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Student protests, 1969
1969-05-10 Daily Iowan: ""University of Iowa Student Report"" Page 2
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Asks U.S. to Pay Tuition; Graduates Would Repay University of Iowa Student Report Saturday May 10, 1969 By JAMES TOBIN and LEONARD ROSS Reprinted with the publisher's permission from the New Republic, May 3, 1969. A copyrighted article by Tobin, a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers (1861-62) and Sterling professor of economics at Yale University, Ross is a Junior Fellow at Harvard. America's most precious resources, according to a well-worn cliche, are the potential talents of its young men and women. Education and training to develop these talents will, in is widely agreed, pay handsome dividends. Yet we have no systematic program for financing such productive investments. Funds to finance education and training after high school are limited, and access to them is quite unequal. Our present arrangements strongly favor the children of the affluent. Their parents can provide financial help. Their suburban homes and schools prepare them for college, and college prepares them for graduate or professional schools. The states offer them university education at a small fraction of its full cost, and tax sheltered philanthropy subsidizes them at private institutions. If they are bright, academically oriented and in the right field (physics or economics, say but not medicine or law strangely enough) they may enjoy a long career of graduate and post doctoral fellowships. Of course, these public and private subsidies are competitively available to all, and the universities have been working hard to find disadvantaged youths who can qualify for them. But universities do not have the scholarship and loan funds to make up for the poverty of the parents of potential candidates much less to remedy their disqualifying handicaps in background and schooling. Many young people could benefit from technical or vocational education if they could afford it. At present, the vast majority of post-high school vocational students must pay their way without any form of government assistance. Thus, for the poor, secretarial school can be as inaccessible as the Ivy League. the fact is that our present arrangements for financing education beyond high school compound the inherited inequalities with which our young people grow up. Private credit markets are no help. If is far easier to borrow money for a car or cruise than for an education. A typical young man or woman - even the student with talent and prospects- has little security to offer a commercial lender. His education may pay off handsomely over his lifetime, but in the short run it probably elevates his tastes faster than his income. Neither he nor his creditor can convert future career promise into present cash. As a result, the average student can borrow, if at all, only on his parents' credit or with governmental help. Today, commercial loans cover only a minor fraction of the cost of higher education. They are virtually unavailable to the student whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year, or to the student needing vocational training rather than collegiate life. Scarce student loan funds are a problem for the nation as well as the young. The costs of higher education, according to recent projections of the Carnegie Corporation;s Commission on Higher Education, will balloon 132 per cent over the next nine years. Junior's summer job won't fit the gap. Unless student borrowing is increased, the older generation must come up with an additional $24 billion a year by 1976-77. But there are increasing signs that it won't work. School bond issties no longer pass automatically, and taxpayer revolts menace pro-education governors. The Carnegie Commission's plan for a 16 per cent annual increase in federal education spending will conflict with other budgetary claims on a Nixon Administration committee to lower taxes and higher military expenditures. If government grants do fall short of Carnegie targets the financial prospects for higher education are not rosy. Public and private institutions will rely increasingly on tuition, and college will become even more of a parent supported institution than it is today. Students from low-income families - already under represented in college enrollments - will be a further disadvantage. Even if higher education garners its needed billions, a large fraction of America's youth will receive no post high school training in the absence of new government programs to finance technical and vocational education. Faced with the dismal financial prospects of higher education, more and more educators see student loans as the solution. Not the usual student loans available from commercial lenders or in the general loan funds of colleges and universities - these loans are too small, too short in term. The federal government and some states, have sponsored loan programs featuring deferred payments and below market interest rates. Bur these loan programs consume heavy subsidies and compete for tax funds otherwise available for scholarships. Moreover, many young people are understandably reluctant to assume heavy fixed obligations against uncertain future incomes. A self financing loans plan with repayment obligations scaled to ability to pay, has been advocated by a number of educators (including Professor Milton Friedman, Yale President Kingman Brewster), the 1967 White House Panel on Educational Innovation and the Carnegie Commission. Let the student pay for something like full cost of his education from the higher incomes the university enables him to earn. Let his repayments be scaled to his future income over many years; the rich tycoon will pay back much more than he borrowed, the poor clergyman much less, but on average the loan fund would earn normal interest. let these loans be available to all students. This is a sensible proposal . On the one hand, it removes economic obstacles that now keep qualified students out of colleges and universities. On the other hand, it places more of the burden of financing higher education on the principle beneficiaries, students who are prospectively if not currently better off than taxpayers. But the proposal is a parochial one, reflecting the nature preoccupation and meritocratic bias of the higher educators who espouse it. It does nothing for the post high school training of youths who do not go to college. Extended to all the nation's youth, however, the plan could, for the first time, make college or technical education universally available, much as the CI Bill of Rights did for World War II veterans. At age 18, every youth in the nation - whatever the economic means of his parents or his earlier education - would have available from the federal government a line of credit of "endowment" of, for example, $5,000. A young man or woman could draw on this "National Youth Endowment" for authorized purposes until his twenty eighth birthday (extensions of time could be allowed for military service or periods of social service like Peace Corps or VISTA). Authorized purposes would include not merely academic higher education but also vocational schooling, apprenticeship, and other forms of accredited on the job training. For every dollar used, the individual would assume liability for payment of extra federal income tax after he reaches age 28 ( or as extended). The terms of this repayment for example one per cent of income per $3,000 borrowed) would be set so that the average individual would, over his lifetime, repay the fund in full plus interest at the government's borrowing