South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Rortybomb wonders how government policies related to higher education have evolved from the Morrill Act to the “pain funnel.”

It’s amazing how quickly we’ve gone from using government resources to enact the democratic visions of the Morrill Act, the GI Bill, and the California Master Plan, three of the greatest pieces of legislation our country has passed, to using government resources to enact a vision premised on eliciting pain. Through a funnel.
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Because government is creating this vision. Government resources pay for it all. Eighty-seven percent of revenues at for-profits come from federal or state sources, including student loans and Pell grants…. Though they teach around 10 percent of students, they take in about 25 percent of total Department of Education student aid program funds. These numbers are on the rise and show little sign of slowing.
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Given that government is funding the basis of this system, what’s the benefit of this privatization of public services and the introduction of the profit motive? Where’s the innovation? The general claim for the privatization of government services is that you can get the same quality for a much cheaper price….
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But that is a significant failure. For for-profit schools, “Bachelor’s degree programs averaged 20 percent more than the cost of analogous programs at flagship public universities….”