College students deserve transparency to determine salaries and debt loads of graduates of particular majors

By Richard McCarty

With student loan debt soaring past $1.5 trillion, Democratic candidates for president are proposing “free” college; beyond criticizing this plan, Republicans need to formulate a plan that it can sell to voters. That plan has to consist of more than just “pay back your loans.” If it were that simple, there would not be so many graduates drowning in debt, delaying home purchases, putting off marriage, foregoing children, etc. Part of the solution is requiring colleges to be more transparent with students. College is a big investment for young people, and they deserve to know how well graduates of their alma mater are faring financially.

To help solve the problem of crippling student debt, it might be helpful to understand how we arrived at this point. Some want to solely blame college students for acquiring huge amounts of debt, but that is as absurd as solely blaming subprime borrowers for the housing market crash. Just as the government and banks played central roles in the housing debacle, so the government and colleges have played central roles in the student loan debt crisis. Government policies have made it easy to borrow money for college; and colleges have worked to collect as much of this money as possible by admitting students who struggle academically, spending lavishly on buildings and salaries, and replacing rigorous, but boring, courses with trendy, pointless classes. Despite the outcry over student debt, colleges do not seem to be making any serious efforts to try to restrain costs. In fact, the cost of tuition and fees is increasing at more than twice the overall rate of inflation.

Many others have also contributed often unwittingly to the crisis. These include well-meaning relatives and educators who drilled into students’ heads that college is a good investment, that skipping college threatens their future, or that they would disappointed if a student chose not to go to college. Unemployment rates are significantly lower for college graduates. For these and other reasons, many students have dutifully trudged off to college.  Some of these students probably are better off having a college degree, but not all. Of course, by herding as many students as possible into liberal academia, we have subsidized leftist professors and helped them spread their failed ideas. As if that were not bad enough, by pressuring more students to get college degrees, we have devalued bachelor’s degrees leading more people to pursue advanced degrees, costing them even more time and money.

So what can be done to address this sorry state of affairs? The Department of Education should require colleges that accept federal funds to survey their graduates on their salary and debt levels and report this information to students so that they can make informed choices. This information should be posted online and be publicly available. Specifically, students should be provided with information about the average student debt loads and the median salaries of graduates by major at the one-year, five-year, and ten-year post-graduation marks. Colleges should also be required to disclose what percentage of students in each major went on to graduate school. After all, publicly-traded companies are required to disclose relevant information to potential investors, why should not federally-funded colleges be held to a similar standard?

On this issue, Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, stated, “The publicly subsidized higher education system with its dependence upon federal loans has no excuse to not provide full transparency to its customers about the financial value of the intellectual improvement that student indebtedness is going toward. Americans for Limited Government is against needless federal regulation. However, our nation is suffering from a crisis of ignorance about the true cost of higher education, and it is incumbent upon this industry to provide the information necessary for its potential customers to make an informed choice about the product they are selling.”

Times have changed; college is no longer the ticket to the good life that it once was. Today’s college students deserve to know just what sort of return on their investment they can expect. A simple regulation requiring colleges that take federal funding to disclose graduate debt and salary information to students could make a huge difference for many students in choosing whether to go to college, where to go to college, and what to study while there.

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California Implements Extreme New Sex Ed Curriculum

The California Board of Education implemented progressive sex and gender education curriculum in public schools across the state, regardless, in some cases, of parental knowledge or consent.

Progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood, collaborated on AB-329 in 2016 and the recently introduced Health Education Framework in May as highlighted by a video created by the conservative group Our Watch.

Both these pieces of education legislation mandate that school districts require sex ed and encourage students to question their parents on sexual topics—topics explored in the kindergarten through 12th grade sex education curricula implemented in California schools.

Lawmakers Create the California Healthy Youth Act, a Bill Mandating K-12 Sex Ed

AB-329, otherwise known as the California Healthy Youth Act, was created in 2016 and has several aimed purposes.

The bill aims to teach K-12 students how to ward off HIV and other STDs; to teach “healthy attitudes” toward sexual orientation, gender, and relationships; and to “promote understanding of sexuality as a normal part of human development.”

The bill also promises to “provide educators with clear tools and guidance to accomplish that end.”

AB-329 allows for parents to opt their children out of sexual education. However, the bill prohibits parents from opting their children out of materials that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

The law also prohibits abstinence-only education and prohibits any discussion of religious doctrine, according to an ACLU handout.

The handout adds that beginning in seventh grade, children must be taught “all FDA-approved methods preventing pregnancy and transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (including condoms, contraceptives, and antiretroviral treatment) and abstinence.”

Educators Must ‘Affirmatively Recognize Different Sexual Orientations and Be Inclusive’

The California Board of Education introduced the Health Education Framework in May—a curriculum on sex education that some California parents found troubling, as the Christian Post reported in May.

