After the US Civil War, former slaves had to get jobs, and landlard planters needed workers.
Sharecropping is a system replicating slavery—afflicting all races—where the landlard allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities.
High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlards routinely kept tenant farmers severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over and over. Laws favoring landlards made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops to others besides their landlard, or prevented sharecroppers from moving if they were indebted to their landlard.
The modern economy’s class structure replicates the agrarian age with capitalist “non-profit” universities and wage slavery, as students, and now parents, accumulate debts difficult to discharge even in bankruptcy proceedings which they will pay off the rest of their lives. While universities promote an ideology of liberal arts education allowing students to discover and develop their human potential, and a meal ticket to the class advancement, in economic reality they are tax-advantaged hedge funds that teach a few courses. The wealthiest U.S. colleges are steering parents into no-limit federal loans to cover rising tuition, leaving many poor and middle-class families with debt they can’t repay.
The latest example was reported yesterday: parents at Baylor University had the worst repayment rate for a type of federal loan called Parent Plus among private schools with at least a $1 billion endowment, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of available Education Department data.
Unlike undergraduate loans that have limits, there is no cap on what parents can borrow through the fast-growing Parent Plus program—where parents make up what student loans and scholarships don’t cover through Parent Plus—no matter their income. Some parents wanting the best schools available for their children sign on the dotted line unaware how the debt can burden them into retirement.
Baylor increased its tuition sharply to transform itself from a regionally known Baptist college into a national brand that now has a $1.8 billion endowment. The central Texas school has added facilities, built a sports powerhouse and climbed college-ranking lists—on the backs of students, and parents.
“Plus loans—which are available for parents and graduate students—have become the new face of the student-debt crisis, helping drive a sea change in the student-loan marketplace. Until five years ago, undergraduates borrowed more than parents and grad students combined; now parents and grad students borrow more…”
Meanwhile, large college endowments have notched their biggest investment gains in decades, thanks to portfolios boosted by huge venture-capital returns and soaring stock markets. For example, the University of Minnesota’s endowment gained 49.2% for the year ending June 30, while Brown University’s endowment notched a return of more than 50%, said people familiar with their returns, as reported in the WSJ. Duke University over the weekend said its endowment had gained 55.9%. Washington University in St. Louis last week reported a 65% return, the school’s biggest gain ever, swelling the size of its managed endowment pool to $15.3 billion. The University of Virginia’s endowment reported a 49% gain.
Petite bourgeois university administrators—modern landlards— do very well with their ‘non profit’ status chowing down on Champagne, wine, and expensive vodka, while students, and parents, toil under debt they will never repay.
Notes
https://www.wsj.com/articles/baylor-university-college-debt-parent-plus-loans-11634138239?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1
https://hechingerreport.org/think-university-administrators-salaries-are-high-critics-say-their-benefits-are-lavish/