The Student Debt Crisis - by Joshua Brown

Many people today struggle with ways to pay for college and have to take out loans to help them pay. Many jobs do not make enough money once they are out of college to pay for these loans that they are required to take out. Due to the amount of money they have to pay off, they are barely getting by. In many cases, they are not even able to save any money up because they have to pay off their college debts first. In this essay I will be examining the cost of 4-year public universities specifically.

In today’s society getting a bachelor’s degree seems to be necessary to progress in your career. There is nothing wrong with pursuing higher education, in fact it is a fantastic thing to want to further your education and career. The problem with this is the cost of getting a bachelor’s degree. I know from experience how much a public 4-year university costs as I attended Purdue University for 2 years. In my 2 years there, I had one year fully paid for through scholarships, but for my second year, I had to take out loans. In the first semester alone, I had to take out a loan of a little over $10,000 just to pay for tuition and fees because I was not living in a college residency. For the students living on campus, I know it is almost double the amount. Another issue with my school in particular and one that I have hear from others is that they are not quick to give out scholarships. I was not necessarily the best high school student, but I did fairly well. I took multiple AP classes, was involved in many extracurricular activities, and ended with a 3.8 GPA, yet I was denied from over half of the scholarships that I applied for. If colleges and universities are going to charge these ridiculous amounts, then they need to be more willing to give aid to the students that need it.

Obtaining a bachelor’s degree still has benefits, and in most cases, it will land you a higher paying job, but in today’s era, the wages that one makes are simply not enough to pay off college debt in a timely manner. For public universities, the price of tuition from the 1980’s has risen 213% while the average wages have only risen 67% (Business Insider, 2022). One of the main reasons that college tuition has increased so much is there is more of a demand to get a degree, hence universities are able to charge more, knowing that people will still attend. Although, there has been a decrease in attendance of 4-year universities since the onset of COVID-19. With COVID-19, more people realized that they could land sufficient jobs without having to attend a 4-year university.

One piece of good news is the new student loan forgiveness program that has just been passed. With this new program, you are eligible for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. This does exclude some people though as if you made more than $125,000 as an individual or $250,000 as a household in 2021 or 2021, you are not eligible for this. Overall, I think this is a great program, but one issue that I see is specifically for young graduates in the medical field. I bring this up because I work in the medical field and have heard the doctors talking about how much it will take them to pay off their student debt. The lowest paid doctor, pediatrician, on average makes $219,000 per year so they would obviously be excluded from this relief program. The problem is that doctors usually have about $320,000 in student loans after they graduate, and that number only increases with interest. This means that even with an aggressive approach to paying off their student loans, it will still take about 10 years to fully pay them off (Bertman, 2021).

With how expensive it is to attend a university, many students end up having to take out loans, but then realize that the job that they have to get a degree for does not pay enough to be able to pay off these loans. In fact, “The average student loan debt growth rate outpaces rising tuition costs by 166.9%” (Hanson, 2022) That brings us to another issue which is that there are many jobs that simply do not earn enough money to support a family and pay off student loans. I think there should be more programs in which you can get student loan forgiveness. I know that for teachers, if they work at a qualifying school for a certain amount of time, they get some student loan forgiveness. This is an example of the type of programs that should be more widely available.

Another option would be to promote community colleges, apprenticeships, or vocational schools more. As much as we have progressed, I still feel like there are many people that look down on community colleges when they are a very viable option, especially for people who come from low income households. When I got my first bill for Pima, I was astonished at how low the cost was. I was taking 15 credit hours for just over $1,300 total. This absolutely blew me away because if I were to take 15 credit hours at Purdue or any 4-year public university, my tuition would be close to $10,000. Another thing that is great is that at many community colleges, you can pay off your tuition and fees just through FAFSA, so many people will have no debt when graduating. This is something that I think should be talked about with high school students. After taking some classes at community college, I will always be a big advocate for them because they are very accessible, affordable, and educating. From my personal experience, I feel like I learn more at a community college because the professors seem to care more rather than being in that position as a status symbol.

There are many different options that people can take to achieve success in a career field, and there is not always a need for a bachelor’s degree. This is not to say that some careers should require higher education because there are many jobs that the education received is necessary. Another issue is that student debt has been rising rapidly and many people are not able to secure a job that pays enough to support themselves and pay off student loans. The new student debt forgiveness program is helping multiple former students to pay off their student loans, although it does exclude some people. There are also other paths to be taken rather than obtaining a 4-year degree where you can make good money. The student debt crisis is something that needs to be more heavily addressed if it is every going to be solved.

References

Bertman, R. C. (2021, November 1). Physician Salary: Is It Worth the Student Debt? Student Loan Planner. https://www.studentloanplanner.com/p...lary-how-much/

All Good Jobs Don’t Require a College Degree. . . (2014, November 3). American Federation of Teachers. https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/spring-2004/all-good-jobs-dont-require-college-degree

College is more expensive than it’s ever been, and the 5 reasons why suggest it’s only going to get worse. (2019, June 26). Business Insider Nederland. https://www.businessinsider.nl/why-i...onal=true&r=US

Hanson, M. (2022, August 28). Student Loan Debt Statistics. Education Data Initiative. https://educationdata.org/student-lo...ebt-statistics

Staff, T. (2022, August 29). Why Is College So Expensive? TheBestSchools.org. https://thebestschools.org/resources...ege-expensive/