In late 2020, I wrote a post titled Living in the Hate of the Common People, and in early 2021, I wrote a sequel.  I think these posts, and the general pattern they describe, are very relevant to the current issues about student loans and the overall topic of education funding.  In summary:

Someone at a social media site, who I will not dignify with a link, wrote, “I think we need to find a way to stop the working class from voting altogether.”  An example of this attitude appeared on MSNBC back in August 2021, with anchor Chris Hayes and Washington Post writer Dave Weigel avidly agreeing about the characteristics of Trump supporters (of whom they don’t approve) … men without a college degree who have enough income to buy a boat (Hayes qualifies it as white men). Personally, I tend to admire people who have managed to do ok or very well for themselves without the benefit of a college credential. (And anyone believing that a college degree necessarily implies that an individual has acquired a broad base of knowledge and thinking skills hasn’t been paying much attention of late.)

As reported by Veritas, a lawyer employed by PBS had resigned after being caught saying things like it was “great” that coronavirus cases were spiking in red states because they might infect Trump voters and suggested that Republican voters should have their children put in re-education camps.

The DC-based lawyer also said “Americans are so f–king dumb. You know, most people are dumb,” and “It’s good to live in a place where people are educated and know stuff. Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or states where everybody’s just stupid?”

The PBS network, of course, attempted to distance itself from these comments, saying that “There is no place for hateful rhetoric at PBS, and this individual’s views in no way reflect our values or opinions.” I’m not so sure about that.  I expect that such beliefs/attitudes are pretty common among employees of PBS and similar organizations, even if usually expressed a little more carefully and diplomatically.

Having a college degree, in today’s America, does not by any means guarantee that an individual has good thinking skills and a wide knowledge base.  Many studies, for example, have demonstrated the lack of historical knowledge among large numbers of college graduates.  And scientific and technical knowledge, among graduates who are not specialists in such fields, are at appallingly low levels.  In articles about energy storage, for example, very few writers appear to grasp the distinction between a Megawatt and a Megawatt-Hour and why that distinction is of the essence when talking about storage. (This is true of coverage in business media as well as in general media.)  Referring to the political reporters with whom the Obama administration interacted on a daily basis,  Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor (Ben Rhodes) said, “They literally know nothing.”  I’m sure all these reporters went to college, and most of them to ‘elite’ colleges.

What college is all too often about, in addition to that piece of paper, is being able to conduct a conversation that will identify you as a member of Our Kind of People, and this includes terminology as well as political and social attitudes.  See my post Aerodynamics, Art History, and the Assignment of Names for discussion of the Terminology point.  (I believe this Terminology point is what David Mamet was referring when talking about ‘hieratic language’ and making the point that Trump was considered unacceptable to many because he didn’t speak in hieratic language.)

Criticism of the student loan bailout has focused on its expense (which may exceed $1 trillion), its questionable legality, its obvious vote-buying motivations, and its fundamental unfairness. These are all important points.  But there is also another very important point:

Canceling this debt sends a message to college administrators: Keep on doing what you’ve been doing…we’ve got your back.  It tends to undermine the pressures for reform that have been building up.  And it also tends to reinforce the belief among the degreed..and especially among the advanced-degreed…that We are the people who matter, we are the in-crowd.

Higher education in the US is a huge industry…US colleges have about 3.5 million employees.  (This compares with 1.4 million for farming, forestry, and fishing, 3.1 million for food & beverage stores, and only about 1.7 million for rail and truck transportation combined.)  Add the 8 million employees of primary and secondary schools to get an idea of just how huge the total US education industry is.  (And the overhead levels, as opposed to people actually doing teaching, have been increasing.)  I doubt that there is any other industry, from agriculture to semiconductors to steel, that has the raw political influence of education.

Of course, education is important.  But this doesn’t mean that anything that calls itself education is worthwhile, nor that educational institutions should have an unlimited call on the resources of the United States.  Just as the fact that national defense is important doesn’t mean that some badly-thought-out weapons system should be automatically approved, or that costs should be ignored in defense contracting.

And, as we see in the comments of so many ‘progressives’, education is too often being used as a criterion to draw class boundaries and to keep people in their places.

The management and social thinker Peter Drucker, writing in 1969, said:

The most serious impact of the long years of schooling is, however, the “diploma curtain” between those with degrees and those without. It threatens to cut society in two for the first time in American history…By denying opportunity to those without higher education, we are denying access to contribution and performance to a large number of people of superior ability, intelligence, and capacity to achieve…I expect, within ten years or so, to see a proposal before one of our state legislatures or up for referendum to ban, on applications for employment, all questions related to educational status…I, for one, shall vote for this proposal if I can.

Drucker also said:

It is highly probable that the next great wave of popular criticism, indignation, and revolt in the United States will be provoked by the arrogance of the learned.

For ‘the learned’, I would substitute ‘the credentialed.’  Peter Drucker himself was learned; many of the people today asserting their education-based superiority are merely credentialed.

Drucker, himself a European,  also warned Americans of the dangers involved when ‘elite’ universities become excessively influential:

One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…

American society today is a lot closer to accepting the claim of HLS as a Grande Ecole than it was when Drucker wrote.  Drucker also said:  “It is almost impossible to explain to a European that the strength of American higher education lies in this absence of schools for leaders and schools for followers”…well, there is far too much of a trend in this direction in America today.

There is also an increasing trend to demand not only a college degree, but some form of graduate degree as a requisite for a serious career. Like the original ‘diploma curtain’ of which Drucker wrote, this has resulted in the waste of human potential. I am confident that over the last week:

–there was an employee at a bank who would have made an excellent branch manager, but was not considered for the position because she did not have a degree.
–there was a branch manager who did have a degree, but was not considered for a regional executive position where she would have done an excellent job…because she didn’t have an MBA.
–there was a regional executive who would have liked to move into an Investment Banking job…and who did have an MBA…who wasn’t considered because his MBA wasn’t from an ‘elite’ school.

Obviously, there are fields in which credentials exist which are meaningful and important.  Airline Transport Pilot, for example.  Structural Engineer.  Certified Public Accountant.  But there are a lot more areas in which credentials are either over-emphasized or are demanded when not really relevant to the job.

Student debt cancellation, despite its cost, unfairness, and the voter anger that is provoked, may be, on balance, a Dem political win.  It contributes to keeping the education machine, with all its dysfunctionalities, running full-blast and even increasing its speed, thereby rewarding a major contribution bloc and also helping to perpetuate an information environment that is Dem-friendly.  And it reduces pressure for the development of educational alternatives which might be both less expensive and less debt-friendly.

More from Drucker:

Historically, the men of knowledge have not held power, at least not in the West. They were ornaments…But now knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement. Scientists and scholars are no longer merely “on tap,” they are “on top.”…

But power and wealth impose responsibility. The learned may have more knowledge than the rest of us, but learning rarely confers wisdom. It is, therefore, not surprising that the men of knowledge do not realize that they have to acquire responsibility fast. They are no different from any other group that ever before entered into power..They too believe that anyone who questions their motives must be either fool or villain, either “anti-intellectual” or “McCarthyite.” But the men of knowledge, too, will find out that power can be justified only through responsibility…

Actions like the student loan cancellation delay the discovery of that sense of responsibility.

The Drucker quotes are from his book The Age of Discontinuity.  I excerpted more of his thoughts on education, in addition to the above points, here.