Drop the drop in the bucket: Let's fix college costs
When I went off to college, I did not have to go far. Both my folks were professors, and there was little doubt as to where I’d go to school - or if I would go.
There was a deal in place: For all the kids of fulltime faculty, that the institution would absorb the cost of their tuition as long as the student did not stay forever, behaved themselves, and managed to stay above a “C” average.
Self-admitted privilege, writ very large.
For many of my contemporaries, there was little chance they’d go to College at all. And in many cases, they did not need to, or want to. Very often, a high school degree was plenty to go on and the vocational training available in many high schools meant that many went on to professional careers in practical occupations. They became electricians, mechanics of various sorts, plumbers, people with applied training and a good, solid income. Job security was good, their futures secure.
A lot of people did not go to college. For them it was a very expensive vanity rather than any sort of necessity. Jobs in the industrial, mining or manufacturing sectors were plentiful. Most college or university training was seen by many as simply unnecessary. In 1980, only about 30% of high school graduates set their sights on a traditional four-year college or university degree.
In the current era, expectations for college are not only much wider in the population, but for most careers, a necessity. Associate degrees are very often required for the trades. And with all the new tech, becoming an electrician or a mechanic or a plumber requires all sorts of rigorous training, study, and highly developed skills. Simple survival requires at least some post-high school training, but.the demand for college has skyrocketed.
So have the costs.
We live in a nation that demands higher education for everyone. It does not demand exclusive, elite, Ivy league educations for all, of course. A very fine education can be had in small private colleges and universities, state schools, land-grants, two-year degree colleges and private and public technical schools. But as demand has risen, costs have, too – astronomically.
A good job is possible today, because of the additional education, but you will spend a terrific amount of the higher salary simply paying off the cost of getting there. The debtors to education loans are quietly making the payments, but at the price of delaying a family, no home ownership, little retirement investment, and the nervousness of a paycheck-to-paycheck budget.
In attempting to work out a solution, one hare-brained plan after another has crept down the road.
The Biden plan to pay off or “forgive” between $10,000 and $20,000 of the accursed debt is, I’m sure, welcomed by the debtors, but does not directly – or even indirectly – face down the basis of the crisis. As the $10k comes in, current students and their families are still building debt daily – and new loans go out every semester. While elective government has fiddled around with this thing, it’s grown to be a massive problem that confronts nearly every American family.
The GI Bill educated and continues to educate generations of young Americans, but the demand for soldiers is finite. Some manner of public service in a needed arena might be suggested: Hospital work and other needed medical staffing; or infrastructural construction in exchange for tuition, perhaps? We currently confront a teacher shortage in our public schools. Perhaps a cost-free education for students who contract to teach for some agreed-upon period might go a long way towards solving both issues.
Whatever the eventual resolution, we need it to come quickly, before we are facing down yet another generation of students drowning in debt. Surely a bipartisan problem can generate a bipartisan solution. $10,000, whatever it sounds like, is less than a Band-Aid.
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics at Florida Southern College and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Drop the drop in the bucket: Let's fix college costs