The Health Education Framework affirms language in AB-329 and included books and supplemental materials such as the Amazon bestseller “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties,” a book that describes sexual activity and gender theory.

The California Board of Education removed this book and several others from the curriculum after outrage from Californian families, as reported by the Christian Post and reflected in the Health Education Framework.

The Health Education Framework notes that as AB-329 orders, teachers must “affirmatively recognize different sexual orientations and be inclusive of same-sex relationships in discussions,” and “teach about gender, gender expression, gender identity, and the harm of negative gender stereotypes.”

Board members for the Health Education Framework included school district representatives, teachers, and academics from across California as well as a school nurse.

The director of community education and outreach at Planned Parenthood, Amy Streavel, was also on the board, according to the California Department of Education.

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Education referred The Daily Caller News Foundation to the sections of the California Education code on a parents’ right to opt their child out of sex ed and the primary purposes of the California Healthy Youth Act when asked to comment. She did not respond when pressed for further comment.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Parents React to Positive Prevention Plus

California parent John Andrews of the Murrieta School District said that schools in his district are using Positive Prevention Plus Sex Ed Curriculum, a curriculum that contains explicit photos and drawings of sexual activity.

“They talk about anal and oral sex as an alternative to regular sex because you can’t get pregnant,” Andrews said in a June video posted June 26 by the conservative group Our Watch. The video generated no local or national media coverage until a tipster alerted The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“They talk about mutual masturbation,” he added.

“They discuss gender roles, the gender spectrum, and in the support materials … they take it even further. They discuss everything, topics like roleplaying for different genders, blood play, dental dams … fisting is mentioned. I mean, they mention it all.”

“If I were to show that material to a child, I would be brought up on charges,” Andrew said. “But somehow our public schools are allowed to teach this to junior high and high school kids.”

The curriculum describes itself as “California’s best source for evidence-based instruction in Comprehensive Sexual Health Education and Teen Pregnancy Prevention.”

It also boasts full compliance with California and National Health Education Standards and California Education Code, including the “California Healthy Youth Act.”

Positive Prevention Plus was begun as early as 1993, according to the curriculum’s website, in order to develop an HIV and AIDS prevention curriculum.

But California Education codes instituted in 2004 began specifying “the content of teen pregnancy prevention education.”

Research findings included in the curriculum show that use of Positive Prevention Plus results in students’ higher use of “reproductive health care services,” more use of contraceptive services, and significant improvements in “the delay in the onset of sexual activity.”

The June Our Watch video shows a variety of factors involved in California’s progressive sex ed programs.

Pastor Tim Thompson told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he published the video through Our Watch to help make parents more aware of how progressive the California sex educational programs are.

“We knew parents had to see for themselves or else they weren’t going to believe it,” Thompson told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The video depicts ACLU staff attorney Ruth Dawson instructing teachers on how to help students obtain abortions without parental knowledge or consent.

“Regardless of how old a student is, they can walk into a doctor’s office and consent to these services without parental consent,” says Dawson, according to footage from the video, referring to abortion when she said “these services.” She was initially misidentified in the video.

The ACLU attorney notes that these services include pregnancy and prenatal care, contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion. “And for these there is no parental notification.”

“I think a good way to think about all these services that California has decided are so important that we are going to allow minors to go into a doctor’s office and consent to these services,” Dawson added. “Because they are just that important and students need to be able to access them.”

The ACLU said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation that all statements made by ACLU representatives during the meeting are “in accord with California law” and claims the video was doctored.

However, when pressed on the matter, the ACLU did not comment on what aspects of the video were doctored.

Activists and Experts Weigh In

“Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late” author, attorney, and Director of the Catholic Women’s Forum Mary Rice Hasson believes that most parents do not understand what their children are being exposed to—and often being exposed to without parental permission.

“The California sex and gender “health” curriculum shows kids explicit images, normalizes kinky and perverse sexual activity, and teaches kids that their basic identity—as male or female—is something fluid or changeable,” Hasson told The Daily Caller News Foundation, saying that schools see parents as “obstacles or barriers to their efforts to indoctrinate an entire generation.”

“Parents—especially religious parents—are portrayed as ignorant or untrustworthy when it comes to issues of sexual identity or activity—as if only the schools can be trusted to ‘protect’ kids and teach them all about,” Hasson said.

Parental Rights in Education Executive Director Suzanne Gallagher told The Daily Caller News Foundation that public schools in America are facilitating a national cultural crisis.

Gallagher’s organization seeks to keep families up to date on infringements of parental rights in public schools across the nation.

“There is a clear political agenda to destroy the traditional family in America,” Gallagher told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Until now, the American family was considered to be the foundation of civic life; the smallest form of government, where children are taught responsibility, respect for authority, and national pride.”

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The truth about bussing? It failed

US schools are as segregated today as they ever have been.

