IF ONLY we didn't owe so much money! Exorbitant tuition prices are not just expenses to us students --- they cost our community too.
Last year I wrote how high tuition at the entrance gate limits opportunities since students cannot afford to attend college. At the exit gate, high tuition also limits opportunitiessince indebted students cannot afford to work in the best career for them. Society simultaneously suffers.
After graduation, debt becomes the 800-pound gorilla weighing on students' backs. Federal and state governments must ease this burden, and citizens should elect those candidates who favor government programs to ease the debt burden on students and their families. Without more public financing of higher education, we must brace for a social meltdown. It has already begun.
Larger debt burdens inhibit college graduates from serving the public, such as joining the Peace Corps, doing volunteer work, working as grassroots political activists or becoming a public defender. Debt burdens alter the complete social landscape.
I myself will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts diploma --- and over $20,000 in debt, despite my generous grants. Each time I remember this burden, I become less and less likely to consider serving the public after I graduate. Debt and the office cubicle have become friends.
Every time an investment bank pays for full-page recruitment advertisements in college newspapers, I shudder to think of those who might participate in public service like Teach for America but bow to the unmerciful whip of debt and dart toward the private sector. Indirectly, society pays the price of high tuition too.
High tuition is driving a wedge between the college educated and those who cannot afford college, separating access to the better jobs, incomes and intelligence that a college education provides.
Unsurprisingly, making college tuition affordable has become a central issue in the Democratic presidential campaigns. "In 10 to 20 years we will have social unrest in this country far exceeding anything we've ever seen," if the tuition burden does not lessen, warned University of Wisconsin regent Nino Amato to the Madison, Wis. newspaper The Isthmus ("The High Price of Knowledge, Nov. 21 2003).
Money now conditions the use to such a critical step in life's success -- college.How has this happened?
When Abraham Lincoln instilled the land-grant program, it was a philosophy that "was in the best interests of the state to have an educated citizenry and so the state invested and paid a substantial part of the cost of public education," historian Art Hove told The Isthmus.
In came Republicans (not named Lincoln) to statehouses and capitals around the country offering seductive -- yet reckless -- tax cuts. When Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore slashed the car tax, he made no provisions to compensate funding for education like the University. His wanton slashing means thousands of Virginian students now shun becoming teachers, while they instead climb the corporate ladder to pay off their massive debts.
"Now the philosophy is, that it's the individual who benefits most, and he or she should therefore pay the lion's share," adds Hove. But when students fight the ferocious claws of tuition, when schools lack teachers, when those youth who can't afford tuition become so frustrated with their life chances they resort to crime, our society pays the most.
Though the House of Representatives recently passed the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act, it is too specific of legislation -- only forgiving the loans of certain teachers to certain subjective "high need areas" -- to solve profound social deficits in the entire teaching profession and other forms of public service.
Citizens are neglecting to look at the consequences of lower taxes on public goods like education. "Would you like to have a $300 tax credit or $2000 in higher tuition?" Howard Dean once asked me.
Exorbitantly high tuition is indeed gravely afflicting society, and this election voters should consider ways to lower its burden on students -- who offers the best way to ease this burden, rather than speculating for whom someone in Tennessee might vote.
Looking at Howard Dean's higher education plan, he seems to recognize this problem. Through his "College Commitment" plan, graduates will "never have to pay more than 10 percent of their income after college on student loan payments." Better yet, those choosing to enter the public service (in professions such as nursing, law enforcement and teaching) will never have to pay more than 7 percent of their income to service debt. If debt still remains outstanding after 10 years, the government will pay the remaining debt.That's a solution to a social ill.
Now is the time to stop turning our backs on the ideal of affordable tuition. For some, a college diploma liberates opportunity. For others, a college diploma is a reminder of perilous danger ahead, ready to attack upon a missed due date. As Americans, we must support the ideas and politicians that free opportunity from the clutches of money.
(Brandon Possin's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bpossin@cavalierdaily.com.)
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