December 2, 2020, 1:51 pm
One of the people most looking forward to the exit of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education has got to be Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has long been a proponent of free college and student debt relief. DeVos, on the other hand, was caught trying to collect student loan payments from people who’d had their loans canceled because they were from colleges shut down for being scams.
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So when DeVos called the efforts to make public college education free, as it is in almost every other nation wealthy enough to make that possible, a “socialist takeover of higher education,” it’s not surprising that AOC had something to say.
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Tuition-free public college is a dangerous socialist takeover of higher ed, as opposed to the far superior capitalist takeover of higher ed, which reliably buries millions of Americans in trillions of dollars in debt & graduates them into low paying jobs without good healthcare
https://t.co/dcu6PIRKcC
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 1, 2020
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“Tuition-free public college is a dangerous socialist takeover of higher ed,” she wrote, “as opposed to the far superior capitalist takeover of higher ed, which reliably buries millions of Americans in trillions of dollars in debt & graduates them into low paying jobs without good healthcare.”
Not mentioned is the fact that primary education in the U.S. is already “socialist” by DeVos’ own definition of socialism, but somehow that’s not considered much of a problem.
Economists have been warning for years that the skyrocketing price of getting a college degree, which is today considered pretty much essential if you want a decent job, is going to create a massive debt balloon that could crush the U.S. economy. Regardless, Republicans like DeVos have resisted the idea of extending free education into the college years like it’s a vaccine wearing a face mask.
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DeVos even managed to evoke the misogynistic classic of the “shrill” woman in her arguments against it.
“We’ve heard shrill calls to cancel, to forgive, to make it all free,” she said. “Any innocuous label out there can’t obfuscate what it really is: wrong. The campaign for free college is a matter of total government control. Make no mistake: It is a socialist takeover of higher education.”
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She further warned that even among those who are socialism-positive, “none of you will like the way it will work.” However, the people who already have free higher education disagree.
“Tuition-free public education (including university) works fine here in Finland,” wrote Dr. Iiris Lehto in a comment. “This is universalism at its best.”
*First Published: December 2, 2020, 1:51 pm
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