I'm lucky, and I know it. When I graduate in two years times - Inshallah* - I'll be doing so free from the cloud of student loans that will be following my peers nationwide, thanks to a combination of scholarships and parental contributions that (barring financial catastrophe on either of their parts) is projected to leave me without debt in May 2014. Though under no illusions in terms of my upper middle-class privilege, I did make a concerted and occasionally painful decision to search for schools not based on aspirations but based on pragmatism. I don't mean to knock Tulane - I've had rewarding experiences there, and, more importantly to 19-year old me, met inspiring people - but the fact remains that it simply would not have been my first choice, had opportunity and life on the academic frontier been my sole concerns. That fact is relevant to highlight, not as a bragging right, but simply as a statement of fact, and an acknowledgement of the way that circumstance inflects my emotional, psychological, political and economic understandings of the student loan crisis.
The student loan crisis, exceeding total credit card debt with obligations upwards of 1 trillion in the US, exists in the public consciousness as a kind of poison - crippling graduates with debt as they flounder in an increasingly competitive marketplace.As the economy idles, student are caught between bad credit (which further diminishes their marketability), fewer middle-income jobs, and a dull, aching hopelessness born of being locked into payments that (on private loans) [were, before Obama's recent reforms] often subject to skyrocketing rates, with no potential for bankruptcy. Some economists have expressed concern that the sluggish job growth rates, in addition to the impact of student loans in deterring major financial investments, combine to make student loan burdens a primary concern for jumpstarting the economy. There's some debate over the aggregate scope of the problem - whether delinquency rates are actually abnormal, whether stories of $100K liabilities and debt until retirement are representative or sensationalized outliers - but from the standpoint of a sophomore in college, the psychological aspect of this conversation resonates pretty strongly with me, and that's the perspective I hope to adopt in the course of this post.
Certain voices, largely (far) on the left (notably the Green Party candidate Roseanne Barr) have called for some variety of student loan forgiveness, a proposition often framed in relative and oversimplified terms: we bailed out the wealthy bankers, why not bail out the poor, Ramen-sucking college student? The actual mechanics of potential Loan Forgiveness legislation (as outlined in HR 4071, a proposed but never really viable piece of legislation on the issue) require students to have paid 10% of their discretionary income (income above 150% of the poverty line, which would currently mean ~34,000/year) for 10 years, at which point, they are eligible to see the remainder of their loan commitments forgiven. For years where income fell below 34K, "contribution" would be zero, but would still be valid in counting towards the necessary ten years. For current borrowers, the amount would be unlimited, but for borrowers initiating their education after passage, it would be capped at $45K.
Practically speaking, it would fundamentally reorient the financial underpinnings of postsecondary education, by basing loan repayment on actual employment rather than assumed employment. If two people went to two different schools, one private with $45K of loans, one public with $24K of loans, and ended up with the same job and income level, let's say $58,000/year for ten years, they would end up paying the same total amount on their student loans. If the gamble behind private, top-tier schools pays off, however, and the $45 K graduate ended up getting a $90,000/year job, he or she would have to pay down almost all of their debt before they would be eligible for forgiveness.
This bill never had a shot in hell of getting out of the House, much less through the Senate and the President. The likelihood of its policy proscriptions being put into practice is practically nil. Nonetheless, after a much-regretted hour sifting through a comment threads on an HR4071 article (and one day, I swear our generation's kids will replace the car wreck metaphor with logic-death-spiral comment threads: horrible, but can't look away), I became fascinated by the dynamics of the debate, specifically in its judgmental, responsibility-driven rhetoric, and its insistence on the individual mistakes rather than the systemic ones.
When the bank bailout was on the table, discussion centered around the "irresponsible homeowners" (even though they weren't the ones being bailed out) but it never quite zoomed in on the irresponsible bankers. This was, in my view, in my view, they handled systems so complex that the average American couldn't empathize with their experience, or because it was hard to pinpoint malfeasance or ignorant in one person, as we so love to do. The danger, we were told, wasn't to the financial futures of certain individuals, but to our way of life as a whole. If the banks collapsed, we all collapsed. It was a tough pill to swallow, but we did it. In this case, many of the same dynamics are at play, but because we see students as individual actors, and not as dominos within a dysfunctional and self-destructive system the idea of forgiving student loans seemed reflexively unpalatable to people. Even though that system was and is dysfunctional and self-destructive: with it's research-centered business models, constantly inflating tuition costs, shame culture around trade schools, and inaccurate information conveyed to teens re. the prospects for a generic graduate. Even though we know and can accept that student loans are, in aggregate, a problem: dragging down the momentum of the economy, destroying credit, dictating the mobility and discretionary spending of an ascending generation. We can bail out banks because they threaten our wellbeing, and because they're often too abstract to effectively hate. That idiot kid who majored in Sociology, on the other hand, him we can hate, him we can blame unremittingly. Just as empathy is facilitated by the focus on the individual, when we rely on caricature instead of connection, jealousy and judgement are similarly fueled by an single target.
Whatever the current bog our educational system finds itself in, it's self-evidently clear in my book that it's in need of serious, foundational reform, but reform that I think has phenomenal potential to be further empowering and democratic, rather than exclusionary. For generations, trade school and technical employment was the purview of the lower and merchant classes, while self-enriching, liberal arts education stayed locked in ivory towards. Now, liberal arts are increasingly looked down on, as the refuge of indolent, navel-gazing rich kids with no real ambitions or productive capacity, whereas technical training is the new ideal. Though I'd be the last to disown the value of the liberal arts, I think that there's a lot of truth in that criticism: it's insane, in 2012, to PAY for a liberal arts education. Just sit back for a second, and think. Every classic canonical text, available online. Lectures from the world's best, self-teaching courses, the ability to converse with anyone, anywhere, new platforms cropping up to facilitate communication and collaboration. If liberal arts are to survive as a valued part of culture, maybe it's best hope to do that is by unhinging itself from the exclusive and often destructive university machines, and empowering students and potential teachers to engage in free schools, trade schools, interactive knowledge-sharing. Maybe, if enough people became involved in a decentralized, internet-wide knowledge economy, it could even have a chance of being formalized (methods of internet-based accreditation, records and "transcripts" of articles, comments, papers graded by peers, etc).
As more and more human labor becomes mechanized, it's unclear what economies of the late 21st century will look like, but my thinking is that liberal arts, while always valuable, may be come increasingly less valued in monetary terms. If we want respect for liberal arts to survive, I don't think clinging to an outdated system with eyes sqeezed shut is really a viable model. I think taking inspiration from the democratizing trajectory of education and imagining a new model of sharing, enriching, and connecting ourselves might be.
Wishing you sunny days and sleepy kittens,
Cody
Arabic Word of the Day: Inshallah. Literally translated as "if God wills it," but often used (as "God Willing" is in English vernacular) outside of any actual religious context. Widely, widely used in Arabic-speaking discourse, and theorized by some to indicate less of a fixation with individual control over one's life and one's future vis a vis the West. Not to be Orientalist, just an interesting perspective.
Quote of the Day: "There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit, some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis." - Rebecca Solnit, a Field Guide to Getting Lost
P.S. Is it valuable to tell kids "follow your dream/passion"? Particularly when so many talented/passionate people were able to succeed not because they were consciously able to focus on that as a career, but because keeping up a passion in parallel with an often labor-intensive paying job built discipline? Just a thought on generational shifts in parenting...
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