Ivory Tower Page #6

Synopsis: A documentary that questions the cost -- and value -- of higher education in the United States.
Director(s): Andrew Rossi
Production: Samuel Goldwyn Films
  3 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.0
Metacritic:
65
Rotten Tomatoes:
82%
PG-13
Year:
2014
90 min
$99,555
Website
2,517 Views


$184 billion in profits

over the next 10 years.

All those profits made

off the backs of our kids

who are trying to get an education.

I think this whole system stinks.

- What do we want?

- Education!

- When do we want it?

- Now!

- What do we want?

- Education!

- When do we want it?

- Now!

STUDENT 1:
We cannot continue

to treat student loan debt

as an individual issue.

We must realize that as a society

we cannot have a generation in debt.

Once you hit $50,000

in debt, you need to pause

and take a look at the value

of the education you're getting.

You don't want to incur debt

that stops you from investing

in family formation, houses,

cars and children down the road.

The value of my education is priceless,

but the value of my education

is also not $140,000 in debt.

If I do ever have kids,

my private loans will be directly

passed to them even if I die.

It's just siphoning my dreams away,

and I feel bad talking about

any dreams that I have these days,

because there's all this talk that

Generation Y is so entitled and selfish

just for wanting the opportunities

that their parents had.

A lot of the

older generations

that criticize the millennials

grew up in a time

when you could go to a state university

and pay your way through

with summer jobs.

These millennial children

then got to college and realized,

"Oh, the money's not there to pay for me.

"I'm not going to be able to graduate

into a cushy job.

"And in fact, everything that I was told

about the way that the world works

"turns out not to be the case."

The student debt

crisis coupled with

the rise in tuition rates

over the past 30 years,

it's just a perfect

storm, it's a nightmare.

We are the students

We are the students

The mighty, mighty students

The mighty, mighty students

After 18 months of intense analysis,

the board of trustees voted last week

to charge tuition for all undergraduates

admitted to the Cooper Union

beginning with the class of 2014.

Right after the announcement

was made, I spoke to Jamshed.

Jamshed was, you know,

waving his hands, yelling, cutting us off.

Right outside of the school,

there was a lot of grieving.

People were angry.

You could kind of

feel this chaotic energy.

It kind of felt like at any moment

something could happen.

The moments

right before an action starts

are the most exciting, also scary.

It was a really long planning session.

Obviously, they can do these things,

and they can overstep us.

They can do that, and they're doing it.

We didn't know what to do,

but people were like,

"We have to do something.

"Let's just go into the President's office.

"We're just going to do it."

We went in,

40 or so people, maybe more.

Lawrence? Lawrence?

- Door, people.

- Lawrence?

The secretary tried to say,

"Don't go in there,"

but, you know, there was 40 of us.

Jamshed wasn't there.

"We, the students of the Cooper Union

for the Advancement of Science and Art

"can no longer uphold or endorse

the direction our college has taken

"under the leadership

of Jamshed Bharucha.

"By voting no confidence today,

"join us in keeping

Cooper Union free to all."

First let me say, I'd

rather you just leave.

"Students and others

currently engaged in

"a sit-in of the President's suite

are trespassing.

"We're going to give a one-hour period

for anyone to leave.

"Anyone remaining on

the 7th floor after that one-hour period

"will be subject to disciplinary action."

At some point, they are going

to have to try and remove us.

I am an officer of the Cooper Union!

- The police?

- They're coming.

There are security guards

on the other side of this glass,

and there's two or three other men.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Free Cooper Union!

For many of us

it was the first time

being in the President's office.

We have this red light that we'd show

to say that we're occupying the space.

It's like being in a submarine.

It's like a shared experience,

and it's hard to sleep

because there's all this energy.

There is some physicality

of having to be there,

actually having to abstain

from your normal life,

and that's very powerful.

This space of the action

is also this great opportunity

to have no one

imposing structures on us.

And this is really

not asking permission and unapologetic,

because we're not sorry.

An entire school

does not have any confidence

in your ability to lead The Cooper Union.

If people have no confidence,

it means that no,

you're not going to be able

to regain that trust,

because there's none left.

You know,

it's a little simplistic to say that,

"You don't do this, and you don't do that."

I'm on the board.

I was firmly for no tuition.

The numbers are what they are.

However they got there,

that's where they are now.

No!

Can I finish?

You need to go. You're so rude.

I would like

the tone of this whole

discussion to cool down a little bit.

It's pretty clear, I think, to all of us

that this moment is different

than anything that's come before.

We haven't been to this point. All right?

And I think we need to let go

of some of the old dialogue,

because we're in a new place right now.

What we need to do, quite simply,

is realize this moment in the country,

with a trillion dollars in student debt,

with all the models of higher education

as a business, it's failing.

This is a moment for this school

to be the vision

of what education can be in this country,

just as it was the vision 150 years ago.

It was part of a radical capitalist vision.

It is rooted in a turn-of-the-century idea

about humanity, and it's an idea

that I think is incredibly contemporary

and incredibly urgent. All right?

To effectively lead us,

you need to realize the moment

you're in and the position you're in.

It is a historic position,

it is a historic moment.

This is a big step

that you came here to meet with us,

but we need a leap, not a gamble.

Universities are clearly

at a crisis point.

We've had runaway cost inflation.

This is not what either the kids

or the parents signed up for.

For yea rs,

we've been saying college

is a great investment no matter what.

And now people are starting to

ask really, really tough questions

about the role that colleges play

in American society,

the authority that they have,

their moral high ground.

Moody's is saying that

college might not be worth the cost.

The rating agency says the high cost

of college plus growing public doubts

about the value of a bachelor's degree

has caused it to revise down its outlook

on the entire higher education sector

to negative.

There's going to be a collapse.

One way or another,

there's going to be a crisis.

It gets to the point

where the price of a degree is so high

that people just don't want

to pay for it anymore.

This is not

what most colleges want to talk about.

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Andrew Rossi

Andrew Rossi is an American filmmaker, best known for directing documentaries such as Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011). more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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