rate. However, the government might decide to set less stringent terms and to subsidize the endowment, using the loan program as a vehicle for general support of education beyond high school. On these terms, Youth Endowment loans should prove attractive to students from all income groups. For the low or middle income youth pressed by increasing tuition and living expenses, and especially for the vocational student, a Youth Endowment loan may be the only means of financing an education. For the upper-middle class student the chief advantage of a Youth Endowment loan would be the stretched out repayment. Like Social Security, the Youth Endowment would be self financing. Of course, in the initial years, outlays will exceed repayments - unlike Social Security, where the taxes preceded the benefits. The inflationary impact of these initial cash deficits would have to be neutralized somehow. This could be done by taxation. But since the Endowment is a social investment project it would be entirely appropriate to borrow the funds from private lenders. The monetary authorities would have to let the Endowment's drafts on the capital market tighten credit and raise interest rates to other borrowers, temporarily displacing other investments of lower social priority. Clearly the self financing feature of the Endowment is a political asset; indeed even its initial cash deficits would be kept out of the federal budget by establishing the Youth Endowment as a public corporation. A Youth Endowment program would leave the choice of schooling entirely up to the student. Borrowers could pick freely among public and private institutions (including profit making vocational schools), rather than having to tailor their training to the changing contours of government aid programs. Their choices would redress the unbalanced emphasis that has characterized government assistance (long on support for the sciences, for academically gifted students and universities, and for experimental training programs for the hard core unemployed; shorter shrift for average America's 2.4 children) Even for the higher income families there is something to be said for shifting the cost of education from dad to the kids. Academic degrees - especially those from expensive private schools - have cash value for the student as well as prestige payoff for the parents. It is unfair - and, as surveys make clear, unrealistic - to expect the average parent to ante $10 or $20 thousand dollars for each child's education. Yet, barring an income repayment loan, the student can't make much of a contribution himself. At present some parents lend their children funds for school, creating a do it yourself capital market which serves as a resourceful but inefficient substitute for a sound government loan program. Preliminary estimates of repayment terms needed for a program covering only academic education suggest that a surcharge of one third of one per cent of income per $1,000 borrowed would suffice. Broadening the proposal to include vocational students would raise the required surcharge and the rate would jump further if students with high income prospects disdained to participate. To hold this clientele, the program might include a feature allowing a borrower to avoid further surcharges once he has repaid the loan at a specified and abnormally high interest rate. Some tricky problems of equity and incentive arise with respect to obligations incurred by women who subsequently marry. If they become joint obligations of husband and wife, will men shy away from girls with negative dowries? Should a woman's repayment surcharge be based only on her own income? Some pragmatic compromise can be reached; the Youth Endowment is not the only case where dilemmas of equity between married and single persons arise. Accreditation of schools and training programs would be a major administrative chore. But much can be learned from the nation's previous comprehensive training program the GI Bill. At first, the Bill contained virtually no safeguards. Grants were made straight to the institution rather than to the student. The Veterans Administration had to rely on state accreditation procedures, however lax. Schools with no prior experience, with no students other than the subsidized veterans themselves, could readily qualify. These loopholes were gradually closed and today's GI Bill program involves no major difficulties of control. Tough accreditation standards can limit the scope for waste. But finally the student's judgement must control. Using borrowed money should ass a stroke of caution to his choice of schooling. Moreover, any Youth Endowment program should be coupled with increased counseling services to help inform the borrower's choice. Among the accredited programs would, of course, be many of the manpower training activities set up by the Department of Labor and the Office of Economic Opportunities, or with their help, as part of the war on poverty. But the recruiting procedures would be reversed, and access to these opportunities, now haphazard and unequal, would be equalized. Now the government gives the money to the program, and the program seeks out and selects the students. Some youths, by luck and location get in; indeed they may have repeated opportunities. Others have none, and no compensatory help to go elsewhere ether. Under the Endowment; one youth would have, over the course of his career, the same line of credit as another. And government sponsored programs would have to compete for student favor with other accredited programs. Aiding the customer, the student, rather than the seller, the institution, has already proved to be the best way to dispense national scholarship and fellowship funds. On the job training programs pose a special risk. Often they have served as a subsidy to employers for jobs involving no real training. even where some training takes place, it might have been granted in the absence of subsidy by an employer facing a tight labor market. To conserve Youth Endowment funds, on the job training should be accredited only upon rigorous evidence that the job offers instruction rather than simply accumulated experience, and that the industry does not normally provide the same lessons free. Similar standards are already being applied to some apprenticeship programs. Political objections to the Endowment are more of an obstacle than these administrative problems. The major trouble is cost. Every year 3.5 million people become 18 years old and under the proposal, they would acquire in the aggregate drawing rights of $17.5 billion. Although not everyone will claim his endowment, and although the Endowment is outside the budget, Congress may be hesitant to begin the program at full volume. A more modest pilot proposal might confine loans to vocational and professional school students, concentrating on groups whose education contributes most immediately to their income. Current government aid programs are least favorable to these groups; and the income range of the borrowing would be sufficiently wide to guage the appeal of a more comprehensive program. Other possible limitations of the program's scale are less attractive. A means test would sacrifice the simple appeal of university and the political support of middle and upper middle income groups, while abandoning the most lucrrative loan prospects. Alternatively, Endowment loans could be limited to states or institutions supplying matching funds; but this would aid only students who might otherwise receive help from non federal sources. Several Ivy League universities are considering on their own an income contingent repayment loan plan. A major political objection to the plan is that it might siphon funds