The most important part of the loan forgiveness actually is that it caps monthly payment to 5% of income and will forgive all debt after 10 years instead of 20
Older Generations need to grow out of the 'Wise Elder' myth and realise they need education as much as if not more than the Youth of today.
This 61 year old couldn’t agree with you more! True, I’ve got some experience and historical perspective, but it’s the younger folks around me who keep me learning and growing. I’ll occasionally make the “get off my lawn” joke as a reference to my status as a curmudgeon, but the truth is, I’d rather have them trample the (metaphorical) lawn, replant with native species, and then hang out with me making art and talking politics. The kids are very much alright!
elders don't always deserve respect
they spent more decades on the planet; doesn't equate to decades of experience
These videos you make are top notch!! I find them very interesting and informative. These are the best videos on TH-cam!!!
I may not agree with everything this channel talks about. But I love his research, outstanding objectivity and well thought out ideas. Good work.
Probably one of the most important videos on the channel
I would love to go to collage and get a computer science degree, but I still haven’t because of the cost. I wonder how many professionals we have lost to the fact that collage is to expensive, and you have to constantly work just to provide for yourself.
This video needs to be shared more. And the main point needs to be stressed. We need free or affordable universal education for all again! We need to demand a new education bill that models after the state and federal funding model used before the late 60s and 70s. We need more of us educating ourselves, finding community, and gaining skills and purpose that we can use to correct the issues we face in our country. Can we start saying “Regan’s presidency was the era America’s lights got turned out, and we need to turn them back on! We the people and the planet depend on it!
I just want to learn math and science. I don’t want to treat college like an investment
I'm getting a second bachelor's currently, this time for a well-paid field (programming industrial controls), using savings I made teaching English in China--which I only got because I had a degree in any major and a US passport. I haven't actually finished paying off my first degree, and I'm counting on my future job to earn enough to pay for the degree I'm not using. I cannot stress enough how much my opportunity is due to luck. If I hadn't had the support of my family to get through that first degree, I wouldn't have been able to finish, and would still be stuck doing unskilled labor struggling to survive. That's how it is for most of my friends. I'm also lucky that I was mentally and physically able to live in another country on my own for so long and that I was suited for teaching. If any of that wasn't the case, or if I had a kid, or if a family member needed my care, none of this would be possible. There is nothing special about me that makes me deserve two degrees when people as smart or smarter than me couldn't finish one. I would happily stay in debt and pay higher taxes if it came along with free college for everyone that comes after me. It doesn't have to be this way.
I am so thankful that I grew up in Scotland where tuition is free. I get to go to a top 10 Uni in the UK for engineering while also being able to go on exchange with that paid for too. Its really unfortunate to see the English students paying 9k+ each year
Education can cost over $40k a year here in the US
Every video blows my mind. So many unseen things i discover. Great work.
as always, abuse is the point. If you are ever confused why something so beneficial to society is being gatekeeped by cost, it is to abuse people.
Loving that great footage of Ortega Dining Commons and Campbell Hall.
I'm tired of "college is useless, learn to code or go to vocational school" advice. If anyone know how modern job application works at all, many are automated to cut cost (the programming for such automation is actually very simple and thus not requiring a lot of capitals), and it'll discard anyone without a degree in seconds, unlike humans, computers followed a strict set of rules and will not give a benefit of a doubt - people with decades of experiences can and do get rejected simply because they don't have a degree. And telling people to not go to college and study philosophy or something (just an arbitrary example) and learn how to weld (another arbitrary example) is a poor advice because if all else equal, people will choose to study things that they both love and are good at. People who would make a good philosopher may not make the best welder and people who is good at welding may not make a good philosopher, for example. And that's putting aside that trade jobs pay more than jobs that required a college degree is just a myth stemmed from survivorship bias, the labor statistics don't support that (this video already cover that).
Trade jobs are undervalued not because of college, but rather because of capitalism. Because colleges are at some point being viewed as a way of becoming a capitalist themselves (and that colleges are de facto (and later outright) exclusive to children of wealthy families), it fits the narrative perfectly for a country where people are indoctrinated into thinking they're just a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire." In the current neoliberal economy, people will study a trade more if it's really paid as well as some advertised, but we know it's not the case. This college vs trade argument is just a way to divide most college students and people working in a trade job, they have far more in common. Poorer college students don't think in the same line as richer college students, poorer college students tend to be there with an intention learn while rich students tend to just be there to form connection with other rich kids to start a business.
Trade jobs are undervalued because they're low skill, which American culture has told us means they're sub-human and deserving of all suffering that comes with it. The thought doesn't enter their minds that trades also are almost universally unionized, and thus actually get fair pay for their work, meaning they're doing WAY better than almost everyone else in the country, let alone the rest of equal skill level.
@@dontmisunderstand6041That has nothing to do with the nature of either trade jobs or "white" collar work, and everything to do with the social politics of unionization. Everything should have been unionized and could have been, had there not been a coordinated decades-long campaign to suppress their formation. Once again, your argument is framing policy results as the cultural mistakes of individuals.
@@matthewcaldwell8100 Individuals have no influence or impact on culture whatsoever. Your strange assumption that I'm blaming individuals for the culture they live in is odd, to say the least.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 Individual decisions meditated by a culture encouraging college education as the primary route to social mobility is half the story. The other half, which financial gurus and grindset fetishists love to omit, are the policy decisions constraining labor"s ability to collectively bargain.
@@matthewcaldwell8100 Inserting a blatant political agenda into a simple assessment of the reality we live in makes it less persuasive, as it reveals a bias that could skew the perception of your words, even if that bias has been specifically accounted for in your analysis. Yes, we all know that neo-liberalism is self-destructive at both a macro and micro level. You're not going to convince its supporters of that by framing the conversation in terms of a tribalistic confrontation.
