NYU professor describes second-tier universities as higher education's Walking Dead, predicts "hundreds, if not thousands" will fail

Zero Hedge posted an article yesterday by Maria Copeland on the precarious condition of America's second-tier colleges.  Copeland quoted NYU professor Scott Galloway's dire prediction:

What department stores were to retail, tier-two higher tuition universities are about to become to [higher] education and that is they are soon going to become the walking dead.

 Galloway predicts that "hundred, if not thousands" of non-elite college will close within the next five to ten years.

I think Professor Galloway is right. We will soon see the mass closures of colleges and universities. Small institutions in New England, the mid-Atlantic states and the upper Midwest have already begun closing.

Why is this happening?

Sky-high tuition. First, small private colleges allowed their tuition to creep up to unreasonable levels.  Until recently, students and their families absorbed these tuition increases passively because they could always pay college costs by taking out more jumbo student loans.

But the coronavirus pandemic, which forced colleges to shift to online instruction, prompted many students to question the value of their educational experience. It is one thing to pay $50,000 a year to listen to a pompous professor's lecture when the student is sitting in an ivy-covered campus building surrounded by sexually active classmates. It is quite another to hear the same lecture on a home computer.

Colleges tried to reverse declining enrollments by drastically slashing tuition costs. Net first-year tuition at the private liberal arts colleges is now about half the sticker price.  But for many small schools, tuition cuts did not attract enough new students to maintain their revenues.

Fewer international students.  It's all about the money, and private American colleges aggressively recruited Asian (mainly Chinese) students who generally paid the full cost of tuition--no discounts for these kids.  But Asian enrollments have dropped off dramatically.

The colleges say that Chinese students are opting not to go to college in the U.S. because they are frightened by America's "gun culture" and Trump's so-called xenophobic foreign policy.  But I disagree.

Asian students and their parents have figured out that American higher education is not worth what it costs.  Secondary education in China and other Asian countries is generally more rigorous than U.S. high school programs. What must Chinese students think when they discover that many of their American classmates come to college without knowing the basic rules of grammar and diction?

Declining interest in the liberal arts. The small private colleges nestled in rural New England and small Midwestern towns specialize in the liberal arts: history, philosophy, literature, etc.  But young people aren't interested in getting a classical college education--especially when it will cost them a quarter-million dollars and doesn't prepare them for a job.

Second-tier colleges have tried to rebrand themselves by offering programs that are more vocationally oriented. But they are burdened by battalions of professors who got their Ph.Ds in the humanities and are unwilling or incapable of retooling.

Most of these professorial dinosaurs are tenured, entitling them to paychecks, health insurance, and pension plans.  The inability to jettison low-value faculty is bringing many private colleges down.

What does this mean to students and professors? Second-rung colleges have been in trouble for years, but the coronavirus pandemic may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  Now may be a good time for high school graduates to take a gap year while the turmoil in higher education gets sorted out.  College students should also consider transferring from expensive private schools to cheaper public universities.

Humanities professors at struggling private colleges need to formulate their Plan B.  There is an excellent chance their institution will shut down within the next few years.   And graduate students in the humanities need to rethink their career plans. In the coming years, the United States will need a lot more plumbers, electricians, and medical technicians and a lot fewer historians specializing in the Ming dynasty.

Second-tier private colleges: Are they the Walking Dead?

Planning on going to college this fall? Why not wait a year or two?

Since time immemorial, middle-class parents have urged their children to get a college education. A college degree, parents believed, was the indispensable ticket to a good life.  College was where young people prepared for the world of work, where they often met their future spouses, and where they formed lifelong ties to classmates.

But listen carefully. Times have changed. The coronavirus, campus unrest, and a troubled economy have undermined the value of a college degree. If you are thinking about enrolling for college this fall, you might want to postpone that plan--at least for a year. And here is why:

The coronavirus pandemic. First of all, the COVID-19 epidemic forced virtually every American college to close last spring and to shift from live instruction to a distance-learning format.  Most schools have announced that they will be teaching their courses online this fall. 

Moreover, dorm life, college sports, and extracurricular activities will all be negatively impacted by the coronavirus.  In short, going to college next year may not be much fun.

Colleges and universities will learn to adapt to a post-pandemic world, but it will probably take a couple of years before they figure it out. Why not postpone college for a year or two while this transition is ongoing?