from other government aid programs. The National Association of Land Grant Colleges (and organization of State universities) has expressed concern that an income repayment loan scheme might come to be regarded as a panacea for educational finance. Public as well as private institutions could then let tuition soar. Indeed, lacking other resources, they would have to impose full fare on students' future earnings. As the Association points out, higher education has social as well as private benefits; there is still a good case for subsidies and scholarships, for the gifted and for the poor, and particularly, for the gifted poor. These fears are probably exaggerated. Since it could be financed entirely by bond sales of a government corporation, the Endowment would not offer direct budgetary competition for other educational appropriations. Moreover, much existing aid is ear marked for purposes with their own powerful constituencies - for example, science education and state universities. But most persuasively, the cost of university education in the next decade will rise far beyond the ability of a universal loan program to finance. So long as the loan program makes the same line of credit available to all, it can never offer enough to finance college and graduate education completely. At present, that would require a potential loan fund of $87.5 billion. And, so long as the Endowment falls well short of this level, the need and political support for subsidizing academic education will persist. The Endowment is a comprehensive, equitable, simple and far reaching scheme for financing education beyond the high school for all segments of American youth. It is hard to locate it in the usual ideological and political spectrum. It can appeal to Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, old and young, rich and poor, black and white ; it is well adapted to the present mood of the country. Legislators Give 'Proof' to Support University students are now awaiting the final step in the enactment of an "anti-riot" rider which was recently attached to the Board of Regents appropriations bill and passed by the Iowa Legislature. The bill needs only the final signature of Gov. Robert Ray before it becomes law. The rider says that any student or faculty member who is convicted of disrupting the University can be suspended from school. The U of I Student Report recently received a copy of some legislators' rationale for attaching this rider. We have reprinted major parts of it here so that the students realize the reasoning ability and select perceptiveness about University students which is exercised by the legislators. As to the violent nature of our campus the legislators offer "proof" such as - " The statement by Vice President Boyd of Iowa University that he did sit silent on the platform, when speakers used filthy language because ' to have objected might have caused a riot.' " The action on campus of persons like Ed Hoffman, formerly of the University of Northern Iowa now of Iowa City, who in the Feb 1-. 1969 copy of Campus Underground, has a letter of his intentions to organize and promote the "Iowa Resistance" movement. THIS MAN SHOULD BE TRIED FOR TREASON. (our emphasis) "Action by a minority group particularly at the University of Iowa, to destroy or damage private property. For example, a wash bowl was ripped off the wall in the Memorial Union last week. Water pipes torn, and filled rooms with water. Numerous similar items of deliberate destruction can be cited. "The Des Moines Register of March 18 states that 60 students led by Jerry Sies gathered on Old Capitol steps outside President Bowen's office demanding abolition of the ROTC program at the University. Sies has a record of two arrests by Iowa City police for disorderly conduct. "He is also listed as teaching a course at the University called Investigation of Discrimination. The legislators who drafted the statement conclude by saying that "the image of our fine, splendid serious students must not be destroyed by a militant, small minority." What the legislators fail to realize is that it is not a "militant, small minority" which is opposing the tuition increase of the voter disenfranchisement. The tuition issue has drawn the most student concern to win their fight since the Hawkeyes went to their last Rose Bowl contest. BUY NEW REPUBLIC MAGAZINE Students Launch Letter Campaign A group of six University freshmen are launching their own campaign to stop the tuition increase. Their point of attack is to present tuition and cost facts to incoming University freshmen and junior college transfers and to get their support that the tuition increase will make it "tough" for these students to attend the University. The six students, all from the Clinton area, will, this week be contacting high schools, Mount St. Clare and Clinton Junior College the news media and school officials in Clinton. As a corollary to the students "informational" campaign each student has been conducting individual research on the various alternatives to financing the University cost without having a tuition increase. These alternatives will be presented to the students parents and media. The students are attempting to reach out to the various areas of the state and make sure that all Iowans are informed on the effects of the tuition increase and the plausible alternatives. The Clinton project , the students hope, will expand to other areas of Iowa. The students are calling for support from other University students who would be willing to aid the campaign. Those interested are asked to contact Dale Elleson at 353-0860 or Denny Demong at 353-0844. The students are also contacting students from Iowa State University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls, in hope of soliciting help for a proposed informational rally which is tentatively scheduled for Saturday in Clinton. Further details will be released this week. Elleson and Demong stressed the idea that they want to state the facts "as they really are" to these prospective students and to show the people of Iowa that a protest can be carried out in a legitimate way. Legislators Write To Give Opinions The following are excerpts from letters to Student Body Pres. James Sutton from members of the Iowa State Legislature. From Rep. Richard F. Drake, R-Muscatine: "House File 774 in neither a violation of the Iowa or United States constitution. Twenty three other states... have similar provisions... "The problem of the 19 year old voting, well could come out of this session of the Legislature. As to the Legislature not wanting the electorate to be enlarged by a group of idealists is not at issue but to be enlarged by tax payers is at issue. Sutton's reply: "Under H.F. 774, some students will not be able to prove their intent to become permanent residents either in the towns they were born in or in the college towns where they actually sleep. "I personally know of two such cases.. where students were prevented from voting in their home towns because they could not show intent to become residents after graduation. "If a student has lived in Iowa City for six years, there may be some justification for not considering him a permanent resident of his ORIGINAL home town. In this case the student would be disenfranchised. " In your letter you say, 'As to the legislature not wanting the electorate to be enlarged by a group of idealists is not at issue but to be enlarged by tax payers is at issue.' May I respectfully remind you that the property classification for voting was abolished many, many years ago. We decided that the idea you are proposing here was un-American." From Rep. Larry Perkins (R- Council Bluffs) "Due to the