Monday, January 7, 2013

Does state and federal financial aid to colleges improve college access and affordability?


 There is a recent growing anxiety in America about higher education. The rising of tuition fee and increasing in student debt, plus the shrinking in financial and educational return are making the people and family started to question if university is a good investment. Statistics have shown that the cost of university per student has risen by almost five times that rate of inflation since 1983. The debt for both the universities and the students have increased. What makes the situation even worse is that the universities have been spending beyond their means. Now, the universities cannot look to government for help as the states have already cut back dramatically on the amount of financial aid they give to universities. President Obama already stated that he is not happy about the increase in tuition fee and has threatened the universities with aid cuts if they continue to do so. However, the question lies in the argument, whether state and federal financial aid to colleges improve college access and affordability?

 In 1962 one cent of every dollar spent in American higher education, nowadays the figure has tripled but despite the fact that America spent greater proportion of its GDP on higher education, it still only has 15th largest proportion of young people with a university of education. From this people argues that the amount of money that we spend on higher education cannot necessarily improve college access and affordability. However, studies have shown that the reason of this phenomenon is that additional value has not been created to match this extra spending. For instance almost a third of students these days do not take any courses that involve more than 40 pages of reading over an entire term and try to get into the class where they can earn higher GPA. As a result, the grade point averages rose from about 2.52 in the 1950s to 3.11 in 2006. While people can argue that student can earn back the investment through getting a great premium for their degree, there are still an ample amount of graduates who cannot find a job. Therefore it is easy to overspend on one’s education. Another issue is that young graduates are now facing a declining in earning over the past decade (16% for women, 19% for men) and more debts. All of arguments above can contribute the reason to explain why the cost of higher education becomes higher.

             Recent statistics have shown that the complex relationship between the federal student aid and the state’s funding appropriate for funding for higher education. They are focusing on the increasing of cost that is shifting towards the public higher education, from states to students and families. This shifting of costs lead to the disinvestment from the states to the higher education. As a result, college officials have compensated for the loss of state dollars with a combination of cost-cutting measures, reductions in student enrollment, and an increased reliance on student tuition and fee revenues. We can see a decrease in the demand of higher education as the price of it goes up as well as a shrink in people who can get access to college. The reduction of investment from the states to the higher education has placed more pressure on federal lawmakers to expand existing student aid programs. In order to release these pressure, recent federal legislation has include financial incentives for public higher education to maintain a minimum funding level, these incentives are called “Maintenance of Effort” (MOE)

            According to an analysis of state applications for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the maintenance of effort provision appears to have successfully limited the amount of disinvestment in higher education during the current recession. This shows that federal incentives and disincentives can help assure that states maintain adequate financial support to public colleges and universities. And as a result, can contribute to college affordability. Many stakeholder groups in higher education have supported MOE provisions. The main reason to including them in federal legislation that are most associate with the accessibility to college are that they can help mitigate rising tuition prices by encouraging states to invest adequately in their public higher education systems; provide a more predictable funding framework for state colleges and universities, thus, diminishing the fluctuation in state funding for higher education that has long been associated with the ebb and flow of economic cycles; and respect state and institutional sovereignty by providing financial incentives, but not legal mandates or tuition control.

However, MOE provisions have also received some criticism from groups representing state lawmakers and governors, such as the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Some of the main criticisms are pointing out that there’s reluctance by state officials to substantially increase funding for higher education, due to ensuing commitments to provide funding at higher future thresholds, as is required by current MOE provisions. There’s also potential increase in fiscal inequities among states, given that those in stronger fiscal circumstances may be better positioned to meet MOE commitments during economic downturns, while the potential loss of federal funds resulting from the inability to meet MOE provisions may exacerbate budgetary constraints faced by less prosperous states. In addition, there’s objection by state lawmakers to federal intrusion into education policy, a power not specifically delineated to the federal government in the Constitution.

Even though MOE has these shortcomings, in the case of the ARRA, evidence shows that MOE requirements prevented many states from reducing financial support for public higher education even further. This helped prevent greater student tuition and fee increases at the nation's public colleges and universities. Therefore, state and federal financial aid to colleges do improve college access and affordability.

