Education is a cornerstone of the American Dream. For many, a College education is paramount to upward mobility. In the United States, professionals possessing a bachelor’s degree typically earn 66% more than those with only a high school diploma, and 75% of the fastest-growing occupations necessitate a college degree.

However, as the cost of attending college escalates, this traditionally low-risk path to prosperity is becoming impossible to reach for more and more Americans. Since 1989, the cost of attending a private non-profit university has more than doubled, while the fees for an average four-year public university have tripled. In 2017, the Institute for Higher Education Policy reported that 95% of colleges in the United States were unaffordable for 8 out of 10 students. In 2015, a whopping 83% of Americans said they could not afford to go to college.

While the inaccessibility of college continues to escalate, experts still cannot agree on the exact causes of this trend. Studies indicate many different possible drivers of increasing tuition costs. For one, state investment in higher education has declined, which has been shown to raise tuition at an increasing rate. Others have different ideas.

In 1984, then-Secretary of Education William Bennett published “Our Greedy Colleges” in the New York Times. Now infamously known as the Bennett Hypothesis, the article argued that expansions of student financial aid were the true culprits of increasing the cost of attending college. “If anything,” Bennett wrote, “increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase.”

The Bennett Hypothesis has since then been a contentious topic among higher education policy analysts and academics. A 2015 study from the New York Federal Reserve supported the Hypothesis, concluding that increases in Pell Grant and federal student loans strongly corresponded with increases in the cost of attending college. The analysis found that for every dollar increase in the federal subsidized loan maximum, the cost of attending college increased by 60 cents, and for every dollar increase in the Pell Grant maximum, college tuition increased by 37 cents.

However, the Federal Reserve study was far from the end of the debate. The correlation found in the study was most prevalent when it concerned expensive, for-profit universities with relatively low selectivity. An American Council on Education report found that selective private institutions generally priced their tuition according to the willingness to pay of the wealthiest families in attendance—a group that is “largely unaffected by changes in federal aid policy.” The same study concluded that public colleges were more susceptible to changing their tuition based on financial aid, but costs remained largely dependent on state politics and investment.

The Center for American Progress showed that college tuition increased even when student loan limits stayed constant; from 1995 to 2014, the maximum loan limit only increased twice, while tuition increased every year. Other research has found little to no relationship between increases in financial aid and increases in tuition for professional graduate school. On the other hand, a University of Oregon study found that the Bennett Hypothesis could not be observed among public or lower-ranked universities, but found a strong relationship when it came to prestigious private universities. It is little wonder that a literature review by the bipartisan Congressional Research Service came to the conclusion that there were too many contradictory findings, not only between different studies, but also within single studies. The report ultimately argued that it was not plausible to say college fees would not have increased in the absence of increases in financial aid.

Clearly, the relationship between financial aid and the rising cost of attending college is hotly contested. However, the debate has far-reaching impact on policy-making, particularly during the past two years. In 2018, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos claimed the United States was in the middle of a “crisis” and cited the Bennett Hypothesis, stating “It has something to do with what one of my predecessors famously pointed out decades ago. When the federal government loans more taxpayer money, schools raise their rates.” Concurrently, President Trump’s budget for the 2019 fiscal year eliminated some federal student loan programs, including subsidized loans. His 2020 budget proposal would slash higher education funding.

According to both Devos’ and Bennett’s logic, decreasing government spending on financial aid will drive down college tuition fees. However, it is important to consider the short-term effects of cutting student aid and whom the cuts would most affect. Currently, middle-class students who do not meet the threshold to receive more generous grant aid packages (and thus must take out more loans) shoulder the biggest burden when it comes to student debt. Dartmouth sociology professor Jason N. Houle found that students from families earning between $40,000 to $59,000 in annual income took on 60% more debt in comparison to lower-income students, and 280% more than students from families earning between $100,000 to $149,000 in annual income. As students graduate, the makeup of debt-holders shifts. In households aged 25 or older, the highest income quartile actually holds the highest share of debt.

