Student Union
- By Tom Collier
A British Perspective: Is the American Democratic System All it's Cracked Up to Be?
I got to America just in time for campaign season to begin, and just in time to catch a moment that set the tone for the election as I have experienced it since.
When I arrived, Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin was just about to tell a TV station in Missouri that during “a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” arguing abortion shouldn't be allowed in cases of rape. I was shocked to hear a candidate say something that was not only scientifically untrue but also such a seemingly extreme point of view. In Britain, this comment would almost certainly have resulted in the candidate stepping down and the campaign of the party being seriously damaged.
While many Republicans did condemn Akin’s statement, and Akin eventually apologized, the outrage was hardly as universal and decisive as I would have expected back home. Akin is still campaigning to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate, and even has a chance at winning, running in a state where nearly 40% of voters are evangelical Christians. In fact, the comments were treated as a political gaffe (albeit a major one); something for the Democratic party to seize upon as “worrisome” and “extreme” in arguing the case for their own party and candidates.
Divisions, Real and Contrived
As I've found, candidates can and do run on some very divisive issues, playing to the more extreme parts of their parties to solidify support from the “base.” Meanwhile, each party also goes after the middle ground, exploiting gaffes made by the competition in order to paint them as the immoderate ones.
In fact, the Republican National Convention was themed around a comment President Obama made during a campaign speech, in which he said, “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that.” The Republican convention trumpeted “We Built It” in response to what they hoped to suggest was Obama’s callous attitude towards private business owners and preference for government welfare programs.
It took me a while to understand why that comment was considered a gaffe actually, especially since in its full context it seems clear that's not what Obama intended. But one of the things I’ve learned in my American history class this semester is that this country has a proud ethic of individualism, and people believe that with hard work and determination they can achieve anything.
The Republicans evidently knew the comment could strike a sour note with many Americans, particularly the small business owners who are a key target for both parties, and played up its importance.
A Bitter Election
I gather from the Americans I have spoken to here that they view this as an incredibly important election in terms of the path America will take for its people and how it chooses to present itself in the eyes of the world. Perhaps as a result, they tell me this is one of the most bitterly divided campaigns they can remember in a long time – if ever.
Polling shows that if the rest of the world were voting for America’s president, we would choose Obama, and it’s difficult for us to understand how the election could be so close. As with the "you didn't build that" gaffe, there are many issues at play in the election that are uniquely American, not least of which is the political system itself. Their electoral process and governmental design contrive to split the population into two rival factions, each of which stays competitive (in voting power and in spirit) with the other.
In the U.K. we have a multi-party parliamentary system, so I’m used to people being able to vote with parties and politicians who represent many different points of view. Even though, realistically, only two of the parties have a chance of winning an outright majority, the smaller parties still maintain some influence and representation in parliament.
The two-party system, by contrast, seems to encourage more extreme partisanship - the varying opinion that everything is either great or terrible, positive or detrimental, patriotic or un-American. There is no nuance, and no real attempt to create it.
Inundated with Ads
It’s in the campaign advertising where you can really see the extent to which party divisions exist. Campaign ads have taken over television in the past few months, and it’s been impossible not to notice the bitterness and the drama.
One ad for Governor Romney stated, "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China." An Obama ad countered, "He's [Romney's] still pushing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. It's just what you expect from a guy who had a Swiss Bank Account."
Many of the ads pounce on comments taken out of context, or cite their own facts that contradict with those cited by the other side.
This is something we simply don't have in Britain. When a judge upheld the U.K. ban on political advertising in 2008, he said that impartiality is “not achieved if political parties can buy unlimited opportunities to advertise in the most effective media, so that elections become little more than an auction.”
After two and a half months of being in the U.S., I have found myself becoming immune to the political ads I see. I often wonder how people can possibly be expected to make an informed decision based on these commercials, or why they even accept the repetition of political advertising as a logical use of resources.
Debates as Theater
After all this, I was very much looking forward to the presidential debates, which I hoped would shed a different light on the candidates and their positions (televised debates were introduced for the first time in the 2010 election in the U.K., so the idea of debates being an important part of the election process is still relatively novel).
