In Education policy, as with all things, follow the money
A quick look at one think tank's report on student debt
A report about how to curtail student debt for “the success of all students” crossed my desk some time ago and I’ve decided to use it as an example of how education policy is mainly driven by activism.
To preface that thesis, one only has to look back at the advent of Common Core back around 2010 through 2014 and the related astroturfing of “education nonprofits” promoting Common Core during that time. The vast majority of these nonprofits, which at the time I had dubbed “Potemkin villages,” were financially backed by one group - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The current example is no different.
Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) released a report called "Rising Above The Threshold: How Expansions in Financial Aid Can Increase the Equitable Delivery of Postsecondary Value for More Students.”
A quick look at the 1993-founded IHEP before we continue to the report itself.
The group’s mission focuses on low-income and “marginalized” groups and the "Who we are" is so vague that it’s a tip-off this is less a policy outfit and more of an advocacy think tank.
We are a diverse and dedicated team of experienced practitioners driven by our passion for improving college access and success in higher education for today’s students.
As they say, follow the money.
Looking at where a group gets its money can tell you more than vague mission statements or “Who we are” missives on a website. IHEP’s mission statement gives a glimpse of the money:
In addition to secure donations via PayPal, we accept donations through Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), including Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, and BNY Mellon."
According to IHEP’s 990 filings, the group has raked in millions annually. In 2017, IHEP hit a high mark of $7,417,359. The most recent 990 filing seems to indicate that the report & IHEPs commission cost $1,079,887
The staff is highly compensated and all make six figures. For example, the CEO's salary is listed as $233,495 with additional outside compensation of $33,430.
The first 990 filing appears to be in 2001 in which it pulled down over $1.91 million. The Kellogg, Hewitt, and Ford foundations appear to have been the major donors. So was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Getting back to IHEP’s report and note that the "funding partner" is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The report is described as using “available data to find that at least 2,414 institutions, enrolling 18.3 million undergraduates nationwide, typically deliver a minimum economic return to students, defined as Threshold 0.”
The description continues, with emphasis added, “Students meet Threshold 0 if they earn at least as much as a high school graduate, plus enough to recoup their investment in college within ten years. But approximately 500 institutions, enrolling nearly 1.5 million undergraduate students, do not meet this threshold. Affordability is part of the reason why.”
“Affordability” is the whole point of the report and a line can be drawn between this report and President Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan which the U.S. Supreme Court just rejected.
Yes, affordability is "part" of the reason but it's not the main part.
College is expensive and has only increased in cost over the last two decades, but the main reason students are not seeing “Threshold 0” is their own choices.
Students have chosen to take out those loans and then invest them in a degree area that cannot possibly make a return on that investment. They choose to take crappy (and pardon the language) useless bullshit courses cobbled together to make an even crappier, useless degree that no one can get a decent job with or they choose not to finish the degree at all.
Not finishing has direct ties to being unable or unprepared for higher-level educational work, which is an increasing problem. This is a problem the report doesn't even touch on nor the topic of the rising rates of colleges reporting high remediation rates for students after graduating high school.
K-5 is supposed to be the foundation for all that is built after in a student's career and academic achievement in those grades had already been stagnant or even falling before the pandemic. Middle school and high school are supposed to build on that faulty foundation. What is that current foundation? Common Core.
The opening paragraph of the report tells you the underlying problem with the entire report; emphasis added:
"There is overwhelming evidence that pursuing a college education provides substantial economic and non-economic benefits to students.1 But how much a degree is worth depends heavily on the institution a student attends. Unfortunately, value also is still influenced by a student’s race, income, and gender, due to inequities in our higher education and workforce systems.
That last line tells you this report is about backing certain policies of the Biden administration - namely loan forgiveness, but also "free" tuition with a focus only on "underrepresented" minorities. So the reader is to assume then that Asian and white folks who have just as much in loans need not read any further?
Paragraph three further supports that assertion, and we learn more about the genesis of IHEP’s report:
This analysis builds on the work of the Postsecondary Value Commission,3 which sought to define postsecondary value, measure postsecondary value, and develop an action agenda to expand and improve value, all while centering equity in postsecondary policymaking. The Commission focused on equitable value for Black, Latinx and/or Hispanic, Indigenous, underrepresented Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) students, students from low-income backgrounds, and women—as well as the intersectional identities within and across these groups (e.g., low-income White students and men of color).
Fun fact: The "Postsecondary Value Commission" is a project of the report's author, IHEP. It is also where the “Threshold 0” is drawn from. So, in essence, the report is based on their own commission's work. Got that?
"The Postsecondary Value Commission brought together higher ed experts and national leaders to examine, explore, and define the value of postsecondary education in the U.S,” according to the commission’s website.
Higher ed experts? Yes, let's look at them.
The Commission members include IHEP's chief, the CEO of the Bill Gates Foundation, various state and national education muckety mucks, policy wonks, nonprofit leaders, and high-level business leaders.
It’s the kinds of cast and crew from Potemkin villages that pushed failed concepts like Common Core and the idea of higher education as the only path for decades.
A quick look at the methodology behind IHEP’s report shows obvious flaws like depending on the data that they've specifically chosen to support their own unstated end goal of erasing student debt and free college tuition:
Our report also explores how doubling the federal Pell Grant and implementing first- and lastdollar free college programs, sometimes called tuition-free college promise programs, would boost the number of institutions where the typical student earns more than Threshold 0.
More To The Story
Another unstated message in IHEP’s report is that everyone should seek higher education and could do so if it were more affordable.
At least one person in the last decade has bucked that idea: Mike Rowe.
Rowe, known for his popular show “Dirty Jobs,” has been on a mission to “help close the skills gap by challenging the stigmas and stereotypes that discourage people from pursuing the millions of available jobs and redefining the definitions of a good education and a good job.”
Sounds great and very logical.
The Washington Examiner had this great article on Rowe coming across a video of himself from 2011 in which he testified about skilled trade work in front of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
Rowe told the committee that skilled trades were the key to saving the U.S. economy, not jobs requiring a four-year degree.
No one in D.C. was listening in 2011.
Rowe went back in 2014 and still nothing.
When he went back again in 2017, something happened:
Rowe made his final plea to Congress in March of 2017 when he once again schlepped to Capitol Hill, this time for the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education. He discussed how Career and Technical Education (CTE) can help close the skills gap and empower students to succeed, and stressed the need to reform the current law.
His message was simple: Career and technical education, and skilled trade professions, need a PR makeover and a champion. “If you want to make America great again, you’ve got to make work cool again,” he said.
This time he got some movement. The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins Act) — the primary federal law aimed at developing and supporting CTE programs — was reauthorized, but not with the robust reform needed. His ideal of a groundswell of support for the trades from our lawmakers never materialized.
Flash forward to Jan. 2022 when Rowe was now talking with FOX News about the record 4.5M people quitting the workforce. Looks like his 2011 self was correct.
"This is a conversation about our workforce and the imbalanced nature of it and the way that's going to impact every single American who shares my addiction to smooth roads, indoor plumbing, affordable electricity and so forth," Rowe told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney.
The interview happened a month or so after U.S. job openings data neared a record high with 11 million for October 2021.
"I’ve never seen anything like this," Rowe told Varney. "I've heard from the energy industry, the flooring industry... the restaurant industry, the cable and broadband industry, they are all struggling with the same basic problem."
Rowe went on to say there’s a gap in blue-collar workers.
Related to that gap, what Rowe had to say about "Quiet Quitting" by Gen Z:
Before and after the pandemic, it seems Mike Rowe has had it right all along.
Don't follow your passion.