The Occupy Wall Street Movement: Demand for Equal Educational Opportunities to Ensure Economic Equality - Essay Example

?Joongsuk Jin Dawna Kemper English 6 February The Occupy Wall Street Movement: Demand for Equal Educational Opportunities to Ensure Economic Equality The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement began on September 17, 2011 as a small uprising of several thousand people gathered on New York City's Wall Street. The movement, which originally started as a local one, has been expanding exponentially across hundreds of cities in the US, inciting equally vigorous movements around the world. It is believed that the Arab Spring, a precursor to the OWS movements, acted as an inspiration for people to rise up and fight for their rights. The OWS movement is significantly meaningful, as it was purely started by people who denounced corrupt multinational corporations and the exploitative rich. Now, it has spread to more than 100 cities in the US and 1500 cities all over the world (“From Tahrir Square to Times Square”). Such a rapid growth of the movement was possible because of the accumulated grievances of the people distressed by economic and social inequalities. The OWS movement aims to denounce the gap between the rich and the poor that has been increasingly widened by companies and corporations that refuse to take social responsibility and are engrossed in their corporate self-interests at the expense of others. The movement rallies against the rich 1% of the society, which tends to be self-centered and ignores the consequences of its actions that affect the remaining 99% of the people by causing economic inequalities (Feller & Stone 1). This 1% of the society includes banks on Wall Street, big corporations, etc. who not only claim and amass wealth at the expense of the remaining 99% of the population, but also influence governmental decisions and policies (Gelder 1). One of the most important things that set this movement apart from others is that this movement has engaged a large number of students as protesters. According to Claudio Sanchez, education correspondent for NPR, more and more students are protesting against soaring college tuition fee, increasing student loan debts, and the limited job market that has resulted due to outsourcing of labor. In addition, the students in the OWS movement brought the people’s attention to the enormity of educational inequalities that are causing economic inequalities between the rich and poor. These students accuse corporate greed in the educational sector as being the reason for the increased inequalities in educational opportunities. This paper therefore, in relation to the OWS movement, argues that educational inequalities are indeed linked to economic inequalities and that the educational system has suffered due to corporate greed. The demands of the students of the OWS movement for equal educational opportunities and relief from corporate domination to ensure economic equality are thus completely justified. Although it may be hard to see the direct link between education and economic equality, it is undeniable that educational opportunity enables people to live financially better lives, considering the fact that people who have college degrees earn more than people who do not. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, men at age 25-34 with a Bachelor’s degree or more, on average earn $ 42,299 per year. On the other hand, men who only have a high school education earn $27,822 per year on average. More importantly, this income gap becomes bigger as they grow older and as they are promoted to higher positions at their workplace. In other words, the earning power of people with college degrees increases much faster than that of people without college degrees. Therefore, the small difference of receiving a higher education, later on, broadens the gap between the people, creating economic inequalities throughout the working life of the individuals. There is a direct relationship between education and economic stability. A poor educational system leads to a skills crisis, and students find it difficult to be employed because of the lack of necessary and appropriate training. While unemployment rates remain high, thousands of jobs remain vacant due to lack of skilled workers (Snyder 3). Therefore, a failing education system is a double-edged sword, as it not only leads to high unemployment rates but also to lack of skilled workforce, thereby hampering the economic progress of a nation. According to Goldstein and Chesky, educational improvement is “an economic imperative”. This is because when a nation does not work towards the improvement of its educational system, it goes into a “downward economic spiral”, both at national and international levels (Goldstein and Chesky 1). Educational progress translates into economic progress of a nation. The OWS movement aims to achieve economic stability and equality, and for this, it demands reforms in the educational system for providing equal opportunities to all. The US is falling behind other countries in terms of its primary and secondary education (Snyder 2). Its education system has further been affected by the economic crises experienced in recent years. The economic crises experienced by the US in the recent past led to an increase in teacher layoffs and decrease in government funding for grants and scholarships. For instance, the Federal Pell Grant, which provides grants to students whose families cannot pay for the high amount of college tuitions for the colleges, suffered due to budget cuts by the Government. Haley Chitty, author and director of communications at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, points out that this program has faced significant obstacles due to reduction of government funding. Chitty adds that “A spending bill [for next year] approved by the House of Representatives in February, cuts students’ Pell Grant awards for the 2011-2012 year by more than 15 percent” (1). Such decisions would limit middle- and low-class students from pursuing their higher education. It is often seen that students who want to go for higher education cannot do so because of high tuition fees and financial difficulties. The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center reports that tuition in 2011-2012 in California has increased at two-year public colleges at an average rate of 3.8% per year and four-year colleges and universities at an average rate of 5.6% per year for the last 10 years, and these were beyond “the rate of general inflation” (1). This increasing tuition in public schools is a serious problem, considering the