Degrees of Inequality by Suzanne Mettler

Author:Suzanne Mettler [Mettler, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465072002
Publisher: Basic Books

STUDENT AID AND THE CONVERGENCE OF THE PROBLEM AND POLITICAL STREAMS

For decades, political leaders were pressured by Sallie Mae and the banks to maintain the existing system and they faced little countervailing pressure from voters that would induce them to overhaul student aid. Young people in the 1960s and early 1970s, engaged by the civil rights and antiwar movements, worked on political campaigns at even higher rates than older Americans and voted at higher rates than in recent decades.11 Their political participation provided an incentive to lawmakers to create and maintain the landmark student aid laws. In subsequent decades, however, new generations of young people failed to become as involved, and voter turnout in presidential elections—at 55 percent in 1972—had fallen to 40 percent in 2000. Given the demands being made by more vocal groups, lawmakers had little incentive to prioritize the needs of the young, including on student aid issues.

After 2000, however, young people began to reemerge in political life, shifting the political stream in a direction more favorable to reform. They turned out at the polls at higher rates in the 2002 and 2004 elections than they had in other midterm and presidential elections, respectively, in many years. In the 2006 midterm election they took part at even higher rates than in 2002 and favored Democratic candidates by a wide margin, helping the party gain control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in fourteen years.12 Democratic Party officials could not help but take note of this newly mobilized constituency and think about how to cement their allegiance to the party.

Meanwhile, information about the boondoggle that the current student loan system provided to banks and to colleges that played along with them began to leak out. For the decade and a half following the direct lending battle of 1993, student aid policies had hovered under the radar of public awareness. Certainly many “inside the beltway” policy wonks and staffers on Capitol Hill understood the perverse incentives at work, but such recognition was not widespread. Gradually, however, investigative journalists began to expose the intense, mutually supportive relationship between lenders, politicians, and many campuses. They revealed the stunning profits enjoyed by Sallie Mae and other lenders and their extensive efforts at political influence.13 One 2003 article in U.S. News & World Report detailed the ways Sallie Mae and other lenders romanced college financial aid officials. At conferences they invited them to disco parties, golf outings, and a show by the US Olympic ski team, and on campuses they offered special perks. At Tuskegee University, for example, they installed free software and supplied free loan counselors. “It’s an endless stream of invitations,” said Johns Hopkins financial aid director Ellen Frishberg, after declining tickets from Sallie Mae to see Huey Lewis and the News in concert.14 Gradually the problems that had developed in bank-based lending gained visibility in the public eye.

As Democratic leaders took note of these twin developments—newly mobilized young supporters and the public’s growing awareness that student aid

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