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Part One:
We speak with Jeff Bryant, Associate Fellow at Campaign for America’s Future and the editor of the Education Opportunity Network website. We discuss the privatization movement, whereby money is taken out of the public school budget to help pay for charter schools. Some of this money is simply wasted, because the charter school closes soon after it opens (or it never opens its doors at all). Even if it’s not wasted, public funding of charter schools affords a small percentage of school children the opportunity to (possibly) improve their education, while leaving the vast majority of children to use proportionally fewer dollars to finance an increasingly inadequate education.
Part Two:
We talk to Sparky Abraham, the finance editor for Current Affairs, about “the case for free college.” Our guest himself had decided not even to apply for college because he could not afford the costs of gaining admission, paying to attend college, nor the debt service on long-term loans after he might graduate. He was fortunate that he had friends from his well-off community and relatives with resources, all of whom encouraged him, assisted him and eventually made it possible for him to do what was necessary to pursue a college education. What about young people who are less privileged than he was?
We also discuss how student debt is worsening racial and gender injustice. We note some chilling statistics which demonstrate the income-wealth gap between black and white women and men, resulting in white men having a much better to afford to get a college education.
