Photo by Darren Hester

It’s a sad truism that if you are a graduate student, you are probably in debt.  While rumors of Obama forgiving all student loans floated around during his campaign, realistically it was unlikely to happen. Still, it was with eager anticipation that I read all of the news sources I could find about the overhaul of the student lending laws.

The Christian Science Monitor helpfully offered a run-down of key components of the legislation:

* Improved repayment options! New borrowers can cap their repayments at 10%, down from 15%.  Sadly, this is only for new borrowers, so it doesn’t apply to my old debts.

* A streamlined federal loan system! So, all loans now originate from the same source. No real change here.

* Competitive loan servicing! Wait, this means we get better customer service? So they will be nicer to me when they tell me to pay up?

* Support to stay in school and manage debt! $750 million for classes on financial literacy for low-income students. This is probably a good thing, but I’m wondering how much time cash-strapped low-income students will divert from their classwork and jobs to attend supplementary classes.  Will this be mandatory?

* More Pell grant money! Sadly, the amount of money does not match the enormous fee hikes that many colleges are imposing this year.

There is also an additional $4 billion dollars to go to community colleges and historically black institutions. As a former community college attendee, I wholeheartedly support this part of the bill.  I was a transfer student and some of my best students at Berkeley are transfer students; I hope that this money will help our valuable, cash-strapped community colleges.  Still, the financial impact on my student loans–nada.

So, Derek Thompson from The Atlantic is accurate in his assessment of what the student lending law means for borrowing students: not a whole lot.

Photos by Colleen Morgan

It’s late and the bus is still filled to the gills with chattering Berkeley students, fogging up the windows and ignoring the exhortations of the bus driver, “STEP BACK! EVERYONE STEP BACK!” Students are leaving campus after late nights studying and working in labs, some headed to Safeway to stock up on supplies.  The student traffic tapers off south of Alcatraz, with older commuters staying on, heading to downtown Oakland and beyond.  The bus quietly undergoes an almost complete demographic change, one that has not gone unnoticed by the AC Transit authorities.

You may have missed the announcement last month from AC Transit: major changes were coming for some of the local bus lines, the most shocking of which is breaking the 51 in half at the Rockridge BART into 51A and 51B, lines that would service the north and the south segments of the 51′s route.  This would require paying for a transfer for non-UC Students, and for students with a Class Pass (a mandatory charge of $69.50 to your student fees, I hope you make good use of it!) presumably AC Transit would be able to charge UC for two rides instead of one. I also do not particularly look forward to getting off at Rockridge and waiting for another bus, especially late at night after a long day of grading.

It’s not a major disruption and will not change the experience of most students who live inside the Berkeley bubble, yet it seems a bit cynical on the part of AC Transit to break the bus line in half at the Berkeley/Oakland border. Students tend to stay in a tight circle around campus, and while this may benefit their university education, it seems a bit sad to live in the Bay Area for several years without venturing into Oakland and San Francisco.  In this respect, breaking up the 51 is just another division between Berkeley and Oakland, punishing those who would venture outside of the bubble.

You can follow the day’s activities in the East Bay and in Sacramento with the Daily Cal’s live blogs. Or read other media coverage here, here, and here.

If you’re a Berkeley graduate student invested in the future of your institution, you know all this already. But in all the debate swirling around the lamentable fee increases – most prominently, how best to protest them – another issue is at stake. It’s heresy around here to suggest that anyone who wants and works for it shouldn’t have access to a college education. But does everyone really want a college education?

As San Jose State professor (and Berkeley Ph.D.) Mike Rustigan argued in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, many young Americans are more interested in working with their hands than sitting behind a desk, and to insist that everyone aspire to a four-year degree discounts the value – not to mention national economic necessity – of learning a trade. Caitlin Flanagan’s polemical (and pretty much universally derided) critique of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley serves as the reductio ad absurdum of our unblinking devotion to a liberal arts education at the expense of any practical knowledge. Arguing that school garden programs rob students of valuable time with civics textbooks, Flanagan accuses Alice Waters and her “ACORN-loving, public-option-supporting” acolytes of preventing migrant workers’ kids from getting into college, which is the only way they could possibly escape their fate of diabetes and underemployment. (Waters’ suggestion that working in a garden can prove pedagogically useful is unlikely to breed a permanent underclass of sharecroppers, but if it asks students to write recipes as well as coherent paragraphs about The Crucible – if it produces people who can effectively communicate information rather than haughtily parade their cultural capital in The Atlantic – is that really such a bad thing?)