The Democratic presidential race has so far been a damp squib. Perhaps the most politically interesting moment of the Democratic debates so far – at least, as measured in column inches – was Kamala Harris’s attack on Joe Biden for having opposed federally mandated bussing in the 1970s.

Two weeks back, at the second Democratic primary debate in Miami, Florida, Harris put Biden, the current front-runner and former vice-president, on the spot about bussing – a strategy to integrate schools by bussing children from black and minority areas to predominantly white schools, and vice versa.

Harris – who won the debate if post-debate polling is to be believed – dramatically personalised her attack. She reminded Biden of earlier comments he had made, reminiscing about his working relationships with Southern segregationists. She said ‘it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations’ of senators ‘who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country’.

She then moved on to bussing: ‘And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose bussing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day. And that little girl was me… Vice-president Biden, do you agree today – do you agree today – that you were wrong to oppose bussing in America, then? Do you agree?’

Biden, though he must have seen it coming, was unnerved. After the debate, Harris stressed it was ‘just wrong’ that Biden is yet to apologise for opposing court-ordered bussing in the 1970s. But, interestingly, she refused to endorse its use today. While school segregation is still an issue in America, getting the government to order bussing again is generally not the top priority for activists. Biden was not wrong when he commented: ‘Bussing is something 99 per cent of the American people don’t even know what we’re talking about.’

In America, buses made the modern public-school system possible, enabling the one-room schoolhouse to be replaced with large elementary and high schools. But buses were long used in the South – as well as in New York, Boston, and many other northern cities – to maintain segregation.

School segregation did not just occur in the South, where it was mandated by law. African-Americans lived in segregated neighbourhoods in northern and western cities, and the schools they attended reflected their isolation. Moreover, Southerners resisted the order by the Supreme Court in the Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954 to desegregate schools, creating ‘freedom of choice’ and other plans to thwart desegregation.

Some areas began their own bussing schemes, including the programme Kamala Harris was part of in Berkeley, California in 1969. (To be fair, the fact that Harris’s parents were a Stanford economist and Berkeley cancer researcher might have helped her educationally in any case.) But Berkeley’s system had been operating for several years and Martin Luther King Jr wrote that when he heard about Berkeley’s bold integration plan, ‘hope returned to my soul and spirit’.

The resistance and lack of progress made elsewhere, however, encouraged the courts to take a harder line. In 1968, the Supreme Court’s Green v County School Board of New Kent County ruling ordered school boards to eliminate segregation ‘root and branch’. Then, the 1971 decision, Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, declared that bussing could be mandated by federal courts to achieve racial balance. Such efforts did ensure that schools desegregated; on Richard Nixon’s watch, more schools were desegregated than under the previous three presidencies.

Bussing schemes were always met with resistance. But federally mandated bussing created a huge groundswell of resistance by 1972, when Biden first became a Senator for Delaware. Grassroots organisations of parents protested that their children were taken away from their friends and sent miles from home; meanwhile, wealthier whites could send their kids to private school. But as noted in the NAACP’s 1972 pamphlet, provocatively titled It’s Not the Distance, ‘It’s the Niggers’: Comments on the Controversy over School Bussing, racist sentiments were a big part of the backlash.

Biden waded into the issue in 1975: ‘The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. What it says is, “In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son”. That’s racist!’

Given that school quotas for students in those days did characterise them by the colour of their skin, Biden’s accusation stands. But the key question in all this is: were these programmes successful? Not surprisingly, they failed. Without other comprehensive measures to integrate African-Americans, they had no chance.

According to a 2013 report by the Economic Policy Institute, African-American students ‘are now more isolated than they were 40 years ago’. A debate about what some have called ‘resegregation’ of schools rumbles on. But few dispute that a shocking degree of segregation continues in America’s K-12 education.

One researcher’s analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics suggests that the number of segregated schools (defined as those in which less than 40 percent of students are white), approximately doubled between 1996 and 2016. And according to a UCLA report, Brown at 62, between 1988 and 2013 the percentage of ‘intensely segregated’ public schools, in which 90 per cent or more of students are minorities, rose from 5.7 per cent to 18.6 per cent.

Circular firing squad

So why bring up a failed policy that, as the Washington Post commented, is surely an anachronism in 2019? Because of identity politics. Biden is vulnerable on issues like race, despite his nearly impeccable record on civil rights. His defensive responses to Harris’s challenges have boosted her standing. This is despite her record as a keen incarcerator of African-Americans when she was attorney general of California, which is surely worse than anything Biden is directly responsible for.

It is now America’s racial past that is on trial, and Biden – though he has probably played as progressive a role as anyone – is tainted. Bussing rises from the policy graveyard not because it is any solution to the problems of 2020, but because it is a way for Harris to establish that she was a victim and Biden a victimiser.

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