But I was a bit disappointed. Like in the ads, I felt that both candidates made claims without any real fact-checking, making it difficult to compare their policies against each other.
The general consensus was that Romney won the first debate, seemingly based on his body language, confidence and assertiveness. Obama himself conceded that if you haven’t got the energy, then the points you make won’t be appreciated.
I think the debates should be about presenting the facts and the proposed policies, to provide the American people with a fair representation of what each candidate believes in or is proposing. It doesn’t feel to me like people have a lot of opportunity to judge either candidate on what they actually say or believe.
What's it All For?
Nor does it feel like anyone is decrying that fact. It seems Americans simply accept that this is how an election goes - campaign ads that say nothing or make bogus claims, debates that favor style over substance, cutthroat competition between two parties.
This makes me wonder – is it all worthwhile?
It’s a hard question to answer. Every democracy has its problems, including the British system. The simple fact of letting people choose their leaders means that politics sometimes devolves into bitterness and childish antics, and sometimes plays to the lowest common denominator.
This year in America feels particularly bad (not that I have a precedent to judge against), and the Americans I know seem to recognize that, without concluding that that means their system doesn’t work properly. I’m still not sure whether I reach the same conclusion, though I fully recognize that as an outsider here who doesn’t understand the American ethos I’m not entirely qualified to judge.
But it was a British politician, Winston Churchill, who might have had the answer when he said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
See all News Updates of the Day
- By VOA News
Columbia U. news site offers tips for international students
Bwog, a student-run campus news site at Columbia University, has a guide for international students spending their first semester in the U.S.
Among the tips:
Expect some culture shock
Don't be afraid to ask for help
Stay in touch with people from home.
Read the full article here. (August 2024)
NCAA's $2.78 billion settlement with colleges to allow athlete payments gets preliminary approval
A judge granted preliminary approval Monday to the $2.78 billion legal settlement that would transform college sports by allowing schools to pay players.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken released an order setting a timeline for a deal that would put millions of dollars into the pockets of college athletes, who can begin applying for payment on October 18.
A final hearing is set for April 7, 2025, the day of college basketball's national title game. If finalized, the deal would allow the biggest schools to establish a pool of about $21.5 million in the first year to distribute to athletes via a revenue-sharing plan. Athletes would still be able to cut name, image and likeness deals with outside groups.
"We are pleased that we are one step closer to a revolutionary change in college athletics that will allow billions in revenue sharing," said plaintiff attorney Steve Berman.
The judge's approval comes 11 days after attorneys tweaked wording in the original settlement agreement to address Wilken's concerns. The main change involved getting rid of the word "boosters" and replacing it with a better-defined description of whose potential NIL deals would be subject to oversight by a neutral arbitrator once the deal goes through.
That did not, however, strike to the heart of the settlement, which sets up a revenue-sharing arrangement between schools and the athletes. The $21.5 million figure comes from the 22% of average revenue that power conference schools generate through media rights, tickets and other sources. It will be recalculated periodically through the 10-year window that the agreement covers.
"We are thrilled by Judge Wilken's decision to give preliminary approval to the landmark settlement that will help bring stability and sustainability to college athletics while delivering increased benefits to student-athletes for years to come," NCAA President Charlie Baker said. "Today's progress is a significant step in writing the next chapter for the future of college sports."
This settlement also allows former players to apply for payments to make up for lost revenue they would have received through NIL deals that weren't allowed in college sports before 2021. It sets up a framework to regulate future NIL deals and replaces scholarship caps with "roster limits," which will grow to 105 for football, the biggest sport at most major universities.
This settlement resolves three major antitrust lawsuits filed against the NCAA, including one spearheaded by Grant House, a former swimmer at Arizona State University. Berman's law firm says the value of new payments and benefits to college athletes is expected to exceed $20 billion over 10 years.
Still unknown, however, is how long the terms of this deal will last. Litigation regarding the rights of players to unionize and potentially be considered employees remains unsettled. Meanwhile, the NCAA is pushing for federal legislation to knit together a streamlined policy for NIL, which is currently regulated by a patchwork of state laws, legal settlements and NCAA rules.