It is also worth noting that loan repayments are significantly more difficult for low-wealth households, even if their income is high. Considering the wealth disparity between ethnic groups, this means that student debt disproportionately affects Black and Latinx debt holders.

In contrast, Pell Grant recipients must come from families making $50,000 or less to qualify. The majority of Pell Grant recipients come from families with annual incomes under $20,000. Short-term rollbacks on Pell Grant aid would affect the population of students who most lack access to higher education. While the price of college has increasingly skyrocketed, the maximum Pell Grant allowed has increased at a much lower rate. Cutting grant aid would eliminate a significant fraction of an already small sum, at least relative to the full cost of college.

Furthermore, if the maximum Pell Grant disbursement falls, students once eligible for the grant may find themselves taking out more loans to pay for college. Currently, the Pell Grant only covers a fraction of the full cost of attending college. Since the 1970s, the purchasing power of the Pell Grant has fallen from 67% to 27% of the average cost of attending college. Lowering the Pell Grant would mean that students who could not afford college before the Pell Grant would face increased pressures of student debt, which may be exacerbated if they also come from a low-wealth family.

Even if rolling back financial aid programs results in downward pressure on college tuition in the long run, reducing student aid has significant short-term implications for college accessibility, whether it is in the form of limiting flexibility and ability to repay loans or reducing grant aid.

The Economics of Reparations

During every Congress that has convened since 1989, H.R. 40 has been introduced to the House of Representatives, but it has never even been debated on the House floor. Originally sponsored by Representative John Conyers, H.R. 40 is a bill about reparations for descendants of African American slaves. H.R. 40 does not delineate any material policy to implement reparations. Rather, the bill only moves to establish a federal commission investigating the history of slavery and possible remedies. Even so, it has never been successful.

Unlike in years past, however, public support for reparations has increased, and a historic congressional hearing on June 19th of this year to discuss H.R. 40 received significant media and public attention. Now, prominent Congress Members like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris have all shown support for the bill. As some of the above Congressmembers running for president in the 2020 election, such as Harris and Warren, have also floated possible reparations programs in their platforms, the likelihood of legislative action is greater than ever.

The Legacy of Slavery and Racial Wealth Gap

The need for some measures to address the Black-White wealth gap is clear. Past research on the topic indicates the current state of economic inequality across racial lines is shocking: the Federal Reserve found that the median Black household has ten times less wealth than the median white household. Currently, Black Americans hold less than 2% of the nation’s wealth, despite being 12-13% of the U.S. population.

Several factors have contributed to these disparities, but most, if not all, are traced back to the devastating effects of slavery. When emancipation after the Civil War occurred in 1865, General Sherman famously promised reparations in the form of “40 acres and a mule” for every freed slave, but such a program never came to fruition. Instead, in the century and a half since then, former slaves and their descendants have faced unjust compensation in sharecropping, exclusion from owning property through discriminatory mortgage practices, redlining, and employment discrimination.

Black wealth did accumulate in some areas of the nation, like the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood was predominantly African American, and home to a number of wealthy Black-owned businesses like that of O.W. Gurley, a landowner who sold land exclusively to Black buyers, and J. B. Stratford, a hotelier. Greenwood became increasingly affluent, as the number of Black business-owners, attorneys, and bankers grew, and became known as the “Black Wall Street.” Most of the money in Greenwood was circulated around the neighborhood itself, rather than being spent outside on white businesses. Greenwood’s success soon drew the attention of the white residents living in the surrounding areas. From May 31st to June 1st, 1921, a mob of around 1,500 armed whites, some given weapons by city officials, rioted in the neighborhood. They looted property, burning more than 1,256 homes and leaving more than 8,000 formerly wealthy residents homeless. The Tulsa Riot Race Massacre illustrated how barriers to financial success continued to exist for Black Americans even after accruing wealth.

For many Black descendants of slaves, it has been extraordinarily difficult to amass wealth like their white counterparts. Inequitable economic prospects continue to plague Black Americans even generations after the first emancipated slaves. Low wealth at the onset results in little generational transfer of wealth, with the average Black inheritance being 35% of the value of the average white inheritance. As young Black Americans graduate college, their wealth actually declines on average, as they are more likely than white college graduates to support their parents financially. These factors, among many others, perpetuate the cycle of wealth disparity that started at slavery.

