Student Loans Suck

They really do- there's something fundamentally unfair about the fact that you can't discharge them through bankruptcy. There's private lendors out there who are maybe one or two steps away from being outright loan sharks. And, of course, there's the massive amount of them that people graduate with- on average around $23,000- the total student loan liability for the country is set to top $1 trillion, if it hasn't already.

That said, nobody makes you go to college. And nobody makes you take out student loans either... I think a large part of the anger that's swirling around out there centers around the fact that the generation that's currently getting the fuzzy end of this economic lollipop was spoon fed the bullshit ideas of chasing your dreams and 'everybody should go to college' and 'if you go to college, you can get a good job' and so a lot of people spurned perfectly decent state schools to go out of state to a massive expensive private college or other state school because they wanted to 'see something different.' Costs didn't matter because, after all, they were going to college and they were going to get a good job... loans would be a cinch.

Yeah, not so much anymore... while I think outright student loan forgiveness is probably about as likely as getting my own pet unicorn at this point- and I'd happily take both, I do feel that it's my obligation to work hard and pay these damn things off. No one put a gun to my head. No one made me take out loans. Yes, you can argue that maybe I and other young people weren't really made aware of the full consequences and scope of student loans, but all the knowlege is out there. We could have figured it out. We just chose not to.

It could be easier though- the President has offered a new plan for some relief. Capping yearly payments at 10% of your yearly income and lowering total repayment time to 20 years as well as making it easier to consolidate- and lowering interest rates. (You'd actually pay more over the long term if you throw in interest under this plan. Real relief would be stopping all interest period.) That's nice enough, I suppose- but all this chatter ignores the real problem:

How do we make college cheaper? Y'all know the score on this one- so sing it with me:
1. Cut administrative positions by 50%- use the savings to lower tuition.

2. Increase faculty teaching loads. They're not getting paid to figure out the preferred sexual position of the South American Fruit Fly.

3. Keep classes running year round- BYU-Idaho, I believe (See DIY U by Anya Kamanetz) admits students on a fall-spring, spring-summer, summer-fall basis year round.

4. Make Undergraduate Degrees 3 years instead of 4. (Universities are starting to twig to this already. I think Ball State has some 3 year BA programs, as does, I want to say Creighton.)

For the consumer, it's real simple: do the homework, apply for scholarships (I didn't, silly me), work your ass off and get done as soon as you possibly can. If you can knock off your bullshit gen eds at a community college on the cheap, totally do that (I didn't, silly me.)

There's hope out there for graduates and people just getting into college now... but let's not get bogged down in a debate over student loans without going to the source- the out of control costs of higher education itself.