Fail State review
Marquette Bascom's lifelong dream of going to college was derailed when she got pregnant with her first son at the age of 17.
When he turned 18, she decided to pursue that dream — which quickly devolved into a nightmare after she realized the financial toll of the higher education system.
That system of student debt, including the predatory lending practices of for-profit universities, is critiqued in "Fail State," a 2017 investigative documentary made by filmmaker Alex Shebanow and executive produced by journalist Dan Rather.
The documentary, which features heart-wrenching interviews with students, college administrators and politicians, explores how university degrees went from optional to virtually mandatory for Americans chasing professional success — and high paying jobs.
Responding to a rapidly changing economy, the number of Americans with college degrees went from 1 in 10 in the 1940s to 1 in 4 by the '70s.
Ironically, pursuing a degree required a gargantuan financial sacrifice as college costs skyrocketed.
"Millions of students are leaving colleges worse off than they started," says the documentary's narrator.
For the 7 million low income students enrolled in college, loans are the only way to help make ends meet.
Bascom's $17,000 paid for more than tuition costs — it literally helped put food on the table.
At LaGuardia Community College, Bascom's loan went further than it did at Corinthian Colleges, once the nation's largest for-profit college network.
The driving motivation in the for-profit system was money: not for students, but for the colleges themselves, which eagerly gobbled $96 billion in federal aid.
As the documentary reveals, the lion's share of that money went to executive salaries, not students.
"I don't think I was learning the right things," says former Kaplan University student Fred Nelson.
"At my first IT interview, I realized how deficient and subpar my education was. I realized I made a horrible mistake," he continues.
The cozy relationship between the government — which continued to dole out billions in federal money to for-profit colleges while public universities struggled to survive — and universities driven by profit is startling.
Even more nauseating are the predatory practices that recruiters used to close on their "clients," including a chilling, deceiptful script known as the "pain funnel" that lead students toward insurmountable debt.
The film made me think quite a bit about Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education who appears briefly in the film, and her role in illegally collecting loan payments from scammed former students.
My only complaint was that the students interviewed deserved even more screen time.
The more attention is paid to substance and life changing issues like these, and less to the current president's ability to dictate the news with his reality show-style hysterics, the better.
When he turned 18, she decided to pursue that dream — which quickly devolved into a nightmare after she realized the financial toll of the higher education system.
That system of student debt, including the predatory lending practices of for-profit universities, is critiqued in "Fail State," a 2017 investigative documentary made by filmmaker Alex Shebanow and executive produced by journalist Dan Rather.
The documentary, which features heart-wrenching interviews with students, college administrators and politicians, explores how university degrees went from optional to virtually mandatory for Americans chasing professional success — and high paying jobs.
Responding to a rapidly changing economy, the number of Americans with college degrees went from 1 in 10 in the 1940s to 1 in 4 by the '70s.
Ironically, pursuing a degree required a gargantuan financial sacrifice as college costs skyrocketed.
"Millions of students are leaving colleges worse off than they started," says the documentary's narrator.
For the 7 million low income students enrolled in college, loans are the only way to help make ends meet.
Bascom's $17,000 paid for more than tuition costs — it literally helped put food on the table.
At LaGuardia Community College, Bascom's loan went further than it did at Corinthian Colleges, once the nation's largest for-profit college network.
The driving motivation in the for-profit system was money: not for students, but for the colleges themselves, which eagerly gobbled $96 billion in federal aid.
As the documentary reveals, the lion's share of that money went to executive salaries, not students.
"I don't think I was learning the right things," says former Kaplan University student Fred Nelson.
"At my first IT interview, I realized how deficient and subpar my education was. I realized I made a horrible mistake," he continues.
The cozy relationship between the government — which continued to dole out billions in federal money to for-profit colleges while public universities struggled to survive — and universities driven by profit is startling.
Even more nauseating are the predatory practices that recruiters used to close on their "clients," including a chilling, deceiptful script known as the "pain funnel" that lead students toward insurmountable debt.
The film made me think quite a bit about Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education who appears briefly in the film, and her role in illegally collecting loan payments from scammed former students.
My only complaint was that the students interviewed deserved even more screen time.
The more attention is paid to substance and life changing issues like these, and less to the current president's ability to dictate the news with his reality show-style hysterics, the better.
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