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--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noam Hassenfeld in for Sean Ramos.
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--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): The U.S. is facing a COVID college crisis. Due to the pandemic, tens of thousands of low-income students are deciding not to enroll. We know that there were more than 100,000 high school seniors who did not complete their federal financial aid form known as the FAFSA this year. So that's a big indicator. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel covers the economics of education for The Washington Post.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: We also know that college enrollment of freshmen is down 16 percent from the previous year. 16 percent of freshmen not coming to class or not enrolling, that's pretty significant. And especially for low-income students, what starts out temporary can often end up becoming permanent. It's very difficult for them to get back into school after the fact, oftentimes because they start working and the opportunity cost just doesn't make sense anymore to them because they're earning a paycheck.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: For some, it's because of money. Others are dealing with mental health problems. But with so many schools going to remote learning, one of the biggest causes of students dropping out is lack of reliable internet access. I mean, millions of Americans are struggling with poor broadband access. I've spoken to students who have tried to do their assignments, college assignments, using their smartphones or posted up in parking lots with Wi-Fi hotspots.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: So they're desperate to try to stay in class, remain in college. But in some instances, it's just not working out. One of the primary folks that we spoke to for the story I worked on with my colleague Heather Long about this trend, her name is Paige McConnell. Paige is a recent high school graduate who is the first in her family to go to college in rural Tennessee, who simply just did not have Wi-Fi at home to keep up with her classes at the local community college.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: She would go to a local library where they turned her way because they were really worried about having people sit around during the pandemic. She spent hours in a McDonald's parking lot using the fast food chain's internet. But she kept getting kicked off of the college's virtual classes because the network wasn't safe. So after two weeks of doing this back and forth, she decided to withdraw.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: So this is happening in rural Tennessee where Paige is. Is it happening in big cities too? It's in both because of how piss poor broadband access is for a lot of folks. And it's not just, you know, the connectivity of broadband. It is also the cost, right? So if you can afford to have internet access on your smartphone, for a lot of students, they can't afford to also have internet access at home and neither can their parents.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: So they're making a choice here. And the choice is to have that mobile accessibility when they can't afford to do both. Internet access is not cheap right now. And that's true whether you're in the Bronx or if you're in rural Tennessee.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): I know a lot of places are setting up outdoor heated areas for restaurants. Is anyone setting up outdoor heated areas for Wi-Fi? Yeah, actually there, you know, we have community colleges in our neck of the woods out in D.C. and Maryland and Virginia that have tried to create Wi-Fi hotspots in their parking lots in order to serve this population. And also because a lot of these community colleges serve adults who have children, and they don't want those poor children to have to sit in the car the entire time or mommy or daddy is taking a class.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): They have started to provide portable hotspots so that students could take that home and at least have that form of access. So there are schools that are trying to meet this community where they're at. It's just not enough in a way that could really make a big difference for the students who are having to drop out.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): What are some of the big picture implications to having a significant increase in dropouts and a significant decrease in freshman enrollment? What impact does something like this have on the U.S. economy?
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: I think you know the long impact it will be not having a workforce that can apply to the jobs that are out there. A lot of jobs these days require a college degree, at least a bachelor's in many instances, often an associate's degree, and not having that credential limits the economic possibilities for not only those students, but also for the economy.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: So that's a very concerning part of this equation. You know, it is still hopeful that perhaps if the economy picks back up, we have a new administration who's willing to invest in higher education to make it more affordable and accessible. And thinking about these issues of broadband access and the like, then maybe we'll start to see some of these students coming back.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: Are we going to potentially see like a generation here that has just worse economic futures because of a lack of college opportunity? That is certainly the worst case scenario, but it is a reality. You know, we are hoping that at the same time, while the demand for a post-secondary credential is not going to change all that much, you will still need some level of college. But there are jobs, there are career training education jobs that are a viable pathway for many of these students.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: But again, that's still coming through places like community colleges. So you have to have access and you also have to have investments in those institutions in order to make it a reality for these students.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): How do you fix such a widespread, sprawling problem like this? There has to be some sort of federal level policy action, whether that means subsidizing internet access for more low-income families across the board.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: It's not that you don't have programs that are already doing that, but it's not widespread enough to benefit students like Paige. It's not widespread enough where a student in the Bronx, who you would think is in a perfect place to have all the internet access, can still afford to have a smartphone with internet access as well as have internet access at home.