This debate contains a major economic concept, which is effect of subsidies in the free market. When a demand of certain services is elastic, the increase in price of it leads to the decrease in quantity demand of this service. This means ceteris paribus, at a higher price, less people in the market are willing and able to purchase the goods. When the government provides subsidies in the market, in this case it’s the state and federal financial aid to colleges, it shifts the demand curve of higher education up. As a result, the quantity demand of the higher education will increase, which means at the same equilibrium price, more people are able to purchase the service that was provided by higher education. Since public higher education is a merit good, it can increase the human capital of the people in labor market, the government is willing to subsidy it in order to improve the efficiency in the country’s market. Therefore it makes sense to argue the state and federal financial aid to colleges improves college access and affordability.

Work cited

Maintenance of Effort: An Evolving Federal-State Policy Approach to Ensuring College Affordability, Journal of Education Finance, v36 n1 p76-87 Sum 2010. 12 pp.

"Not What It Used to Be." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, 01 Dec. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

How Does Modern Framework Shape Individuals?


Have you ever try to create your own mix music by using the app on your laptop? Do you understand that by doing this you are actually breaking the law of copyright? As the technology became more advanced, music’s impact has spread throughout the globe under a shocking speed and all of us are living in a modern discursive framework. Individual music consumers like you and me are considered as the direct receivers of this impact. Aram Sinnreich, in his book, argued that the modern framework we are in right now is a society where the regulatory institution wants to protect the work of genius but the individuals are trying to resist the regulations. According to Sinnreich: “the institutions surrounding musical production and consumption serve both constraining and enabling roles, reinforcing the discursive framework and serving as a boundary for the processes of regulation and resistance described in chapter 1” *

The modern Discursive Frame work we are in right now consists of  6 binaries (art vs. craft/ artist vs. audience/ original vs. copy/ performance vs. composition/ figure vs. ground/ materials vs. tools). Long before technology became this advanced, the two parts of each binary are separated completely. However, due to the emerge of advanced modern technology, the line between each part of binary gradually becomes blurry. For instance, back in the history, when you are enjoying a piece of music, your role in this whole performance is only an audience. Nowadays, you can started to mix your own music with your laptop. This means that when you are enjoying the performance of your remixed music. You are acutally playing two roles: artisit and audience.

Official regulatory institutions such as governments are trying to regulate this situation. In another word, music regulation is acting as a force that tries to separate the two parts of each binary apart. For instance, separate the artists and audiences. However, the problem is nowadays we can download music without paying to the company that produces them by using advanced technology. Which means that we can basically get access to any music and remix them into a new song without paying a thing. Hence it is harder for regulatory institute to regulate anymore. Under this situation, individuals like you and me are forming a resistant force to against the regulations. We want to find out new ways that we can avoid the regulations while the official institutions are also trying to find out the new ways and to regulate them. During this “tug-of-war” process, music innovations emerged.

Now we’ve got a question. Why would the institutions trying to regulate the music? We can discuss this by looking at an example. Pussy Riot, a rebellious Russian punk band staging a flash protest against President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscows’ main Orthodox Cathedral, was sentenced to two years in jail. The band promoted feminism to the public and the lyric of their songs are criticizing the Russian government. Their sentence has raised debate in US about government’s regulation on music. Because America is a country where people have freedom of speech and according to Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, pseudonymous Guerrilla Girls: “we live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.” * In another word, Pussy Riot was punished by something that Americans are taking granted from for the whole time.

The possible reason of Russian government is trying to regulate Pussy Riot’s music is that it afraid music and behavior from Pussy Riot will affect the idea of thoes who listen to the band’s music. The government is afraid of losing its control over the country. We can say that it is the fact that regulators believe music has this enormous power to shape people’s ideology that promotes the process of regulating and resisting. According to a graph in Sinnreich’s book*, we  know that a single simple idea can move its way up to affect individual, and then individuals gather together will affect different institutions. Eventually, it will make a change in the whole macro-society.