Less police protection.  Colleges have a legal duty to keep their students safe on campus and in the dorms. Most colleges meet this responsibility by maintaining a campus police force.

In the wake of George Floyd's killing, however, many colleges and universities are facing intense pressure to dismantle their police forces. As Insider Higher Ed recently reported:

 Student organizations, workers’ unions and individual activists at dozens of universities are calling on administrations to cut ties with local police or disband campus police departments, saying that policing institutions enact violence upon black people and uphold white supremacy.

So if you go to college this fall, there is a good chance that police protection on your campus will be diminished from what it was a year ago or even eliminated.  In my view, this is another reason to postpone going to college. Wait until the debate about campus law enforcement is resolved before embarking on your college career.

Growing uncertainty about the worth of a college degree. Although the higher-education industry tirelessly touts the value of college education, that mantra is becoming shopworn.

Without question, the cost of going to college is far too high.  In particular, students who take out student loans to major in "soft" disciplines (social sciences, humanities, gender studies, etc.) are finding that their degrees leave them with massive debt and no job.

Some young people go to college with a clear idea about how their degree will qualify them for vocations in such fields as engineering, business, computer sciences,  or medical technology. But others are clueless about why they are on campus.

If you have only a hazy notion about how you want to make a living, you should strongly consider working for a year after graduating from high school. You should use the time to reflect on your future and explore alternatives to chasing a college degree.

In my state, thousands of people have gotten technical training at vocational and community colleges and gone on to get good jobs with six-figure salaries.  If you ask these people whether they are sorry they didn't acquire a bachelor's degree, I think most will tell you no.

So think long and hard before going to college this fall, especially if you plan to finance your studies with student loans. Your chosen university will still be around in 2021 if you decide to pursue a college education. 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts: A Window into the World of Private Student Loans

CFPB v. NCSLT: A Settlement is Scuttled

In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued the National College Student Loan Trusts (NCSLT) and their debt collector, Transworld Systems, accusing the two defendants of illegal student-loan debt collection. Specifically, the CFPB accused NCSLT and Transworld of collecting on private student loans after the statute of limitations had expired and of suing debtors for unpaid student loans even though NCSLT could not prove it owned the debt.

CFPB and NCSLT  quickly entered into a settlement agreement subject to a federal court's approval. These are the essential terms of the settlement:

• National Collegiate and Transworld must conduct an independent audit of all 800,000 student loans in its various trusts.

• National Collegiate will stop trying to collect on student loans if it cannot prove it owns the debt.

• NCSLT will stop filing lawsuits on student loan debt after the statute of limitations has expired.

• NCSLT and its debt collecting agency will stop reporting negative credit information on borrowers that NCSLT improperly sued.

• NCST will stop filing false or improperly notarized legal documents.

• NCST will pay substantial monetary penalties.

Unfortunately for the litigants, Federal Judge Maryellen Noreika refused to approve the settlement because the parties involved did not have the authority to settle the lawsuit.

If this glitch gets worked out and the deal is finally approved, it could lead to $5 billion in debt relief for people who defaulted on private student loans. In the meantime, the lawsuit provides a window into the world of private student loans.

The Securitization of Private Student Loans

Most students finance their college education through government loans, and the total amount of outstanding federal student-loan debt is now $1.74 trillion. The private student-loan market is much smaller. According to Nerdwallet, college borrowers only owe about $125 billion in private student-loan debt.

Private banks and financial institutions (Sallie Mae, SoFi, Wells Fargo, etc.) issue student loans, but private lenders generally do not hold the loans on their books for very long. Instead, the loans are securitized. In other words, the loans are packaged and sold to investors as securities called student-loan asset-backed securities (SLABS). 

SLABS is attractive to institutional investors because they produce a reasonable return rate and are considered low risk. Historically, default rates have been lower for private student loans than federal loans because the banks usually require the student borrower to find a guarantor to co-sign a private student loan—often a parent or grandparent. Thus, if a student borrower defaults on a private loan, the lender can sue Mom or Granny. 

Also, student loans are difficult to discharge in bankruptcy because the same "undue hardship" standard that applies to federal loans also applies to private student loans.

