The Student Debt You Willingly Took On Is Not My Problem To Solve

The Federalist ^ | 02/17/2020 | Margot Cleveland

[SeekAndFind]

Of all the pandering showcased during Democrats’ attempts to win back the presidency, wiping out student debt ranked at or near the top.

“I believe that education is the future for this country,” socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders barked during the first round of Democratic primary debates, explaining that’s why we must “eliminate student debt and we do that by placing a tax on Wall Street.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke similarly. “I can tell you this,” the Minnesota senator demagogued, “if billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

There can be no serious discussion of this issue, however, in 60-second sound bites. So, beyond the soak-the-rich shtick that shades every Democratic economic debate point, the candidates resorted to two tactics: shock and sob stories.

The Shock Strategy

The size of student debt provides the jolt necessary to peddle their plans to the American populace. “I got $100,000 in student loan debt myself,” California Rep. Eric Swalwell bemoaned. “College affordability is personal for us,” South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg shared, noting that his household has “six-figure student debt.” So, sure, “I believe in reducing student debt,” Buttigieg announced.

Next came the sob stories. Those student loans are suffocating a generation, the candidates suggested. After all, “40 million of us who can’t start a family,” the diaper-changing daddy Swalwell contradictorily proclaimed, adding that they “Can’t take a good idea and start a business and can’t buy our first home.”

“We can’t put people in a position where they aren’t able to go on and move on,” frontrunner Joe Biden agreed.

Tellingly, when not constrained by the debate format, these same politicians push the same narrative to garner support for bailing out student loans, all while the media provides the Democrats a free assist.

“With loans totaling more than $130,000,” Buttigieg’s household is “among the 43 million people in the United States who owe federal student loan debt,” the Associated Press reported last month, before highlighting the myriad plans to bail out student debt pushed by a cadre of presidential candidates. The AP then furthered the narrative by using statistics to shock the public into socialism:

The debtors are so numerous and the total debt so high—more than $1.447 trillion, according to federal statistics—that several of the Democratic candidates have made major policy proposals to address the crisis. Their ideas include wiping away debt, lowering interest rates, expanding programs that tie repayment terms to income and making college free or debt-free. Student loan debt is often discussed as an issue that mostly affects millennials, but it cuts across age groups. Federal statistics show that about 7.8 million people age 50 and older owe a combined $291.9 billion in student loans. People age 35 to 49, a group that covers older millennials such as Buttigieg as well as Generation X, owe $548.4 billion. That group includes more than 14 million people.

Sob Stories Reign Supreme

Then the sad tales continue the sales pitch for a government solution to student debt—a ploy that began well before the 2016 elections. Here’s one of myriad media examples.

“Shayna Pilnick, 28, would like to buy an apartment but can’t afford a mortgage. Jacqueline Mannino, 23, and her boyfriend, Benjamin Prowse, 26, want to get married. Jacob Childerson, 24, and his wife, Jennifer, 25, wish they could start a family, but they live with Jennifer’s parents,” is how USA Today opened its 2013 profile of millennials unable to obtain their dream life because they are “tethered” to “tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.”

There are many ways to counter these arguments, based on both economics and equity. But it’s hard to counter soundbites with sense, so instead, here are my inquiries for these politicians, the press, and all the students demanding relief from the burdens of their debt: Tell me your sob stories from age 12 on, not what you can’t do now, but what you couldn’t do then. Tell what you had to do then and through college to avoid what is now, to you, crushing student debt.

What time did you get up to deliver papers in junior high? How many hours a week did you work since 14 to save for college? How many toilets did you scrub? How many high school football games did you miss because you were working? What dream college did you forgo to avoid taking out student loans?

Which 8 a.m. class did you take so you could complete your major’s requirements and still work in the afternoon? Which bus line did you take to get to your job because you didn’t borrow to buy a car? What job did you work full-time while completing your MBA at night?

What did you do to afford college? What didn’t you do because of the cost of college? Were you getting tattoos and traveling your way through college? Were you pledging and partying? Did you go to your top-choice university? Maybe an out-of-state public university with higher tuition rates? Which spring break and study abroad destinations did you visit along the way?