In conclusion, the modern framework we are in right now is related to everyone of us. We are living in a society where the technology is advanced enough for us to mix the two parts of each binary together. People made up of the whole society and individuals like you and me have the ability to challenge the modern framework which threaten governments and other institutions. The music experience we are having right now comes from the music innovation that emerged from music regulating and resisting. We make up this society and we try to accommodate the change of it. We are part of the mordern framework and that’s how individuals like you and me are fitting in this whole discursive framework.

Work cited
* MELENA RYZIK, “Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest”, 9/7/2012: page 2, Print
* Sinnreich Aram, Mashed up- music, technology, and the rise of configurable culture, Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010, Print, page 36.

How rap music has a negative influence on society


Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip...
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it; you better never let it go
You only get one shot do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime (Eminem, Lose yourself)

Think about rap music. What is the first word that came up to your mind? I’ve asked twenty of my peers that question and nineteen of them answered “violence”. People generally have a negative view of rap because they believe that it always relates to gangs, guns and other social issues. Aside form their subject matter; rap lyrics are generally not appropriate. It is certainly not the kind of music that parents would want their children to listen to. However, over the years we have seen a rapidly increasing amount of consumption of rap.  Most of these consumers are teenagers. It is my position that rap music has a negative influence on society.  Based on the lyrics of the rap, the audiences and the rapping industry as a whole, it is easy to show how rap can cause crime and discrimination in a society.
Rap music, usually known as “rapping” – also known as emceeing, MCing, spitting, or rhyming – refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics" (Wikipedia). Conventionally speaking, it occupies a grey area between speech, poetry and song. By saying grey area, I mean that we can’t easily distinguish the difference between rapping and speaking. It is just like telling the story in a rapid and rhythmic manner. The ample amount of lyrics in the rap music allows singers to express their feelings in a more detailed way, because they contain an extensive amount of information.
In the last two decades, rap music has undergone some important transformations. One of the most significant of these changes occurred in the early 1990s, with the emergence of “gangsta rap.” Gangsta rap was identified by The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture as the most controversial type of rap music. The genre receives global attention for “its vivid sexist, misogynistic, and homophobic lyrics, as well as its violent depiction of urban ghetto life in America” (Abrams 2000:198). The content of the lyrics usually relates to strong feelings: despair, anger or ecstasy, for example. Usually, the song tries to be relatable for the audience. For instance, in the song “I Need a Doctor” (Eminem ft. Dr. Dre & Skylar Grey), Eminem raps two verses about his mentor, thanking Dre for believing in him in his early days. Eminem conveyed his feeling through a series of heartfelt lyrics such as, “…You picked me up, breathed new life in me. I owe my life to you, before the life of me, I don't see why you don't see like I do…”(“I Need a Doctor” by Eminem ft. Dr. Dre & Skylar Grey). From this we can see that rap music can be very emotionally charged, and therefore audiences find it relatable to the audiences.
This kind of rap makes the listeners feel that the story being described in the song is what a real person has gone through. It presents the drama of someone’s life to audiences.  Normally, we don’t have to interpret what the meaning of a rap song as we do for other genres of music, because we can easily obtain the story through the clarity of the lyrics.  Sometimes the story described in the song resonates with the audience, which is the reason why more and more people listen to rap music. In this sense, rap can be very easily related to people’s real lives, and so the audience is easily influenced by the music.
In most cases, the rap lyrics rhymes at the end of each sentence, making it fairly catchy. According to This is Your Brain in Music (Daniel J. Levitin), “We listen to music that has a pulse, something you can tap your foot to, or at least tap the foot in your mind to.” (Levitin, p165). Research has shown that people tend to remember lyrics very quickly if the lyrics were sang in a rhythmic manner. The rhythm provides a certain pattern or beat to the brain, and – according to Levintin’s experiment – the cerebellum appears to be involved in tracking the beat when we listen to music, which enhances our ability to remember the song. As a result, the lyrics might be recited over easily and stick in people’s heads for quite a long time.
