The 1960s were a decade of intellectual and political ferment on college campuses. Anti-war, feminist, and racial justice movements all found a foothold in higher education, with student activists often playing a pivotal role in social movements that extended far beyond the university. A crucial condition for the student radicalism of the time was the affordability of public higher education and the recent dissolution of barriers that prevented students of minoritized backgrounds from attending college. Today, these conditions have all but disappeared. Collectively, college graduates owe some $1.6 trillion in student debt. The most elite institutions have been cordoned off from students of working class backgrounds by astronomically high tuition fees. Even public universities demand staggering rates from their students. When did this change occur, and why? Retired professor of history Ellen Schrecker joins The Chris Hedges Report to explain the long assault on public, affordable higher education detailed in her new book, The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s.
Ellen Schrecker is a retired professor of history at Yeshiva University. She is the author of several books on McCarthyism and higher education.
Studio Production: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Kayla Rivara
Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
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** (Disclaimer: This video content is intended for educational and informational purposes only) **
I really listen to my elders from the generation right before me. They talk like things are better but their worse, what did y’all do????
Runaway tuition costs and university presidents making huge money
Federal backing of student loans did this. Before that, the college was responsible for the loan, and getting paid back so they could only invest in the education of a student if they were confident the student could pay them back. They therefore had an incentive to give them a useful education that would allow the student to become productive.
That ended when the federal government guaranteed student loans. The college gets paid immediately so they have no incentive on producing a productive member of society. The taxpayer is on the hook for the loan.
This happened under William Clinton.
It was free until Foundational Black Americans wanted to attend college, so they put a price to enter, in a attempt to discourage them.
Dammit Dr Schrecker, you have retired from teaching. So kindly shut it. You were asked to this interview to discuss Mr. Hedges's topic of why colleges have become unaffordable. And you completely hijacked the interview, because you like the sound of your voice, and you like your words more than anybody else's. How rude. There is nobody that listens to Chris Hedges that does not know the history of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. So aaalll of your teaching preaching was wasted. I kept waiting for Mr. Hedges to bring it back to topic. And he tried, not once but twice. But he's a gentleman. So he let you run your mouth.
I was adjunct for over two decades, gig work with zero benefits. Now with the recent cultural changes, I am not willing to go back into the classroom under any circumstances. I'm going into nursing, which means at least three years of college expenses. I thought I might get some insight from this interview, not some tired old history lesson that everybody who tunes in to Chris Hedges learned decades ago. Put it away, Dr. Schrecker, put it away. You apparently have no new insights to offer.
Simple.., our kids became cash cows
I see lots of young people from India at our colleges. Thanks to American businesses, they made a middle class in India and took away American middle class. American kids can't afford to pay for college. We need to make college free for American born citizens.
Going to school should be free for every American.
What happened? Some people started to wakeup! Some people started realizing that they have been enslaved.
Capitalism can't have its slaves running around knowing that their slaves now can they?
Humanity needs to just stop!
A reset is needed before anything else!
Humanity, "whether or not any of you realize it or not " gets its strength, it's intelligents ,and comfort from this planet.
A separation has occurred in our psyches that most of Humanity's problems stem from. Most of Humanity has no spiritual connection to this planet. Once Humanity regains the connection you will realize of what I speak.
The Turtle Island Indigenous, still retain this connection and in the interest of saving all life on this planet, they are willing to help the rest of us reconnect!
Sherri Mitchell's book Sacred Instruction.
Is written with all of Humanity in mind.
This connection is wonderful and impossible to describe. Buy the book read it
make the connection! Be a part of saving all life on this planet.
I came of age in New York City in the 1960s, although I was too young to know as much as revealed in this discussion. I attended The City College of NY (CCNY) that was dubbed the Communist College of NY because Julius Rosenberg studied there. As aware as I thought I was, this interview put what I knew and experienced into a larger context. I appreciate hearing interviews with people well versed in the events of these times and cannot thank you enough for providing a platform for authors like Ellen Schrecker.