The question now is whether reparations would feasibly and effectively remedy these institutional inequalities, and on whom the onus falls upon to pay for the policy.

What would reparations look like?

Currently, there is no consensus on the details of a reparations plan. Most of the Democratic Presidential candidates, barring Marianne Williamson, do not advocate for direct payments of cash. In fact, Professor William Darity, an economist at Duke University who has been one of the foremost academics advocating for reparations, found that a lump sum payment could actually increase the relative income of non-Black producers as Black Americans gain more purchasing power and consume non-Black goods, leading to an absolute decline in Black income as a whole. Darity has stressed the importance of programs fostering longevity in financial prosperity, such as a public trust fund giving out grants for asset acquisition like homeownership or higher education.

Another suggestion, championed by Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker, is a baby bond, or savings issued to every infant at birth (Booker proposes a universal bond, not restricted to Black Americans, making his platform less of a purely reparations policy). Such a bond could be liquidated once the child reaches adulthood, when it could be used for college costs or other expensive endeavors.

Considering how racial income inequality is the primary driver of racial wealth inequality, programs like subsidized higher education to encourage higher incomes for Black Americans may have a significant positive impact on the wealth gap. However, others have argued that government benefits locked for specific purposes are overly paternalistic. An increase in the disposable income of Black Americans would allow for better quality of life as it opens access to higher quality everyday goods, such as healthier food and better healthcare. The freedom to spend a lump sum would also arguably afford more personal dignity to descendants of slaves who have already faced excessive institutional injustices.

With reparations programs, however, also comes the question of how to define their recipients. Professor Darity has argued that reparations should only be restricted to the descendants of slaves, a proposal heartily endorsed by grassroots organizations like American Descendants of Slavery. However, information about ancestry is still not universally ready to be tracked. Furthermore, Pan-African activists have objected to the exclusion of other Black Americans. Activist Nkechi Taifa stated to the Washington Post, “It’s extremely difficult to separate classes of black people … the idea that unless you can actually trace your family directly to a slave that you haven’t been subject to the legacy of slavery is a bunch of hogwash.”

The population of Black immigrants to the United States has risen, comprising 8.7% of the Black population. Many Black immigrants come from the Caribbean, which also has a history of slavery. Quantifying reparations recipients will significantly impact how much the government must spend in total to fund such benefits, which brings us to the most ready and vocal argument in opposition to reparations. Who will pay for such an expensive policy?

Costs and Payers

Experts have a wide range of estimates for the exact amount owed to descendants of slaves. Thomas Craemer from the University of Connecticut, for example, placed the total amount at $5.9-14.2 trillion (in 2009 dollars), while Jason Hickel argued that unpaid slave labor from 1619-1865 equaled up to $97 trillion total.

Regardless, with the U.S. federal budget being $4.1 trillion in 2018 ($1.3 trillion of which is discretionary spending), there needs to be a viable way to pay for a robust reparations program. Lawyer Willie E. Gary argued in favor of suing white Southern families who historically benefitted from slavery, while others have suggested a tax on all households in the top 1% of wealth. Unsurprisingly, these proposals are likely to meet with backlash, especially from Americans who have not historically participated in slavery and feel they should not be penalized for a sin they did not commit. Other methods include government bonds to raise revenue, which may phase out the costs of reparations with future returns to the payer.

Despite the punitive aspects of these proposals, however, the American economy as a whole stands to gain from abolishing the racial wealth gap. The racial wealth gap makes for substantial losses in the national GDP as Black Americans consume and invest far less than they would contribute to the economy if they had a larger share of the nation’s wealth. McKinsey reported that the racial wealth gap will cost the US economy between $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion between 2019 and 2028; in other words, closing the racial wealth gap could increase the projected GDP in 2028 by 4-6%.