It is important for us to understand that there is a possibility a lyric will become stuck in people’s heads because, as we go through a song lyric, a majority of them discuss alcohol, drugs, guns, and crime. We hear swear words and disrespectful sexist comments in the song. All of these represent negativities in our society. Once those lyrics go through people’s minds repeatedly, they will make people start to think about the negative subject matter. The more we listen to the songs, the more of this negativity we are exposed to. As a result, rap music gradually deteriorates people’s opinions of their society. These kinds of influences are subtle but long lasting. As Levintin mentioned, “Music appears to mimic some of the features of language and to convey some of the same emotions that vocal communication does, but in a non-referential, and nonspecific way”.
So what will these negative views in people’s heads lead us to? I believe that they can actually lead to more crime in our society. Take teenagers as an example. They are the biggest consumer group of rap music and they are absorbing staggering amounts of new information every day during adolescence, and developing their view of the world. Teenagers are the group of people who can be most easily influenced by strong emotions. Not all of them have been involved in major social problems, so listening to rap music is a very common way for them to get a sense of what social issues exist. Therefore, an increase in consumption of rap music exposes them to social negativities much more frequently than they would be otherwise. However, most rap music is full of biases and inaccurate representation of these social negativities. Some of the lyrics even promote conducting crimes. It is difficult for teenagers to judge whether the opinions in the rap music are legitimate or not. This type of rap music misleads teenagers and they are likely to draw wrong conclusions, thinking that crimes, guns and swearing are symbols of being ‘cool’, and that is ok to behave in such a way.
Because teenagers are impulsive due to their young age and they are less rational than adults, what they think in their minds will mostly likely turn into action. This results in the rate of teenagers’ crime going up. As a matter of fact, according to research done by Dr. Ralph J. DiClemente from Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, teenagers who listen to rap music are three times more likely to hit a teacher, over 2.5 times more likely to get arrested, twice as likely to have multiple sexual partners, and 1.5 times more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease, use drugs, or drink alcohol. (Kirchheimer, Sid. "Does Rap Music Put Teens at Risk?")
Of course, only strong emotion and oppositional lyrics are not enough for rap music to make a huge negative impact on society. Any type of music needs media to present it to the whole world. Teenagers today can get access to technology fairly easily. Therefore, modern technology acts as a stimulus for the wide spread of the rap music and the influences that it carries with. For instance, before the Internet could be accessed as easily as today, some of the most popular ways for people to get access to rap music are listening to a radio station or purchasing an album. All of the songs that were released in these ways are censored, which means that the inappropriate lyrics were eliminated in order to be able to put rap on public radio stations. Nowadays, with the website YouTube, people can watch whichever music video are uploaded, whether it is censored or not. This greatly increases the possibility that a people will encounter swear words and the inappropriate content in many lyrics.
 In addition, video clips allow people to associate music with visual image. Before, we could only listen but now we are able to see. This is not necessarily a good thing, as many music videos are not appropriate for people under a certain age because most music videos are set in ghetto or parties. For instance, in the music video “Love the Way You Lie” (Eminem ft Rihanna), we see a lot of scenes where two people are physically fighting with each other. These kinds of scenes can influence teenagers’ views of abusive relationships and might lead to teenagers trying to mimic the violence in the video. Since now we can’t control who sits in front of the computer and watches a video, we can’t possibly stop young people from watching them. As a result, the negative influences that rap music can bring will be distributed even more quickly.
In addition, data from the Survelum Public Data bank has shown that more males (47%) listen to rap than females (13%). Conventionally speaking, women are more risk averted than men, so even the women are exposed to the rap music are less likely to commit a crime than men are. Men are more willing to take the risk and act on the violent suggestions that’s been described in rap music. As a result, the more they are exposed to rap, the more crimes are likely to happen.
Aside from the lyrics in rap music, a lot of negativities also exist in the rapping industry. For instance, there is significant discrimination against white people and women in this industry. Throughout history, the number of white rappers and female rappers is so small that most of the time we can see only black males rapping on the stage. It is as if black male have occupied this entire industry. Although in recent years we are seeing an increasing amount of white and female rappers, such as Eminem, Vanilla Ice, Bubba Sparxxx, Lil’ Kim, Nicki Minaj and Queen Latifah, their numbers are still dwarfed by the black male rappers. We are certainly seeing some social problems here: racism and sexism. This phenomenon is actually reinforcing the stereotype that only black males can rap. Or by extending this phenomenon, we might come up with another stereotype that all black males can rap. As I have discussed before, society has a negative impression of rap music, as it is always associated with crimes, guns, and drugs. As a result, biased views are easily formed towards black male populations. People will think that all black males are criminals. This is similar to the stereotype that all the Chinese people know Kungfu, only much worse.
