As the mainstream press frets that the much-touted “economic-recovery” appears to have lost steam, the economic crisis continues to escalate for ordinary people.
With official unemployment holding steady at 9.5% (real unemployment is much higher), and with the state budget cuts producing yet more tuition increases, a growing phenomenon is sweeping the nation: homeless and hungry college students.
National Public Radio (NPR) reported in late July: “For many college students and their families, rising tuition costs and a tough economy are presenting new challenges as college bills come in.
“This has led to a little-known but growing population of financially stressed students, who are facing hunger and sometimes even homelessness.”
Exact figures are available, but the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth has reported a large increase in homeless students.
The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has even created an “Economic Crisis Response Team” to help homeless and hungry students stay enrolled.
NPR reported the story of one such UCLA student, Diego Sepulveda, who ended up homeless after losing his full-time job at Subway. Now Sepulveda alternates between sleeping in the library, student centre and friends’ couches, catching occasional showers in a school gym.
With fees increasing and social services being cut, it has often been left to students — such as Sepulveda's friends — to help each other out. For example, Abdullah Jadallah, a 22-year-old UCLA engineering student, started a food pantry after noticing how many of his classmates were going hungry.
Broader trends are sure to push even more students up to and over the edge.
Kathryn Edwards and Alexander Fernandez argued in their recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) briefing paper “The Kids Aren’t Alright: A Labor Market Analysis of Young Workers” that official unemployment for workers aged 16 to 24 peaked at 19.2% after the 2008 recession.
This is the highest rate since records started being kept in 1948.
Real unemployment — counting involuntary part-time workers and those who have given up looking for work — is probably twice that rate.
“Though young adults represent only 13.4 percent of the workforce”, Edwards and Fernandez wrote, “they now account for 26.4 percent of unemployed workers”.
The unemployment rate for young Black workers stands at 32.5% and 24.2% for Latinos. Unemployment for teenage workers — aged 16 to 19 — stands at more than 50%.
The high level of youth unemployment has a big impact on college students, as so many students must also work to make ends meet. In 2008, 45% of 16- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in high school or college as well as employed (or looking for work).
With students and their family members losing jobs, more students will fall through the tattered social safety net.
Since the 2008 recession, hunger and homelessness has mushroomed among all age groups. Late last year, the US Conference of Mayors reported up to 30 and 40% increases in homelessness in several US cities.
One in eight US people now rely on food donations from the relief charity Feeding America — an increase of 1 million people each week in 2010 compared with 2006. One in eight people in the US rely on food stamps for their daily bread.
Times were already tough before the recession. But before 2008, family members and friends could take up more of the slack.
If the parent of a student lost their job, the student could drop out of school for a while and work in order to help the family. Conversely, if students found themselves in trouble, loans and help from family could keep things going until graduation.
The breadth of the crisis is sabotaging this privatised welfare system.
To make matters worse, Corporate America is looking for even more ways to take advantage. Business Week reported on April 30 an increase in for-profit “educational” outfits — such as the University of Phoenix and Chancellor University — targeting homeless people to fleece them of financial aid money. Those targeted were often left with a mountain of defaulted student loan debt.
These predatory “colleges” are big business. One of Cleveland-based Chancellor University’s major investors is “Neutron Jack” Welch, former CEO of General Electric, who got his nickname by firing some 100,000 GE workers.
Goldman Sachs owns 38% of the for-profit Education Management Corporation in Pittsburgh.
Chancellor and Phoenix have sent recruiters into homeless shelters to sign people up for classes, regardless of their ability to pay or even attend school.
After they get tuition money — paid for by student loans and financial aid — these companies can churn through yet more students, never worrying about pesky facts like graduation rates or what happens to their would-be students.
This type of predatory “education” isn’t new. In past recessions, there was a proliferation of for-profit “trade schools” — which more often than not failed to provide any real training for unemployed blue-collar workers.
Business Week wrote: “In the Cleveland shelters, you can still find people with trade school debts from 20 years ago.
“Those who don’t repay their student loans [today] may forfeit their chances for public housing and are also ineligible for deferral financial aid to return to college.”
On the one hand, college students are being driven into homelessness and hunger. On the other, the homeless and hungry are being preyed upon by for-profit "educational" vultures. Funk musician George Clinton best summed up this sort of thing when he coined the phrase “America eats its young”.
Education — including higher education — is a human right. Not only should tuition fees be paid in total by the government, the living expenses of students should be subsidised.
Until we win that victory, we must meet every instance of cutbacks and fee hikes with protest and action. Some of our fellow students’ very lives are on the line.
[Abridged from the US Socialist Worker.]