“Today’s college student is decidedly nontraditional—and has been for a while,” according to the Director of RTI International, a higher education think tank in North Carolina, Alexandria Radford. “Popular culture tells us that college students are recent high school graduates, living on campus, taking art history, drinking too much on weekends, and (hopefully) graduating four years later,”
Free College A Winner For Democrats
“Just say FREE COLLEGE Democrats! Just say it and we’ll win!” shouted Michael Moore in a Q&A after the premier showing September 17 of his new two-hour-plus long documentary film “Fahrenheit 11/9” – a convenient reminder to Democrats of the “disastrous” day when President Trump was announced the winner of the 2016 presidential elections, juxtaposed to the date of the disastrous day 9/11 when terrorists attacked the United States 17 years earlier. Offering free college to everyone was Moore’s (who is 64 years old) solution for a new party of Democrats that bypassed the 70-and-80-year-old establishment Democrats who “allowed” Trump to win, according to Moore. “Promising free college will get the young people out to vote,” Moore said emphatically. “Don’t worry about paying for it. Americans always buy things they want and can’t afford; we will figure out how to pay for it later.”
Moore doesn’t recommend trying to form a third party of disaffected Democrats and Libertarians for the 2020 election. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We just need to take over the Democratic party. It’s there for the taking.” Moore urged Democrats to “Let people of color and millennials run the party and we will win.” In the film, Moore focuses extensively on the millions of millennials who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and were cut out by establishment super delegates for Hillary at the July 2016 nomination convention in Philadelphia. That turned off many needed Democratic voters in key states, Moore claims. Maybe the Democratic National Committee heard him. On August 26, the DNC voted to curtail the power of super delegates by barring them from voting on the first ballot to choose the party’s presidential nominee.
College Student Demographics Show More Latinos, Non-Traditional Students
“Today’s college student is decidedly nontraditional—and has been for a while,” according to the Director of RTI International, a higher education think tank in North Carolina, Alexandria Radford. “Popular culture tells us that college students are recent high school graduates, living on campus, taking art history, drinking too much on weekends, and (hopefully) graduating four years later,” Radford writes. “But the fact is that most college students are “non-traditional,” meaning that they have one or more of the following characteristics: 1) Financially independent from their parents; 2) Having a child or other dependent; 3) Being a single caregiver; 4) Lacking a traditional high school diploma; 5) Delaying postsecondary enrollment; 6) Attending school part time and 7) Being employed full time. Close to 74 percent of undergrads fall into these categories, especially Hispanic students. While the gap is closing between college degree attainment of whites and Hispanics, Latino students were overrepresented in the public two-year sector, according to the College Board (black students were overrepresented in the for-profit sector). As a result, Hispanic students continue to have less college debt than other groups. But the focus of education forums in Washington, D.C., is changing too it seems to one of job and entrepreneurial business skills attainment and entrepreneurial success. Panels at the Aspen Institute on September 13, for instance, focused on Latina/Latinx as the linchpin to American business success.
Ed Committee Chair Bans “T” Word In Hot Issue: Apprenticeships
At the September 5 hearing of the House Education Committee on apprenticeships, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) reminded the panel and witnesses at a hearing on apprenticeships, not to use the “t” word. She didn’t mean references to President Trump. She meant the word “TRAINING.” “Chairwoman Foxx believes that the t-word should never be used in conjunction with people. The chairwoman says that you train animals and you educate people,” Press Secretary Marty Boughton told The Hispanic Outlook. The distinction was important in the hearing entitled “On-The-Job: Rebuilding the Workforce Through Apprenticeships.” For over two hours, the role that public and especially private colleges and business can play to increase on-the-job “skills education” through apprenticeships was bandied about. The urgency: there are more than six million unfilled jobs in America. Republican lawmakers generally favored seeking out partnerships with businesses to develop apprenticeship programs—that could also include likely job offers. Democratic committee members tended to emphasize the role government should play in supporting apprenticeships and making sure they included diverse populations.
DO NOT FEAR! Democracy Is Alive And Well!
As the midterm elections heated up this summer and fall 2018, many establishment Democrats increasingly decried the “death of democracy.” “The Trump administration is a threat to our democracy” former President Obama—who had been almost unseen and not heard since January 2017—said in a coming out speech at the University of Illinois on September 7. “Our democracy is in crisis” Hillary Clinton warned throughout September in speeches, interviews and essays. Books such as “How Democracies Die” and panel discussions at the Brookings Institute and others focused on the “death of democracy.”
But it’s not true. As a Congressional reporter who for over ten years has covered the sausage factory where laws are presented, argued over, negotiated, killed and passed, I see democracy fully diverse, vibrant, loud and messy—anything but dead in the U.S. Congress, Washington, D.C., and the press. The political splits in all our institutions IS democracy. Democracy IS diverse! Democracy does not guarantee a permanent conservative or a liberal outcome. Democracy 2018 does not work to cement the liberal legacy of the past 50 years. Conservative wins and changes to (liberal) policies and the ensuing fight against that, are the signs of a vibrant democracy, not signals of its demise. The liberal Democrats who decry the “death of democracy” really are reflecting the painful, essential but not existential changes happening in the Democratic party, and they constantly leave out one crucial word: liberal. We may well be seeing the demise of what is called “liberal” democracy—but not democracy itself. •