Grace period for US student loan payments is over. Here's what you need to know
The 12-month grace period for student loan borrowers ended on September 30. The "on-ramp" period helped borrowers who are struggling to make payments avoid the risk of defaulting and hurting their credit score.
"The end of the on-ramp period means the beginning of the potentially harsh consequences for student loan borrowers who are not able to make payments," said Persis Yu, Deputy Executive Director at the Student Borrower Protection Center.
Around 43 million Americans have student loan debt, amounting to $1.5 trillion. Around eight million of those borrowers had enrolled in the SAVE plan, the newest income-driven repayment plan that extended the eligibility for borrowers to have affordable monthly student loan payments. However, this plan is currently on hold due to legal challenges.
With the on-ramp period and a separate program known as Fresh Start ending and the SAVE plan on hold, student loan borrowers who are struggling to afford their monthly payments have fewer options, added Yu. Student loan borrowers who haven't been able to afford their monthly payments must consider their options to avoid going into default.
If you have student loans, here's what you need to know.
What was the on-ramp period?
The Education Department implemented this grace period to ease the borrower's transition to make payments after a three-year payment pause during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this year-long period, borrowers were encouraged to keep making payments since interest continued to accumulate.
"Normally, loans will default if you fall about nine months behind on making payments, but during this on-ramp period, missed payments would not move people towards defaulting and then being subject to forced collections. However, if you missed payments, you still be falling behind ultimately on repaying your loans," said Abby Shaforth, director of National Consumer Law Center's Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project.
Since this grace period has ended, student loan borrowers who don't make payments will go delinquent or, if their loans are not paid for nine months, go into default.
Borrowers who cannot afford to make payments can apply for deferment or forbearance, which pause payments, though interest continues to accrue.
What happens if I don't make my payments?
Borrowers who can't or don't pay risk delinquency and eventually default. That can badly hurt your credit rating and make you ineligible for additional aid and government benefits.
If a borrower missed one month's payment, they will start receiving email notifications, said Shaforth. Once the loan hasn't been paid for three months, loan servicers notify to the credit reporting agencies that the loan is delinquent, affecting your credit history. Once the borrower hasn't paid the loan for nine months, the loan goes into default.
If you're struggling to pay, advisers first encourage you to check if you qualify for an income-driven repayment plan, which determines your payments by looking at your expenses. You can see whether you qualify by visiting the Federal Student Aid website. If you've worked for a government agency or a non-profit organization, you could also be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives student debt after 10 years.
What happens when a loan goes into default?
When you fall behind on a loan by 270 days — roughly nine months — the loan appears on your credit report as being in default.
Once a loan is in default, it goes into collections. This means the government can garnish wages (without a court order) to go towards paying back the loan, intercept tax refunds, and seize portions of Social Security checks and other benefit payments.
What if I can't pay?
If your budget doesn't allow you to resume payments, it's important to know how to navigate the possibility of default and delinquency on a student loan. Both can hurt your credit rating, which would make you ineligible for additional aid.
If you're in a short-term financial bind, you may qualify for deferment or forbearance — allowing you to temporarily suspend payment.
To determine whether deferment or forbearance are good options for you, you can contact your loan servicer. One thing to note: interest still accrues during deferment or forbearance. Both can also impact potential loan forgiveness options. Depending on the conditions of your deferment or forbearance, it may make sense to continue paying the interest during the payment suspension.
What is an income-driven repayment plan?
The U.S. Education Department offers several plans for repaying federal student loans. Under the standard plan, borrowers are charged a fixed monthly amount that ensures all their debt will be repaid after 10 years. But if borrowers have difficulty paying that amount, they can enroll in one of several plans that offer lower monthly payments based on income and family size. Those are known as income-driven repayment plans.
Income-driven options have been offered for years and generally cap monthly payments at 10% of a borrower's discretionary income. If a borrower's earnings are low enough, their bill is reduced to $0. And after 20 or 25 years, any remaining debt gets erased.
What is the latest with the SAVE program?
In August, the Supreme Court kept on hold the SAVE plan, the income-driven repayment plan that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.
Eight million borrowers who had already enrolled in the SAVE plan don't have to pay their monthly student loan bills until the court case is resolved. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.
