The Decline in Educational Standards

The Decline in Educational Standards: From a Public Good to a Quasi-Monopoly is about the "commodification" of education and the factors that have changed education from a public good into a "commodity" over the last 50 years. When we look at today's education, we see that academic standards in public education have been declining for decades even as education funding has reached nearly a trillion dollars per year to fund such failed programs as No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Simultaneously, tuition and fees at public universities have increased nearly 2000 percent over the last 30 years, and student loan debt is now a staggering $1.5 trillion. Quite simply, education has become big business.
This book examines the various issues associated with the commodification of education, especially neoliberalism and privatized Keynesianism-what they are, how they developed, and how they have affected education and public policy. It argues that neoliberalism and the related socioeconomic shift to "debt-based consumerism" are at the center of commodification, leading to a significant decline in the exchange value of a college degree. It also argues that we cannot understand the changes in our public and higher education systems without examining the historical, social, economic, and political factors that have essentially created an education system that is significantly different from what it was in the not so distant past.

James D. Williams holds a doctorate in rhetoric and linguistics from the University of Southern California and has published more than a dozen books on education, linguistics, and rhetoric. He has held faculty positions at UCLA, The University of Southern California, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a founding faculty member at Soka University in California.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section I: Economics and Neoliberalism
Chapter 1: Liberalism and Conservatism: Some Characteristics
Chapter 2: The Industrial Revolution
Chapter 3: Socialist Stirrings
Chapter 4: John Maynard Keynes and Economic Theory
Chapter 5: The Great Depression
Chapter 6: Kynesian Economics and The Road to Serfdom
Chapter 7: The 1970s Inflation
Chapter 8: Debt-Based Consumer Capitalism and Taxation
Chapter 9: Debt-Based Consumerism and a Mountain of Debt
Chapter 10: Too Big to Fail
Section II: What Happened to Public Education?
Chapter 11: The Common School Movement
Chapter 12: Meeting the Educational Needs in a Diverse Society
Chapter 13: Intelligence Testing
Chapter 14: Academic Tracking
Chapter 15: Criticisms of IQ Testing and Tracking
Chapter 16: The Effects of the Proximate Environment on IQ and Academic Performance
Chapter 17: The Commodification of Education
Chapter 18: Federal Control Through Federal Funding
Chapter 19: Parental Satisfaction and Student Performance
Chapter 20: Charter Schools, Vouchers, and Politics School Vouchers
Chapter 21: How Did We Get Here?
Chapter 22: Following the Money
Section III: Higher Education as a Quasi-Monopoly
Chapter 23: Education and the End of Poverty
Chapter 24: Higher Education in a Privatized-Keynesian World
Chapter 25: The Democratization of Higher Education
Chapter 26: The Gainful Employment Rule and Tacit Collusion
Chapter 27: Declining Public Confidence and the Politicized Faculty
Section IV: Improving Public and Higher Education
Chapter 28: Neoliberalism, Priviatized Keynesianism, and the Debt Bomb
Chapter 29: Rethinking Public Education
Chapter 30: Egalitarianism and the Drive for Equal Outcomes
Chapter 31: Reforming the Nation's Education System