A documentary on the astronomical rise of student loan debt in America might not sound like an ideal night out at the movies.
However, think of it this way: the average cost of a movie ticket is $7.96, whereas the student loan debt stands at a staggering $1 trillion -- it claims valedictorian as America's leading financial crisis. So what's another $8 bucks plus the cost of Milk Duds?
Andrew Rossi's Ivory Tower is an informative, infuriating, and oddly entertaining look at the ticking time bomb that is tuition rates in America. Its summer release date could be deemed questionable, now that school's out and everyone seeks an escape at the multiplex from all those textbooks and dirty looks. An escape this is not, but well worth the price of admission. After all, if audiences can turn a flick about cancer-stricken lovebirds into a box office sensation then surely they can handle this.
SF Weekly caught up with Andrew Rossi, whose last film Page One: Inside the New York Times dealt with the newspaper industry crisis, to discuss problems, solutions and good old school spirit.
How did you manage to make an entertaining film on such a doom-and-gloom topic?
I think the challenge in a film like this is to provide people with a sort of analytical and historical context that they need in order to understand the problem but also to put a spotlight on the characters who bring both the problems and solutions to life. I think that the main protagonist of the film in a way is the American higher education system itself rather than any individual. When you look at the trajectory of higher education in this country it actually has a very inspiring arch.
We start at 1636 with Harvard being founded with the idea that Puritans wanted to preserve their learning for future generations just as they had established shelter and a way to have food and sustain themselves. Right after they did that they wanted to make sure that future generations would be educated. All these things are actually very uplifting examples of a society coming together to provide for all of its members to have moral uplift through education. So in a certain sense, this story of higher ed is a very positive one and it's one that Americans should be very proud of.
Of course, the problem comes in our current age in which the cost of tuition has skyrocketed by 1120 percent since 1978 and student loan debt has become a terrible cancer on young people who try to go to college to participate in the American dream but in many cases feel that they are paralyzed with debt that constricts the choices they would make in terms of career, starting a family and participating in the economy.
Your film covers a lot of ground within a 90-minute run time. How did you decide on the narrative and the specific schools profiled?
We had three editors working on the film. They were editing simultaneously as we were shooting so we were able to really get a sense of how certain storylines were landing in a sort of rough-cut form. On a certain level there are things that emerge as storylines that you want to capture.
For example, Cooper Union, when that story broke it was not on our radar per se. We heard that the students had occupied the president's office and so we rushed to go cover that and it ended up becoming what I think is a heroic profile of students seizing control for themselves. That was something that we didn't really anticipate but incorporated into the film and into the creation of this tone palate that we wanted to direct in a form that would provide a journey for the audience and also some insight into how we got here with all these problems.
How did your own college education compare to what you captured on film in our present day? Is there even a comparison to be made?
I went to Yale and studied history and I was lucky that my parents were able to afford for me to go to college and so I emerged without debt. I still use the critical thinking skills that I learned in college in my work as a documentary filmmaker and I look back certainly with nostalgia on my time in college and think it was completely valuable to my life now. I think that there are several students we see in the film who have a similar view on their education. The power of college experience endures and I think the film reflects that. The real problem comes in when you have student loan debt and when you have campuses that in some cases are attracting students with an emphasis on social life and creating perverse incentives in the classroom such that academic rigor is not emphasized. In those cases, it seems that students are still not having the valuable experience that we want them to have.
How would you go about planning for college if you were a high school senior today?
I think that President Obama has suggested that students and parents look at a set of metrics to decide which college to attend. that are very important. He said that prospective students and parents should look at the completion rates of colleges, the amount of student loan debt that on average students have, and the types of employment and salaries that people who go to certain schools are able to acquire. I think that those types of metrics are much more important than, for example, the athletic teams, the reputation for partying or other amenities that are advertised sometimes to students. That's the most important piece of advice that I would give to prospective students.
Secondarily, I think that if there are those believe they could pursue an idea or career choice that doesn't require a traditional four-year course of study, that they should feel empowered to explore the option of not going to college and that increasingly there are alternatives.
Aerial shots of the major universities are key in this film. What's the thinking behind that?
The title of the film refers to the idea of the tower in which the academic resides far away from the people but also the central physical structure of the campus, which keeps on growing taller and bigger. It's a visual motif that keeps recurring in the film representative of the ceaseless growth of the university.
You mentioned the film's title. Could you elaborate more on its meaning?
Ivory Tower has its roots in story of the tower of Babel. In the Old Testament it's the story of a society that wanted to build a tower to reach God and kept on making it taller and taller until finally it collapses and disperses all around the world. It's a metaphor for the attempt to constantly grow bigger and better, almost approaching a divide in power which always is full of hubris because nothing can ever grow that big and be sustainable.
The summer release date for the film seems clever and like the product of perfect timing? Was that your intention?
I think the release date was the product of the different demands on the windowing of the film. The film is produced by CNN Films and it will be broadcast on CNN in the fall so I think this was the right time to release it.
It's a fortuitous combination of events because at graduation time people are certainly talking about commencement speakers and the idea that students are jumping off into the rest of their careers. I think that this film will hopefully be a part of the conversation that parents and students are having as they look forward.
Ivory Tower opens Friday, June 20, at the Landmark Embarcadero.
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