The College Misfire

The enormous cost of attending college and students’ inability afterward to find work in their fields is a huge topic right now. The nation’s students have amassed college debt, which has doubled since 2007 to $1.2 trillion, which is more than total credit card and auto loan debt. This is a real burden, especially when we consider that it is on the backs of students just getting started in their careers. There is very little which can upset the older generation of Americans like seeing our young people in distress.
In an effort to try to understand this problem, I spoke with three recent college grads who work here at the Herald, and I left those discussions moved, and upset. One said, “I owe $800 per month for 25 years; I am drowning. My boyfriend owes $1,200 per month. I wish I had waited to go to college. Eighty percent of the time I wish that I had never attended college, at least not a four-year college. If I had to go, I wish that I had at least started at a community college, and then, if necessary, do the last two years at a four-year college. I wish that I had done my homework and looked into better scholarships, not just go without a thought of what I was obligating myself to. As for my friends, none of them even have jobs in their fields.”
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There is very little which can upset the older generation
of Americans like seeing our young people in distress.
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One said, “my sister has a master’s degree and cannot find a position.” Another added, “I am going to be paying this loan off the rest of my life.”
How did we get here? Columnist George Will recently created a YouTube video (https://youtu.be/Vfl4BGbMxoQ) on the need for a college commencement speaker who would dispense with all of the bromides, and tell the truth to the graduates: That because the federal government subsidizes college loans, our nation has created the same type of bubble which the federal government created in the housing market, when it decided to force an increase in the number of home loans. In the process, the standards for qualifying for the loans were lowered, and enormous numbers received loans they could not repay. This produced the sub-prime real-estate market collapse.
Now this has happened in higher education. The government decided that more people should go to college, even though many are marginally qualified. This enabled students to secure loans, which no bank would have made to them without government guarantees.
The colleges responded to this powerful incentive by admitting more students with lower standards and increasing their tuition four times faster than the rate of inflation. This indeed brought to the colleges masses of additional students. The result: huge numbers of students getting out of college with punishing loan debt on their shoulders. Many others hold degrees in fields for which no one is hiring, and many others don’t even graduate.
Mr. Will is very critical of the colleges for lowering their standards to suck up all of this money, and in the process are delivering a sub-prime education at an exorbitant price. I guess it is better to recognize the problem late than not at all. It’s too bad so many have to suffer in the meantime.
Art Hall
From the Bible: Choose discipline over silver and knowledge over the finest gold. Wisdom is better than pearls, and nothing you desire compares with her. Proverbs 8:10-11