The Real Story Behind Skyrocketing Student Debt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Last edited Wed Nov 25, 2020, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

On edit: The title on the video is misleading. If you actually play the video it says "College used to be debt free."

I attended community college in the 1970's and one could pay their tuition working part time at a minimum wage job.

This changed in the 1980s when Reagan was elected and many other state government likewise elected Republican governors and legislatures.

In my state, Washington, they doubled the price of tuition in 1981. That was the last time Republicans held the governorship and both Houses of the legislature.

These days to attend college you either have to have wealthy parents, earn a scholarship or take out a loan

[Warpy]

1. They're ignoring the elephant in the room

and that elephant's name is cheap labor conservatism, something perfected by Republicans but not completely restricted to them. Listen to fiscal conservatives in Congress, you'll hear it every time the subject of raising the minimum wage comes up, which is now very rarely.

At the same time, the jobs that paid a living wage have largely been offshored, along with our manufacturing base. They have likewise much of the office work that used to sustain suburbia, even electronically filed tax returns are processed in India.

White males got clobbered the hardest because they'd been the best paid, many of their jobs not considering female applicants until the late 70s and then only grudgingly. Male POC could get those jobs, too, but they were last hired, first laid off, so they couldn't count on them, meaning women and POC didn't fall as far simply because they didn't have that far to fall.

College debt has skyrocketed along with the cost of health care and housing costs because these are things that haven't been offshored yet. They show us what the real inflation rate in the US has been and wages have never kept up with it. College debt didn't exist when families were paid enough to afford to put their kids through a state college. Now that is totally out of reach.

Why were wages allowed to fall so far? Greed is too easy an answer. The problem was a pernicious economic philosophy that said high wages created inflation and discouraged both saving and investment. That philosophy said if you shoved money at the rich, they'd do the investing and inflation would be kept low and the rising tide would lift up all boars. Well, we see what happened to that.

I don't deny that racism is at the heart of defunding city schools, of course it is. Once middle class white folks fled out to the burbs, they didn't want funding parity with city schools. That wasn't where their precious darlings were going any more, so they fought the idea tooth and nail. Restrictive covenants kept those suburban schools lily white for 3 decades.

However, that's not what caused the explosion of student debt. Wages that have fallen even below subsistence have done that. Racism isn't the answer, driving working people into poverty and then despising them for it is the answer and that has hit working people of all colors, religions, locations, and any other criterion you can think of. Only the richest can afford to send their kids to school to graduate without debt. Everybody else is saddled with massive debt or a lack of education, take your choice.

[lapfog_1]

2. I went to college in the 1970s

It wasn't free...

I was accepted to MIT, Stanford, and the Univ of Kansas.

I got a partial scholarship to MIT, nothing from Stanford, and a "full scholarship to KU".

My parents were poor... only I didn't really know they were poor.

They couldn't help me with any money... so KU it was.

I worked 1/2 time for my entire 6 years there... to get a 4 year degree. The scholarship was only for the first year and only if I attended full time. Bye Bye scholarship.

I did manage to exit debt free... but I sure lived the "Starving student" life while I was there.

I support free college tuition... and 0 interest loans for living expenses. But lets not say "oh those boomer people got a free ride"... we didn't.

The GI Bill did build the middle class in the 1950s... but those people that went to college earned it... it wasn't "free" either.

[captain queeg]

3. Not free certainly, but affordable

I started in the 70s, went for a year paying my own way. You could have a part time minimum wage job and scrape thru. Went back in the 80s. I’d saved up some money, got some financial aid, and worked summers. I had to borrow $6000 my last year and paid that back pretty quickly. I don’t think the methods I used would be sufficient these days.

[appalachiablue]

4. The far right also didn't wan't anymore anti-war, college students.

Educated troublemakers, 'hippies' and activists who knew too much about the MIC and Vietnam, pollution, the environment, consumer protections, the need for civil rights, womens' and LGBT rights.

Reagan as CA Gov. (1967-1975) began reducing tax revenue support for college tuition and continued it as president in the 80s.

The debt for American students has been growing ever since. No other advanced nations indebt college students.

US college tuition was affordable in the 1950s-1970s, esp. if students worked part time.

[McKim]

6. A Way to Control the Intellectual Class

This is a way to keep people down and control the intellectuals. There is also a war on freedom of speech in our universities and less job security there.

[appalachiablue]

7. Control of the media and education have always been

targeted by the anti democratic far right - the first thing authoritarian regimes go after all over the world.

Anti intellectualism and dumbing down is part of it. Civics education has declined here for decades.

Chris Hedges wrote forcefully about American illiteracy on the rise 12 years ago.

[Redleg]

5. I went to college in the 80s.

I started out with an honors at entrance scholarship which was renewable year-by-year so long as my grades stayed above 3.5. I finished my first year with slightly less than that and lost my scholarship. I was still living at home and got a part time minimum wage job to pay for school and car insurance, etc. In my third year I enlisted in the Army Reserve and also started in the Army ROTC 2-year program. I got a little bit of reserve pay, my ROTC stipend, and a small amount of GI bill to help pay for my undergrad degree. That money, along with my part-time pay, helped me graduate debt free. School was definitely affordable back in the 80s and perhaps half of the students worked, mainly part-time. It was unusual to see students working full-time in those days and most graduated without oppressive debt.

Nowadays I am a professor at a good sized regional university. I am still paying off the student loans I took out during my doctoral program. Trump and Betsy Devoss halted the public service student loan forgiveness program right after I found out about its existence, so I will continue to pay for a few more years unless a miracle happens. I can afford it though, since I am tenured and am payed reasonably well. My kids are going to be starting college very soon though, so all this stuff is still relevant to me.

Most of the students at my university work and many work more than part-time. At the same time they are trying to take a full load of courses, which I think is quite difficult to do when you are working so many hours. The thing is that tuition is so much higher now and the cost of books have gone up too. We offer a good number of scholarships and other forms of financial aid, but most students here end up in serious debt.

I can say that the tuition keeps going up but faculty salaries are not a significant cause of this. Many states have cut back funding for higher ed and universities have had to hire additional administrators to beat the bushes for donations. A large part of a college dean's work these days involves raising money. My college is creating new non-degree "credential" programs to bring in more revenue. Of course this takes more faculty or stretches out currently faculty.

I don't really see an end to our problems unless states start putting more money into higher ed., but that seems unlikely to happen. Many state colleges and universities still maintained severe budget cuts or freezes even during the Obama recovery and into tRump's 4 years of mal-administration. Now with the covid problems and slowing of economic growth, I am certain it will get worse, including more salary cuts and other cost-saving measures.

Other advanced nations have nicer things than us because their people are willing to pay a bit more in taxes. Those taxes provide much more security though, in the form of nationalized health care and free or low-cost higher education, not to mention the benefits to retirees. In Amerika we have one political party that would like to pay virtually no taxes and thinks that a top marginal tax rate of 39% is communism.