While the costs and gains of reparations mean that everyone in the United States is a stakeholder, reparations remains a moral issue singularly centered on the experiences of African Americans. The United States cannot reconcile with such an ugly history of racial oppression and brutality without fully addressing it, particularly when such a history still pervades multiple aspects of modern American society. As author Chuck Collins argued to CNN, “People say, ‘slavery was so long ago’ or ‘my family didn’t own slaves.’ But the key thing to understand is that … the legacy of slavery … created uncompensated wealth for … white society as a whole. Immigrants with European heritage directly and indirectly benefited from this system of white supremacy. The past is very much in the present.” With the attention on reparations increasing in both the political and public sphere, the question of recompense for slavery, and more broadly, racial justice as a whole, is here to stay until a satisfactory answer is found. 

Persecution for Profit: China’s Economic Strategy in Xinjiang

The situation seems like something out of an Orwellian dystopia. The Xinjiang region of China has been transformed into a modern police state as Xi Jinping’s government significantly increased its security presence in the region. The predominantly Muslim Uighur population has been subject to tactics of repression like an ongoing online surveillance system, bans on religious practices such as veiling faces and keeping long beards, and arrests on nonsensical charges without due process. Organizations like the Human Rights Watch have estimated that up to a million Uighurs are incarcerated in “re-education camps.” While such numbers have not been verified, the slew of firsthand accounts from Uighur survivors are both concerning and damning.

Although tensions between Xinjiang and Beijing have always existed due to tensions between the Uighur and Han ethnic groups, the Chinese government has significantly strengthened its control over Xinjiang in the past few years. President Xi Jinping’s administration has claimed that its actions are in response to the threat of terrorism in the Xinjiang region. The Chinese government has used violent separatist groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to point to a larger problem with terrorism in the region, especially in the wake of events like the 2009 mass riots that broke out in Urumqi, which killed 194 people and injured thousands more. To address these concerns, Beijing has progressively strengthened its security presence over the last decade. In 2010, domestic security spending in Xinjiang increased by 90%.

The situation has only heightened in the past few years, with reports of the mass internment camps coming to light in 2018. The Communist Party’s desire to exact ideological control over the entire nation, like some analysts have suggested, does not fully explain why Beijing has suddenly intensified its efforts in Xinjiang. According to Uighur activist Rushan Abbas, “This has everything to do with the Xi Jinping’s signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative, because the Uighur land is in the heart of the most key point of Xi Jinping’s signature project.”

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an expansive plan that aims to create an open economic zone in Eurasia and the Middle East, echoing the interconnectedness of the historical Silk Road. Xi hopes to build a massive collection of infrastructure projects including railways, energy pipelines, highways, and border crossings to bolster trade between China and its neighbors. Because of the scope of BRI, the project stands to have far-reaching effects not only on the Chinese economy, but also on the Eurasian region as a whole, as it will connect at least 65 countries collectively representing 30% of global nominal GDP.

Xinjiang is a critical location along this new Silk Road. Key routes of the BRI run straight through the region. For example, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through Xinjiang to link China to the Pakistani port of Gwadar. China Daily, a state-run paper, acknowledges that the region is “a crucial gateway for the Belt and Road Initiative … Its land border with seven countries means it is best placed to expand China’s trade and ties not only with these neighboring nations, but also with Europe and beyond.” The same article notes that almost all trade from Central Asia passes through Xinjiang, and that Beijing hopes to create a transportation and commercial hub there in the future.

Beijing thus has a vested interest in eliminating unrest in Xinjiang. As of May 2019, China has already spent over $200 billion on Belt and Road projects, and the projected gains from the BRI are also significant. A World Bank study found that BRI transportation infrastructure could increase global exports by 6.3%, while partnering states along the economic corridor could see up to a 10% increase in exports.

