Brutal Contrast: What sustainicity isn't.

Having just returned from a few tours of duty at some of our nation's finest universities, I was struck by the contrast between two pieces that have both inspired and haunted me this week.  In one, The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik offers a breathtaking assessment of incarceration rates in these United States. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik

The other was in yesterday's New York Times, where Andrew Delbanco offers an opinion piece that considers candidate Rick Santorum's recent claims that America's colleges and universities were nothing more than "indoctrination mills." http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/opinion/colleges-and-elitism.html

Through the lens of sustainicity, this armchair economist found a striking contrast between these two enterprises that have astonishingly similar average costs, about $26,000 per year. Many folks involved in social change movements, both grassroots activists in neighborhoods all over our country and the "grass tops" folks as well, have noted the contrast. Policymakers frequently suggest that by front-loading investments in early childhood education and other investments, we give vulnerable children a fighting chance at educational success; at the same time significantly reducing our communities' future prison expenditures. Similar arguments are frequently made in the public health arena, another area rife with inequality and a continuing need systemic reform.

I recognize that this is not a novel concept but the approach has always made sense to me. What struck me about these particular articles is how they highlight the shortsightedness of current trends. By privatizing public institutions, we seem to be losing our ability to demand they produce public good.

If you want proof of the marketplace at its most dehumanizing and unsustainable, simply review the current "Letter to Shareholders" from Corrections Corporation of America (CXW). http://ir.correctionscorp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=117983&p=irol-reportsannual. The self-congratulatory tone and predictions of ever-expanding prison populations represents everything that "sustainicity" rails against.

If however, you'd like to ponder the role of the institutions at the leading edge of elite education, I offer Delbanco's contemporary interpretation of the Protestant values that were in play when Harvard, Yale and Princeton were founded, "In secular terms, this means recognizing that people with good prospects owe much to their good fortune---and to fellow citizens less fortunate then themselves."  Perhaps a recognition of the responsibility that under girds privilege is the most potent response to Santorum's charge of elitism.  Perhaps we should see it as a call for stewards of capital to commit to rebuilding our eroding public capital?

When taxes go to zero, do we swap higher education for bigger prisons?

Suffice to say, I hope not.