Ivory Tower *** (PG-13) Anyone who’s been paying attention has likely noticed how the American Dream has been fading into a nightmare of social and economic stasis. For the past couple of decades, our upward mobility has started lagging behind many other countries. Wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands; the middle class that flourished after WW II is shrinking in both size and purchasing power. This sobering documentary examines how even the value of a college education has diminished, while the real costs of getting one have soared beyond the reach of many.
Our boom of the 1950s that made us the envy of all the world was largely driven by the GI bill and publicly-subsidized state universities that made Boomers the most educated generation in all of history. One may debate how much good that group (present company included) accomplished with the advantage, but the resulting widespread prosperity was unprecedented. Then came the 1980s, with deep cuts in public funding for higher education, making more students dependent on loans, which in turn failed to keep pace with rampant hikes in tuition and fees. Many of those who graduate begin adulthood with staggering debts, severely limiting all subsequent life decisions from career choices to family planning.
Universities have morphed into businesses, with students as the consumers. They compete with each other for faculties and facilities that maximize the quantity and quality of customer applicants. Money is spent on lures that may not enhance the actual education or career preparation functions that used to form the institutional core. One backlash effect has been a movement towards alternatives - on-line and other communities that teach specific skills without offering the traditional sheepskins or other credentials. Much of that activity has surged in the entrpreneurial arenas propagated by rapidly evolving internet technology and trade.
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The film is loaded with statistics - many of which are appalling - about the seismic shifts in all aspects of the college experience and its arguably dwindling role in shaping the course of our adult lives. Parents and students facing those decisions in the near future might find this thoughtful analysis of the system and these fast-growing alternatives a useful perspective on how to get to what to be when the kids grow up. (Consider that sentence an exercise in preparation for, or in lieu of, Rhetoric 101; either way, it won’t be on the final). (6/27/14)