childish and disrespectful way in which you presented yourself at the Rally (at the State Capitol, April 28) I now feel that 19 year olds do not have the maturity to accept responsibility of voting... I cannot honestly back the way you or your cohorts take". Sutton's reply: "We acted in the most Democratic method by presenting our grievances in person to the legislature. "It is our feeling that your offhand are rather irresponsible dismissal of the 19 year olds voting issues is as childish and disrespectful to us as you claim our lobbying efforts were to you." Sutton Describes Dilemma Of SDS in Strike Question By JIM SUTTON Many members of SDS believe a strike is possible without majority support. But at a meeting late Thursday night, SDS voted not to strike unilaterally. There are reasons: The 1200 votes favoring a strike may not represent much support. Many students interpreted the ballot to mean that "no strike" was simultaneous with "no further action" and therefore voted for the strike rather than give up the entire fight on tuition question. The risks of attempting a strike alone are great, This tactic has been a severe failure in places where moderate activists are at work. It is one thing to strike unilaterally when others are doing nothing; it is quite another to strike when alternatives are being proposed and explored. The question is what will SDS do now. It would appear that most militant students would like to force the strike on the student body by precipitating some incident which would force police intervention. An opportunity would then be created to claim police brutality, whether or not the charge is justified in order to mobilize broader student support. Perhaps it would work. The morality behind this tactic is questionable, according to SDS's own philosophy. Ignoring the will of the majority is justified only when the majority is acting immorally or illegitimately n deciding to pursue the proposals which were put before it Thursday night. Certain SDS members simply believe that a strike must be forced against the majority. Thus, SDS is facing is a serious dilemma. Will SDS go along with the majority or will it sacrifice its views on participatory democracy to the more militant sector of its ideology? Participatory democracy means men participate whether or not their ways prevail. SDS needs to decide whether, by ignoring the majority, it is willing to run the risk of proposing participatory democracy for an elite. Perhaps there is no room for participatory democracy outside SDS meetings, but from the obvious effort by SDS to participate actively at the assembly Thursday night this doesn't seem to be the case. Idea Offered To Stop Hike The University may find itself c aught in the same bind as University students who face a rise in tuition. An alternative proposal was investigated Friday which would cause a legitimate shit down of the University. A source inside the University said that students can exert economic pressure on the University and cause it to have to close its doors. This economic pressure could come in the form of 5,000 students asking the University Business Office for an itemized statement of their University bills. If this many students would ask, the University would have to spend $5 million in order to accomplish the task. This amount of work would take until mid-July to complete. The students are legally entitled to have these statements, the student who suggested the proposal stated. Senate to Discuss Action on Tuition Student Senate will meet at 7 p,m. Tuesday in the Union Lucas Dodge Room Resolutions to be discussed include: Authorizing additional senate seats for foreign and Afro-American Student Senators Establishing a summer session for Student Senate Discussion on further steps concerning the tuition increase. Condemnation of Jerry Langenberg Clerk of Johnson County District Court for releasing personal information. Committee on Student Life recommendations for the student code. New University Conference Quiz ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS: TRUE OR FALSE 1. The State Board of Regents did not interview any candidates for the Ui presidency except Dean Boyd 2. The student subcommittee of the presidential search committee did not endorse the selection of the Dean Boyd. 3. UI endorsed the Joint AAUP-NSA Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students. 4. After the Committee on Student Conduct rules in accordance with the Joint Statement, University Management rescinded their endorsement. 5. Managers Bowen and Boyd have indicated that they do not intend to accept the decisions of faculty student committees if they don't agree with them.. 7. The same day Manager Bowen sent a memo to all chairmen of university committees telling them that their committee meetings need not be public. 8. UI has still not taken a public position against classified and secret research. 9. Major support at UI for secret research comes from pharmacy and engineering. 10. Under NASA policy, no grants are given to universities that bar military recruiters. UI received 2.7 million dollars from NASA in 1967-68. Is the inference true or false; UI does not bar military recruiters. 11. Sixty per cent of Hawkeye Court apartments are unoccupied because of high rents and faulty construction. 12. Students who attempt to break their lease at Hawkeye Court have been threatened with withholding of grades and barring of registration. 13. In some Hawkeye Court and Hawkeye Drive apartments you can hear toilets flushing from five surrounding apartments at once. 14. Johnson County Welfare will not place foster children in the Barracks Apartments because they regard them as substandard. 15. Under the proposed campus parking program, the average secretary typist will have to pay two weeks of her salary in order to park. 16. According to the original parking plan, Ui would have been the first in the Big Ten to have matching parking ramps facing each other. 17. The President's Library Committee, in their independent planning of the remodelled library voted not to permit undergraduates to the new floors except with written permission. 18. The planned new recreation building has no women's dressing facilities and only one women's toilet. 19. The faculty club (Triangle Club) has no women's toilet. 20. Despite the two items above, the inference that women at Iowa have extraordinarily large bladders is incorrect. 21. The per cent of women staff employees at UI has not changed since 1940. 22. The per cent of women faculty has not changed since 1940. 23. Since 1940, the per cent of women in low paying nontenured instructor positions has been increasing, while the per cent of women in all other faculty ranks has been going down. 24. Two of every five instructors at UI are women. 25. UI, in 1856, was the first state university to accept women. 26. One hundred years ago there were proportionally more women at UI than today. 27. Since 1945, it appears that the proportion of black students on the UI campus has been decreasing. 28. Although the College of Medicine enrolls only four per cent of the students on campus, it controls approximately 25 per cent of the UI Faculty Senate seats. 29. Liberal Arts, which has 57 per cent of the student body only has 41 per cent of the Senate seats. 30. The Faculty Senate never took a stand on the Code of Student life. 31. The Graduate Student Senate is illegal under the Code of Student Life. 32. Professor Jerry J. Kollros, Chairman of the Department of Zoology, is not now nor has ever been a member of the New University Conference. ANSWERS All questions are true A score of under 10 - you are asleep 11-20 you have been neglecting your studies. 21 or higher - you are a member of NUC. Have you paid your dues?
