What is lost when education ceases to be a free public good

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion essay by E. Tammy Kim, ”What free college really means,” June 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/30/opinion/warren-sanders-free-college.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#comments:

The rise of neoliberalism in the '70s meant privatization of what had been public goods, including education. This created both massive student debt and pressures to reorient education to job and career preparation alone. This removes from higher education its contribution to a meaningful life, with an educated citizenry, even if largely limited to the privileged "middle-class." Such a citizenry is the basis of the thoughtful public discourse that forms a public sphere or civil society, which liberal activists in Eastern Europe successfully criticized their own societies as lacking.

Such thoughtful discourse has been diminishing even as social media have gotten more people talking to each other. And this has been true at universities also, where most often the liberal left has struggled over the symbolic distribution of access to what had already been reduced to career prep.

A shift back towards education as public good is the best bulwark against fascist and authoritarian drift, and of making this country again worthy of its promises of greatness.

What happened is capital found new ways to offload costs. It has long been the case that workers are expected to pay many of the indirect costs of working, because they are also costs of living. Your needs, including a right not be insulted, are important if they are your employer's also.

More than survival, we want meaningful private and public lives. Fascism makes us live with boredom instead.