College-Loan Debt and Why Everyone Should Be Lucky

A recent editorial by Cokie and Steven Roberts brings
up an economic issue that is does not hit as close to home for me as it does for many other recent college grads, but still pisses me off. This issue is the growing problem of college-loan debt. To quote the Robertses directly:

A serious class conflict divides the
nation's campuses. On one side are
privileged grads entering the work
force
debt-free because Mom and Dad foot the
bill; on the other are
students
shouldering huge loan burdens . . . Wealthier
students can
afford to take
unpaid internships that provide invaluable career
advancement. Kids who wait
tables to pay their bills can't do that.
More seriously, students graduating
with large loans face severely diminished career choices. They simply can't afford to take jobs that provide psychic rewards instead of financial ones.

I am one of the "privileged grads." I have no college-loan
debt because with my college education, part was paid for with an academic scholarship and my parents paid the rest.

Yes, the amount my parents paid actually included an amount
left for me (just like my sister and all my mother's-side cousins) by a late
great-aunt. And my academic scholarship was pretty good. But there still remains the fact that unlike many of my peers, I did not have to take
out loans or even work (though I did have a
few summer jobs and an after-school job anyway) to pay for what my
scholarship didn't.

So we've established that you're free to hate me. The point I
want to make is: I got lucky. Lots of other college kids didn't. That's not
fair. I don't think it was necessarily my fault or my parents' fault for
being lucky that made those other kids be unlucky, but either way, those
kids should've been as lucky as me.

My guilt reflex is somewhat ... well, impaired, after my
overloading with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, college liberalism,
Protestant fundamentalism, and reading "The Redneck Manifesto" by Jim Goad [see: http://notbyjlhart7.blogspot.com/2006/09/from-redneck-manifesto-by-jim-goad.html]. Therefore, I find it hard to feel guilty that my parents had
the money to save me from debt. But whether it applies to you or not, I think anyone who believes the slightest in equality-of-opportunity has got to see this college-debt system is fucked up.

This is especially the case seeing that the fucked-up-ness is
getting worse. To quote Roberts and Roberts again:

On July 1, a new bill raised the
interest rate on Stafford loans -- the primary program for undergrads -- from
5.3 percent to 6.8 percent. PLUS loans, which go to
parents not
students, zoomed to 8.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, over the last three
years, Congress has failed to increased funding for Pell grants, the main
direct-aid program. The maximum is stuck at $4,050, while the average annual
cost at a private university has risen to $32,000. Even public colleges
cost about $15,000.

The Robertses suggest that Pell grants be made to keep pace with inflation, that the interest rates on PLUS and Stafford loans be decreased, and that both private charities and "[m]odest government programs that forgive loans for students working in public service jobs" be encouraged. I don't think any of this sounds like a particularly bad idea.

I've also considered the possibility that colleges and universities themselves can do more to reduce costs for students. One of the first things that comes to my mind is reducing salaries for both college administration and faculty. I am naive enough to assume that at least a few of the left-leaning professors out there would be happy to reduce their salaries in the name of promoting greater socioeconomic equality. Finally, a solution both liberals and conservatives can get behind! Liberals in general will have to support it because it's so obviously egalitarian. Conservatives, I imagine, will love it because they hate liberal college professors. As far as more conservative-tending administrators go, well, the kids'll have a lot of fun occupying the dean's office til the administrators agree to reduced pay too.

Why should we do this? Because human capital is our future. If a big-time pro-rich-people person like David Brooks can say that education is the key to greater equality as well as greater overall prosperity, then a good education clearly counts as equality of opportunity rather than of result.

Sources:

Brooks, David. 12 Sept. 2006. "Human capital is the smart investment." Akron Beacon Journal. Page B2.

Roberts, Cokie and Steven V. Roberts. 10 Sept. 2006. "Storefronts instead of high rises." Wooster Daily Record. Page A4.

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