So since the 1960s America has become more stupider! We're falling way behind on china-russia Vietnam! And we wonder why
Ronald Reagan and the Republicans have been the root of our problems since 1984 and not one president since then has corrected what he did not one
Biden is funding Nazis in Ukraine while Americans live in poverty – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMN4MkEyVWY&t=1s
The answer to any price question is Supply and Demand.
–B.A. Economics UCSD
High costs of secondary education serves the same purpose as the repeal of the GI Bill: an educated populace will question.
An uneducated populace will accept lies as truth.
Kleptocracy, malfeasance, conniving parasitic corporateer profiteer NGOs, corruption, bailout subsidize prop-up & undeserved indulgence while chisel heist & impose undeserved disparity, institutional intrusion, …
The blacklisted were often apologists for Stalin and Chairman Mao. Many of the rest were their dupes. Others, later, were goodhearted non-ideological opponents of the Vietnam war.
This proves that The uneducated deprived hostile Beast is lurking around every corner in America the richest country and quasi trendsetter in the world. Thank you Real News Network for this Peak into the current terrifying miss use of our public funds that has been ordained by the unconsolable Beast. Amazingly all these events have occurred in the land of the ordained exceptionalists
Geez the libs love being up Berkeley and free speech, remember that 1 time we were the good guys how about everybody still be for free speech, like on twitter, YouTube , facebook today? The mental gymnastics to believe the Berkeley protests were righteous and then advocate for censoring speech online is insane
this is very telling, as most black colleges today are far from radical, in fact they are borderline conservative in some respects.
Do I remember hearing that black people were exempt from receiving the GI bill???
Would love to hear more about how tuitions rose, which we didn't get to
What does student debt have to do with "AFFORDABLE EDUCATION"? NOTHING!!! The massive educational complex which includes the marriage of research and corporations that are in bed with governmental compromised sectors who are non-elected bureaucrats in the service of industrial level corruption, thus you get the very thing President Ike Eisenhower warned us, but few ever mentioned, the scientific-technological Elite:
Scientific-technological elite
He also expressed his concomitant concern for corruption of the scientific process as part of this centralization of funding in the Federal government, and vice versa:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[1]
The germs of Germ-any put barriers between learning from you can't sit here with Rosa Parks to almost 250,000 for colleges and when it was not corrected and many measures of extortion and slave wages too.
The germs of Germany matrix of the blue pill and the Red pills and can't forget the opium and the bending of the spoon 🥄 and poison.
I weep for my country and the one I envisioned we would be living in after the success hoped for following the activist eras of anti racism and anti war and free speech on campuses through the 60s and 70s .
Will look to get the book, Thank you Chris and Ellen
So f.. up
Most blokes are better off going to trade school or doing an apprenticeship, plumbers, Sparkiest (electricians) , chippies (carpenters & builders) & mechanics, etc, can earn close to 6 figures or more these days. All jobs more useful than a BA too.
Perhaps the error is in the title given to this clip: You took 29 minutes talking about the purge of professors because of political beliefs. And you spend about 2 minutes discussing the financial situation at universities – reduction in funding – but this presentation has made virtually NO discussion on the promised topic. At the very end of your presentation you talk about teachers being paid very poorly but you have not given any precise and detailed account of how …step by step…education became more expensive and less affordable. An extremely disappointing and rambling presentation. Or, fix the title of the clip!
What happened? In order to have an “IDIOCRACY†you must first have people who have failed to learn anything other than one lane of information.
Back when everyone could go to college there wasn’t the wealth of information easily available to help educate you on subjects out of your expertise. Now, you don’t need a degree to be an expert and stupid people run the world by “influencing†other stupid people. I believe I is called “IDIOCRACYâ€
There are too many people getting stinking rich working for universities. The fact that they don’t really do anything but smile and collect paychecks is irrelevant to the education. Nepotism and cronyism have taken over and are getting rich at universities all across America.
Ronald Reagan decided rich people should be the only educated Americans. The educated rich would then trickle down education to the rest of the USA. I am not speaking from anecdotal evidence I was there.