Considering the amount Beijing has already spent to kickstart the BRI, the Chinese government has strong incentives to secure returns on its investments. Bloomberg noted that “concerns about lawlessness in Xinjiang could chill investment,” both from foreign companies and risk-averse Chinese banks. Any violence in Xinjiang that potentially interferes with the construction of BRI projects is off-putting to financial backers. As an unnamed Chinese financier communicated to a Lowy Institute report, “I prefer to invest in places like Canada and Australia, where I can get safe and decent returns. However, where I have been ordered to invest in [BRI] countries, I will only allocate the minimum amount.” Such fears extend to the unstable Xinjiang. China worries that terrorism in nearby states like Syria and Qatar could aggravate separatist groups in Xinjiang, hindering BRI projects. The government’s actions against the Uighur population could be a preemptive strike to protect its economic investments.

Are the Uighurs simply an obstacle for Beijing’s projects then? Rebecca Warren of RealClearDefense posits that the Belt and Road Initiative projects in Xinjiang actually aim to increase the livelihoods of the Uighurs residing there, with the goal of dissuading extremism and separatist violence. In Xi Jinping’s address to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017, he vowed to “devote more energy to speeding up the development of old revolutionary base areas, areas with large ethnic minority populations, border areas, and poor areas.” The Belt and Road Initiative could be a means to actualize that priority. Peter Cai from the Lowy Institute argues that “the regional development aspect of [the Belt and Road Initiative] is perhaps one of China’s most important economic policy objectives.” If successful, Xi’s administration believes it can quell the dissatisfaction that spurred the 2009 riots and avoid similar events. As Lu Shuling, the former Chinese ambassador to Islamabad, stated, “The best medicine to address the terrorism problem is through tackling the incubator of terrorism, namely poverty.”

If Beijing intends to improve the Uighurs’ livelihood through the BRI, the initiative may generate the same concerns as past development projects. In 1999, the Chinese government launched an initiative called the Great Leap West to modernize and enrich Xinjiang in order to better integrate the Uighurs into Chinese society. The Great Leap West introduced a slew of infrastructure projects and investments into Xinjiang, with the central government spending around one hundred billion renminbi in just the first year. On paper, the policy was a success. Xinjiang’s GDP has skyrocketed since 2000 and aggregate wages have increased by 470%.

If the BRI were simply a continuation of past economic policies regarding Xinjiang, why the sudden crackdown in the past few years? The twisted irony of repressing the Uighurs for the purpose of helping them cannot be rationalized, though a closer examination of Great Leap West policies may reveal an explanation. Xinjiang’s past economic growth does not apply equally to the Uighur and Han populations. As Xinjiang modernized, an influx of Han workers migrated to the region in search of the increasing job opportunities. While Hans were only 7% of the Xinjiang population in 1949, that number increased to over 40% by 2010. This migration of Hans explains a significant portion of Xinjiang’s recorded economic growth. The average income for a Han was 1,141 RMB (161.24 USD as of 10/21/2019) per month in 2011, while the average Uighur earned 892 RMB per month. Unsurprisingly, ethnic profiling has been observed in hiring practices.

Xinjiang’s development also involves extraction of its natural resources. When such resources are extracted, however, the Uighurs receive almost no benefits from their region’s own wealth. Xinjiang’s reserves of natural gas, coal, and other fossil resources represent over 20% of China’s total energy reserves, making it the largest fossil fuel source in the country. China’s coal consumption has risen significantly in the past two decades and it has been a net importer of coal since 2009 to satisfy this high demand. Access to Xinjiang’s energy resources are vital to China’s rapid industrialization, but means that only 2% of Xinjiang’s oil remains in the region. The rest services the wealthy Han-dominated urban centers on the east coast via the Xinjiang-Shanghai pipeline.

The logic of a short-term crackdown on Uighur rights with the long-term goal of economic development to prevent terrorism is paradoxical. As Weiwen Yin of Texas A&M University found, the increase in economic performance from the Great Leap West had a positive correlation with the probability of terrorist attacks—precisely because unequal economic gains across ethnic lines spawned grievances among the Uighur population. Beijing’s current tactics of repression are likely to generate even more discontent among the Uighurs. The approach is counterproductive if the Chinese government’s goal is truly to foster regional development as an anti-extremism measure. The more pernicious possibility is that the BRI, and all the limits on Uighur freedoms accompanying it, was always designed to serve the Han majority. Either possibility comes at a significant human cost that the international community cannot ignore.