My Sources

Bibliography

Berenbaum, Howard  The relation between worrying and concerns: The importance of perceived probability and costhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796706000696

Bowen, William G.The “cost disease” in higher education:
http://www.ithaka.org/sites/default/files/files/ITHAKA-TheCostDiseaseinHigherEducation.pdf
The Tanner Lectures
Stanford University
October 2012

Brown, Carolyn M.Paying for the High Cost of Higher Education
Black Enterprise42. 6 (Jan 2012): 20-21.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/929132774

 Lewin, Tamar. "For-Profit College Group Sued as U.S. Lays Out Wide Fraud." New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/education/09forprofit.html?_r=0imes (Jordi201college’s source)


Miester, Bob “Debt and Taxes:Can the financial Industry Save Public Universities?”

Research Proposal

Essay Proposal
Egypt Pringley

Working Title: The Balance of Credentials and Fear

Topic: I plan to look into the idea of How our credential based society has caused us to take drastic measures. Why do we put ourselves through so much in order to obtain a piece of paper or say that we attended a certain school?

Thesis: The motive behind people inquiring large amounts of debt is the trust in the way our society works. It is understood that our workforce is paper and credential based and that fact resonates so strongly in the American people that we collectively as a country willing put ourselves into debt in the name of education.
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Research Question: Because many Americans are fully aware of the debt that they will inquire by attending certain universities why do they continue to do so? How strong are the desires of the middle class to stay afloat and who controls what credentials are necessary in the workforce? Are these perhaps the same people that have control over the universities?

Theoretical Frame: The people that set the credentials necessary to thrive in the workforce are the same people that control the tuition prices of higher education. They are out to get us!

· Readings: Barbara Ehrenrich of the Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (more sources on other blog post)

· Topic Sentences: The connection of Privatization and the middle class fear is the fact that privatization uses the fear to continue the cycle

· Examples of how we are a credential based society and a name dropping society: people are going into debt to go to better schools because of the “name”

· The Intertwining idea of fear in different aspects of higher education

· Solutions? How do we isolate this fear and how do we prevent private investors from profiting off of it

• How does the fear connect to our credential hungry society?
• fear and irrationality
• talk about the “false claims act” brought up in Times Article

Blog Post3

Privatization connects to the topic of the Middle classes’ fear simply because it feeds off of it. Privatization is fueled on an ever present emotion in both the lower and middle classes.  In the article Debt and Taxes: Can the Financial Industry save Public Universities? The author uses University of California to some up an example of Privatization using this fear in action. He states “By following the logic of financialization, UC could theoretically raise revenues from enrollment growth for as long as Californians were more willing to incur debt than to pay higher taxes”( Meister 134). This quote deals with two fears and ideas that circulate in American society, The first being that going to debt for education is the way out and the  second being never want to pay higher taxes. Is it possible that college and the debt it puts you in has become a trait of the middle class?

Is fear causing the struggle?

Blog Post#2

As previously mentioned before the key focus on this blog is not necessarily the price of tuition and their continuing growth rates but ,more so the reason why people are buying into college despite the high cost. The middle class is a lot of times used as a pawn for political reasons to convey a certain image. For some the middle class is portrayed as the everyday American, for other the middle class is depicted as a diminishing number however the middle class is perceived there is always the idea of that particular group of people trying to maintain that status if not move up.  Education is the most common way that middle class use to secure their place. Author Barbara Ehrenrich  of the  Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class writes about how from a historical aspect, despite the cost of tuition, this has always been a fear.

 

This Blog is about the choices families make about higher education despite their financial situations. The article used in class really focuses on the behind the scenes decisions that universities make in favor of private investors. At the end of the day no matter who controls the price of tuition and the means that families get the money, the most important factor is the fact that students are going to school no matter what. I want to focus on the thought process of families and the fear and other factors that drives them to make risky financial decisions in the name of higher education. Once one can conclude what is the cause of such drive then one can figure out how this crude higher education cycle has lasted so long.