In solidarity of Campus Equity Week 2013, UVM is sponsoring the viewing of the film, “For Profit” to be screened in Waterman 427 on Tuesday, Oct. 29th at 7 PM.

 The film discusses the for-profit values that the US public higher education has absorbed from the corporate world, associate professor of romance languages and linguistics and executive member of United Academics Yolanda Flores said.

 Student debt, the defunding of public higher education and the increasing salaries of administrators are all issues that the film addresses, she said.

 The film also notes how students today are paying higher tuition for a lower quality education, including less services to ensure students’ academic success, more courses taught online and more courses taught by adjunct faculty.

 As part of Campus Equity Week 2013, the film is offered across college campuses across the country during the week of Oct. 28 to Nov. 2.

 “At the national level, it is the working-class students of color who are being completely priced out of pursuing higher education,” Flores said.

 “While the students of middle-class background are graduating into indentured servitude as they struggle to repay their student loans,” she said.

 “If this trend continues, higher education will only be affordable to the most affluent sectors of society; thus, further economically stratifying society into the ‘haves and the have nots’,” said Flores. 

“This is an assault to the democratic principles on which this country was founded,” she added. 

 Students and staff members will be able to share their thoughts in the post-film discussion.

 In an interview with Chronicle of Higher Education, producer Aaron Calafato said that while working as an admissions counselor the college was pressuring him to sign up unprepared students for expensive degree programs that would leave them heavily in debt.

 Campus Equity Week is intended to spotlight the increasingly stratified higher education system that will decrease meaningful access to higher education for millions, according to their website.