Blog Post #9

My argument is that death of imagined community in the USA has caused privatization to come into an ever increasing state of being which coupled with the college for all movement has resulted in colleges raising tuition at astronomical rates due to the high demand for an education, which has resulted in devaluing degrees and an educational bubble. This part of my argument is most applicable to the counter argument posed by President Obama in his State of the Union Address as recorded in Selingo's College (Un)Bound on page 70. The president blames the above issue on institutions taking advantage of federal funds and the states' lack of control over higher education in order to create these high tuition rates. He decides that college for all is not the problem, the schools are. He then ends this quote by threatening to cut all funding to schools which are unable to control themselves, in order to reduced tuition. In this way the president is trying to create a community which demands that one part of the community not exploit the other for its own gain.  Ultimately, the president sees the problem as the result of individualism but he blames privatization/rising tuition on schools which are making it impossible for the government to adequately fund them, instead of on an outdated ideology and a specifically a shattered community.

Selingo, Jeffrey J. College (un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students. New York: New Harvest Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Print.