Debt-free college.
Is it synonymous with “unicorn” or the latest and greatest gift from the U.S. government?
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, along with leaders in Congress, are pushing for legislation and grassroots support to eliminate student debt. But is it as good as it sounds?
Upon closer inspection, the idea of “debt-free college” is not only irresponsible, but also an unrealistic promise to young people.
U.S. House and Senate leaders, members of the media and students gathered at the Capitol’s Visitor Center Wednesday morning for a press conference on the announcement of the group’s “growing momentum for a national goal of debt-free college as it becomes a central issue for Democrats in 2016.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the crowd that the enormous debt students face from higher education is “just plain wrong” and that it “goes against the American grain.”
Schumer purported that a college education is the ticket to getting into and staying in the middle class. He said that without college education or burdened with the debt from education, people are barred from “starting a family or buying a home – crucial to their lives, crucial to our economy.”
“Simply put,” Schumer added, “I hope that debt free college is the next big idea as we fight to make college education affordable once again.”
Schumer is telling millennials that higher education is the only way you, in America, can make it into the middle-class and achieve the American dream of owning your own home or having a family. But what does this say to the many people in the previous generations and today who have established a career and a life for themselves without a college education?
Earlier this year, Beyond Outrage author Robert Reich summed up on the issue facing student’s today in a blog for The Huffington Post titled, “Why College Isn’t (And Shouldn’t Have to Be) for Everyone”
And it’s true — the norm for high school students across America is a push to a four-year institution. Yet as recently as 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that 44 percent of college graduates were employed in jobs that didn’t require their degree.
Despite this, the supporters of the “Debt-Free College” movement continue to echo to students that going away to school for four years to get a degree is their only chance at the American Dream and the only way in to the middle class.
The supporters of this movement see spending more money to send everyone to a system that has proven it is not the measure of success for all people as the answer to years of low employment, a lagging economy and a sky-high national debt.
But it also only pushes forward one path, when in truth there are many paths to the American Dream.
One of the problems with pushing college as the only viable option and a major reason why so many recent college graduates are underemployed is because the supply of college-educated people in the workforce has increased at a rate much faster than the demand. College graduates looking for an entry-level position either find themselves overqualified for jobs that don’t require their degree or under-educated for jobs that require further schooling.
Though there is often a stigma in pursuing a vocational skill instead of a college degree, it seems that should be an option equally supported and encouraged for young people.
The Wall Street Journal pointed this out just this month, writing “too often, other non-bachelor’s-degree technical-training programs, such as apprenticeships that could also help students learn highly paid skills, get short shrift as well.”
Hard work and success have never been exclusively reserved just for students who go to college. Everyone can think of someone they know who paid for a college degree and ended up not using it.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) referred Wednesday to many colleges as “diploma mills” – yet that is the exact thing that offering debt-free college to students will contribute to and create.
The option of having your debt absolved by the government is a huge incentive to go to college, and get a degree — any degree — just because you can. That will create true diploma mills and only serve to devalue the bachelor’s degree further than it has been.
And yet the students proudly wearing “I Am a Student Debt Voter” t-shirts at the press conference didn’t seem to grasp any of that.
Despite the negatives that come along with it, Yale student Jacob Woocher, 21, believes that college should be a right for everyone in America if for no other reason than the social skills and the “great environment” a college campus provides.
“Whether or not they gain valuable skills for their job, I think college is a great environment for kids to be in – you don’t want some idiot 18 year-old kid out in the world with maybe a high school education and say ‘go figure it out,'” he told Red Alert Politics. “18-22 is a huge part of your life having college to figure yourself out – I think it’s great.”
But is it the government’s job to send kids to college? Is it their responsibility to make it possible for that 18-22 year old “idiot” to go to school for four — or in many cases, five or six — years to “figure themselves out?”
Of course, a bachelor’s degree will never be a bad thing, per se. Just like that extra slice of pizza or paying to go to a concert you’re not that excited for, but all your friends were going to be there — it’s not an inherently bad thing. There just may have been better option for you personally that also could have saved you some money.
Encouraging young people to determine which path is best for them, then promoting hard work and job growth so that they can pay off a student loan and not be burdened with even more federal taxes, might just be more realistic option than “debt-free college.”