Nevertheless, defaults on private student loans have shot up recently. National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts owns 800,000 private student loans. According to Bloomberg,  more than half of the principal on those loans was in default at the time of the proposed settlement between CFPB and NCSLT in 2017.

All these private student loans are managed by loan servicing companies, and when borrowers default, collection companies usually file suit on the creditors' behalf in a state court. In recent years, there have been thousands of lawsuits filed against private student-loan defaulters all over the United States. Transworld Systems alone has filed 38,000 debt-collection lawsuits.

Unfortunately for the creditors (the owners of the SLABS), statutes of limitation apply to collection efforts on private debt. Unless the creditor sues before the statutory limitation period expires, it cannot legally recover on student loans in default.

Moreover, the SLABS owners must prove they own the debt. In some cases, creditors have gone to court and found themselves unable to produce the paperwork that shows they are the legal owners of the debt they are trying to collect. 

Why is CFPB v NCSLT important?

If you've seen the movie The Big Short, you know that the financial crisis of 2008 was triggered by a wave of defaults on home mortgages. Financial institutions had bundled thousands of home loans into securities call ABS (asset-backed securities), which were represented as being low-risk investments.  

In fact, many of the underlying mortgages were subprime loans on homes that had been overvalued. When the housing market collapsed in 2008, millions of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages, and the ABS investors lost tons of money. 

Also, when creditors sued the defaulting homeowners, they often could not prove they owned the debt. A lot of the paperwork on these mortgages had been "robo-signed" and improperly notarized. In many instances, the courts refused to hold defaulting homeowners liable on their home loans.

Something like that is happening now in the private student-loan market. People who have private student loans are defaulting at a surprisingly high rate. Creditors are filing suit against defaulters but often cannot show they own the debt. In some instances, paperwork has been improperly"robo-signed," causing some judges to rule in favor of debtors. 

Financial commentators have warned for years that the student-loan program is in a bubble, much like the housing bubble of 2008, and that a major financial crisis in the student-loan industry is on the horizon. The coronavirus has put millions of Americans out of work, leaving them unable to make monthly payments on their federal and private student loans. In other words, the bubble may be about to burst.  

What this means is hard to say. In the private student-loan market, investors in SLABS will undoubtedly lose money, but the federal government holds more than 90 percent of all student loans. The Department of Education can maintain the status quo in the short term by merely continuing to issue student loans as it has for the past 50 years. But even Education Secretary Betsy DeVos admitted publicly in 2018 that only a minority of student borrowers are current on their loans.

Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed forgiving all federal student debt acquired to attend public colleges. But a more straightforward way to deal with this massive debt crisis is to allow insolvent student-loan debtors to discharge their debt in the bankruptcy courts.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos: What, Me Worry?

Don't go hating on Tulsa just because President Trump willl speak there in a few hours

President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Tulsa this evening, his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic descended on the United States.

Trump's media critics often mention the fact that Tulsa is the site of one of America's worst race riots. Indeed, on June 1, 1921, white rioters rampaged through Tulsa's Greenwood District, an affluent African American neighborhood, and destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes and businesses. Between 100 and 300 people were killed, and 6,000 African Americans were interned by law enforcement authorities. The Tulsa race massacre may, in fact, have been the worst race riot in American history.

Trump's media enemies insinuate that Trump picked Tulsa for his first post-coronavirus rally because he is a racist, and he finds Tulsa's history of racist violence appealing.  But to say such a thing, or even to imply it, is a slander on Tulsa, one of MidAmerica's most charming and lovely cities.

Tulsa was transformed during eastern Oklahoma's oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s, which brought enormous wealth to the city and a construction boom. As anyone knows who has visited Tulsa, the city is the home of an extensive collection of Art Deco buildings. It is truly a museum of early twentieth-century architecture.

Oil wealth also made possible the establishment of two nationally acclaimed museums: The Philbrook and the Gilcrease. The Philbrook Museum is located in what was once the home of oil magnate Waite Phillip and his wife Genevieve and contains an impressive and eclectic collection of art.

The Gilcrease Museum houses perhaps the world's most extensive collection of western American art. Thomas Gilcrease, another oil magnate, donated his own art collection to form the foundation of the museum's treasurers. Born of a mixed-race family (Scotch-Irish, French, and Creek), Gilcrease was enrolled in the Creek tribe when he was nine years old.

