“So here’s how I see it: Much of the student debt weighing down millions of Americans can be attributed to false promises.”

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and opinion columnist for The New York Times, April 29, 2022.

I’ve talked frequently about the idea of cost versus value and how these interrelated concepts don’t always line up. For example, I discussed the short and long term value of the bi-partisan Infrastructure Law and proposed Build Back Better Plan, despite its high, overall cost, although that cost is proposed to be spread over 10 years.

And with the ever-increasing costs of higher education, the value of that education for each student differs wildly, both in economic payoff and providing a solid base for making sense of our world, which only a “high quality” education likely will accomplish. Typically, and I am generalizing here, a fully online two or four year degree by a barely accredited “university” is not what I mean by high quality. Yet these students rack up debt and have to pay it off, with not much to show for it in terms of either learning anything substantive or getting ahead economically.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think that one of the most important comments about education I’ve heard recently is that our economy should be prepared and able to work for those who choose not to go to college (paraphrasing Secretary Pete Buttigieg).

Share

I’ve gathered a few articles this week that touch on the problem of student debt, attempts at equalizing environmental impacts of pollution, and how we might wean ourselves from coal. Completely.

— The issue of student debt and the economic payoff of higher education is exactly what New York Times Opinion Columnist, Paul Krugman, discusses in a recent piece titled, Wonking Out: Education Has Less To Do With Inequality Than You Think: That much of student debt is accumulated under false pretenses, whether you’re hoodwinked by fraudulent for-profit colleges like now defunct Trump University, or you believe that any college degree you earn will launch you into the economic elite. And Krugman makes a wonderful case why these assumptions aren’t true, and why student loan forgiveness is necessary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/opinion/college-student-loan-debt.html

— Next up is a piece from yesterday’s Washington Post that explains how the Justice Department and the U.S. EPA are going to right the wrongs of environmental inequities. They have created The Office of Environmental Justice, which is intended to bring a holistic government approach to ensuring that all communities, including those that have suffered historical racial discrimination, have access to clean water and clean air—a given in one of the richest countries in the world, don’t you think?

Experts have said neighborhoods with higher concentrations of racial minorities and the economically disadvantaged are more likely to suffer health problems caused by environmental pollution or degradation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/05/05/biden-environmental-justice-effort/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_politics

— And finally for today, a super article written by ProPublica and co-published with The New Yorker, focusing on what the United States can learn from Germany’s attempt to wean itself from coal. The piece weaves in some juicy statistics about our own West Virginia—with all the hoopla about the disaster that would befall the state if we transitioned from coal, here is an interesting stat: “…fewer than 15,000 people now work in coal mining, down from 100,000 in the 1950’s”. The population of West Virginia as of July 2021, although it continues to decline, is 1,782,959.

In the U.S., the coal exit has been haphazard. Federal attempts to move beyond coal went dormant under President Donald Trump, and under President Joe Biden they are now running up against the opposition of Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who holds both the crucial 50th vote in the Senate and a stake in a family coal business that earned him nearly $500,000 in 2020.

By contrast, in Germany, which depends more on coal for its overall energy needs than the U.S., it has established an official transition commission as part of its “ ‘Energiewende’, or energy pivot” and enacted legislation that sets specific timelines for mines and coal-fired plant closures, plus compensation for workers, mine owners and even entire communities to ensure a less painful transition.

What can we learn from Germany’s effort to phase out coal for energy use? What are your thoughts on student debt relief and the value of higher education? And what about our belated attempts to address environmental justice?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comment Section below:

Leave a comment

And if you are not already a paying or free subscriber, here’s your golden opportunity!