'Our belief in education is so great it transcends evidence'
How did all these for profit colleges with no cultural resonance with Black people, no history with Black people, get all these Black people?
The reason why we invest so much of the public's money in building systems of education, the reason why we put so much of our political capital into making those things available is because we think they serve a public good. We think it is important that people have access to education. I call this ‘the education gospel.’ Our belief in education is so great it transcends evidence. We don't know how it works, we just know it is important. This is the fundamental narrative and ideology of why education matters in the US and why we are all expected to contribute to the sustenance of education.
— Tressie McMillan Cottom @ The New School
We’ve reached a threshold of social and political realignment and it is time to decide what kind of world you want to participate in. Two words matter in this instance: states and markets. When we ask ourselves if we want the government, often times called the state, to do more or less for our wellbeing, we are also asking ourselves if we care to maintain capitalism, also known as a free market economy, as we know it.
Do you want to participate in a world with a hands-off government and individual people with money respond to our social problems? Or a world where the government does more to shepherd public wellbeing and individual people with money do less social caretaking? Or do you want to participate in a classless, moneyless, stateless society where the people within a community participate directly in a democratic process to create and maintain the foundations of living well together?
Where are you along this spectrum?
I’ve been using Black Socialists in America’s mumbo jumbo section to understand fancy shmancy political terms and simple political terms with big concepts. “In general terms,” it says, “a state is any politically organized community under a single government.” There was a time when I didn’t know what was meant by the phrase “state sanctioned violence” when it was used to describe the murders of Black people by police or when the police were described as “agents of the state”.
In our world, states—politically organized communities—have governments and borders mostly on stolen land. In a free market economy, a market is a place where buyers and sellers exchange goods and services. How does a democracy fit into this picture?
Presently, America is playing a little game of democracy charades. Because Americans exalt capitalism, our government is equal parts oligarchy and autocracy. These terms are a fancy way of saying power does not live with the people but with a powerful few or one, single, powerful, actor. This does not mean that our efforts to preserve an American democracy are futile but from my view, it is a way of seeing clearly the danger we’re in and the degree to which inequality persists in this country.
I learned what an oligarchy was when 1. watching Billions and 2. early on during my reading of Lower Ed, I listened to the smart women of Gaslit Nation talk about oligarchies and the Cold War with Timothy Snyder and it made me think: oh, government rule by a powerful few? I see you, America.
At the same time American democracy is rapidly dissolving, although it is debatable whether or not we have a democracy at all, there is a political philosophy ripping through our social contract like the plague. It’s another mouthful of a word and it is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a fancy way of describing what it means to be self made. It is also a philosophy that says all problems are better solved by the marketplace.
There is no better way for me to understand neoliberalism as an ideology and a dominant political philosophy than thinking about the existence of a for-profit college and contemplating my experience as a reluctant solopreneur and a for-profit college graduate. After for-profit colleges, for-profit hospitals are next on my shit list.
Every degree you can think of can be pursued in the for-profit sector. It would be fine if it were accessible and transformed the life chances of the students who attend them. The question is do they?
— Tressie McMillan Cottom @ The New School
You wouldn’t typically associate for-profit colleges, if you’ve thought of them at all, with Black women’s reproductive wellbeing. It is relevant to me because how Black women are educated directly impacts our ability to plan for and take care of our families with dignity. To parent, you need money. To afford healthcare, you need money. Childcare? Money. Self care? Money. In a capitalist society, money means freedom, independence, and security.
Education was supposed to guarantee good jobs and better pay. If Black women were the highest educated (a contested statistic) wouldn’t we be paid more? For-profit colleges are the sector of higher education producing the most African Americans with a college degree, and they are the most expensive and the most risky. It’s a problem for Tressie and it’s a problem for me, too.
Roll with me here. If Black women are enrolling in colleges at a higher percentage than any other group, as this blog post explores, could it be related to the expansion of for-profit colleges from 2005 to 2014? In Lower Ed, we learn that by 2014, for-profit colleges “increased its aggregate enrollment since 1998 by 225 percent to 2.1 million students, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.” I’m not sure I see a cause and effect relationship, but these statistics certainly feel like cousins.