And Tulsa has other cultural treasures. The Bob Dylan papers and the Woodie Guthrie papers are housed in the city.  Both collections were purchased by the George Kaiser Foundation.

Over the years, Tulsa has been the home of countless famous actors, sports figures, and musicians. Tony Randall--part of The Odd Couple, is from Tulsa, along with Time Blake Nelson, the actor, screenwriter, and movie director.

Tim Blake Nelson deserves special mention. He is best know for his role in Brother Where Art Thou, but he also directed The Grey Zone, perhaps the best movie ever made about the Holocaust.

Before closing my paean to Tulsa, I must also mention that Tulsa is the home of Cain's Ballroom, where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys performed both live and on the radio during the 1930s. Cain's Ballroom helped popularize a new form of American music that blended classic swing with western themes and melodies. Even today, Cain's Ballroom is known as the Carnegie Hall of western swing.

Why am I going on so long about Tulsa?  Perhaps it is because I grew up in rural Oklahoma and always considered Tulsa as Oklahoma's most beautiful, gracious, and culturally rich city.  I still feel that way. So--whatever happens tonight at the Trump rally, please don't let the evening's events tarnish one of the great cities of America's flyover country.

Bob Wills and Texas Playboys performed in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Two LSU professors say they will refuse to teach incoming freshman who used the "n" word in a video: I disagree

Once upon a time, colleges and schools had the job of inculcating civic virtues in their students: to introduce them to the marketplace of ideas, to think objectively and rationally, to be tolerant of others, and to appreciate diverse values and cultures.

But maybe those days are past. According to some academics, incoming students should be vetted to make sure they already have a particular set of values.  If they don't have those values before enrolling, they should be refused admission.

That seems to be the view of two professors at Louisiana State University who vow not to teach an incoming freshman should he try to enroll in their classes. Why? Because the poor sap used the "n" word in a video that became widely publicized.

I think they are wrong to take that position.

Don't misunderstand me. I abhor racist speech and racist sentiments. The young person who used that word acted wrongly. But how will a public university inculcate better values if it refuses to admit someone intolerant or wrongheaded on issues of race?

I'm retired, but I would not refuse to teach this student. If he took my class on higher education law, he would be exposed to some of the famous civil rights cases of the U.S. Supreme Court: Sweatt v. Painter, Brown v. Board of Education, and Grutter v. Bollinger. If he were a student in my classroom, he would be learning about American law in a multicultural environment because a significant percentage of my students are African Americans.

The two professors say they will drop students from their classes who have a record of engaging in hate speech.  Allysa Johnson is an assistant professor in the Department of  Biological Sciences.  William Doerrler is an associate professor in the same department.  

Both professors are widely published, and I'm guessing that students who take their classes will be exposed to the fascinating and broadly useful research in the biological sciences.  Professor Johnson specializes in the genetic causes of age-related degenerative diseases.  Professor Doerrler researches in the area of bacterial resistance to antibiotics--a critical medical issue.

I do not know anything about the student whom Professors Johnson and Doerrler want to bar from their classrooms. Perhaps the student is an avowed racist with no interest in biology. On the other hand, the misguided kid might make an enormous contribution to American society, were to be admitted to LSU and have his mind opened to new ways of thinking by LSU's eminent faculty.

In my view, refusing to admit a student to a public university classroom because of unfortunate remarks the student made before coming on campus undermines the core mission of a university--which is to nurture and stimulate minds---to help students to become better people.

LSU removes Middleton's name from university library--good. But let's expose all the famous bigots in American higher education--including the ones at Harvard, Stanford, and M.I.T.

Louisiana State University announced that it is changing the name of the university's main library. The library was named after Troy H. Middleton, a genuine hero of World War II and L.S.U.'s president from 1951 to 1962. Unfortunately, by present-day standards, Mr. Middleton was a racist. Mr. Middleton was a bit like Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, who didn't get the memo from the Bolsheviks.

L.S.U.'s current interim president, Tom Galligan, explained the reasons for the change. "Our goal is to erase symbols of things that exemplify a racist past," Galligan stated.

Any student, or particularly a student of color, that has to go into any building which bears the name of someone not identified with progress and [instead] with racist traditions is to inhibit their education. They won't feel safe in that building.

