I finished paying off my school loans in 1999. Like many paying on loans, I did not pay back just a bit more than I borrowed; it was close to double. I was almost a debt slave. Leaving grad school to find no professional employment opportunities put me behind the repayment eight ball from day one. It took several years before things turned around. But for about twenty years, the monthly payment was a heavy burden.
There was an incredible thrill when I mailed off that last payment. But also a worry that, once again, the unscrupulous would find some obscure fee or payment that would tie me to continued charges. I sometimes have a terrible dream in which I still owe a few dollars, and with interest, I would be paying for another decade.
The jury deliberating on the value of post-high school education has found that even a standard liberal arts education pays significant benefits over a lifetime. The trend is towards multiple careers during a working life, not staying forever in one occupation. Having an excellent traditional liberal arts background may better prepare us for the shifts, twists, and turns of changing employment.
But education will probably continue to be our single most considerable personal expense. When it’s paid, it’s great to bask in the glow of achievement. But more and more are winding up with unpayable amounts. I wonder if the lenders are hatching a method to pass the bills onto the next generation. A sort of peonage based on educational debt. Considering the benefit to the entire society that education brings, it would seem that it would be worthwhile making paying for it less demanding. Massachusetts has started a system of free community college education. This program will lift the burden of two years of educational debt from many. Quite a few students may decide that two-year associate degree programs are all they need or want. Others will go on to finish a bachelor’s degree.
We invest all the time in things we need as a society: roads, buildings, harbor engineering projects, and more. We should be prepared to invest in the human capital that makes everything possible.
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Great post 🖊️
Congrats on paying off your school loans! You seem to be in the minority on that. The debt burden would be conscionable if students could more easily establish a career in what they schooled for, but that prospect seems less likely than ever for too many. I know one who, with more than one doctorate, still had to work post office and even supermarket jobs to cover income gaps because tenure is so hard to nail down. Some of my kids and their spouses are still paying back, because all of them went back for a greater or additional degree because the jobs they hoped for are scarce (and/or no one ever leaves those positions anymore). The struggle is real.
The sand keeps shifting under peoples feet. And instead of seeing the added value of the education they continue to argue for less education.
But the universities are complicit in this, they make money off the redundant doctorates they pump out.
In 2009 I was interviewed to run a business communication for Chinese students. The woman interviewing me explained how education was one of the most lucrative “exports” of the US and that each of the Chinese kids in the program would be worth about $100k to the university. The program didn’t happen and the Chinese students were integrated into the regular program which saved the university some money so they could pay $4million to buy out the contract of a (failed) football coach.
I have a lot of mostly unexpressed feelings about the sinister and greedy direction of higher education. “in my day” as an in-state student in Colorado I paid $100/semester for everything. Not housing, of course, but… It disgusts me that my community college students went into debt to take classes they should have had in secondary school. But I’m really happy that my tax dollars pay for wars. That’s just so awesome…. grrrrrrrr…..
Trump U and other for profit colleges lead the way. The others merely emulate and follow.
Well that’d not really true. Most go the state schools and Ivy’s showed the way. the for profits just took things a step further.
It’s evil.
It’s run away Capitalism at it’s best.
Our trades people earn a lot more money than many of our indebted university graduates. They appear to have a lot more political power too.
Here in the States Lawyers dominate politics. And you know why mosquitos, Vampire bats, and ticks don’t suck blood from lawyers, don’t you? Professional Courtesy .
Hee hee.