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Asks U.S. to Pay Tuition; Graduates Would Repay University of Iowa Student Report Saturday May 10, 1969 By JAMES TOBIN and LEONARD ROSS Reprinted with the publisher's permission from the New Republic, May 3, 1969. A copyrighted article by Tobin, a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers (1861-62) and Sterling professor of economics at Yale University, Ross is a Junior Fellow at Harvard. America's most precious resources, according to a well-worn cliche, are the potential talents of its young men and women. Education and training to develop these talents will, in is widely agreed, pay handsome dividends. Yet we have no systematic program for financing such productive investments. Funds to finance education and training after high school are limited, and access to them is quite unequal. Our present arrangements strongly favor the children of the affluent. Their parents can provide financial help. Their suburban homes and schools prepare them for college, and college prepares them for graduate or professional schools. The states offer them university education at a small fraction of its full cost, and tax sheltered philanthropy subsidizes them at private institutions. If they are bright, academically oriented and in the right field (physics or economics, say but not medicine or law strangely enough) they may enjoy a long career of graduate and post doctoral fellowships. Of course, these public and private subsidies are competitively available to all, and the universities have been working hard to find disadvantaged youths who can qualify for them. But universities do not have the scholarship and loan funds to make up for the poverty of the parents of potential candidates much less to remedy their disqualifying handicaps in background and schooling. Many young people could benefit from technical or vocational education if they could afford it. At present, the vast majority of post-high school vocational students must pay their way without any form of government assistance. Thus, for the poor, secretarial school can be as inaccessible as the Ivy League. the fact is that our present arrangements for financing education beyond high school compound the inherited inequalities with which our young people grow up. Private credit markets are no help. If is far easier to borrow money for a car or cruise than for an education. A typical young man or woman - even the student with talent and prospects- has little security to offer a commercial lender. His education may pay off handsomely over his lifetime, but in the short run it probably elevates his tastes faster than his income. Neither he nor his creditor can convert future career promise into present cash. As a result, the average student can borrow, if at all, only on his parents' credit or with governmental help. Today, commercial loans cover only a minor fraction of the cost of higher education. They are virtually unavailable to the student whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year, or to the student needing vocational training rather than collegiate life. Scarce student loan funds are a problem for the nation as well as the young. The costs of higher education, according to recent projections of the Carnegie Corporation;s Commission on Higher Education, will balloon 132 per cent over the next nine years. Junior's summer job won't fit the gap. Unless student borrowing is increased, the older generation must come up with an additional $24 billion a year by 1976-77. But there are increasing signs that it won't work. School bond issties no longer pass automatically, and taxpayer revolts menace pro-education governors. The Carnegie Commission's plan for a 16 per cent annual increase in federal education spending will conflict with other budgetary claims on a Nixon Administration committee to lower taxes and higher military expenditures. If government grants do fall short of Carnegie targets the financial prospects for higher education are not rosy. Public and private institutions will rely increasingly on tuition, and college will become even more of a parent supported institution than it is today. Students from low-income families - already under represented in college enrollments - will be a further disadvantage. Even if higher education garners its needed billions, a large fraction of America's youth will receive no post high school training in the absence of new government programs to finance technical and vocational education. Faced with the dismal financial prospects of higher education, more and more educators see student loans as the solution. Not the usual student loans available from commercial lenders or in the general loan funds of colleges and universities - these loans are too small, too short in term. The federal government and some states, have sponsored loan programs featuring deferred payments and below market interest rates. Bur these loan programs consume heavy subsidies and compete for tax funds otherwise available for scholarships. Moreover, many young people are understandably reluctant to assume heavy fixed obligations against uncertain future incomes. A self financing loans plan with repayment obligations scaled to ability to pay, has been advocated by a number of educators (including Professor Milton Friedman, Yale President Kingman Brewster), the 1967 White House Panel on Educational Innovation and the Carnegie Commission. Let the student pay for something like full cost of his education from the higher incomes the university enables him to earn. Let his repayments be scaled to his future income over many years; the rich tycoon will pay back much more than he borrowed, the poor clergyman much less, but on average the loan fund would earn normal interest. let these loans be available to all students. This is a sensible proposal . On the one hand, it removes economic obstacles that now keep qualified students out of colleges and universities. On the other hand, it places more of the burden of financing higher education on the principle beneficiaries, students who are prospectively if not currently better off than taxpayers. But the proposal is a parochial one, reflecting the nature preoccupation and meritocratic bias of the higher educators who espouse it. It does nothing for the post high school training of youths who do not go to college. Extended to all the nation's youth, however, the plan could, for the first time, make college or technical education universally available, much as the CI Bill of Rights did for World War II veterans. At age 18, every youth in the nation - whatever the economic means of his parents or his earlier education - would have available from the federal government a line of credit of "endowment" of, for example, $5,000. A young man or woman could draw on this "National Youth Endowment" for authorized purposes until his twenty eighth birthday (extensions of time could be allowed for military service or periods of social service like Peace Corps or VISTA). Authorized purposes would include not merely academic higher education but also vocational schooling, apprenticeship, and other forms of accredited on the job training. For every dollar used, the individual would assume liability for payment of extra federal income tax after he reaches age 28 ( or as extended). The terms of this repayment for example one per cent of income per $3,000 borrowed) would be set so that the average individual would, over his lifetime, repay the fund in full plus interest at the government's borrowing rate. However, the government might decide to set less stringent terms and to subsidize the endowment, using