You should reflect on how best to actually achieve your ideals, rather than simply spreading awareness of your ideals.
Very good analysis, this video is well-done. My college was virtually free from 1970-1975. I paid the very, very meager tuition, low-cost housing, and meals with a simple part-time work-study job. I went to college four quarters per year with a full credit load. No full-time job needed, no loans needed.
Reagan then: We have to be careful. The proletariat might start making some changes around here.
Reagan today: Told ya.
ya
This kind of information should be mainstream information!!!
I think even for those of us who are privileged enough to afford it, the idea that college is a privilege makes us feel indebted socially if not financially, which I think contributes to the feeling of imposter syndrome that many students get. I have some other issues with the education system (I don't agree with grading as it currently exists, and I think we should have more freedom as students in Montessori schools have), but I think the cost also adds to all those other faults.
I really feel happy for living in Denmark.
My family is probably at the highest considered lower middle class, and that's not even so to say their fault.
My dad has epilepsy and working a full job was so damaging to his health doctors to him to quit work and a apply for early pension, so even though he now goes at home, feeling bored, and has done for the last 30+ years, his body can't handle working even though he has the same build in mindset as he gave me, to work is to live, since when you work you do something and feel valued. Then there is my mum who's health is still good enough for a job, but she can't handle more hours even though we could use money, since her body ain't the best either.
Even with all that stacked against me, I, with the help of some willpower and goverment funded education, goverment funded free libraries and hospitals that make it so if I get sick, I won't get so much debt that I need to start working, has made I possible for me to pursue higher education and I'm on my way to go to university coming from a family with nothing, pretty decent grades and everything. Imagine if I didn't have that opportunity, and if others in Denmark didn't have, they would lose so much potential in smart people who just couldn't afford the time to study, since when you are hungry, reading books won't feed ya
Just as an example. Even if you call some majors useless. I’d think medical, engineering, business, and more would be considered “important” in general society
I agree. I would also include communications and information degrees, especially now.
May '68 is perhaps the first time I've heard J.C talk about France positively.
Very enlightening. I honestly thought colleges in the US had always charged tuition, just based on assumption. It doesn't surprise me that conservatives are responsible for the current pay-to-win scenario with higher education.
I was lucky enough to not have to get a loan for my undergraduate degree, but I really wanted a master's degree after that so I ended up having to take out a loan. The loan was for about $28k, and after 10 years of paying it off at $650 per month, my balance earlier this year was still $20k. Talk about the math not adding up... that damn interest is so predatory it blows my mind. I'm so thankful that Biden finally lived up to his promise and cancelled at least a big portion of everyone's student debt. Although it's not gone completely, the current debt is at least much more manageable now. I also appreciate so much how many other people that helped. I wonder though... how many people did the $10k of forgiveness significantly help? Most people I know owe many multiples of that amount.
for your case, going from $28k to $18k sounds pretty good, but if you go from 50k to 40k it's not that much
What was even the interest rate??? I estimated it to be about 30%? I've never heard of it
Thanks JT! I also enjoy the deprogram immensely.
It’s really problematic that people call humanities gen eds “useless” because they’re getting a STEM or business degree. It’s so important for everyone to understand politics and history
@@silverscalederg8632 As a STEM graduate, don't be a moron.
You're obviously a humanities major lol. They're useless in that they can't be used, not that they don't teach you about the world. And politics is worse than most, not worth studying in college.
@@silverscalederg8632 Most people won't do that. And some things aren't enough reading them for yourself, a good teacher/professor can really open your mind.
A lot of STEM majors can barely read or have low reading comprehension, the same with writing, and that's not good.
@@MoonOvIce "A lot of STEM majors can barely read or have low reading comprehension, the same with writing, and that's not good. " Reddit and Twitter comments are certainly evidence of that..
@@silverscalederg8632 humanities are also important and vital to the health of society, not learning things like history is helping society go down hill very fast.
Wonderful video JT. I ask myself daily on if there's anything that reagan didn't ruin, and each day the answer continues to be "hahaha no, reagan was a monster"
Do you think he “drove” those, or he was just the actor directed by “dark forces”.
@@Ihatebs Perhaps both, if by "dark forces" you mean capitalists that served as his advisors and confidants. However I also think that the degradation of all american institutions that we have seen since reagan are a direct result of his liberalization policies (reaganomic/trickle down economics).
Things like the falling of unionization, stagnation of pay, increasing inflation, decreasing literacy and education, are all a result of the policies pursued by the nixon and reagan administrations, which were implemented by loyal advisors who thought cost cutting and liberalization were the solutions to the problems we saw in many of our underfunded social institutions.
The dark force, really, was liberalization driven by capitalist think tanks and notions that the "free market" would somehow solve our problems, which it clearly didn't.
@@DougMed Capitalists do not value the free market. If they did, they'd recognize that outside intervention is the only way a theoretical free market can ever exist. Economists even have a name for this undeniable fact, they coined the term "market power", the ability to influence a market through purely economic forces (in other words, the ability to prevent a market from being free in the first place).
"It wasn't always like this" is the most important angle American citizens, most of whom are woefully illiterate on history, should be targeted with in every political argument. Once they are given factual knowledge on how the neoliberal work precarity, the rich paying minuscule tax, deregulated industries, etc are historical contingencies stemming from specific decisions by specific people at specific points in time, and are taught the history of The New Deal, 19th century mill workers seeing ownership of their workplace as the default normal, etc, you immediately notice how they enter a confused state where they can't find words anymore to keep justifying the "well this is the reality I guess" state of things. That state is step one on their road to countering narratives that serve the status quo.