As corporations reduce job protections and the government slashes our social safety net, economic instability and insecurity weigh heavily on the backs of those least able to carry it. Cottom builds on the work of political scientist Jacob Hacker, who has shown how workers shoulder more and more economic risk-risk that was once carried by businesses or the government. To help us understand the rise of for-profit education, Cottom explains how the new economy fueled a credentials race. She also closely examines the students’ personal stories, showing that they are often double victims, closed out of traditional educational pathways and left to attend schools with questionable curriculum and dubious results. But rather than vilify these colleges, Cottom places them within the larger context of a shifting economy and those it has left behind. For Lower Ed schools, education is a very profitable business, as they wring profits out of tuition often paid by maximizing federal financial aid programs. She knows the ins and outs of these institutions and how they always have their eye on the bottom line. and becoming a professor, she worked as an enrollment officer at two for-profit schools. It stalls dreams, sells hope, and distorts education.Ĭottom’s book is a study of this disruptive sector of education, one that the author has firsthand experience with. When we ask for justice and get ‘opportunity,’ it is Lower Ed.” We ignore Lower Ed at our peril. When we ask for social insurance and get workforce training, it is Lower Ed. “When we offer more credentials in lieu of a stronger social contract,” writes Cottom, “it is Lower Ed. This legitimizes the gospel of education as an economic commodity and encourages the televangelists of the Lower Ed world, a group of for-profit schools that serve mostly poor students with limited educational access.

This educational philosophy of personal attainment applies to all colleges, but it starts at the top: Elite institutions justify their cost as a worthy and necessary investment in oneself.

It is worth the struggle, debt, and sacrifice because it is the only way forward, and, of course, “forward” is measured only in terms of personal economic gain. “A college education,” writes Tressie McMillan Cottom in her new book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, “whether it is a night class in auto mechanics or a graduate degree in physics, has become an individual good.” Today, everything rests on the individual’s shoulders and education is solely a personal investment. There was a time, not too long ago, when we saw college education as both an individual attainment and a societal good: We talked in lofty terms about “citizenship” and “democracy.” Not anymore.

Lower ed tressie mcmillan cottom