the loan program as a vehicle for general support of education beyond high school. On these terms, Youth Endowment loans should prove attractive to students from all income groups. For the low or middle income youth pressed by increasing tuition and living expenses, and especially for the vocational student, a Youth Endowment loan may be the only means of financing an education. For the upper-middle class student the chief advantage of a Youth Endowment loan would be the stretched out repayment. Like Social Security, the Youth Endowment would be self financing. Of course, in the initial years, outlays will exceed repayments - unlike Social Security, where the taxes preceded the benefits. The inflationary impact of these initial cash deficits would have to be neutralized somehow. This could be done by taxation. But since the Endowment is a social investment project it would be entirely appropriate to borrow the funds from private lenders. The monetary authorities would have to let the Endowment's drafts on the capital market tighten credit and raise interest rates to other borrowers, temporarily displacing other investments of lower social priority. Clearly the self financing feature of the Endowment is a political asset; indeed even its initial cash deficits would be kept out of the federal budget by establishing the Youth Endowment as a public corporation. A Youth Endowment program would leave the choice of schooling entirely up to the student. Borrowers could pick freely among public and private institutions (including profit making vocational schools), rather than having to tailor their training to the changing contours of government aid programs. Their choices would redress the unbalanced emphasis that has characterized government assistance (long on support for the sciences, for academically gifted students and universities, and for experimental training programs for the hard core unemployed; shorter shrift for average America's 2.4 children) Even for the higher income families there is something to be said for shifting the cost of education from dad to the kids. Academic degrees - especially those from expensive private schools - have cash value for the student as well as prestige payoff for the parents. It is unfair - and, as surveys make clear, unrealistic - to expect the average parent to ante $10 or $20 thousand dollars for each child's education. Yet, barring an income repayment loan, the student can't make much of a contribution himself. At present some parents lend their children funds for school, creating a do it yourself capital market which serves as a resourceful but inefficient substitute for a sound government loan program. Preliminary estimates of repayment terms needed for a program covering only academic education suggest that a surcharge of one third of one per cent of income per $1,000 borrowed would suffice. Broadening the proposal to include vocational students would raise the required surcharge and the rate would jump further if students with high income prospects disdained to participate. To hold this clientele, the program might include a feature allowing a borrower to avoid further surcharges once he has repaid the loan at a specified and abnormally high interest rate. Some tricky problems of equity and incentive arise with respect to obligations incurred by women who subsequently marry. If they become joint obligations of husband and wife, will men shy away from girls with negative dowries? Should a woman's repayment surcharge be based only on her own income? Some pragmatic compromise can be reached; the Youth Endowment is not the only case where dilemmas of equity between married and single persons arise. Accreditation of schools and training programs would be a major administrative chore. But much can be learned from the nation's previous comprehensive training program the GI Bill. At first, the Bill contained virtually no safeguards. Grants were made straight to the institution rather than to the student. The Veterans Administration had to rely on state accreditation procedures, however lax. Schools with no prior experience, with no students other than the subsidized veterans themselves, could readily qualify. These loopholes were gradually closed and today's GI Bill program involves no major difficulties of control. Tough accreditation standards can limit the scope for waste. But finally the student's judgement must control. Using borrowed money should ass a stroke of caution to his choice of schooling. Moreover, any Youth Endowment program should be coupled with increased counseling services to help inform the borrower's choice. Among the accredited programs would, of course, be many of the manpower training activities set up by the Department of Labor and the Office of Economic Opportunities, or with their help, as part of the war on poverty. But the recruiting procedures would be reversed, and access to these opportunities, now haphazard and unequal, would be equalized. Now the government gives the money to the program, and the program seeks out and selects the students. Some youths, by luck and location get in; indeed they may have repeated opportunities. Others have none, and no compensatory help to go elsewhere ether. Under the Endowment; one youth would have, over the course of his career, the same line of credit as another. And government sponsored programs would have to compete for student favor with other accredited programs. Aiding the customer, the student, rather than the seller, the institution, has already proved to be the best way to dispense national scholarship and fellowship funds. On the job training programs pose a special risk. Often they have served as a subsidy to employers for jobs involving no real training. even where some training takes place, it might have been granted in the absence of subsidy by an employer facing a tight labor market. To conserve Youth Endowment funds, on the job training should be accredited only upon rigorous evidence that the job offers instruction rather than simply accumulated experience, and that the industry does not normally provide the same lessons free. Similar standards are already being applied to some apprenticeship programs. Political objections to the Endowment are more of an obstacle than these administrative problems. The major trouble is cost. Every year 3.5 million people become 18 years old and under the proposal, they would acquire in the aggregate drawing rights of $17.5 billion. Although not everyone will claim his endowment, and although the Endowment is outside the budget, Congress may be hesitant to begin the program at full volume. A more modest pilot proposal might confine loans to vocational and professional school students, concentrating on groups whose education contributes most immediately to their income. Current government aid programs are least favorable to these groups; and the income range of the borrowing would be sufficiently wide to guage the appeal of a more comprehensive program. Other possible limitations of the program's scale are less attractive. A means test would sacrifice the simple appeal of university and the political support of middle and upper middle income groups, while abandoning the most lucrrative loan prospects. Alternatively, Endowment loans could be limited to states or institutions supplying matching funds; but this would aid only students who might otherwise receive help from non federal sources. Several Ivy League universities are considering on their own an income contingent repayment loan plan. A major political objection to the plan is that it might siphon funds from other government aid programs. The National Association of Land Grant Colleges (and