Last month, the debate over how to solve America’s student debt crisis was reignited when Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, announced a plan to erase the country’s combined $1.6 trillion of outstanding college debts.
Predictably, it set social media and the 24-hour news cycle on fire.
As a second-year college student, I found it extremely unsurprising that the vast majority of the talking heads spouting arguments like, “If you decide to go to college, it’s your responsibility to pay for it,” went to college at a time when all you needed was a No. 2 pencil and the change in your pocket left over from lunch.
Going to college in the United States has become both more expensive than ever, even with inflation, and more necessary for a high-paying job than ever. And it’s become a nearly $2 trillion problem.
My father graduated from the University of South Florida in 1988, a year when tuition there was $1,188 a semester – according to a report from Florida College Access. Adjusted for inflation, that should have the buying power of about $2,600.
In 2019, tuition at USF is $6,410 a semester.
This may have to do with the demand for college education going up. According to the Department of Education, U.S colleges expected 5.1 million more students in the fall of 2017 than the fall of 2000. This, in turn, may be due to the widening gap in pay between those with college degrees and those without them.
A 2016 study from Georgetown University found that 65% of careers in the United States require at least some kind of college education. And in 2015, the Economic Policy Institute found that college graduates on average earn 56% more than high school graduates.
So, for young people like me, this is our situation we have to face. If we want a job in the profession of our choice, then we better have a college degree on our resume.
And all those costs just include tuition. Students need to eat, they need to be able to get around town, they need a place to live, and they need to pay for textbooks.
The importance of college also goes far beyond just class education; it’s both the great social mobilizer and the greatest lesson for young people in how to be an adult. College is where a young person from a small town in Kentucky can learn how to speak and act like the East Coast lawyer that he or she wants to be. And it’s also a transition from living with your family in high school to living on your own as a professional adult, where you’re able to make mistakes without serious consequences.
And when we’re in this maddeningly stacked system where we have to pay a lot of money in order to make enough money to pay off the method which we used to make our money, it’s audacious to call it our fault.
So, what are the plans to fix the crisis?
Sanders’ plan calls for wiping out the student debts of 45 million Americans, regardless of race – certainly the most progressive from the 2020 Democratic field. He’s also called for public universities to be tuition-free.
Barring one of the most monumental changes of U.S domestic policy in history, it seems like a pipe dream.
One method would be to expand how long Americans are expected to have their loans paid back. In European nations like Germany or England, students have 20 and 30 years to complete their payments – which gives them far less of a burden in their formative adult years.
In Australia, a percentage of your paycheck goes toward your student loan payment – much like Social Security here. This ensures that the loan bills don’t swallow up people when there are fluctuations in their income.
No matter how we all feel about the exact method, we need to agree that something has to be done about the American student debt crisis. We can’t call ourselves a land of opportunity if we deny the great ideal of social and financial mobility to those who can’t afford it.
