President Barack Obama’s outlining of the nation’s budget last week was certainly a polarizing endeavor, but his administration’s corresponding outreach toward college students &- current and prospective, alike &- is something that should be universally appreciated. For its criticism of being shortsighted and spendthrift, Washington D.C.’s financial planning is marketing a steady, long-term plan to widen collegiate accessibility and also help the already-graduated crowd avoid the vice grip of post-graduation debt. While some of the country’s money is set to freeze, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has made it explicitly clear that keeping the Y-generation educated is a cause worth active splurging. And it is.
As it stands, a four-year undergraduate stint at Boston University that includes tuition and room and board will cost almost $200,000, and that is only at a fixed rate. The pace at which tuition increases is generally accepted to be more than that of inflation, and by the time a student graduates, he or she has already accumulated the stuff of several decades’ worth of impending loan repayment. If the trend continues, college will become totally unreachable to most of the nation and something available only to the financial upper-echelon. After a certain saturation point is reached, jobs will only be available to the already well-off.
A proposed forgiveness program is set to eliminate the debt students owe on government loans after 20 years of repayment, and if a graduate enters the public service sphere as a profession, it will disappear after only 10. It’s impossible to require a job applicant to have spent enough money for the college diploma that’s required to apply for a job, only to be dealt a salary that does not venture close to covering that cost. Moreover, the plan is working to eliminate federal subsidies to private lenders, which is money Duncan said can be allocated directly to students. The pot for Pell Grants could also drastically increase.
Nobody should go broke or bankrupt for going to college and the resulting payment should not be a life-long stronghold that can only be offset by premature death. If potential students continue to be dissuaded from applying to college or attending, the next generation of policymakers and legislators will move even closer toward an oligarchic elite. The state of American politics cannot afford to cut off higher education to any more of its population. It’s already an option that is offered to too few.
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