Student Debt: Not Just a Student's Problem

College may be the best time of your life but you’ll pay dearly for it.

Inflated Tuition. Over-saturated Markets. Unpaid Internships. Student Loan Debt. And no decent job to show for it.

‘Sure sure Debby Downer, but what of it?,’ you may say.

Well, fellow tax-paying Americans, we are building an awfully big house on the sand. And it begins when we equip students with unrealistic expectations and half-truths. 

Nowadays we tell students that if they want to support themselves, their best bet is a college degree. Or, some would argue, a Masters. That is what the job-market now requires.

What we DON’T tell students is that doing so may not be enough. To get to our established norm, they must accrue $25,000+ in student loans. And, regardless of merit or GPA, over half will have little hope of repaying those loans, being that they will be under or unemployed. Please note that this outcome is not limited to Philosophy or History majors but “sensible” majors such as Business. One out of every five college-grads is a Business major. The fact is- they no longer stand out.

The counter-argument is that underemployed students can defer loans until a better solution or career comes along. But when and how do we propose that will be? Indeed, you can defer or forbear - in other words, perpetuate the highway robbery they call “interest” to accrue so that the possibility of paying loans is no shorter than winning the power-ball lottery. Our $1 trillion in student debt is higher than all the credit-card debt in the largest consumer-driven nation in the world. And instead of dealing with it, we’re telling students to ultimately increase it.

Consequently, first-time enrollment in graduate school has declined for two years in a row. I mean really....what are the odds of winning the power-ball twice? And with fiscal cliffs and record-breaking deficits, I fail to see how America can afford to have fewer scholars and more debt.

While students run the gauntlet, we have cozy middle-aged executives, bigoted newscasters and theory-bound sociologists spouting off about how the younger generation is just lazy and worthless and needs to stop making excuses.

Yet these same people are the ones soon to be affected by our peril and horribly botched system. The overhead costs in higher education are unparalleled and yet still allowed. Loans from the Department of Education have grown by $24 billion in a single year. And as the amount skyrockets annually, the inverse correlation of fewer and fewer students able to pay them off should make us stop and think.  In fact, tax-payers should start getting shifty.

Let’s get real. College has fallen from its pedestal. It is true that a college degree is the new norm for the working world. But the Bachelor’s degree is no longer a golden ticket to a good job. So why are we forcing students to trade dreams and exorbitant funds for debt and job insecurity?

I am a firm believer in American higher education. I only wish getting one made more sense.