President Galligan is right. It is simply unacceptable to require African Americans to study in buildings that were named after prominent racists.  But I think America's education leaders should widen their examination of our nation's chauvinistic past and expose all famous people in American history who were prejudiced against not only African Americans but Catholics and eastern Europeans as well.

As Thomas Leonard revealed in his book Illiberal Reformers, almost all American intellectuals and political leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were eugenicists. By definition, these people supported efforts to reduce so-called inferior racial strains from America's predominately white, Anglo-Saxon population.

Francis A. Walker, president of M.I.T. (1881-1897), was a eugenicist who was prejudiced against eastern and southern Europeans. Anderson Dixon White, president of Cornell  University(1866-1885), portrayed European immigrants as barbarian invaders. David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford from 1891 to 1913, held similar views.

Moreover, American intellectuals during this period were almost universally prejudiced against Catholics. For example, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School (1870-1895), refused to admit graduates from Catholic colleges to Harvard Law School.

Harvard's president, Charles William Eliot, supported Langdell's bigoted policy, claiming it was based on the inferior quality of Catholic colleges and not prejudice. Was President Eliot himself an anti-Catholic bigot?  You bet. On a trip to Europe in the mid-1860s, he wrote: "I hate Catholicism as I do poison, and all the pomp and power of the Church is depressing and mortifying me."

Racial and religious prejudice among American intellectuals during the Progressive era is well documented, and yet we are not renaming buildings that were named after prominent bigots.  Harvard's law library is still named after Dean Langdell.  Stanford still has a campus building named after David Starr Jordan. Walker Memorial at M.I.T. still honors its eugenicist president.

So here is my plea to American higher education. Yes, scrub the names of racists from campus buildings. But don't settle for outing Confederates and relatively obscure guys like Mr. Middleton.  Change the names of buildings that honor prominent eugenicists and religious bigots, including the buildings at Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, and M.I.T.

That's a big job, so you better get started.

Christopher Columbus Langdell: Bigot-in-Chief at Harvard Law School (1870-1895)

Christopher Columbus statue beheaded in Boston. The morons are out of control.

Poor Christopher Columbus. He wasn't woke, and he paid the price.

Over the last few days, protesters pulled down Chris's statue in Richmond and dumped it into a lake. And in Boston, vandals beheaded a likeness of Chris located in Boston's North End.

What did Mr. Columbus do to deserve these indignities? He discovered America--the racist son of a bitch.  And by introducing Europeans to the Western Hemisphere, he ushered in a long era of oppression against the Native population and against Blacks.

OK, we get that. But what are we supposed to do now--all the descendants of privileged Europeans? Go back where we came from? If we did that, who would patronize the Indian casinos?

Of course, I'm being sarcastic. But on a more serious level, I am offended by the morons who vandalize statues of Christopher Columbus. They obviously aren't aware that Columbus symbolizes Catholic contributions to American history.

In the late nineteenth century, American Catholics were still being discriminated against, especially in New England. Protestants were forming men's civic organizations partly to establish life insurance funds for their members. But Catholics were not permitted to join these groups.

Father Michael McGivney, pastor of St. Mary's Church in New Haven, Connecticut, organized a small group of Catholic laymen to provide life insurance for Catholic working men.  One of the members suggested a name for the organization: the Knights of Columbus.

Over time, the Knights evolved from being merely an insurance company to becoming a militant organization devoted to stamping out anti-Catholic bigotry in the United States. It was the Knights who led the movement to recognize Columbus Day as a national holiday, and it was the Knights who fought the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s when the KKK was primarily an anti-Catholic terrorist organization.

By the early twentieth century, Christopher Columbus came to symbolize Catholic contributions to American history. He was especially dear to Italian Catholics because Columbus was Italian.  It is no accident that Columbus's statue in Boston is located in the North End--which is Boston's Little Italy.

Although the vandals may not know it, their lawless acts are microaggressions (don't you love that word?) against Catholics and ethnic Catholics in particular. When they deface a statue of Columbus, they dishonor millions of Catholic Americans, and they demonstrate their woeful ignorance of American history.

*****

Note: I am aware that strictly speaking, Columbus did not "discover" America.  Scandanavians were probably the first Europeans to explore North America. More to the point, archeologists theorize that the first people to settle the Western Hemisphere came from Siberia via the Bering Land Bridge.