--:-- Danielle Douglas-Gabriel: And these are issues that CUNY can't solve on its own. The state of New York can't solve on its own. It's going to take a federal level policy decision in order to make this a widespread nationwide issue that we're going to address. And not just for colleges. I mean, think about K-12. How many schools are having this exact same issue?
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): My name is Toriana Antonelli. I'm a first-generation college student attending the University of Arizona. Back in March, I was on campus, but then the pandemic hit, I wasn't able to stay on campus, did not have access to Wi-Fi on my own, so I stayed with a friend. And after staying with them, I was homeless and did not have access to reliable Wi-Fi.
--:-- Toriana Antonelli: So at one point, after reaching out to a teacher to explain my situation, they suggested I go to a Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi to do classwork. And I wasn't comfortable taking that risk because of COVID in terms of infecting my mom or like my little siblings.
--:-- Toriana Antonelli: So as of a few days ago, I moved yet again, and luckily this place has faster, reliable Wi-Fi, and I'm able to hopefully finish off my semester and not have to drop any classes or drop out of college completely.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): Up next, there's a pretty straightforward solution to the problem of spotty broadband access. Give everybody the internet. Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime. Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): Emily Stewart, you recently wrote a piece for Recode called Give Everybody the Internet, where you outlined how to fix the problem of spotty internet access. Before we get to the solution, what's the best way to wrap our heads around exactly how big of a problem this is?
--:-- Emily Stewart: If you think about how much of your life is tied to the internet, it's really easy to see. And it's not something that we think about a lot. So obviously, during COVID, we've seen how many people are doing their jobs on Zoom, right? So the internet is hugely important for doing your day-to-day work.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Video conference tools like Zoom have become the new norm for meetings and for groups that want to get together. I mean, my job's on Zoom, your job's on Zoom. I was on a Zoom call. I guess we all now live on Zoom calls.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It also means, you know, we are seeing a move towards telehealth, toward being able to go to the doctor, to fill a prescription, things like that. The CalFresh program, our SNAP, our food stamp program, can now today provide access to commodities online. Government services, a lot of them are online, especially in a world where we don't want people standing in line in different places.
--:-- Emily Stewart: DMV is also rolling out new services that can be completed online, including title transfers and registration renewals. It is just how we do our day-to-day lives, even now heading into the holidays. A lot of people are going to be gathering on Zoom for celebration.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So I really think if you think about what a big deal it is, it's huge. And it's huge all of the time, but especially during coronavirus, we've really seen how enormous it is.
--:-- Emily Stewart: How widespread is this? I mean, do we know exactly how many people don't have internet access in the U.S.? We do and we don't. The FCC puts out an estimate that says about 21 million Americans don't have access to quality broadband internet. But a lot of estimates say it's quite a bit higher than that.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I mean, just because you have an internet connection doesn't mean it's particularly good internet connection. So it's kind of a two-sided problem.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Do we know where America ranks compared to the rest of the world in terms of internet access? I mean, it's not great. We are behind a lot of countries like South Korea, Japan, Switzerland for typical download speeds.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And it's an area where the U.S. doesn't really have a good excuse as to why we're not doing so well. What is the excuse that they give? Well, we have left a lot of the internet infrastructure in the United States up to private companies. Private companies are in the business of making money.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And to be frank, it's not lucrative for everyone in the United States to have internet. So where we have the interstate highway system or the postal service, we understand that it's not necessarily a moneymaker for the USPS to be delivering a piece of mail to Alaska, right? But we think people in Alaska should have mail.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. And I guess to get someone high-speed internet way out in Alaska, you know, you don't just need one person bringing them the Internet. You need cables and infrastructure, right? Right. And it's pretty expensive.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, major corporations just they want to give the Internet to people who can pay for it. And so what happens here is it kind of becomes a two-pronged issue where to a lot of rural areas, again, it's pretty expensive and it's geographically complicated to get them broadband Internet.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Well, you hear a lot about rural broadband, but there's a second part of this that is, it's also an access problem. So, you know, I live in New York City, let's say. There are a lot of people here who can't afford $60 a month internet.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But at the same time, you know, Verizon or Comcast or Optimum doesn't want to sell anybody $20 internet. And so that kind of is like, has led to this issue where we really have kind of, again, a two-pronged problem here.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Maybe the line doesn't run by my house in the first place, but even if it does, if I can't afford the $60 a month, it doesn't matter that there is a line running by my house.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Have any communities in America gotten together and said, hey, we think that the internet is an important basic resource in order to participate in modern society. We're going to give everyone accessible and relatively affordable internet?