Faux-populism aside, most school garden advocates would agree with Flanagan that, whether early education is cultivated in vegetable plots or those of Shakespeare, college is the ultimate goal, and the argument that the university isn’t for everyone runs a real risk of elitism. It’s easy for a tenured faculty member, or a first-year graduate student enjoying the first fruits of fellowship, to wax poetic about the art of mechanical production. But, as Rustigan argues, recognizing the abilities of those who show promise in shop class isn’t just empty praise; it might help steer would-be dropouts in a positive direction. Our educational system tends to give short shrift to those with neither the desire nor the skill set to don white collars. If the push for equal education put more emphasis on vocational programs, like the Regional Occupational Training offered in cooperation with the Santa Cruz public school system, we might give otherwise unmotivated teens a reason to stay in school by showing them there are multiple paths to success. Manufacturing may be cheaper in China, but home improvement and electricians’ visits will continue to be made in America, and such expertise comes with a certain job security. As Rustigan quotes a retired plumber, “No one is going to outsource your local repair guy.”

And let’s face it: not all of us in academia have the luxury of condescending to the service sector. Plenty of plumbers make more money than assistant professors, and grad students flush with funding now might not find such a plum situation on the job market – to say nothing of undergraduate humanities majors who try and fail, as I did last year, to score jobs in marketing or magazines and end up waitressing (and earning more than some office-bound peers) instead.

This isn’t meant to suggest that anyone is deciding between a mechanical engineering PhD and a career as a shop mechanic, or to deny the fact that college education can indeed be a powerful force for social change and personal gain. As the current controversy at Berkeley High attests, the misguided assumption that non-white students can’t excel in college-prep courses comes perilously close to proving Flanagan’s point. But it’s about time we realize that learning skills for manual labor, like learning critical thinking, is good for everyone, whether it’s part of a formal curriculum or not, whether as the basis for a vocation or as a supplement to one. The best education would teach how to use all the basic tools: reading, writing, arithmetic, and a hammer.

Loma Prieta earthquake damage to the Bay Bridge

Despite the damage, the 1989 earthquake was much less intense than the 1906 earthquake that struck San Francisco. And chances are good, 63% according to the most recent predictions, that an earthquake of equal or greater magnitude will occur along a Bay Area fault within the next 30 years.

During an earthquake

Loma Prieta earthquake damage to the Old King Library in San Jose

• If you are inside when an earthquake strikes, drop, cover, and hold on. That means take cover under a heavy piece of furniture or drop to the floor against an interior wall. Protect your head and neck with your arms, then stay put until the shaking has stopped. In an earthquake, avoid exterior walls, windows, large hanging objects and mirrors, and large appliances.
• If you’re in bed, stay there and cover your head with a pillow.
• If you’re outside, move to a clear area if possible. Avoid buildings, power lines, and trees. Always assume that fallen power lines are live.
• If you’re in a car, pull over to the side of the road as soon as it’s possible and safe. Avoid anything that might fall on your vehicle, such as an overpass. Remain inside until the shaking has stopped.

And remember, as Emily White of the Red Cross said during a recent interview with the Chronicle, “Most earthquake-related injuries result from falling debris or people trying to move more than a few feet during the shaking.”

Before an earthquake

• Develop an earthquake plan. This includes identifying safe spots in every room in your home and practicing getting into these spots and dropping, covering, and holding on. Also make a plan for how you will communicate with and meet up with family members, friends, or roommates after a quake.
• Put together a disaster kit. This should include the supplies you’ll need to survive for 3 days on your own. Your kit should have bottled water (1 gallon per person per day); nonperishable food; first aid supplies; a flashlight with extra batteries; extra personal supplies, such as medication, contact lenses or glasses, and basic hygiene products; copies of personal identification and insurance information; a list of emergency contact phone numbers; something for warmth; and emergency cash.
• Look around your home for potential hazards, i.e., heavy objects or glass (in picture frames or mirrors) that could fall during an earthquake. Move these items away from places where people sit and sleep.

Related Links:

• How to prepare for an earthquake on SFGate
• Putting down roots in Earthquake Country from the USGS
• Complete SFGate Loma Prieta earthquake anniversary coverage
• What to do in an earthquake from UC Berkeley’s Office of Emergency Preparedness

Also of note: Journalism Professor Michael Pollan has an article on rules for eating in the annual Food Issue of the New York Times Magazine.