However, some people might ask if the increasing of crime rate in modern society influenced the emergence of rap music? While black men can be stereotyped in rap, rap may have originated as a way for a stigmatized community to express their frustration. According to Simon Jones, “Black music generally and Jamaican music in particular have functioned as transmitters of oppositional values and liberating pleasures…”(p231) From that we can see rap as a medium that distinguishes black music from the white music, as black music has a higher tendency to portray the miserable life of low-income family, the underside of society, and the voracious quest for money and better living conditions.
I would agree that an increasing crime rate in society would lead to the emergence of rap music. At the beginning of this essay I gave a quote from the song “Lose Yourself”, which is from the movie “8 Mile.” This movie is a great portrayal of how rap music evolved from the miserable living conditions, facing black communities in America. In many of the scenes from this movie, we can see people using their life story as a source of rap lyrics. For instance, in one scene, the workers in a factory are lining up to receive the food. All of them are exhausted and tired of the repetitive, boring job that they are doing. As they are waiting, an old lady started to rap – and her lyrics were complaints about her life, the food she had every day, and the bad working conditions. Her action soon disrupted the quietness of the line, and a man started to rap back to the old lady, saying that he is tired of her constant complaining. He mocked her for complaining about things that she had no control over. Then he started verbally attacking other people in the crowd: an obsessed worker’s body size and a gay man’s outfit. The whole interaction was in the form of rapping. From this, we can see rapping as a distinctive way to release pressure. People can rap about anything, but most of the time people will rap about things that they are stressed about. So it is reasonable to say more crimes and social negativities present people with more sources for rapping material. Therefore, it makes sense for people to argue that an increase in crime rate can result in the increase in the amount of rap music.
Crime and rap music are like two forces that are acting in different directions. According to Newton’s Third Law, there is no such thing as a unidirectional force, thus when rap music has an effect on the crime rate and discrimination in a society, the negativities in that society act in opposition to that force and provide a source for the creation of rap. However, the magnitudes of these two “forces” are not the same. Rap music itself, by transmitting negative lyrics to the vulnerable audiences and stereotyping people in that industry, definitely have a greater impact than the other way around. Therefore, overall, we are seeing the negative impact of rap music on a society as the dominant force of the two.
In conclusion, rap music has a huge amount of lyrics that allows the audience to relate their own lives to the music, which, is very influential. It is emotional, but also contains a lot of negative views about society. The rhymes in the lyrics enhance the ability for audiences to remember them. Teenagers are the major consumers of rap music, so they are exposed to the negativities and are more likely to act on the violence, a factor that also affects the males. As a result, we are seeing an increasing number of crimes and discrimination in our society due in part to rap music. The kinds of negativities presented in the songs also extend to the rapping industry itself, where white people and women are notably excluded. It also strengthens the stereotype that black male populations are criminals. Though people can argue that rap music has emerged from the negativities in the society, the impact of rap on the society itself is greater. Therefore, I believe rap music definitely has a negative influence on society.
















Work cited
Abrams, Nathan. 2000. “Gansta Rap.” P. 198 in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, edited by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson-Gale
Dr. Dre - I Need A Doctor (Explicit) Ft. Eminem, Skylar Grey." YouTube. YouTube, 24 Feb. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
EminemVEVO. "Eminem - Love The Way You Lie Ft. Rihanna." YouTube. YouTube, 05 Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Jones, Simon. 1988: Black culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK, Bsingstoke:Macmillan.
Kirchheimer, Sid. "Does Rap Music Put Teens at Risk?" WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Levitin, Daniel J., This is Your Brain On Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, East Rutherford, NJ, USA: Penguin Putnam, 2006. P165-188

"Rapping." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
8 mile, Curtis Hanson, Brian Grazer, Jimmy Iovine, Scott Silver, Eminem, Kim Basinger and Brittany Murphy, November 8, 2002. film

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