The party that figures out how to convince young people that they have a solution to this will win elections until either the problem is solved or it becomes apparent that their solution did not work.
The Institute for College Access & Success, an independent nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California recently released its eighth annual report on average student loan debt in the US, and its findings are dire. College graduates who borrowed for bachelor’s degrees granted in 2012 have an average student loan debt of $29,400, the highest average student loan debt ever on record.
Overall, 70 percent of college seniors graduated in 2012 with debt.
“The graduates of 2012 left school and entered repayment at a time of high unemployment,” said Debbie Cochrane, research director at the institute. “In many ways, these graduates were hit from both sides.”
“They went to college during a recession when their family’s ability to pay for college was likely reduced. Now they are graduating from college and may be experiencing substantial challenges getting a job to repay the loans.”
We have created a generation of well-educated sharecroppers, and they are going to be extremely angry. How that populist anger is channelled will decide whether we move as a country to the left or we start looking for scapegoats and tear each other apart.
Certainly we should reduce (or, frankly, eliminate) tuition at public universities, and that will benefit the economy. But this generation is not “doomed.” The unemployment rate for 4 year grads is still less than half that of people with a high school diploma. And 4 year grads still make over a million more during their life time (in part because they don’t end up unemployed as much, and can build their careers more consistently). By the way, major matters little. Unless you’re going to be in a very select set of highly technical majors (like oil industry engineers) your unemployment and wage rates ten years out all fall well within a comfortable range.
In that context, 29k, while very painful, is still a very good investment. These students will still overwhelmingly end up in a middle class lifestyle within a few years, unless we fall into another recession. The debt will delay that lifestyle, but not put an end to it.
In fact it’s actually more dangerous than ever not to have a degree, as the gap between college and non-college grads keeps growing. If we want to change that, we need to jack up the minimum wage, fully implement universal health care, and make it so that a wider variety of professions earn a decent wage. For now, college is still the way to go for most students.
I hear McDonald’s is going to require a four year degree.
The ones that have it really tough are those that took on student loans and didn’t graduate. All those suckered into attending one of those proprietary schools. The millions that enroll in colleges because that’s what they’re told they must do to succeed but could barely get through high school and just want training and a job and not more history, etc.
The Republican meme is already going around, “You can’t afford college because the government subsidizes illegals to go to college.” Doesn’t make much sense but it combines hate for illegals with distrust of government programs so it’s a winner for the GOP.
The obvious solution for the education loan issues for the current generation is a one-time jubilee on all outstanding student loan debt. This will have the side-benefit of freeing a lot of professionals from the golden handcuffs of large health care systems, universities, and corporations.
The longer term solution is having more realistic policies for providing education as a societal infrastructure for lifelong learning that supports broad purposes. Narrowing government education funding to job skills ignores why government first got involved in the funding of common schools that had a common national curriculum. Universities and community colleges are increasingly transgenerational and until recently, when free access for 65 and over was curtailed, provided quality of life improvements for many seniors. And that has the effect of lowering health care costs and increasing productivity.
But our elites and the politicians who represent them are too narrow to understand any of this.
If any party grabs this issue and succeeds with it, it is likely to be an out-of-the-blue third party movement with no previous history that improbably gains majorities out of a major party realignment.
I’m not holding my breath.
They want this system. Everyone works for the bank. And they get to keep just enough to keep the consumer economy going.
Exactly! Student Loan Debt now exceeds Credit Card Debt and is getting near Mortgage Debt as mortgage debt continues to fall and student loans continue to grow. Google around and you’ll find that Wall Street banks are packaging student loans into CDO’s and slicing and dicing derivatives from them. Both Bush (TARP I) and Obama (TARP II) gave the green light, showing by their actions (and Holder’s somnambulance) that ANYTHING the banks do will be covered by the federal government.
I coin a new term: bankcroppers.
Reminds me a bit of that Canadian sci-fi show Continuum. In the future the protagonist comes from, corporations rule and people are basically owned their entire lives by them, body and mind. The protagonist has a privileged position (law enforcement) among them, but even so in flashbacks we can see much more negative aspects for those not on the inside.
