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The Origin of Student Debt:

Regan advisor warned that Free College would create a Dangerous Educated Proletariat

It’s important to understand how Americans came to #owe the current cumulative total of *more than $1.6 trillion* for higher education.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser #Roger A. #Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.”

According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in #danger of producing an #educated #proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be #selective on who we #allow [to go to college].”

“If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.”

Freeman also said — taking a highly idiosyncratic perspective on the cause of fascism —“that’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.”

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/