As a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, I have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. My parents were not the Kardashians, so I stand to benefit significantly from student loan forgiveness. Furthermore, I do not entirely subscribe to the right-wing thought that student loan forgiveness is bad. After all, if our government spends millions on gender studies programs in Pakistan, I’d rather see that go to student loan forgiveness here at home.
However, student loan forgiveness doesn’t address the root of the problem — colleges charging ridiculous tuition prices.
In the student loan debt crisis, colleges and universities have escaped the blame they deserve. These institutions charge gargantuan predatory prices with little justification, mostly just because students have access to the loan money.
Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders constantly lament the $1.6 trillion student debt crisis, but I cannot find any evidence that they have ever focused on the outsize role colleges played in creating it. They hold Wall Street to different political, financial, and moral standards than universities, which have arguably behaved in a far greedier way.
Tuition prices have soared well beyond the inflation rate — an especially noteworthy fact given the current state of affairs. Between 1978 and 2019, college tuition prices increased by a shocking 1,375% — four times the rate of inflation and eight times faster than wages since the 1980s.
Why is this? Has it suddenly become significantly more expensive to teach foreign languages? History? Science or math? And if so, why is it so much more?
The reason is exploitative behavior by college administrators. They took advantage of the loans and the cultural pressure to obtain a college degree to maximize profits. They significantly increased tuition prices, knowing they had a sociological monopoly on secondary education. In turn, universities manipulated government programs for their financial gain.
Quite frankly, if Wall Street had committed the diabolical scheming that colleges did, politicians such as Warren and Sanders would crucify them all along the main roadway, one after another, just to set an example.
Politicians have failed the public regarding the student debt crisis. Too few of them have given any attention to what caused skyrocketing tuition prices — prices that still increase annually without justification or, usually, explanation. More of our country’s leaders, from both political parties, need to investigate the causes behind tuition inflation — especially the ballooning in university administrations.
The institutions that once prioritized the pursuit of knowledge and higher learning have transformed into financial racketeers. It is time we start placing the blame where it belongs. Student loan forgiveness is nice, but if nothing is done about college tuition costs, we will be in the same predicament over and over again in the future.