That’s not sci-fi. That’s a reality show.
“And they get to keep just enough to keep the consumer economy going.”
But, BooMan, what you’re documenting in this post is that they are NOT getting to keep enough to keep the consumer economy going. Am I not reading your sarcasm again?
That’s a glitch.
Yes, it’s a long-term job to deal with tuition prices. Restoring public funding of public universities (and recognizing that they serve a PUBLIC good) is a large part of it.
Just allowing student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy would help a lot, not least as a potent threat that would make other options more palatable to the rentiers.
For example, a JOBS program that offered lots of employment serving the public interest while forgiving/repaying the student debt would help the economy, the students, and the cultural and physics national infrastructure.
And goose-steps.
Well, that’s one way to judge the red/blue divide. If the Republicans are able to continue strangling the federal government then a lot of the channeling will have to be done at the state level. And it’s not too hard to predict which states will embrace economic populism, and which will pass laws declaring that Islam itself is a terrorist organization.
I have been putting away money for years for the b2 boy’s education for just this reason. Hopefully it will be enough.
>>The party that figures out how to convince young people that they have a solution to this will win elections
when this party shows up, you will continue telling us we should vote Democrat instead.
A hell of a time to compel them to buy health insurance..
The lucky duckies don’t have to face that until they pass the latest definition of adulthood at age 26. Until then, they remain the precious darlings of mummsie and daddy (who also probably paid for most of those college costs as well).
For a full third of American kids, it’s just Mummsy, who would be the one compelled to pay the bill (somehow this won’t dawn on their kid?).
While the ACA may have been the right thing to do, it’s not 100% great politics from the perspective of courting the young.
For that third of kids with only Mummsy, less likely that Mummsy has the employment and money to pay the bill. More likely it’s been Medicaid and S-Chip, both of which for the most part end at age 19.
you are wrong: one word: childbearing
College age < 26, therefore covered under parents healthcare plans.
But thank you for trolling.
“Covered” doesn’t mean free.
Yes, anarchonarchist, it’s extremely bad politics to create policies and tax subsidies which help young people gain Medicaid or private health insurance, and take away the abilitY for insurers to deny or cancel coverage at any time for any reason, and create yearly caps on personal health care expenditures and eliminate lifetime caps on lifetime reimbursements for care from insurers.
I hear that young Americans LOVE the choice of deepening their crippling debt or being forced to make the choice to avoid seeking care when they’re sick. We have heard the demands of young people nationwide, “PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING TO FIX OUR SCREWED-UP HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.” Then, if they are fortunate enough to have rooftop access, those (mostly) spry youngsters get up there and shout, “WHATEVER YOU DO, MAKE SURE THAT HEALTH CARE COSTS CONTINUE TO INCREASE THREE OR FOUR TIMES THE RATE OF INFLATION SO THAT MEDICARE IS ELIMINATED BEFORE I GET OLD.”
I sure hope they don’t fall off that roof. How ’bout you?
You are wrong. many young ppl want to start a family and now they can. They are signing up. “compel” vs. go with no insurance and 1) risk bankruptcy via an accident 2) put off having a family until …
btw when ACA was being debated heard horror stories about mothers being kicked off health care when they had problem pregnancies or infants were born with conditions.
(and look at the numbers of young ppl signing)
I’m sure there are some thoughtful young folks out there, but I haven’t run across (I was young once) a single couple that was putting off anything because of health insurance. I’m sure they exist, but the idea that there is a monolithic, purely positive reaction to being compelled to buy something just has not born out (even at a bargain price or out of another family member’s pocket). You may think it’s merely because of mis/dis-information, but there are some folks who simply want to take the risk rather than pay a private insurer while they still think themselves invulnerable. My point is merely that those folks are not small in number.
well you’re wrong. especially re: having children
great point!
My money’s on ‘tear each other apart’.
The people against whom the well-educated sharecroppers should turn have the unprecedented wherewithal to guarantee they turn someplace else.
The ability to obfuscate, distract and entertain has never been so powerful, or so concentrated.
