Guest Column
Increasing College Tuition Impacts Jewish Community
W
ith students now returned to
college campuses, families are
again concerned about ever-
increasing tuition at our public colleges
and universities. While this is an issue all
Americans face, it has particular impor-
tance to the Jewish community
No ethnic group in America has benefit-
ted more from access to higher education
than the Jews. Many in our community are
the children, grandchildren or great-grand-
children of immigrants who had virtually
no access to college education in Eastern
Europe. Among the rewards those immi-
grants found in America was the oppor-
tunity for their offspring to attend public
colleges and universities, where enormous
opportunities presented themselves at
either no or very modest cost.
While many of the most prestigious pri-
vate universities restricted the number of
Jews, public colleges and universities, par-
ticularly the great state universities across
the country, generally welcomed Jewish
students, no matter how large their num-
bers, offering them tuition so low that even
those from the poorest homes could afford
to attend. As a result, a flood of young Jews
became the first in their families to attend
and graduate from college. Public higher
education thus became the "portal to the
American dream."
Imbued with a love of learning that has
characterized Jews since biblical times,
these college-educated Americans have
excelled in remarkable ways. While Jews
make up only about 2 percent of the popu-
lation of the country, over the past 90 years
they have accounted for more than 35
percent of all U.S. Nobel Prize recipients. In
fields like medicine, Jews make up almost
40 percent of all U.S. Nobel Laureates, about
No Excuses from page 40
director of RAVSAK, the Jewish
Community Day School Network,
stated, "It takes a great deal of fuel to
power Jewish literacy, especially when
Jewish literacy and Hebrew literacy
are intertwined [as I believe it must
be]. The engines of Jewish literacy —
engines that drive Jewish citizenship,
peoplehood, spiritual meaning, ethical
living and intellectualism ... [cannot be
fueled] from Sunday school and sum-
mer camp (only)."
Day Schools Are Key
As such, day schools truly need to
become a top priority for the Jewish
community. That means adequate fund-
ing to make them more affordable and
to train teachers to provide the neces-
sary and effectual education for this
century. Equally important is funding for
Jewish camps and for meaningful infor-
20 times greater than their share of the pop-
ulation. Similarly, Jews have accounted for a
vastly disproportionate number of Pulitzer
Prize winners in literature and the arts.
And it has always been the case that pub-
lic colleges and universities have attracted
the greatest number of Jewish students. It's
thus no surprise that more members of the
Detroit Jewish community are graduates of
Wayne State University than any other insti-
tution of higher learning. At the University
of Michigan, Jews account for more than 15
percent of the 43,000 students on campus.
Jews now attend college at about twice the
rate of the U.S. population in
general.
So, with all this good news of
a community committed to and
benefitting from higher educa-
tion, what's the problem? Why
can't we just keep doing what
we've been doing for decades?
The answer is that the shocking
disinvestment in public colleges
and universities, while affecting
the entire nation, will have an
especially severe adverse impact
on the Jewish community.
When Michigan invested heavily in higher
education, many in our community were
the direct beneficiaries of low tuition. The
idea that students would borrow tens of
thousands of dollars to attend college was
simply unheard of. That meant, until very
recently, those who graduated could and
did marry in their early 20s, often right
after, if not during college. Armed with
degrees, they could and did quickly find
good jobs, allowing them to move out of
their parents' homes, start families and
careers and, importantly, become active
participants in Jewish communal life.
The burden of repaying loans incurred
simply to attend college just did not exist.
That burden is now present for an ever-
growing number of students.
While all America is suffering from the
decline in support of higher education,
its impact on the Jewish community will
be magnified for several reasons. Except
for Orthodox Jews, the American Jewish
community has among the lowest birth
rates of any group in America. And Jews
are an aging population: our average age is
7 years older than the nation as
a whole.