Did you splurge on your fairytale wedding instead of paying down your student loans? What cars did you buy or lease? Where did you live? What electronics did you own? What clothing and other personal expenditures did you have? In short, show me the money and how you spent it!

None of my business? You’re right. Nor is your student debt my business or my problem.

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Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and current adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

[Future Snake Eater]

All that does is point to the abject failure of public education, something that my kids aren’t even participating in (we homeschool), yet every one of these kids is expected to take on a significant amount of debt immediately upon entering college—because they “have to.”

[Future Snake Eater]

If H.E. had to stand behind their product financially, things would be drastically different.

Back up. Why is their product such a basic requirement to begin with? You can produce a good product or a crappy one, but if I'm required to buy it regardless, it puts all the power with them, not me or my kids or your kids or anyone else's kids (unless you're wealthy and can pay cash for their education).

[wardaddy]

Three points

Yes it’s not my problem

College costs have grown exponentially beyond inflation to the point of absurdity.

Not everyone has to go to college. It’s a waste and a vast majority quit.

When I was in college late 70s it was 600 a semester tuition plus books and room and board however you chose it

What has happened thru so many programs mostly tailored for non whites and women that many many students get assistance so those who have to pay full ticket require higher and higher base level tuition to cover those who get subsidized

Or it’s college employee benefits and freebies like Vanderbilt has where their employees get their tuition paid at Vandy if they qualify or their tuition elsewhere is subsidized by vandy

Stuff like that makes ordinary schlubs pay higher tuition

Plus college tenure staff is grossly over compensated

And colleges spend money on causes like foundations do

And on top of it they have enormous endowments

This is how fairly tale land leftists run things

[gcparent]

Add to that many colleges have become resorts i.e.High Point. In their quest to attract students building luxury dorm housing, student centers, recreational facilities.

[wardaddy]

I hustled too...my dad paid tuition and gave me 35 a week

But today you’re making 250-300 a week working like you’re saying, it’ll pay room and board but not tuition too

[rlmorel]

While I may have sympathy for someone who has incurred large student debt, I simply cannot, and will not support the government bailing these people out with tax dollars, not even a single cent.

Yes, I went into the USN, got out and used the GI Bill, went to a state college for a STEM degree, lived at home with my parents while I commuted to school and held down jobs working a minimum of 20 hours a week (nursing home kitchen, even a UPS dockworker one year, and lab assistant) while working towards two degrees simultaneously.

My parents offered help, but it was clear to me they couldn’t afford it, so my living at home with free room and board was a huge help to me.

My point is, it was all by choice, every component of it, and I wasn’t very sharp, but I just made those choices as they came up. A lot of these people who are complaining I have no doubt are far more equipped than I was at their age to make the right choices. But they didn’t.

I feel sympathy for the graduates, and contempt for the colleges, but I refuse, on conservative principles, to allow that they should be bailed out with government money and rewarded for their conscious, and wrong choices, while those who made responsible choices have to suck up the fact that they paid more for their education than these people who wanted to go to a high end school and take useless courses.

I don’t care about predatory practices on the part of lenders. I managed to avoid signing up for credit cards while I was in college, even though they began to hand them out like popcorn with no credit checking. If you are 18 years old and are old enough to fight and die for your country, then you are old enough to put pen to paper in a legal contract. Nobody twisted your arm to do it, you did it yourself because you wanted to go to Harvard or Yale instead of Fitchburg State or Eastern Connecticut State University, live on campus, and enjoy that life. You signed it yourself if you were 18, or your parents co-signed for it, in which case they should be responsible.

This whole thing pisses me off, and if I had a kid who went through, worked, went to a lesser college for a STEM program, paid for everything and then saw some kid who went to Harvard for a Gender Studies degree get all their loans forgiven, I would be steaming mad.

As a first step, the government should be completely out of higher education. Anytime the government is involved, the costs go up, and are paid by taxpayers, not the institutions or professors themselves. Some may think as a recipient of the GI Bill, that it is hypocritical of me to take this stance, but I see no conflict. Anything we can do to assist veterans, given that we ask them to be prepared to lay down their lives or undergo great hardship, is worth the money and the right thing to do.