Peasants revolt. These folks will not revolt precisely because it would be tantamount to admitting they’re peasants, and they’ve just gone heavily into debt precisely to remove any traces of peasant origin.
The peasants can certainly revolt, but it’s unlikely to succeed until the sans-culottes join in the fun.
All that college education isn’t going to help the new CA sharecroppers if the rains continue not to fall.
But the folks up at the ski resorts are having fun in all the manufactured snow. Don’t bother them with info on the fossil fuel energy required to make that snow (and transport their asses up to it) that will contribute to the conditions that in the long-run will reduce snowpack.
The reason loans are so high is because we stopped investing in higher education as a country and passed all the costs onto the students. If public colleges and universities aren’t getting the funding from the federal/state/local governments like they used to they have to raise tuition rates and then students have to take on more loans.
It’s an easy fix, the problem is political will to fix it.
A big problem that has increased student debt is the huge increases in student tuition and fees, well above the inflation rate. This has come about because the cost of college education at public universities is no longer being subsidized by taxpayers to the extent that it once was. So, the cost is now passed on to the students.
Voters apparently want the benefits that public universities provide (business spinoffs, educated workforce) but they don’t want to pay for it. State politicians would rather cut taxes or fund prisons than invest in the future by providing decent funding to the state universities.
The better UC campuses (I work at one of them) are rapidly becoming privatized as a result. Goodbye to the days when a student could pay for college with a summer job.
Working against the supposition of your second paragraph is that the UC program just benefited from California citizens taxing themselves to the tune of $7 billion a year with the double-digit % voting margin for Proposition 30. Governor Brown’s campaign said the Prop 30 money would be set aside for public education, and the Legislature helped him keep that promise in the 2013 budget.
I think the actual problem is that people are being told that the benefits of public universities and K-12, SS/Medi/Medi, and lots of other things Americans demand can be provided while keeping Federal taxes low on the rich and everyone else. All we have to do is get rid of all those low-income parasites, welfare and UI cheats and social/health programs.
That unemployment remains at a chronically high rate and many of the poor are full-time workers is something the plutocrats and their servants wish for us to forget. Unless the unemployed/underpaid are older white people or young whites from wealthy families; the plutocrats want to make sure those unfortunates know that the UNDESERVING unemployed/underpaid are to blame.
It’s all very, very infuriating. Too many Americans like these lies; it’s easier than confronting the false assumptions manufactured for them.
Proposition 30 was welcome, but only a start to shoring up our drastically eroded system. And we’ll have to see how much of the revenue actually gets used on higher education necessities, as opposed to boondoggles like free ipads for LA middle schoolers.
I totally agree that voters have been fed easily-digestible baloney for far too long, and their taste for it is a major reason why we are in the shitty place we are in.
I helped a good friend of mine when he was in grad school. He was totally broke and now as a 35 year old he is just now finally getting out of the hole. And by that I don’t mean debt, he is just now able to service the debt and live a life. Forget about saving. At 35. You can’t count on people like him getting mad. They have too much to lose.
In my current job, we’ve hired people with 4 year degrees to do factory work for about $12.00 and hour. We know they will leave when they can, but for now they are stuck. Again, they are not going to get mad about it. They just want to get on with life.
So I wish I shared this hope that they would get mad and start, well, at least voting in off year elections. It may be the only way to start the process of reform.
Many of us are angry, and know that there has to be a critical mass of other angry people to actually change shit.
See: Wall St., Occupy.
But oh, when people who should be outright furious with the oligarchs do wake up, it could be 1793 for our Kings and Queens, and there are plenty of silent, “sleeper” radicals just waiting to don a black mask.
P.S.
Hi NSA staffer reading this 9 months after it was written! That’s a hell of a backlog you got there!
USA! USA! USA!
We need to get jobs for OUR CHILDREN. Honestly, the illegals can go home. Get out. We need jobs for OUR CHILDREN, not for illegals.
We need to end the H-1B scam where the scabs from China and India get jobs while OUR OWN CITIZENS do not. This is DEEPLY WRONG.
You need to take your racial insecurities elsewhere.