organization of State universities) has expressed concern that an income repayment loan scheme might come to be regarded as a panacea for educational finance. Public as well as private institutions could then let tuition soar. Indeed, lacking other resources, they would have to impose full fare on students' future earnings. As the Association points out, higher education has social as well as private benefits; there is still a good case for subsidies and scholarships, for the gifted and for the poor, and particularly, for the gifted poor. These fears are probably exaggerated. Since it could be financed entirely by bond sales of a government corporation, the Endowment would not offer direct budgetary competition for other educational appropriations. Moreover, much existing aid is ear marked for purposes with their own powerful constituencies - for example, science education and state universities. But most persuasively, the cost of university education in the next decade will rise far beyond the ability of a universal loan program to finance. So long as the loan program makes the same line of credit available to all, it can never offer enough to finance college and graduate education completely. At present, that would require a potential loan fund of $87.5 billion. And, so long as the Endowment falls well short of this level, the need and political support for subsidizing academic education will persist. The Endowment is a comprehensive, equitable, simple and far reaching scheme for financing education beyond the high school for all segments of American youth. It is hard to locate it in the usual ideological and political spectrum. It can appeal to Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, old and young, rich and poor, black and white ; it is well adapted to the present mood of the country. Legislators Give 'Proof' to Support University students are now awaiting the final step in the enactment of an "anti-riot" rider which was recently attached to the Board of Regents appropriations bill and passed by the Iowa Legislature. The bill needs only the final signature of Gov. Robert Ray before it becomes law. The rider says that any student or faculty member who is convicted of disrupting the University can be suspended from school. The U of I Student Report recently received a copy of some legislators' rationale for attaching this rider. We have reprinted major parts of it here so that the students realize the reasoning ability and select perceptiveness about University students which is exercised by the legislators. As to the violent nature of our campus the legislators offer "proof" such as - " The statement by Vice President Boyd of Iowa University that he did sit silent on the platform, when speakers used filthy language because ' to have objected might have caused a riot.' " The action on campus of persons like Ed Hoffman, formerly of the University of Northern Iowa now of Iowa City, who in the Feb 1-. 1969 copy of Campus Underground, has a letter of his intentions to organize and promote the "Iowa Resistance" movement. THIS MAN SHOULD BE TRIED FOR TREASON. (our emphasis) "Action by a minority group particularly at the University of Iowa, to destroy or damage private property. For example, a wash bowl was ripped off the wall in the Memorial Union last week. Water pipes torn, and filled rooms with water. Numerous similar items of deliberate destruction can be cited. "The Des Moines Register of March 18 states that 60 students led by Jerry Sies gathered on Old Capitol steps outside President Bowen's office demanding abolition of the ROTC program at the University. Sies has a record of two arrests by Iowa City police for disorderly conduct. "He is also listed as teaching a course at the University called Investigation of Discrimination. The legislators who drafted the statement conclude by saying that "the image of our fine, splendid serious students must not be destroyed by a militant, small minority." What the legislators fail to realize is that it is not a "militant, small minority" which is opposing the tuition increase of the voter disenfranchisement. The tuition issue has drawn the most student concern to win their fight since the Hawkeyes went to their last Rose Bowl contest. BUY NEW REPUBLIC MAGAZINE Students Launch Letter Campaign A group of six University freshmen are launching their own campaign to stop the tuition increase. Their point of attack is to present tuition and cost facts to incoming University freshmen and junior college transfers and to get their support that the tuition increase will make it "tough" for these students to attend the University. The six students, all from the Clinton area, will, this week be contacting high schools, Mount St. Clare and Clinton Junior College the news media and school officials in Clinton. As a corollary to the students "informational" campaign each student has been conducting individual research on the various alternatives to financing the University cost without having a tuition increase. These alternatives will be presented to the students parents and media. The students are attempting to reach out to the various areas of the state and make sure that all Iowans are informed on the effects of the tuition increase and the plausible alternatives. The Clinton project , the students hope, will expand to other areas of Iowa. The students are calling for support from other University students who would be willing to aid the campaign. Those interested are asked to contact Dale Elleson at 353-0860 or Denny Demong at 353-0844. The students are also contacting students from Iowa State University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls, in hope of soliciting help for a proposed informational rally which is tentatively scheduled for Saturday in Clinton. Further details will be released this week. Elleson and Demong stressed the idea that they want to state the facts "as they really are" to these prospective students and to show the people of Iowa that a protest can be carried out in a legitimate way. Legislators Write To Give Opinions The following are excerpts from letters to Student Body Pres. James Sutton from members of the Iowa State Legislature. From Rep. Richard F. Drake, R-Muscatine: "House File 774 in neither a violation of the Iowa or United States constitution. Twenty three other states... have similar provisions... "The problem of the 19 year old voting, well could come out of this session of the Legislature. As to the Legislature not wanting the electorate to be enlarged by a group of idealists is not at issue but to be enlarged by tax payers is at issue. Sutton's reply: "Under H.F. 774, some students will not be able to prove their intent to become permanent residents either in the towns they were born in or in the college towns where they actually sleep. "I personally know of two such cases.. where students were prevented from voting in their home towns because they could not show intent to become residents after graduation. "If a student has lived in Iowa City for six years, there may be some justification for not considering him a permanent resident of his ORIGINAL home town. In this case the student would be disenfranchised. " In your letter you say, 'As to the legislature not wanting the electorate to be enlarged by a group of idealists is not at issue but to be enlarged by tax payers is at issue.' May I respectfully remind you that the property classification for voting was abolished many, many years ago. We decided that the idea you are proposing here was un-American." From Rep. Larry Perkins (R- Council Bluffs) "Due to the childish and disrespectful way in which you presented yourself at the Rally (at the State