[gcparent]

Its a good way to have the kid invested in their education.

[wardaddy]

If your area is 15;hr usual starting pay then your costs are high there too

I’m in Nashville metro

I asked a Publix kid last nite carrying my groceries his pay...in Smyrna TN on Lee Parkway....I was passing thru....Rutherford county from Willson to Williamson

Nice young man goes to MTSU and told me he ...makes 10.30 an hour

[CheshireTheCat]

A co-worker is lamenting that her daughter dropped out of college because she is making too much working as a waitress at a three-star restaurant in their quaint little toney town.

She routinely makes over $500 in tips on each of Friday and Saturday nights and another $200 during the non-peak hours leading up to dinner.

She got a couple other waitressing gigs at other places M-Th after quitting school and makes about a thousand a week in tips from those.

She’s looking to buy a townhouse, marry her boyfriend, who is in college full-time, and then scale back on waitressing and get some sort of applied science associate’s degree when he graduates and gets a job.

The co-worker thinks this is crazy. I tell her I would be proud of such of a kid.

[The Antiyuppie]

I’d love to know what the age cohorts of these kids who developed skills in the military or apprenticed or went to trade school, think about this subject. They don’t strike me as suckers.

[Jess Kitting]

RE: Or we could take steps to make college more affordable.

I’m all ears regarding any good ideas anyone might have.

Cut out all the unnecessary programs and focus on educating the students.

[Paladin2]

My neighbor, a Prof at a Great Midwestern Land Grant Uni. teaches one class a semester, if that.

[gcparent]

The federal student loans are not income or credit based. They could start by lowering the maximum amount allowed.

[lastchance]

Perhaps college costs like medical costs are kept artificially high because of the two things they share: 1. No real exposure of what they really cost in terms of exchanging money for services or goods. and 2. Massive government involvement which practically begs for inflating those costs.

[gcparent]

Cut out non academic electives. A semester is only 16 weeks. And all these winter, spring and summer breaks for the teachers benefit. It could be done in 3 years

[lastchance]

Thanks for pointing this out.

[Kickass Conservative]

Big Oil = Evil

Big Pharma = Evil

Big College = Wait, what?

[Gort_Klaatu]

Our state has a program that you can invest in called “College Savings”. We put money for each of our kids in every month from the time they were two years old. By the time they were ready to go to a STATE university, they had enough money in the account to graduate debt-free. And here is the kicker - the interest on the money we invested paid for one full year of college - ALL EXPENSES.
Colleges used to offer an education and several intramurals for activities. You had to buy a ticket that would let you go to a certain number of athletic contests. At the cafeteria you got a choice of two entrees. Now they offer cafeterias that have 15-20 different entrees, free access to every sporting activity on campus, rec centers with climbing walls, mini water parks, etc. and they tell you this is all free! This is why college is so expensive now. The “perks” are what is driving the price up. Colleges try to appeal to the leisure aspect of the incoming student and massive debt is the reward.
We took two vacations during all those years, have never had cable/satellite TV, and maybe went out to eat once a month. We sacrificed and have never regretted it. I will be damned if the government decides I have to foot he bill for families that were irresponsible and paid for a college they could never hope to afford.
I have a niece that ran up over $70,000 in debt because she just “had to go” to a private school. She is now almost 40 and still has over $30,000 left to pay. She is a democrat and intends to vote for someone that promises to make everyone else pay for her mistake. Also - that great education she insisted on getting went down the drain because she couldn't cut it as a teacher (lasted three years) and now sets up phone conferences.

[Verginius Rufus]

Before I got my current job, I had a one-year position at one of the Big Ten universities (replacing someone on sabbatical). I had to teach two courses a semester. A lot of the other people in the department seemed unhappy that they were not at some more prestigious university.

My university doesn't have sabbaticals (although a few faculty each year get one semester off as "faculty development leave").

[Verginius Rufus]

Big College = Wait, what?

First tell me how good their football team is.