Argument: My argument sets out to address why American students are willing to pay more for their education by attending colleges in America when they have the option of practically (or actually) free college tuition in Europe. Students from the United States choose to attend universities “at home” instead of in Europe because of better graduation rates and employability due to a more career-focused model of education, despite rising tuition costs that result from an increase in privatization. Counterargument: My counterargument comes from Caitlin Zaloom’s enmeshed autonomy. As we’ve seen, the higher education system in the US forces students to rely on their parents to help fund their education. Zaloom argues in favor of traditional models of European education because it puts less of a financial strain on students and their families. She also uses Germany as an example because of its free tuition. Families who send their students there are only required to support with living...
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ReplyDeleteThis is a great topic and one I would like to know more about myself. I thought that Caitlin Zaloom's discussion of college financing in some other countries was very interesting for comparison, and might make a good starting point. You might also read Lara Takenaga's article "4 Years of College, $0 in Debt: How Some Countries Make Higher Education Affordable" in The New York Times (May 28, 2019), which is based on self-reports from readers.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/reader-center/international-college-costs-financing.html
You will have to give some thought about what particular angle to take in analyzing these differences, so that your paper doesn't become just a "report" on the differences from country to country, or an elaborate version of compare and contrast.
Certainly neoliberalism (as discussed by Melinda Cooper) is one of the ideological justifications for state cuts and tuition hikes, and Britain is another country besides the U.S. where that has taken hold, with many of the same effects as here. There have also been occasional threats from a rise in neoliberalism elsewhere -- including Canada.
However, neoliberalism seems less a cause than a symptom of some larger issue.
One question is whether population diversity, and the rise of racism and xenophobia, might be one of the underlying causes for the rise of neoliberalism. Basically, the idea is that countries with relatively homogeneous populations (especially in Europe) tend to have an easier time maintaining a high level of state-support for higher education because citizens feel they are helping fund educations of people like themselves. But in countries with greater diversity, and rising white resentment, you will see cut-backs.
There was a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (which you can access free from any Rutgers computer -- in the computer labs, in the libraries, or logged into a Rutgers server) titled "Can ‘White Resentment’ Help Explain Higher-Education Cuts?"
by Eric Kelderman (The Chronicle, Jan. 27, 2020) that supported the race thesis.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-White-Resentment-/247921
You might also track down the paper it cites (though you may need to order it through the libraries).
An earlier article by Scott Carlson titled "When College was a Public Good" makes a similar argument.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/When-College-Was-a-Public-Good/238501
(That article is also among the supplemental texts on our Canvas site).
And Melinda Cooper offers some good discussion of the dog-whistle politics that used race to push through the neoliberal policy agenda of Ronald Reagan.
This is just one explanation for why the U.S. had a tough time maintaining strong state support for higher education once racial diversity among college students started to rise.
One previous student compared the U.S. to Norway and other countries:
ReplyDeletehttps://ek605.blogspot.com/2017/12/blog-10.html#more