Capitol, April 28) I now feel that 19 year olds do not have the maturity to accept responsibility of voting... I cannot honestly back the way you or your cohorts take". Sutton's reply: "We acted in the most Democratic method by presenting our grievances in person to the legislature. "It is our feeling that your offhand are rather irresponsible dismissal of the 19 year olds voting issues is as childish and disrespectful to us as you claim our lobbying efforts were to you." Sutton Describes Dilemma Of SDS in Strike Question By JIM SUTTON Many members of SDS believe a strike is possible without majority support. But at a meeting late Thursday night, SDS voted not to strike unilaterally. There are reasons: The 1200 votes favoring a strike may not represent much support. Many students interpreted the ballot to mean that "no strike" was simultaneous with "no further action" and therefore voted for the strike rather than give up the entire fight on tuition question. The risks of attempting a strike alone are great, This tactic has been a severe failure in places where moderate activists are at work. It is one thing to strike unilaterally when others are doing nothing; it is quite another to strike when alternatives are being proposed and explored. The question is what will SDS do now. It would appear that most militant students would like to force the strike on the student body by precipitating some incident which would force police intervention. An opportunity would then be created to claim police brutality, whether or not the charge is justified in order to mobilize broader student support. Perhaps it would work. The morality behind this tactic is questionable, according to SDS's own philosophy. Ignoring the will of the majority is justified only when the majority is acting immorally or illegitimately n deciding to pursue the proposals which were put before it Thursday night. Certain SDS members simply believe that a strike must be forced against the majority. Thus, SDS is facing is a serious dilemma. Will SDS go along with the majority or will it sacrifice its views on participatory democracy to the more militant sector of its ideology? Participatory democracy means men participate whether or not their ways prevail. SDS needs to decide whether, by ignoring the majority, it is willing to run the risk of proposing participatory democracy for an elite. Perhaps there is no room for participatory democracy outside SDS meetings, but from the obvious effort by SDS to participate actively at the assembly Thursday night this doesn't seem to be the case. Idea Offered To Stop Hike The University may find itself c aught in the same bind as University students who face a rise in tuition. An alternative proposal was investigated Friday which would cause a legitimate shit down of the University. A source inside the University said that students can exert economic pressure on the University and cause it to have to close its doors. This economic pressure could come in the form of 5,000 students asking the University Business Office for an itemized statement of their University bills. If this many students would ask, the University would have to spend $5 million in order to accomplish the task. This amount of work would take until mid-July to complete. The students are legally entitled to have these statements, the student who suggested the proposal stated. Senate to Discuss Action on Tuition Student Senate will meet at 7 p,m. Tuesday in the Union Lucas Dodge Room Resolutions to be discussed include: Authorizing additional senate seats for foreign and Afro-American Student Senators Establishing a summer session for Student Senate Discussion on further steps concerning the tuition increase. Condemnation of Jerry Langenberg Clerk of Johnson County District Court for releasing personal information. Committee on Student Life recommendations for the student code. New University Conference Quiz ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS: TRUE OR FALSE 1. The State Board of Regents did not interview any candidates for the Ui presidency except Dean Boyd 2. The student subcommittee of the presidential search committee did not endorse the selection of the Dean Boyd. 3. UI endorsed the Joint AAUP-NSA Statement on the Rights and Freedoms of Students. 4. After the Committee on Student Conduct rules in accordance with the Joint Statement, University Management rescinded their endorsement. 5. Managers Bowen and Boyd have indicated that they do not intend to accept the decisions of faculty student committees if they don't agree with them.. 7. The same day Manager Bowen sent a memo to all chairmen of university committees telling them that their committee meetings need not be public. 8. UI has still not taken a public position against classified and secret research. 9. Major support at UI for secret research comes from pharmacy and engineering. 10. Under NASA policy, no grants are given to universities that bar military recruiters. UI received 2.7 million dollars from NASA in 1967-68. Is the inference true or false; UI does not bar military recruiters. 11. Sixty per cent of Hawkeye Court apartments are unoccupied because of high rents and faulty construction. 12. Students who attempt to break their lease at Hawkeye Court have been threatened with withholding of grades and barring of registration. 13. In some Hawkeye Court and Hawkeye Drive apartments you can hear toilets flushing from five surrounding apartments at once. 14. Johnson County Welfare will not place foster children in the Barracks Apartments because they regard them as substandard. 15. Under the proposed campus parking program, the average secretary typist will have to pay two weeks of her salary in order to park. 16. According to the original parking plan, Ui would have been the first in the Big Ten to have matching parking ramps facing each other. 17. The President's Library Committee, in their independent planning of the remodelled library voted not to permit undergraduates to the new floors except with written permission. 18. The planned new recreation building has no women's dressing facilities and only one women's toilet. 19. The faculty club (Triangle Club) has no women's toilet. 20. Despite the two items above, the inference that women at Iowa have extraordinarily large bladders is incorrect. 21. The per cent of women staff employees at UI has not changed since 1940. 22. The per cent of women faculty has not changed since 1940. 23. Since 1940, the per cent of women in low paying nontenured instructor positions has been increasing, while the per cent of women in all other faculty ranks has been going down. 24. Two of every five instructors at UI are women. 25. UI, in 1856, was the first state university to accept women. 26. One hundred years ago there were proportionally more women at UI than today. 27. Since 1945, it appears that the proportion of black students on the UI campus has been decreasing. 28. Although the College of Medicine enrolls only four per cent of the students on campus, it controls approximately 25 per cent of the UI Faculty Senate seats. 29. Liberal Arts, which has 57 per cent of the student body only has 41 per cent of the Senate seats. 30. The Faculty Senate never took a stand on the Code of Student life. 31. The Graduate Student Senate is illegal under the Code of Student Life. 32. Professor Jerry J. Kollros, Chairman of the Department of Zoology, is not now nor has ever been a member of the New University Conference. ANSWERS All questions are true A score of under 10 - you are asleep 11-20 you have been neglecting your studies. 21 or higher - you are a member of NUC. Have you paid your dues?
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