From Joan Walsh in Salon:
Next time you’re watching a college graduation, as you look out over the sea of caps and gowns, make sure you notice the ball and chain most graduates are wearing as they march onstage to receive their diplomas. That’s student loan debt, which at over $1 trillion tops credit card debt in the U.S. today. The average burden is $28,000, but add in their credit cards and they’re graduating with an average of $35,000 in debt. It’s no wonder that people who’ve paid off their student loan debt are 36 percent more likely to own homes than those who haven’t, according to new research by the One Wisconsin Now Institute and Progress Now.
Apt. 11d 
WC Fields was asked how he liked children and he said ‘With a wild rice stuffing and a mustard glaze’ – there are lots of people making a WHOLE lot of money from the squeezing of kids who took too much student loan money, and they are trying very hard to avoid thinking about what they are doing.
Going to a second- or third- tier private college on loans is a sure path to poverty. Maybe I encourage my lads to go to the local JC and take HVAC training.
dave.s.
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I agree that going to second or third tier private colleges is a bad financial decision and, unfortunately, one made by those who have less flexibility to make unwise financial choices. My worry is that the opportunity to go to a public university (including ones that are less than “first’ tier) is being undermined as well, not so much because people hate their own children but because they hate other people’s children.
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I wish she’d clarified what she means by “we” here. My inclination is to blame the taxpayers and state legislators who have gradually removed funding from public universities. I assume she realizes it didn’t actually *cost* $400 a year to go to Wisconsin or Berkeley when she and her friends went there. Within the last 8 years Illinois has shifted from funding 58 percent of tuition to about 40 percent (at least that’s what I’ve heard), and it keeps going down. The state takes less and less responsibility for educating the middle-tier student.
The universities do put in the occasional flashy improvement – a great gym, for example – in order to keep enrollments up, and students are now accustomed to a higher standard of living on campus (more single rooms, which were almost unheard of at my not-quite-Ivy in the 80s). Ours now pay about as much in room and board as tuition (each $10K) – not a huge cost of living for about 9 months, actually. But yeah, what bj said about not caring so much about other people’s children is true.
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I don’t think you really have to impute ill will or intent here. A number of trends were in motion when things were going pretty well – more administrators, profs making a wage more similar to those in industry, improvement in student housing – they kept going, and BANG the cost of providing college has gone way up. Meanwhile, the cost of the rest of state government services has also skyrocketed – state wages also went way up, as did the expected pension costs and the cost of providing benefits – so in the competition for tax dollars state schools did less well. Meanwhile, Suze Orman was prating about how college debt was ‘good debt’, and people who should have been more careful thought this was the thing to do to ensure that junior did not slip down from the middle class.
Nobody was thinking, ‘I want to fricassee high school seniors for my yummy breakfast’. That’s just the way it worked out. dave.s.
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I don’t think you really have to impute ill will or intent here.
I believe the children are our future and I read a great deal of dystopian fiction.
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Yes, there are a combination of factors at work here. It’s true that everyone has less money, especially since 2008, and there are a lot of important programs out there that are underfunded or unfunded. And certainly not everyone has ill intent. On the other hand, one of our top-ranking administrators, when trying to convince the state legislature to keep its promises and continue to give tuition breaks to children of university employees, was told, “Why should we pay for the janitor’s kid to attend college?” (This happened to be an African American top administrator, to give you a feel for the rank insensitivity of the legislator.)
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“On the other hand, one of our top-ranking administrators, when trying to convince the state legislature to keep its promises and continue to give tuition breaks to children of university employees, was told, “Why should we pay for the janitor’s kid to attend college?””
It is a puzzler, actually, why give tuition breaks to the college janitor’s kid and not to the Walmart janitor’s kid, isn’t it? The college janitor isn’t poorer than the Walmart Janitor.
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The reason for it in this case is that it’s part of our benefits structure, so people come to work here specifically so that they can get that benefit (and possibly giving up the opportunity to earn more elsewhere). They were looking at taking it away even for employees who had worked here for a while. You can argue against giving that benefit in the first place, but to my mind it is at least one tiny, tiny step towards making things better for people in the local community.
This person wasn’t worried about the Walmart janitor. His point was that maybe you could justify these breaks for the smart faculty kids, who would make the college seem more impressive, but why bother with everyone else? (And you wouldn’t get any argument from anyone who teaches here for the state to subsidize anyone in that income bracket, regardless of where they worked, so that tuition would be affordable). The overall level of disinterest in keeping tuition affordable is pretty appalling.
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The NY Times article on an Oregon bill to charge %of future earnings rather than tuition for its state universities is circling my email lists:
The article is short on details (probably ’cause it’s not a bill that’s actually going to become a law), but the bottom line on numbers is 3% of salary for 20 years, which would be 40K (current tuition for 4 years)for a salary of 67K (not taking into account inflation or loan costs).
No info on how they handle someone who goes to school or doesn’t work.
Who would prefer this? Say, for example, you had the possibility of having access to two different state systems, and one charged 12K tuition/year v one that would charge 3% of future income for 20 years?
I think they are underfunding the system and undervaluing the costs (that is, one would need to pay more than 3% of future earnings in order to make the system revenue neutral, even taking into account the current level of funding to the state systems). I wonder what a revenue neutral system would cost (to replace current tuition income)?
(Part of the reason I think this is not a real bill, but just a thought experiment).
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Kind of like social security, but in reverse, right? Some of the same problems, though. At least the cost isn’t as open ended, since a limited number of years of tuition would be provided.
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