fact that many students come from middle- and low-income families, and are highly dependent on public education because tuition is lower in public schools than in private schools. However, the public education system itself is turning out to be a disadvantage for students. According to Langberg and Pitts, public education in the US has “undergone a corporate coup”. They argue that the public education has been undermined and manipulated to serve the interests of corporates. In their words, the public education system was hijacked by corporates back in the 1980s during the initiation of the Business Roundtable, after which, the education system became a bipartisan venture. Langberg and Pitts discuss several reasons for the infiltration of the American public education by corporates. The first reason is that if public systems are resource starved, it translates into lower taxes for the corporations and the rich. The second reason is that by lowering the standards of public education, it would be possible to maintain a “permanent underclass”, making it easier to obtain cheap labor. Thirdly, if public funds are diverted to for-profit charter school, private schools etc. it would result in increased profits for the corporates. The fourth reason is that if a narrow curricula and high stakes testing are promoted in schools, it will be easier to develop the students into voters and consumers who can be easily controlled or manipulated. The fifth reason is that by blaming the incompetency of students, teachers, and parents for the low economic conditions and recession, it will be easier to distract them from the poverty and inequality promoted by capitalism. Thus, public education has been commercialized to suit corporate interests. Bankers and leaders of most corporations hold important positions in school boards and in other organizations that govern the education system. For instance, a commercial banker, who was earlier an analyst at the Lehman Brothers, is currently a member of the North Carolina State Board of Education (Langberg and Pitts). Important decisions regarding education are thus taken by corporates who naturally tend to influence them to suit their own interests. Most students participating in the OWS movement and its sister movement – the Occupy Education movement, believe that – The bankers, the UC Regents, the CSU Trustees, and the corporate politicians — are pushing through vicious fee hikes, layoffs, and budget cuts under the pretext of the financial crisis that they created and profited off of (Rooney). Mirroring this argument is that of Thomas, according to whom, “the trend for appointing CEOs to the top jobs is symptomatic of a declining commitment to public education and social justice”. According to him, corporates appointed as CEOs in the top jobs in public education rarely have any expertise or experience in the educational sector. As Thomas puts it, the corporate push to acquire public education reveals America's failure in improving state education. The corporate public education system has suffered heavily because of corruption, bureaucracy, and regimentation (“You May Have Missed”). Education today represents a multi-million dollar industry driven by commercial and corporate interests. With businessmen managing the educational system of a nation, it is only natural that the education system would transform into a profit-seeking industry. This has spelt doom for those who seek higher education but have limited resources and cannot afford high tuition fees. In order to pay for their exorbitant tuition fees, students often take student loans that are beyond their ability to repay. According to data provided by the American Student Assistance Organization, a whopping 60% of undergraduate students, in the 2006-2007 academic-year alone, had borrowed money to fund their education (asa.org). The borrowing rates are high even among graduate students and minorities. According to The Project on Student Debt, “California college seniors who graduated with student loans in 2010 owed an average of $25,250, up five percent from the previous year.” Many students fail to pay off their loan amounts because of lack of jobs and poor economic conditions. High interest rates with hard economic times, together with lack of job opportunities, are leaving students under the burden of heavy debts and loans, leading to a steady rise in the number of loan defaulters (US Department of Education). Opportunities for higher education have thus become accessible mainly to the rich, while low and middle-income groups suffer under the dual burden of lack of education and lack of employment. Therefore, the demands by the OWS movement for equal educational opportunities and more affordable education is truly justified for low and middle-income people so that they can have equal educational opportunities to advance economically. The increasing student loan debts and default rates significantly influence the students’ future because not only will this put a serious burden on students after graduation, but will also increase the likelihood that they will end up as credit delinquents. It will, later on, have negative effects on their lives. For example, their default history will affect them negatively when they try to get jobs. In addition, when they try to go back to school to pursue higher degrees, it will prevent them from receiving student loans again from the government. Eric Hoover, writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, points out in the article “Debt Protesters Denounce Colleges for Broken Promises” that most student protesters in New York have common resentment for “debt and tuition hikes.” According to the article, there is even a petition movement by which the students hope to collect 999,999 other signatures to actualize a “pledge of refusal” to repay all of their student loans. Universities, on the other hand, continue to raise the tuition every year, arguing that the states’ budgets have been cut down or economic distress has increased the costs of providing classes, and in order to maintain the quality of education for students, it was an inevitable choice that had to be made. However, in contrast to their argument, they have laid off thousands of teachers and reduced the number of classes. According to the Executive Office of the President report, “Teacher Jobs at Risk,” the budgets and funding cuts in education caused the loss of 300,000 teachers’ jobs (1). In addition, the universities’ arguments for increasing the tuition become even more unconvincing due to the fact that high powered-executives of universities, such as presidents, earn substantially more