Posted on 04/11/2016 1:03:32 PM PDT by pabianice
My student debt surrounds me like the construction on the University of Massachusetts campus; no matter how hard I try to avoid it, it shows up everywhere. It keeps me from getting to class on time, it ripped a hole in my backpack and it just puts me in a terrible mood. Like the construction, my student debt affects my every decision: what books I buy for classes versus which ones I can access for free, the amount of hours I work to pay my rent and if I can even continue my education at UMass. You can get rid of the Hasbrouck fence, but student loans are for life.
Lucas Coughlin, another Collegian writer, claimed in his op-ed on Jan. 26, 2016 that college should not be free. I disagree. Higher education is a right. Free higher education would take the burden off students (and non-students) while providing access to good paying jobs and economic advancement to people whose family wealth or personal financial circumstances do not allow them access to college without a life-long debt sentence. The total amount of student debt in the United States surpassed $1.3 trillion in 2015 and the UMass class of 2015 graduated with an average of $28,565 in debt. The burden of student debt makes going into the job market post-college extremely stressful.
The problem with higher education now is that it is becoming less and less accessible due to skyrocketing costs and wage stagnation at the time when more folks need it. Colleges need to be more accessible and turn into a viable option for students instead of something that’s immediately out of the question, or is an unattainable goal. Low income students and students of color are less likely to afford the rapid rise in the cost of higher education, and this limits opportunities for a huge number of potential college students.
To clarify, when I talk about free higher education, I mean completely free: four years of tuition-free public higher education as well as access to free food, housing, books and any other cost necessary. Right now, one-third of UMass students currently work on campus, which does not include the residential assistants and peer mentors in Residential Life or off-campus jobs. The total number of students who work at UMass is significantly higher, and many of these students rely on their jobs to stay in school. Even with those jobs, students are still accumulating debt.
If higher education were free, low-income and working class students wouldn’t have to chose between working long hours at low-wage jobs to help finance their education, which often distracts from and jeopardizes their education. Many opponents of free higher education argue that students need to “work hard” and “earn their way” for a mediocre paying job after graduation and that current college students think we’re entitled to everything. Last semester, I was working 40 hours a week – some labor unpaid – and ended up with the worst GPA I’ve ever had in my academic career. My student debt is around $45,000 right now, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to pay that off with an 11-percent interest rate. I am struggling, and many other students are struggling as well. How is that entitlement when we’re just trying to get by?
Coughlin thinks students can get their higher “education degree cheaply” in today’s society. He suggests students should “attend junior colleges for a year or two, or attend a commuter school.” But what happens when these students move to universities to complete the remainder of their four-year degrees? What I want to ask Coughlin is if he and his family always considered college as an option? How many hours does he work a week? Does he work for spending money or to pay bills? Has he ever had to decide between paying rent and textbooks? Does he struggle under the weight of loans he’ll carry for decades after graduation?
Now I ask you, Coughlin, do you understand why higher education should be free? Students across the United States are demanding it and taking direct action for this to become a reality. Higher education needs to be free so students can go to college instead of being funneled into low-wage jobs with little chance for economic mobility. Higher education needs to be free so undocumented folks, who can’t even access federal financial aid, can attend college without paying from pocket. Higher education needs to be free so students can finally become learners, and not consumers and products of a privatized system.
Erika Civitarese is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at ecivitarese@umass.edu.
Free college isn’t worth spit. I’ve seen the kids going to college for free. “Cs get degrees!” is the mantra.
I agree with the author to a point. I want my country to have an educated populace. But there is typically motivation behind this sort of demand.
Why aren’t they interested in the skyrocketing costs of college? And what is the true ‘cost’? Free food and housing? So in a round about way, mommy and daddy still pay for everything unless you don’t pay taxes.
Our govt is corrupt. Giving them more money to mishandle is NOT the way to fix things. Just like with Health Costs, has anyone asked why it costs so damn much to go to college instead of simply demanding more ‘freebies’.
Why can’t we hold people in “Involuntary Servitude”?? it worked for Obamacare.
Clearly, this individual wants to enslave his professors. One cannot possibly have a right to another person's labor.
Free higher education would take the burden off students (and non-students)
Horsefeathers. Somebody has to pay for the infrastructure of the university. That burden is currently borne (voluntarily) by the students and alumni. Who does this simian moron think would bear the burden if not the students and alumni? Despite his rhetoric otherwise, this evil thief wants to enslave the entire country, not just his professors.
He should be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.
“If it’s gonna be free then no degrees courses should be offered that do not fit a JOB description!!!”
Exactly. I was thinking the same thing. No women’s studies, sociology, African American studies, liberal arts, etc. Just specific careers. Law, medicine, etc. Everything else should be vocational.
And Erika Civitarese you’re distributing your income to pay for these down trodden college students? Or do you just mouth off? No one is stopping you paying for the tuition of others.
Think about it
From Elementary (ust'a be (rightfully) called Grammar) School up through college ... young people attend a building where someone talks and you read out of books and the result is supposed to be an "education"
In times past, that education prepared you for real life ... reading, writing and speaking so you could be a productive (and interesting0 member of American social structure ...
buying and selling and using numbers correctly ...
inputting information about the world around and outside of you to give you a sense of what the world is ...
And the school never, never, never EVER interfered with Dad, Mom nor God !
Look at the nation our forebears built !
And all it "cost" was the necessary requirements to feed and house (a) teacher(s) with a little left over ... a building and the needed heating elements in the winter
Did he ever consider going to a less expensive college?
Of course not.
I counter with: perhaps you should move to his home country and take advantage of "free college"
+1
“FREE” anything = slavery for those that work for a living.
Why should “college students” have a right to demand a portion of my productivity?
What makes you think this pathetic dweeb can handle four nanoseconds in the Marine Corps?
College is not free, no matter what laws are passed. She just means that she wants somebody else to pay for it.
And to pay for her housing and food too.
What kind of person has so little dignity and sense of self that she seeks complete dependence?
I wonder what Erika Civitarese is majoring in.
I wonder what this snowflake is majoring in, “Transgender Barista Studies”?
Change High School from 4 to 6 years.
Teach a real High School curriculum in the first 3 years and a solid college curriculum in the last 3 years.
Cut out ALL the worthless crap courses that gain students nothing.
Expel troublemaker students permanently...
Outlaw the leftist teachers unions...fire all bad teachers.
Hire better teachers who can teach both sections... keep the whole thing on the same old High School campus and add on some space if needed.
Students can elect to go 3 years and get a HS diploma or 6 years and get a BA. Either choice the same price for the student 0.00 This should be doable with only modest increase in school taxes IMO... so long as reasonable people make the fiscal decisions and cut out the waste. Hell, let me do it and I’ll bring it in at a lower cost than before the change.... the amount of wasted money in education is staggering!
Save tons of dough.
I say why not!?
So this brat wants the guy spreading hot tar on a roof to pay income tax so he can go ahead and buy a book he can access for free anyway, and so illegal aliens can get a free college degree.
I guess we will have to spend 400 posts ripping it to shreds instead. :-)
No, it isn't. And saying that it is doesn't make it so.
We live in a society wealthy beyond the wildest utopian dreams of only a century ago. Education is free. Public libraries are abundant. Internet connections are paid for by the community. There still is a cost, of course: it's in the work necessary to employ those priceless resources in learning. Learning will never be free. But education is.
What is not free is the diploma, the formal certification that the student has endured a set of classes with minimal or better performance. If you want the sheepskin, you pay for the sheepskin as your parents and their parents did. But don't whine that education is being withheld. All you have to do is grasp it. And that, in the entire history of humanity, has never been true as it is today.
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