www.publicsource.org: In the past 30 years, tuition for one year at a public university increased by more than 200%. As rising expenses for college and rent outpace wages, more than 44.7 million Americans have student loan debt totaling $1.7 trillion. More than 2.1 million Pennsylvanians have unpaid student loans, totaling $71.5 billion, and the average cost for in-state college tuition in Pennsylvania for the 2019-2020 school year was $23,167.
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It's so unfortunate how this information isn’t passed on to high schoolers going on to college, at least in my school it wasn’t. It got buried underneath all the information on simply applying to schools, but money can sometimes be the deciding factor on what school you choose to attend. I know many of my friends simply had to choose universities they didn’t even care to go to because they got better financial aid. Financial aid also has huge problems in accessibility. Overall the situation of student loans is a huge problem in this country. As the article states not only is debut increasing, but in turn wages aren’t, which exacerbates the situation. I know when I told some fellow student that the minimum wage in Pennsylvania was $7.25, they were extremely shocked. So even thought the cost of living in Pittsburgh isn’t as high as many other cities, the low wages make it hard to ever live sustainably, especially under the weight of college debut and loans. So many people see college as the only option after grade school and never actually see this information that the article presents on how it can be a financial nightmare.
I was lucky enough to have access to college counseling through my high school, but even with that resource, many of my peers went into the college process with little knowledge or forethought regarding the financial impacts. In most cases, this was due to pressure from their parents to ignore the finances and go to whichever school was “the best”. Even if you go to the top university for your program and as a result get a higher paying job than if you had gone to a school that offered better aid, you won’t see the benefit of that extra money for many many years as you pay off your debts. The best option is to pick the school that is the best intersection of price and quality. I hope in the future more high schools can offer counseling to teach students the difference between federal and private, and subsidized and unsubsidized loans. I also think there needs to be less pressure to go to school when it is not necessary. There are plenty of well-paying jobs that do not require a degree and far too many people needlessly accumulating debt because they were told they had to go to college to make something of themselves. Supplied with this information, and with a more realistic attitude about the need to attend college, there would probably be less of a need for student loan forgiveness.
The national student loan debt situation is quite a beast. With a stronger push to get a college eduction over the last 20 years, I find my age group to be in a difficult situation. We are all encouraged to go to college and get a four year degree, no one talked about how much money it really costs. I had a few friends in high school get into fancy schools in Texas such as A&M or UT and now they have a lot of dept. I fortunately went to a small private university and paid less than 1/10th of what they paid for undergrad. I was able to graduate with no debt because of scholarships, grants, and work opportunities. Had I not gone that route, there is no way that I would have been able to consider going to grad school at Carnegie Mellon. I am now taking on a bit of debt but the pause that Biden put on student loan repayment has made it possible to have less stress. I think that there needs to be more education on the cost of tuition alongside the push. Additionally, schools need to start being held responsible for increasing their prices.
I probably wouldn't be going to college if it wasn't for the extensive financial aid I receive. I'm incredibly grateful for all that I'm receiving, but it's still somewhat demoralizing to know that despite the grants, scholarships, and other sources of aid I'm receiving doing a great amount, that I'm still going to end up with an excessive amount of debt. I consider myself one of the very fortunate poor students too.
The worst part I find is that while not going to college can be viable, a lot of industries refuse to hire people that don't have a bachelors (don't even get me started on experience requirements for entry level jobs). With the excessively rising expectations of employment nowadays, it really feels like college is an expensive necessity that inevitably shackles you to debt.
Student loan debt in the United States is utterly out of control. It has always been apparent to me that if I want to complete a bachelor's degree, I will be required to borrow money to do it. It really kind of bothers me when articles present this situation as “here's what to consider before applying” because there is no equitable way through college without taking out private or federal loans. While institutions are completely at fault for this, there does not seem to be much motivation coming from anywhere to address the issue. Sure, student loan debt is a hot topic on Capital Hill but we are so far from any sort of resolution it does not even feel real to consider. Some things that I can appreciate from this article is the drive to educate those who are about to take out loans and what those loans really mean. I really wish there would be a day that college did not have to be a loss versus reward gamble, but until then, I guess all we can do is educate ourselves and try to be successful in order to pay off the student loans.
My dad paid for his entire first year of college out of pocket with money that he got working a summer job. My dad paid out of pocket while I can say with full certainty that without my financial aid I would not be attending CMU. CMU is unbelievably expensive and even with my financial aid, I will be going into incredible debt after graduating. This is the unfortunate thing about college and even more specifically high education in the arts. I would not have been able to audition for CMU if the pandemic had not forced things to be moved online. The cost not only to attend CMU but even just to get accepted is far higher than it ought to be. This is keeping the idea that the arts are only for the rich intact. I was lucky enough to have some financing classes at my high school but not everyone is so lucky. Now more than ever colleges should be thinking about how to move forward and make themselves more accessible for all.
Student Loan debt is insane. I am fortunate in that I went to a community college for the first two years of my degree and then a local state school for the rest of my bachelor's but that was largely because I was paying out of pocket for my tuition and even then it required I work about 50 hours a week the entirety of the time I was enrolled.
It's criminal that we saddle young people with so much debt at such a young age. We force them to make a choice on what they wanna do with their lives before they are old enough to vote and then saddle them with potentially hundreds of thousands in debt to have the privilege of marrying themselves to that early decision they may lose passion for. I wonder how many people just do something they hate for their whole lives just because we made them choose at an early age?
I agree that earlier education is necessary on this. The two best things that I did was taking 2 year offs school after High School to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and then deciding to go to local schools that were cheaper for my bachelor's or I never would have been able to afford coming to grad school.
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