The next court hearing about this case will be held on October 15.
What happened with the Fresh Start program?
The Fresh Start program, which gave benefits to borrowers who were delinquent prior to the pandemic payment pause, also closed on September 30. During this limited program, student loan borrowers who were in default prior to the pandemic were given the opportunity to remove their loans from default, allowing them to enroll in income-driven payment plans, or apply for deferment, among other benefits.
Boston university relaunches journalism curriculum to encompass humanities
As the fall semester begins, a women’s college in Boston, Massachusetts, has retooled its media-related curriculum to best reflect the ideals of the school’s namesake, the late journalist Gwen Ifill.
Simmons University announced it would relaunch the media school as the Gwen Ifill School of Media, Humanities and Social Sciences. A search committee also named media scholar Ammina Kothari as the new dean.
The Ifill School’s new structure expands its media curriculum to include humanities and social sciences. The attributes that defined Ifill also shape a new, holistic approach, “An unwavering commitment to accuracy and objectivity, a nuanced understanding of social and historical context and a compassion-based appreciation of policymaking’s real-world implications,” according to a Simmons press release.
“Folks here are very proud of Gwen’s legacy and want to honor it in many different ways,” said Bert Ifill, Gwen’s brother and a longtime university administrator.
A crucial component of the Ifill School is its emphasis on communications, a field Gwen excelled in, Bert told VOA.
After graduating from Simmons in 1977, she had long careers in both print and television journalism, working for The Baltimore Evening Sun, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC and PBS. She covered seven presidential campaigns and died in 2016 at age 61.
Ifill was the first African American woman to moderate a vice presidential debate and to coanchor a national newscast, “PBS NewsHour.”
“Gwen valued storytelling, and she was an amazing journalist,” Kothari, the school’s new dean, told VOA. “But she also worked really hard to raise awareness about important social issues and to highlight underrepresented voices.”
Abigail Meyers, a current junior at the Ifill School, admires the journalist’s “groundbreaking work” in both journalism and racial justice, she told VOA. Raised near Baltimore, Maryland, Meyers feels a special connection to Ifill’s work for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper.
The school has been instrumental in supporting Meyers’ aspirations to become a professional journalist, she told VOA.
“The support that you get from the faculty and alumni is unlike really any other journalism program,” she said.
Being a double major in communications and political science, Meyers appreciates the new curriculum’s flexibility, as she is able to take classes across different disciplines.
This flexibility will help prime Simmons’ students to achieve success, Kothari said. She believes interdisciplinary training leads to stronger leaders in the world.
“As we think about communications or media, including journalism or social sciences, we need a strong foundation in humanities to understand the historical context for what we see happening today,” Kothari said.
The school’s increased focus on humanities “couldn’t be more timely,” according to the press release. Nearly three of four Americans believe media literacy is an important skill in today’s news landscape, a 2023 Boston University survey found.
However, humanities-focused degree programs like the Ifill School’s receive little recognition. Of all the bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2020, humanities degrees made up less than 10%, a number that has only been decreasing, according to a 2022 MIT study. Meanwhile, science, technology, engineering and math degrees, or STEM, have grown exponentially.
But humanities and STEM shouldn’t be seen as opposites, Kothari said.
She cited the COVID-19 pandemic response as an example. Many precautionary measures such as social distancing were grounded in “amazing scientific research,” but weren’t effectively communicated to the public, she said.
“As we have new knowledge being produced, we also need journalists,” Kothari said. “We need communicators who are able to translate very complex information to the audience so they can see, ‘How does it matter to me? What is the effect for me?’”
Ifill’s legacy is not only celebrated within her namesake school, but also through press freedom organizations around the world.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom nonprofit, honors Ifill with the annual Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award, which is presented to individuals who have “shown extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom,” according to CPJ’s website.
Christophe Deloire, the late director of international media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, received the 2024 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award.
“Christophe was one of journalism's greatest-ever champions,” RSF Executive Director Clayton Weimers told VOA in an email. “There was hardly a fight or an advance in press freedom in the past decade that he wasn't a part of, if not leading.”
