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.
Went to school on the GI Bill after 4 yrs in the Navy, helped some. I still had to work full time while going to school full time. At a state supported school. Not one a them LEAGUE schools. Didn’t borrow a cent.
The very first day of sixth grade our teacher wrote that on the chalkboard and then he explained it to us. It stuck with me my whole life.
If you expect to get the 5% to 15% increase in budget, then you'd better use up your current allotment of monies on useless crap.
College is already free. The government hands out student loans and 40% stop paying them back. More tax dollars given away for loyalty to socialism.
Stopped reading right there. What isn't a "right" to lefties.
Oh I know what isn't, being born. To lefties college education, murdering unborn babies, and whatever else their immature brains can conjure are rights.
Pffft
For those keeping score at home:
Government intervention in the form of loans and grants hyper-inflated college tuition. Simply put, the more government gravy that became available, the more colleges ramped up the cost of tuition. Statistics clearly bear this out.
The higher the cost of tuition the more students were forced to borrow. Moreover, the ease of borrowing allowed many students to throw in the cost of that cool spring break, new cell phone, maybe an old car, etc.
Now we have a couple of generations of carefree snowflakes who have borrowed to the hilt, and often irresponsibly. They are now drowning in debt with many simply biding their time waiting for Comrade Bernie or Hillary to wave the magic wand and forgive all student loans and hand the cost over to taxpayers.
My lovely daughter-in-law brought nearly $100,000 in debt to the marriage and she had the nice car, cell phone, swank apartment, etc...Now son is pulled into her debt issues.
Add to that fact that they also put their honeymoon on student loan debt. Of course I did not find this out for years...Perhaps they did it because of the competitive interest rates when compared with credit cards; however, I would have postponed the trip to Hawaii if I were them even tho they did get free housing and my gift was airfare....
Point is I absolutely agree with you that their loans are often padded with other expenditures.
Side note, they are both making good money but cannot buy a house due to their debt.
Well, it could be implemented by adopting the way in which it is done in other developed countries with free university educations: rigorous entrance examinations so that the number of students admitted can be educated within the institution’s budget without tuition receipts, using only taxpayer funds, regarding having bright students receive proper university educations as a public good, and income from endowments (even public universities now have endowments).
This would mean that college degrees would no longer be able to be used as lazy HR tools to keep applicants qualified for jobs that can be done on the basis of a high school education or simple native talent from actually being screened, and it we would need to beef up our trade schools (I favor creating polytechnics — trade schools with just a little more academic oomph, so that one would learn the science behind one’s trade plus a thin general post-secondary education).
If college or university was the only place and the only way you could learn something, the author might be closer to a point.
But it isn’t and it’s not.
I was talking to someone the other free college advocate the other day and I asked why shouldn’t I, at 48 with a law degree, just not get another degree on the house? That’s not what her policy intended, by I asked why it wasn’t a good idea. She didn’t see it coming.
Assuming that Coughlin is a person I hope that he/she told this snowflake to buck up....and go get a job.
Turns out the author, Erika Civitarese, is a little marxist. Check out her FB for a few little hints.
Just have the government pay. See, no problem.
‘’Just specific careers. Law, medicine, etc. ‘’
Those degrees cost around $300,000 just for the schooling.
Who has that to start with?
After school, there are hefty costs in certain career paths such as medicine where you have to pay $50k-$100k insurance after residency to pay for any suits that could occur as a result of something you did in your residency.
There’s too much chest thumping on this thread by old timers who just have not paid attention to the sky rocketing costs of education.
The problem is the gov’t subsidization first. That needs to be fixed.
The students are literally too young to know any better. That is why socialism is appealing to them.
It is up to us to eliminate the easy money. Forget the chest thumping and pummeling of the young people.
Well, it could be implemented by adopting the way in which it is done in other developed countries with free university educations: rigorous entrance examinations so that the number of students admitted can be educated within the institution’s budget without tuition receipts, using only taxpayer funds, regarding having bright students receive proper university educations as a public good, and income from endowments (even public universities now have endowments)
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So no one with less than a 1300 or 1400 SAT?
Oh, free government money. Why didn’t I think of that?
Oldest grandson went to junior college for two years, then took two years off to work and save his money to pay for the last two years. Said he cannot believe how totally lazy and spoiled most of his classmates are. He’s carrying 15 hours and working 30 hours a week but still has time to sleep, eat and do nothing. Some of them do get it.
It was once proposed that the government should pay for and provide free food for all in the form of rice and beans. These items provide a fine diet, one that is common in many places where college education is free.
The analog in hire education would be a degree in a classic core curriculum. Majors must have some utility. No victim studies courses. No feminist deconstruction. There would be class attendance requirements and real exams.
LOL. Yeah a free college education you will pay for for life...
And everything would be nothing.
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