Our young people, equipped
with fine educations that we've
worked so hard to provide, are
increasingly interested in pur-
suing careers, thus postponing
marriage and parenthood. This
means that any external forces
that further delay marriage or
the raising of families cannot
but further negatively affect our
demographics. A generation
that is burdened by devoting
years to paying off student loans is far less
likely to carry on the traditions of tzeda-
kah and communal engagement that have
so enriched Jewish life in America for the
last 100 years.
Government policies that create finan-
cial barriers to reaching well-rounded
adulthood will, in time, seriously dimin-
ish Jewish communal life in America. In
Michigan, those damaging policies have
been on full display under both the current
and prior administrations, as disinvest-
ment in higher education has become the
accepted way to balance our state's budget.
mal Jewish experiences.
Our rabbis and community leaders
need to step up and lead the charge to
promote serious formal and informal
learning experiences that engage and
challenge. Too many of our rabbis give
tepid support at best; and sadly, many
of our community leaders fail to see the
value and critical importance of a day
school education for their own children.
If we keep doing the same things and
our leaders keep making the same deci-
sions, why would we expect different
results?
Our full energy and commitment must
be focused on these three areas: day
schools, summer camps and rich infor-
mal Jewish experiences. As a realist, I
recognize that the majority of Jewish
children will not attend day schools any
time soon; as an optimist, I can always
have that as a goal. Until that day, we
need to admit that "the Emperor has no
clothes," that supplementary religious
education in its current, diluted state,
does not work to produce committed,
involved Jews. We need to change this.
It is time for synagogues and temples
to increase the hours of supplementary
religious school education, to create
meaningful and purposeful curriculum
and to train teachers to be effective so
that the increased hours are impactful.
Equally important, we must bring
back and strengthen opportunities for
informal education in the synagogues
and temples. And if the synagogues and
temples will not do it, the day schools
should step up and create meaningful
supplementary programs, both formal
and informal, for those children not in
the day schools.
We like to tell ourselves that Judaism
is just another consumer product, but
it isn't. The fact that most Jews today
view Judaism as a choice makes it that
Reining In Costs
Adjusted for inflation, Michigan's funding
for higher education has dropped 50 per-
cent in the past decade. This is, of course,
why tuition has climbed so high at the 15
Michigan public colleges and universities.
Declining Support
A decade ago, state dollars accounted
for about two-thirds of Wayne State
University's budget, with tuition providing
one-third. Today, the situation is reversed.
And while our state's support for its highly
regarded public education system is falling
dramatically, other parts of the budget are
climbing astronomically. Michigan now
allocates 50 percent more on operating
prisons than it does on supporting higher
education. This is not good for the state of
Michigan, not good for young people and
particularly not good for the Jews.
While the organized Jewish community
is active in so many significant public policy
debates, not nearly enough has been said
about the importance of adequately funding
public higher education.
If the state of Michigan enacted a tax
of $25,000 on all 22-year-olds before they
could marry or begin a family, the public
would be outraged. But in a very devious
way, that's exactly what's been happening.
This is a Jewish communal problem
that cries out for attention. Unless we and
our leaders speak with a unified voice and
demand adequate public support for higher
education, the pathway so successfully fol-
lowed by the Jewish community for the
past 100 years will, to our lasting regret, be
irreparably damaged.
❑
Eugene Driker is an attorney and on the
Board of Governors at Wayne State University,
Detroit.
much more important that we remind
ourselves, our leaders and our families
why it matters to be an active and com-
mitted member of the Jewish people
and why it is worth the time and effort.
It will take courage and effort for our
rabbis and community leaders to step
up and actually make this happen — to
go against the conventional wisdom
and the majority culture. As Jews, we
are counter-cultural, and we should
embrace and celebrate it.
We can keep lamenting the trends
and the causes for another 40 years, or
we can come together as leaders, focus
our resources and build a generation
of literate, committed and active Jews
who live comfortably and meaningfully
in both worlds: our larger secular world
and our rich Jewish world.
❑
Steve Freedman is head of Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit, Farmington Hills.
October 31 • 2013
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