Capitol Community College, in Hartford.
“The Problem We All Live With” (1964 oil) painting), by Norman Rockwell, dramatizes efforts to integrate Southern schools in the face of intense racism. U.S. marshals are escorting the little girl to a newly integrated school.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
For decades, even before the Connecticut Supreme Court decision in the school-integration case of Sheff v. O'Neill,. 27 years ago, educators have been telling the state that racial integration in education is crucial to better student performance, especially for children from minority groups. In response, Connecticut built and operated dozens of regional schools at a cost of billions of dollars to induce minority students from the cities and white students from the suburbs to mix voluntarily.
While the regional schools have moved thousands of students around, they have produced little integration, particularly in Hartford, which was the center of the Sheff case. Student performance throughout the state has continued to decline. But the political correctness of it all has produced high-paying jobs for many educators and has made them feel better about themselves.
Whereupon last week the state community college system repudiated racial integration in education without anyone noticing it.
The system announced a partnership with Morehouse College, in Atlanta, through which students of color who graduate from Capital Community College, in Hartford, in two years with an academic average of at least 2.7 will be guaranteed admission to Morehouse as juniors on their way to a four-year degree.
Morehouse is a prestigious "historically Black" institution, and according to Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, state community college officials said "studies have shown that Black students who enroll in historically Black colleges and universities are more likely to earn their degrees and have more income than those who attend non-HBCU institutions."
Surprise! Racial integration is not such a boon in education after all.
"HBCUs like Morehouse College inherently believe in the success of their students," community college system President John Maduko said, implying that other schools couldn't care less about how their students do.
So having long strived to integrate its students in primary education, Connecticut now will strive to resegregate them when they get to higher education.
The irony passed without comment from the state's education bureaucracy and the rest of state government. Have those billions spent on regional schools been wasted? Who cares? Now let's cost people billions more by making them all buy electric cars.
Meanwhile, the even more expensive failure of higher education is getting less notice than the failure of lower education.
Bloomberg News reported last month that changes to the federal college student loan program made since President Biden took office have facilitated forgiveness of more than $127 billion in debt, which has been transferred to taxpayers.
The problem of student loan debt is presented as a matter of the heavy burden that prevents borrowers from advancing to homeownership and family formation.
But this is only a subsidiary scandal. The bigger scandal is the grotesque overpricing of higher education. If higher education was worth what is charged for it, millions of young people wouldn't be stuck with heavy debt for so long. They would get jobs paying them enough so that they easily could discharge their debt soon after graduating.
The loan system itself is largely responsible for inflating the cost of higher education. The more money is available, the more colleges and universities will absorb it, as by establishing courses and degrees that bestow few job skills.
A 2014 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that many college graduates end up in jobs that don't require college education. A study a year earlier by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity reported that there were 46% more college graduates in the U.S. workforce than jobs requiring a college degree.
College grads often earn more than other people. But is this because of greater knowledge and skills or because of the credentialism that higher education has infected society with?
Nothing has been done about this problem, since college loans are less of a benefit to students than to educators and college administrators, the ultimate recipients of the money and a pernicious influence on politics.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
