Student Loans -- Not a Crisis

I went to school late in life.  I didn't catch "the bug" until my mid to late 20's and graduated with my bachelor's degree at the ripe young age of 31.  Knowing that I had to pay for all of my education I was strategic and deliberate.  Something about footing the bill made it more valuable -- in class I wanted my money's worth!  I didn't want class to be let our early or have class cancelled. I had paid for the whole hour.

I started at a community college.  I found there, teachers who wanted to teach rather than teachers who needed to publish.  Most large universities make a good portion of their income on the published works of its professors; the professors there MUST publish or perish.  That need to publish is often a distraction from their primary job of teaching -- not so at a community college.  I worked toward a transfer goal and was accepted to U.C. Davis as a junior. Thus far I had no student debt.  I worked throughout my first two years and found the community college schedule quite conducive for that.

At Davis I applied for student aid.  I got a Pell Grant which almost everyone can get.  I got a Board of Governor's Grant in California which again almost anyone can get.  I applied for a couple of other small private grants and got them too.  The grant money is out there -- you just have to sit down and do it.  I then applied for two small student loans.  The lowest rate was 5% and the highest hovered just under 8%.  Again I found a part time job at a golf country club waiting tables.  I studied, I road my bike and I worked.  I did not party, play harder than I worked and did not waste my time or my money.

When I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Economics I had just under $8K in student debt.  That to me was a lot of money!  I had a year before I needed to begin paying it back.  Right after graduation I moved to Colorado and set out to find a job.  None were to be found.  The dot com bubble had begun to leak and was readying to burst.  I knew no one and had no inside connections for anything.  It took me nearly six months to land a “real” job of any kind through a temp agency, prior to that I took any temp work that came along.  The “good” temp job ended up becoming a permanent job and I was set.  Then the bubble did burst and the Titanic-of-a-software-company I was working for went belly up.  I found more temp jobs and was able to piece together an income.  By now my loans were due.

When I began paying them back the payments were small -- very small. Anyone who did not take out more than a couple of loans can make those payments of the income of a waitress.  I found myself having to take work that did not use my degree at all but paid the bills.  I began to pay extra on the higher interest loan to pay it down faster.  When it was paid off I paid extra on the lower interest loan.  I paid them all off early. When you hear young people dithering about having debt until they are 40 (assuming they went to college right after high school) that is because of one of two things and sometimes both.  First, they took out way too much money in the forms of loans.  They don't have to do that -- they CHOOSE to do that.  And second they make minimum payments on those loans.  Most don't have to do that either.  They can forgo 3 lattes a week and make an extra payment.

On the morning before Mr. Obama was to address students at CU Boulder they interviewed students who had been waiting in line for tickets all night.  We heard the interviews on local radio. One girl was so excited that he was coming and that he as addressing the fact that their student loan interest rates were going up to just over 6%.  She went on to say that she thought education should be a "right".  Wait a sec young lady; you did get twelve years of free education!  I helped pay for your education too.  The rest of it is up to you.  Spread your little wings and fly.  The gift that all of us are blessed with in the United States is a free K-12 education.  Some people beyond that don't need or want more.  They take up a trade, enter into an apprenticeship or begin as an hourly worker somewhere and work their way up to management.  I would venture to guess that a large portion of today's degrees are never "used".  The college-aged generation today was raised in an entitlement atmosphere so no wonder they have an entitlement frame of mind.  A college education is NOT a right; the freedom to PURSUE one is.

Today’s student loan debt exceeds one TRILLION dollars.  Students are protesting this debt.  But wait a minute – it is their debt, not mine, not yours, but theirs.  Some of them actually want that debt forgiven.  I would like my mortgage debt forgiven too and my car payment and the credits cards, but that is not going to happen.  A student loan is an unsecured loan – they can’t really repossess a kid’s education.  Because it is unsecured, young people can actually threaten to walk away from their own personal debt and have few repercussions.  In many cases the value of the education in real terms is lower than the cost of the loan they took out to get that education.  But no one likes to look at this critically because it is our “young people” and it is “education”.  At eighteen a young man can enter the military and die in on foreign soil for the freedoms of this country. His peers of the same age can make better life decisions regarding their debt and their tolerance for it.  To write this off as an “error of the young” is absurd and inexcusable – this time if any, is the best time for them to learn to stand on their own two feet.   Today’s young people have got to understand what debt is and what it means before they take it on.

There are not a lot of great jobs out there – but there are jobs.  No one should believe that by getting a degree they are entitled to a job – it just isn’t so.  I took whatever I could get in order to support myself and service my debt.  I was not entitled to a thing – neither are they.  Grow up and take responsibility for the decisions you make and the money you take.