1. The right-wing wants to wage class war over student debt, painting a picture of elite leftist 'gender studies' majors working as Starbucks baristas
The reality? California's desperate middle-class kids living in their cars in the Walmart parking lot, or couch surfing (Thread)
The reality? California's desperate middle-class kids living in their cars in the Walmart parking lot, or couch surfing (Thread)
2. My new column asks how the hell the American Dream of an affordable college education in the Golden State devolved from free tuition to this fall's hellscape of thousands of struggling, unhoused students from San Diego to Santa Cruz inquirer.com/opinion/colleg…
3. It's a sad but maybe inevitable new chapter to the theme of my new book, After the Ivory Tower Falls, which shows how America's failure to embrace higher ed as a public good has cheated generations of young people amazon.com/After-Ivory-To…
4. The book shows how free tuition in California built a thriving middle class and the world's 5th largest economy, only to bring the right-wing backlash led by Ronald Reagan that became the roots of our absurd student debt crisis theintercept.com/2022/08/25/stu…
5. I also explained the history of how we got here in this thread that went viral in May, on the anniversary of the 1970 Kent State massacre. Anyway..
https://twitter.com/Will_Bunch/status/1521541066150797312
6. Flash forward to 2022, and today's youth - especially Black and Brown folks - know they need a diploma to have any middle-class ambitions, so whatever it takes. With California's insane housing crisis, increasingly that is homelessness latimes.com/california/sto…
7. This is not your father's American Dream. It's kids writing papers while sleeping in the Walmart parking lot, or hopping from couch to couch between trips to the free food pantry. This is #RealCollege for America's working class...
8. It never should have come to this, and it doesn't have to. A nation that won WWII and put a human on the moon can offer learning and training to all of its young people, with willpower and a sense of priorities inquirer.com/opinion/biden-…
9. California officials seem to finally grasp the problem but their solutions would take years. The UC system needs to declare a housing emergency and do whatever it takes to house today's students inquirer.com/opinion/colleg…
10. Meanwhile, I hope my new book will aid what needs to be a national conversation about putting higher-ed reform on the front burner and how to undo the right's privatization of college - which needs to be a public good -30- bookshop.org/books/after-th…
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