Interest rates on subsidized government student loans are slated to double to 6.8 percent in July. That would add up to $1,000 to the burden of students dependent on loans to help pay for their education.
Not surprisingly, President Barack Obama has called on Congress to sustain the lower rates. When Mitt Romney agreed, House Republicans reversed their previous position and passed the extension. Now, the Senate and House are descending into a nasty debate about how to pay for the extension, not whether to do it. Enough, as the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized; they should fix this and move on.
Keeping interest rates low on student loans is a good thing, but it does not answer the real question: How do we make college or advanced training affordable for the young?
The reality is that soaring college costs are pricing ever more students out of the education they need. Tuition and fees at colleges are rising faster even than medical costs. Students now graduate with an average of $25,000 in loans. Two-thirds of all students rely on loans to help pay for their education. Student debt -- now over $1 trillion -- exceeds credit card debt.
These loans are like a noose around students who are graduating into the worst jobs market since the Great Depression. One in two recent graduates under 25 is in need of full-time work -- unemployed or able only to find part-time work. Wages are still sinking for recent graduates, even as their indebtedness rises.
For many, the student loan burden is crippling. If they can't find work, they can defer payment on their loans, but interest keeps adding up on the unpaid balance. If they find work, they often can't pay the basics -- rent, car loan, health care and student loan. Instead of their education lifting them into the middle class, it too often suffocates hope.
This country can't afford to waste a generation. High-quality public education has been central to our success. We led the world in providing K-12 public education. With the GI Bill after World War II, we offered an entire generation free access to college or advanced training. The result was the best-educated work force in the world, which helped build the American middle class.
All now agree that college or advanced training is more important than ever, yet we are making it less and less affordable. College tuition is soaring because the state contribution to budgets is being slashed. We're privatizing public colleges piecemeal by putting more and more of the costs on the students.
We should go the other way. Invest the money needed -- an estimated $30 billion a year -- to make public colleges free for all who qualify. Let all children know that if they can get the education, then they earn. Last week, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, offered this advice to college students: "Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."
He doesn't get it. Fewer and fewer families can afford to finance college for their kids.
Conservatives argue that making college free would just encourage idleness among the young and, anyway, we can't afford it. Those were the same arguments that were made against the GI Bill. We can afford it -- the cost is far less than the 20 percent cut in top tax rates that Romney champions. In fact, we can't afford not to do it.
If the American dream is to stay alive, the young must have access to the best education in the world. We will all pay the price if we don't provide it for them.
Follow Rev. Jesse Jackson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revjjackson
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Keep it like it is and let people save for college, borrow for college or go to a tech school.
Somebody will always need to mow my yard and paint my house, high school grads can do that work.
In the case of free public higher education based on financial need is the wrong way to approach this issue. If states are to provide public education, this would undoubtedly be disastrous as some states have stronger foundation in higher ed than others. Permenant residence could shift artificially for this reason...unless schools become nationalized.
IF, students receive free public education, they ought to pay for their education via public service. ROTC is a good example of subsidized education that yields positive results for the students and for the general public. Why not expand organizations such as Americorp and Peace Corp. and have students commit to service? Perhaps then, politics and civic education will become more organic and experiential rather than just theoretical and distasteful via "news" media.
Demanding change and public policy is futile. Organizing and offering a plan of action has a chance.
And as for those of you who are upset at "African-American Studies" or "Theater Arts" being part of one's education, think again. Education is about developing a WHOLE mind capable of critical thinking and analysis. The more variety of influences that a person is confronted with, the more resilient and flexible they are.
The reason? Because they're PUBLIC. Duh.
When did college become a business..It wasn't like this back in the late 70's but has become one hell of a profitable one at that hasn't it...;-))
This is the city in which I live...So if I have this backwards as you claim that I have. Please....I like to know how???
Re-read the very first line to this comment...No, I think I should copy and paste it again... New CSU Fullerton president gets $300k home remodel???
Incoming CSU Fullerton President Mildred Garcia got the highest pay raise possible under a new executive compensation cap approved by trustees in January — 10 percent — for a base salary of $324,500.
As well as a $12,000-per-year car allowance; that she will also get to live, for free, in the historic C. Stanley Chapman house, an eight-bedroom, 5,800 square-foot manse on 3.9 acres, a few miles from the Fullerton campus, last assessed at $3.4 million; and that said house is getting a $300,000 remodel.
The house hasn’t been renovated in decades, and money for the construction does not come from state funding, according to university spokesman Christopher Bugbee: It’s from surplus revenue from one or more of the campus auxiliary organizations, which run commercial operations on campus. (BULLSH*T) !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still, this is stoking some outrage. ”Instead of directing the funding for our students, they are directing it towards the comfort of top executives,” Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, told CalWatch.
i think the main point is that state schools were once affordable to the middle class. they are no longer so. red flag.
First, there is no such thing as a “free” education. The cost is merely being shifted to the taxpayers. This cost shifting is particularly nefarious since it removes price from the “purchasing” decision of the ultimate user (the student) and hence removes a layer of cost discipline at the colleges. Further, there is no economic reason the taxpayer should be forced to subsidize a major in say Theater Arts, African American Studies etc.
Second, Jackson complains that college graduates have a hard time finding a job yet he also claims that “everyone agrees” that advanced training is more important than ever. Huh? It can’t be both. If college graduates are having trouble finding jobs or jobs that require a college degree, then by definition that means there is an over supply of them and hence we should be subsidizing less (if at all), not more. A more accurate account would be that a degree in a marketable skill e.g. engineering, accounting etc. is probably worth the price of college while other degrees e.g. gender studies, women studies etc. are relatively useless and certainly shouldn’t be subsidized.
Finally, Jackson complains about the rising cost of college and the debt burden it places on students, yet his solution is to increase the demand for the product by making it “free”. Increasing the demand on any product causes the price to increase not decrease
Silly me. Thanks for setting me straight. I think I'll buy some oranges and make an orange pie, orangesauce and orange cobbler.
I made three essential points:
1) Education is never free-proposal's like Jackson's are just redistributing wealth by cost shifting
2) You can't have-as Jackson claims- a simultaneous situation whereby college students are having trouble finding jobs and yet a college degree is supposed to be invaluable.
3) Subsidizing the demand for a college degree can only serve to increase the price of college (that's Economics 101) one of the symptoms Jackson is complaining about
If you'd like to address any of those points I'd be glad to respond
Further, if you'd look at the numbers, rather than just mindlessly repeating a slogan, you'll see college education as a whole is at best a mediocre investment. Both the classes of 2010 and 2011 have had troble finding jobs that use their college degree
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/04/22/national/w070232D21.DTL&tsp=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html
As I noted some majors may be doing quite well but others (e.g. gender studies, theater arts etc)-as an investment-are virtually worthless. Unfortunately when government subsidizes college eduation it doesn't delineate between these two groups.
Finally, if a college education is clearly a great investment then there is no reason to subsidize it. People and parents should be borrowing money, taking second jobs etc. in the private sector to pay for it since under that premise the return on investment would exceed the cost of borrowing.