than full-time professors. In fact, it is almost incomprehensible why and how those administrators earn such high salaries, which consist of a big proportion of the entire annual budget for the schools, argue Stripling and Fuller in the article “Pay Gap Widens Between Presidents and Faculty.” Many of the presidents of private universities are receiving an exorbitant amount of salary and other compensations, aggravating the income disparities within a school (Stripling and Fuller). Moreover, the problem is that while the universities argue that it is unavoidable to increase tuition, perks and huge pay checks for presidents seem to contradict their argument. For instance, Constantine N. Papadakis, the president of Drexel University, has earned $4,912,127 of the total compensation in 2009 (Stripling and Fuller). Although they claim that it is a fair amount of money they earn considering their big responsibilities, they fail to provide better education. While it is obvious that economic and educational inequalities are interlinked, not everyone agrees with the notion that education can play a significant role in resolving the issue of economical and social inequalities. They are skeptical about the fact that economic inequalities can be remedied by providing equal educational opportunities. For instance, John Marsh, assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, shares his experience from taking English classes for poor adults in Illinois. He, along with his fellow professors, provided free classes for the poor, and it was called the Odyssey Project, initiated to provide higher education opportunities to the underprivileged. However, he soon realized that simply offering equal education opportunities to low income people did not actually ensure high future incomes, as he witnessed many low-income students still struggling with their lives even after graduation. In his article, Marsh argues that, “the Odyssey Project taught me that programs like it are neither necessary nor sufficient responses to the problems of poverty and economic inequality in the United States”. It is thus partially acknowledgeable that solely depending on equal educational opportunities to ensure economic equalities and bridge the gap between the rich and the poor is too idealistic. However, equal opportunities for higher education are important because they assure that every student has the chance to reach their full potential. Nicholas D. Kristof, a renowned columnist in The New York Times, emphasizes the significance of “early childhood education.” He claims that unfair opportunities for middle and low-income students from the beginning of education create more serious social and economic inequalities later in their lives. Moreover, he cites the research of James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, arguing that “[Investments in early childhood education] pay a return of 7 percent or more than many investments on Wall Street” (qtd. in Kristof). As is evident from Heckman’s research, education is an economically proven and effective method of ensuring equalities in society. Therefore, the importance of education in promoting economic equality cannot be underestimated. In conclusion to the stated arguments, it can be surmised that educational inequalities are indeed linked to economic inequalities and that the educational system has continuously been subjected to corporate dominance. The demands of the students in the OWS movement for equal educational opportunities and relief from corporate domination to ensure economic equality are therefore completely justified. The impact that the OWS movement has had on the present state of education is immense. Not only did it build a strong awareness of education among people, but also introduced positive changes to the current state of affairs. For instance, Antioch College in Ohio, a small liberal arts school, announced that every student who attends the school in the next 3 years will receive four year full tuition scholarships. According to reports by the Huffington Post, Antioch College had to shut down due to financial deficits after the 2008 economic recession. Many alumni who were inspired by the OWS movement donated to the school so the school could reopen to students. This is an inspirational example of the positive changes made by student protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movements. The movement reflects, French Enlightenment writer, Voltaire’s ideas, in his book, “Candide: or Optimism,” on democracy, social justice, equality, and most importantly, the dangers of the concentration of power in the hands of a wealthy few. In reality, corporations, bankers and wealthy politicians have amassed wealth and power at the expense of the people and have done little to reduce economic, social and educational inequalities. Consequently, the students’ protests in the Occupy Wall Street movement have spread a strong message throughout the society, awakening people to the importance and values of equality in education. Because of the continual increase of college tuition and reduced financial aid in the form of college grants, there has been a steady increase in the burden on students. Many students are struggling with high student loan debts, not knowing whether they will be able to repay them within 10 years or more. Moreover, since tuition is ceaselessly increasing, the affordability and accessibility of pursuing higher education has declined for most of the middle- and low-income students. In addition, the self-centered interests of administrators have reduced the quality of education. Students cannot seek free education; however, affordable education and equal opportunities are basic human rights and these should be sought after. Improving the educational system and making it affordable and accessible to students from all strata of the society and from all socio-economic backgrounds is an indispensable requirement for ensuring economic stability and progression. The OWS movement protests against the corporate domination of educational institutions and the increasing marketization and commercialization of education. America is largely a capitalist economy and it is believed that this is one of the primary reasons for the corporatization of the education system. However, it is vital to do away with business-centric ideals in the educational system. This will not only ensure that all individuals will be able to afford better education but will also guarantee that they get better jobs, thereby giving the economy an upward swing, apart from promoting economic equality. 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