Dear Editor,
One topic that comes up frequently in connection with higher education is the crushing burden of student loans. It is massive and growing all the time. The bigger question might be, is that smart public policy? I would contend that it is not.
One of the economic effects is that students are taken out of the consumer pool for many years or decades by crushing debt that prevents them from buying a house or other goods which reduces demand and economic growth. When it happens to millions of people you can bet that hurts the economy.
A little history lesson here might be illustrative a generation or two ago things were different. At the end of World War II the Federal Government enacted the GI bill. This provided millions of veterans with free of very low cost college. It had a very positive effect because it fueled a huge post-war boom in industry as increasingly high tech industries had a huge number of educated employees. If the GI bill had not happened that wouldn’t have happened. Many of the amazing post-war accomplishments like the space program benefited immensely.
Another big factor in early times was that tuition was much lower relative to average wages so that an average person could save for college and pay for most of it themselves. This was especially true at state colleges. At one time in the 1960s, before Governor Ronald Reagan, the University of California had almost free tuition.
The other problem is we turn education into a mere commodity. That is a sad thing that sells it far short. We end up with lots of business majors and very few poets. Poets matter, too, as do wise citizens. That is not to say that English majors don’t have debt just that people tend to go into high paying careers out of necessity to pay off students loans.
State governs, often Republicans, seem to go first for university budgets to close budget gaps. These foolish cuts reduce the quality and availability of college and drives students out of these states. It comes down again to investment spending: a dollar in education brings many dollars in return. Employers look at the quality of education when they think about where to locate.
The individual lives matter too. It is a hard like when you owe $20,000 and you work at Starbucks. The students who go to one of those for Profit College are in worse shape because they owe $100,000 for a diploma that is often worthless. These businesses are more like fraud schemes then what colleges ought to be. That is a big risk especially if you don’t graduate, which a large percentage of students don’t.
In summary, massive student debt is a huge millstone around the necks of students and around the economy. It’s time we start looking at the big picture again. I vote for a few more poets and a few less business majors.
Charles Morchauser
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