To be a young person today, someone say between the ages of 18 and 29, is to experience a sense of gnawing trepidation if not outright terror. The job market has slumped precipitously. According to the Gallup organization, unemployment and underemployment among 18 to 29 year-olds runs about 33 percent. If you are from a privileged background, you can escape the worst effects of this collapse in opportunity. You, after all, have access to private prep schools and the means to foot the substantial bill that goes with elite education in America.
But for those outside the one percent, there is daunting reason to fear. For the American post-World War II social compact seems to be unraveling. That promise consisted of the following terms: The American public would generously provide low-cost access to state universities and finance access to private universities through a combination of grants and loans. In return, the public would receive a talented and trained work force equipped to raise living standards even higher for the next generation.
In the last decade, however, we have witnessed a parabolic rise in tuition for state universities. In state-after-state, tuition has nearly tripled between 2000 and 2012. Take, for example, the University of California system, which in the middle 1960s prided itself in charging no tuition at all. It has raised full-time undergraduate tuition from around $4,000 to nearly $13,000 for the forthcoming academic year, excluding cost-of-living expenses. The cost of attending private universities has, if anything, climbed even more steeply.
Try protesting this situation peacefully, as students did at U.C. Davis in November, 2011, and you will find yourself pepper-sprayed by thuggish men in uniform. At the same time, these students, whose parents, according to reports on household wealth, have seen their net worth decline by forty percent in five years, are increasingly forced to borrow the full cost of their ever-more-expensive education.
The plight of students attending America's for-profit educational establishments is far more dire. Students in these programs, many of which grant degrees of dubious utility, tend to borrow at a higher rate than those enrolling in traditional undergraduate institutions while having even poorer job prospects.
Not even the nation's professional schools are immune. Law schools, in particular, are facing a crisis -- most students must now borrow six-figure's worth of debt to enter a workforce that has been described as "bi-modal." A few new lawyers will enter extravagant high-end jobs but most will find themselves in a Hobbesian universe where life may not be short, but it assuredly will be nasty, brutish, and low-paying.
Taken as an aggregate, student loan indebtedness is now in excess of one trillion dollars, surpassing even credit cards.
The Bible can help us resolve this worsening crisis. The first two verses of Deuteronomy, chapter fifteen, teach: "At the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been declared."
Verse four explains the motive behind this command of the Lord: "But there shall be no poor among you." At the time of Deuteronomy's composition, Israel was in a transition. The Jewish people were no longer wandering nomads in the desert, but a nation settling into a life of agriculture and trade. With the introduction of money and commerce, there came the possibility of onerous long-term indebtedness that could ruin households and even lead to their enslavement. The Lord foresaw these dangers and commanded debt forgiveness as the means of relieving class difference and restoring opportunity and access to all.
Student-loan debt, which was once a means of narrowing the distance between the classes, now cements class boundaries into place. The new panacea -- income-based repayment plans -- only institutionalize indebted servitude.
Student loans are called a bubble, but this is not really accurate. They will not pop like mortgages, because unlike mortgages, they are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. Indeed, they are best described as anchors, dragging into the depths those who are forced to rely upon them to cultivate their minds and prepare themselves for a brighter future.
As I envision it, student-loan forgiveness would work much as the general amnesty that followed the Vietnam War -- it should be sweeping and total. The Federal Reserve has the power to purchase federally-backed assets, and did so aggressively at the height of the crisis of 2008/2009, when it granted relief to the banks that caused so much mischief. Failing this sort of response, Congress might enact the Student Loan Forgiveness Act, endorsed so eloquently by Maria Mayo in these pages on June 6.
This argument should appeal even to those whose only obeisance is to the economic gods of efficiency and consumption. Young people, freed from the shackles of long-term debt, will begin to buy homes again. They will start families, and plan for their futures. The wheels of commerce, now slowing to a halt, could be re-energized. The deflationary vortex, whose cyclonic force is drawing closer, could be escaped. Here the arguments of religion, morality, and economic well-being coincide to the betterment of us all.
Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) Breslauer ($306,000 salary) like to blame the politicians, since they stopped giving them every dollar expected. The ‘charge Californians more’ tuition skyrocketed fees by an average 14% per year from 2006 to 2011-12 academic years. If Birgeneau Breslauer had allowed fees to rise at the same rate of inflation over the past 10 years they would still be in reach of most middle income students. An unacceptable legacy for students, parents, politicians!
Additional funding should sunset. The economic downturn is devastating California. Simply asking Californians for more money to fund inept Cal. leadership, old expensive higher education models and support burdensome salaries, bonuses, and pensions is not the answer.
UC Berkeley is to maximize access to the widest number of Californians at a reasonable cost: mission of diversity and equality of opportunity. Birgeneau’s Breslauer’s ‘charge Californians higher’ tuition denies middle income Californians the transformative value of Cal’s higher education.
Opinions? UC Board of Regents marsha.kelman@ucop.edu Calif. State Senators, Assembly members.
The real issue is that the schools and loan organizations have no stake in the student's success. It would better to have "shares" where money for education buys a fraction of the student's income above the income expected without the education for 20 years. And the school needs some skin in the game, it can't take all its money up front. A law school that produces few high paid graduates better be inexpensive.
Financial realities couldn't be ignored; the responsibility of finding affordable education fell on me. Fortunately, through a reciprocal agreement between Harris and SLU, I was able to take majors in education classical languages.
Friends are mortgaging their lives away to send their children to prestigious universities. Many of their kids are on five- or six-year plans; university life is far too fun to be taken seriously. An acquaintance's child was graduated two years ago from Tulane and prefers to play video games and drink with friends rather than deal with the realities of work.
To expect my hard-earned tax dollars, in the form of government-sponsored debt relief, to subsidize parents' irresponsible choices, or students' sloth, is unjust. Suggesting it occur under the aegis of Mosaic Law is laughable.
If you want a Scriptural solution [1], petition the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to have churches, church-sponsored institutions, clergy and religious pay Federal income, as well as corporate property taxes.
Better yet, for ALL students who request it from a Catholic university or college, grant them a full tuition, room and board and fee waiver [2].
----------
[1] Matthew22v21
[2] Luke6v30
no other debt is like it...it can grow and you have no say...
"but that was an interest free grant"... all capitalized now....
"but that total is incorrect."... oh well you are still earning 8.25% interest on it...
"but consolidation made it worse, you capitalized all the interest, fees and penalties, the principle is 400% larger, how much more interest are you going to charge me?" ...how much longer are you going to live?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723104576061953842079760.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/obama-relies-on-debt-collectors-profiting-from-student-loan-woe.html