As Ifill’s legacy spreads, there is one person who couldn’t be prouder: her brother, Bert. He told VOA it often seems as though his full-time job is “to talk nicely about Gwen.”
“It's always a great pleasure and honor for me to talk about her and to talk about her legacy, not only as obviously a very skilled journalist, but as an extraordinary mentor and confidant,” he said.
China’s youth unemployment fuels rise in postgraduate studies
Youth unemployment in China climbed to nearly 19% in August, its highest level so far this year, according to official data. Analysts say that the higher level of youth unemployment is driving more college graduates to enroll in graduate schools to escape the job search as the world’s second-largest economy struggles.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, or NBS, late last week, the unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds rose from 17.1% in July to 18.8% in August. One big reason for the uptick in joblessness, the NBS said, is that nearly 12 million students graduated from Chinese universities this June, heightening competition in an already tough job market.
Postgraduates overtake graduates
“The job market has shrunk, and at the same time there are still so many graduates. Too many people are idling every day,” said Lin Chan-Hui, an assistant professor of the General Education Center at Feng Chia University in Taiwan. “Another way out is to return to school to study further and temporarily escape the competitive workplace.”
Some Chinese universities say they are seeing more postgraduate students than undergraduates.
According to the state-backed digital publication The Paper, the number of graduate students at Lanzhou University exceeded the total number of undergraduate students for the first time. Lanzhou University is located in the capital of northwestern China’s Gansu Province.
In eastern China’s coastal Zhejiang Province, the Zhejiang University of Technology shows 5,382 new graduate students were admitted this year, beating out the number of new undergraduate students by 40.
The trend was already picking up at more famous Chinese universities last year.
Last December, Beijing’s Tsinghua University said the number of undergraduate freshmen in the previous academic year was 3,760, while the number of master's and doctoral students was 12,069.
Shanghai’s Fudan University in October 2023 reported 15,000 undergraduate students and nearly 37,000 graduate students.
China's Ministry of Education said that last year there were more than 47 million people enrolled in higher education institutes, 1.3 million were graduate students, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Lei, a higher education consultant in Shenzhen, who due to the sensitivity of the subject only gave his surname, told VOA the trend of higher education is moving toward "college graduates who don’t go to graduate school would immediately become unemployed" amid China's economic slowdown.
"On one hand, studying in graduate school can really help you find a job. On the other hand, it’s also an avoidance mentality,” Lei said.
Wandering masters and doctors
Feng Chia University’s Lin said that having an undergraduate degree is not enough in fields like technological innovation and scientific research, so it is still necessary to get a postgraduate degree in certain fields.
On the other hand, he said, China has too many people getting doctorates and master’s degrees and not enough technical and vocational education so there will be "fierce competition for upper-level work, but no one does the lower-level work." Highly educated young people are not willing to engage in grassroots work, Lin said, so there will be more and more "wandering masters and doctors."
Lin said the geopolitical tension between China and the U.S. has also made studying abroad for a postgraduate degree harder, so more students choose a domestic one instead.
Chinese netizens seem to agree that waiting for the job market to improve is their best hope.
A Hunan netizen on China’s Weibo social media platform under the name "Da Ke Ya Tang" said: "The market will not be able to provide so many jobs in the foreseeable future, so we have to leave the problem to the future."
"If colleges and universities cannot adapt to the country's demand for innovative and pioneering talents and reform the way students are trained, more employment pressure may accumulate in society in a few years," writer Wang Guojin said in a post on Weibo.
COVID students coping?
A PhD student in Shanghai who, due to the sensitivity of the subject, only gave his surname Zeng, told VOA the increase in master's and doctoral students is also because many graduate students went to college during the COVID-19 pandemic and are struggling to adapt. Zeng blames remote learning for their struggles with social interaction and the skills needed to compete in the job market.
"This group of college students obviously lacks some socialization skills, at least in recruitment interviews,” Zeng said. “They can't reach the same level as the previous students.”
Zeng adds that monthly stipends for master's and doctoral students ranges from roughly $143 to $700 and Chinese universities encourage entrepreneurship by providing funds to start small projects through competitions.
“Who wouldn’t want to continue their studies and earn money at the same time?” she asked.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