--:-- Emily Stewart: Yeah. So there are a lot of communities that have done this. New York, Boston, Silicon Valley, those are the kind of innovation hubs that may come to mind when it comes to high internet.
--:-- Emily Stewart: But the city home to the country's fastest broadband is nestled below Lookout Mountain along the Tennessee River, Chattanooga. Which, you know, around 2010 basically built out its own municipal broadband system.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Today, with speeds of up to one gigabyte per second, Chattanooga's 170,000 residents enjoy broadband that's 200 times faster than the country's average. It cost $330 million, about $100 million of which was from the federal government.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And they really had to get buy-in from different stakeholders. And they had, you know, a real battle to do it. Here is the really big problem. Those same companies, Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner, are fighting public utilities that want to bring broadband to rural areas.
--:-- Emily Stewart: So Comcast, which was a major provider of internet service, tried to sue the city a lot. I spoke to a former mayor there and he said they sued multiple times to try and stop Chattanooga from building out their own internet infrastructure.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, he said they'd come in and say this isn't fair. And he'd say, but come on, guys, you have all this money. Like, how is this not fair?
--:-- Emily Stewart: So is Chattanooga a model for the rest of the country when it comes to broadband? Again, to get back to the corporate power and lobbying question, you also have, you know, 20 plus states that have put in place laws that try and bar cities and municipalities from creating their own Internet service.
--:-- Emily Stewart: It really shows that that, you know, that you still have legislatures that are really listening to corporations and that are that are going to put up these roadblocks even when the system has already changed.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): In the first half of the show, Danielle said that this is basically a policy issue. Is there a way that the government can actually make this happen? So when you talk to experts about this, what they'll tell you is that it really is a federal, a state, and a local problem.
--:-- Emily Stewart: There isn't really one solution here. But one thing that a lot of experts that I spoke to pointed to this $100 billion package put forth by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
--:-- Emily Stewart: We call for investing $80 billion to deploy a secure and resilient broadband infrastructure to expand access for communities nationwide. Getting infrastructure into a lot of rural areas, it doesn't exist. Connecting unserved and underserved rural, suburban, and urban areas across the country while prioritizing persistent poverty communities.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And then another plank of that is providing a subsidy of about $50 for low-income households. So basically, again, solving that problem that if you have a $60 internet option that you can't pay, maybe you can pay the $10.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And a lot of experts say, you know, like, listen, this is a good place to start in solving kind of the two sides of that problem. And a lot of politicians were campaigning on expanded internet access, right? Elizabeth Warren wanted a public option for the internet. Bernie Sanders wanted to turn it into a public utility.
--:-- Emily Stewart: Does President-elect Biden have an internet plan? So Biden has proposed investing $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure. So that solves, again, at least partly the rural end of it.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And I think we could also probably think that he might throw his weight behind this Clyburn bill. He and Clyburn are pretty close allies. And I can see a world where Biden would support something like that.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And is there a real opportunity for something like that now? I mean, it almost reminds me of universal health care. You know, we had this huge number of people that didn't have insurance. We decided it's an essential thing to have. We even had private companies trying to block it. But in the end, Obamacare happened.
--:-- Emily Stewart: I mean, do you think this is a moment where we might be able to overcome all these hurdles? I certainly hope so. I think we've really seen during the pandemic what a big deal it is for people to not have internet. It's school, it's work, it's health care, it's government service. It's really everything.
--:-- Emily Stewart: You know, one of the things that made me really optimistic when writing about this and reporting on this is that the people who care about this issue really care about it a lot. I think that is a thing to stay hopeful about, that the people who really care about internet access know that it is an economic issue, an education issue, as much as it is a tech issue, if not more.
--:-- Emily Stewart: And they are going to keep fighting.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): Emily Stewart writes about business and politics for Vox and Recode.
--:-- Host (Noam Hassenfeld): I'm Noam Hassenfeld in for Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Thank you.
