With the possible exception of youth whose parents are willing and able to pay annual costs approaching, in some cases, $75,000 for tuition, room, and board, college leaves no one unscathed, in Bunch's view. Those who attend are left with huge debts, no degree if their funds run out, and possibly no job opportunities related to their field of study. Through these processes, tremendous inequality has been "locked in" (p. 7). Meanwhile, some of those who do not (or did not) attend feel that they are looked down upon by their more educated counterparts, fueling resentments among the non-college-educated that have manifested themselves in the political arena.
Further, Bunch links massive student debt -- $1.7 trillion in the aggregate -- to altering the trajectories many lives may otherwise have taken during emerging adulthood:
This millstone forced millions of Americans under thirty-five to live with their parents or in cramped apartments -- using the money that in the past would have gone toward a mortgage to instead pay off their never-shrinking loan balance -- and postpone getting married and starting a family (p. 133).
Bunch identifies multiple sources for the problems besetting modern higher education. The original sin, in his view, is the failure during the post-World War II era to follow through in expanding the GI Bill -- which provided financial assistance for returning veterans to attend college -- so that higher education would become a government-funded "public good" for all Americans, the way public K-12 education is. Further, even in parts of the US in which a public-good ethos toward higher education did take hold, most notably California, the 1966 election of Ronald Reagan as governor and his antipathy toward student demonstrators led to escalating tuition and fees at University of California (UC) campuses. The cutting of state appropriations to higher education in more recent decades has exacerbated the problem of college costs, Bunch contends.
Embedded within the education wars is a question of human development and emerging adulthood: Is the aim of higher education job preparation, general intellectual and personal growth, some of both, or different emphases for different students? As Bunch reports, Reagan in 1967 came out forcefully in favor of "workforce development" (p. 88), an idea that would spread throughout the US in the following years. General learning to become a more well-rounded person would be diminished and (whether causally related or not) many more students began majoring in business (p. 97). In recent weeks, in fact, one prominent governor derided "niche subjects" while promoting more "employable" fields of study.
Bunch's historical overview of developments during the GI Bill and Reagan/UC eras are first-rate, in my view. These areas are well-researched and compellingly reported, as one would expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist such as Bunch. Throughout the book, his extensive interviews with students, graduates, dropouts, administrators, political activists, and others bring life to the statistics.
The book contains some other ideas that scholars of emerging adulthood might be interested in pursuing:
- Bunch talks of college helping to create, during the 1950s and '60s, an "extended adolescence," a respite from farming and industrial work, and a "youth culture" (p. 61), ideas previously discussed by Erikson, Arnett, and others.
- Related to identity formation, Bunch cites political scientist Lilliana Mason's notion of "mega-identities" (p. 106), in which different potential dimensions of identity -- e.g., politics, religion, gender roles -- become mutually reinforcing, melded, and aligned with each other. These mega-identities can then help polarize people's attitudes in support of or in opposition to college education and associated cultural connections (e.g., radical professors, student demonstrators).
- Many readers are probably familiar with the term "deaths of despair," coined by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton to describe burgeoning rates of suicide and substance abuse/overdose fatalities among middle-age, non-college-educated, working-class White residents of Rust Belt and Appalachian regions of the US. Having covered the tragic stories of some young adults who died in a similar manner and seeing some newer data on youth fatalities, Bunch also notes that deaths of despair appear to be "surging for younger people without college diplomas" (p. 185). A Google Scholar search of "emerging adulthood" and "deaths of despair" yields very little at this point, so research opportunities in this area seem fertile.
In the final parts of the book, Bunch offers recommendations for ameliorating the destructive aspects of college financing and improving young adults' overall personal development. These recommendations center around universal free higher education (either college or other forms of training such as career and technical education), coupled with mandatory national service (either military or civilian). The latter would not only produce tangible benefits to society but could also help unify our fragmented country.
