Student Debt Crisis in American Colleges

In this presidential election year for the U.S., fierce partisan competitions and the on-going euro crisis both indicate a common contractible disease in the western world: public debts that are increasingly out of control. In addition, private debt also becomes a serious problem. Since the burst of the real estate bubble triggered by subprime mortgages, more than 10 million “drowned” home owners have been suffocated by their house mortgages, and thus have become a great domestic challenge for Obama administration. While these people still need to pay back their house mortgages, their houses are no longer worth their prices in the market.

In this U.S. presidential election year, another debt crisis has incrementally floated up to the surface too: student loans for higher education. According to a New York Times report, the total number of college student loans has reached an astronomical figure of one trillion dollars, approximately 10 times the total expenses of the Iraq War in its 10 years. Moreover, the crisis could be called “covering both public and private schooling.” Under the deteriorating economy and employment market, the ones in debt are the one in four individuals who seek college education, yet can’t afford to pay back their loans and thus default. Additionally, 90 percent of student loans are issued by the federal government, whose already risky debts will definitely be worsened for the sake of lowering liability pressure for college students.

The student debt crisis speaks directly to the current political argument in the U.S.: increasingly worsened social polarization as well as rapid disappearance of opportunities for the lower classes to come up in society. For most Americans, college education means the only way to reach or maintain the middle class status. Those holding a college degree or above earn more than twice as much as those with only a high school education, and this gap is still widening.

The sky-rocketing increase of higher education tuition has overtaken pay raises and the inflation rate, a trend particularly true at public universities that used to have low costs and accommodated more than half of the nation’s students. Due to local administrations’ consistent cutting on educational funding, these universities have had to increase tuition greatly, seriously burdening lower class and middle class students. According to a New York Times report on June 1, a new round of funding decreases and tuition increases faced by California universities, including the world-renowned UC Berkeley, is even making it difficult for middle class families to afford higher education. Obama also mentioned in his first Iowa election speech five years ago that in 10 years, 2 million American students would be prevented from going to universities due to increasingly expensive tuitions.

In 1993, only 45 percent of American students went to college on loans; however, the figure has reached 94 percent today, meaning that only six out of every hundred graduates are out of debt while the rest have an average loan of more than $20,000, among whom more than 10 percent have a debt over $50,000. Luckily for them, they at least get their degrees in the end. According to the Washington Post, nearly 30 percent of students applying for loans end up dropping out of the college, wasting all the money that can never be paid pack.

Those who are not highly educated tend to support the Republican Party.

Relieving school debts for the majority of college students and maintaining fairness in terms of social ascending opportunities naturally become great issues in the big election year. The U.S. Congress is debating a bill that has the federal government providing long-term student loans with low interest rates.

However, this bill has been opposed by many conservatives. The big name Washington Post Columnist George Orwell has correctly pointed out, for instance, that the bill will make the government fund those who are able to go to college with all the taxpayers’ money and enable them to get paid after graduation twice as much as those who don’t make it to college, which literally is “helping the rich by sacking the poor.”

On the flip side, liberals argue that higher education is critical to America’s economic competitive power and that the less funding the government is willing to offer, the fewer opportunities there will be for the poor to attend college, so they get stuck in lower social classes for generations. Statistical data show a petrifying and hereditary phenomenon in the American society: among the top one fourth, best paid class, 82 percent of students hold a college degree. In contrast, only 6 percent of the children from the lowest one fourth, and worst paid class have finished their university life.

The debate has great political implications in this election year. Most public opinions show that among white voters, the support for the Republicans is inversely proportionate to the degree of education they have. “Brainwashed” by liberalism, students holding a college or a higher degree show a particular predilection towards the Democratic Party, while blue collar Caucasians who didn’t go to college still make up the grassroots pillar for the Republicans.

Blue collar workers have been increasingly subjected to a tough social competition in the post-industrialization era, hence generating a strong sense of “sour grapes” anti-elitism. A clear example of this mindset is the Tea Party’s support of the Republican candidate Santorum, who once criticized Obama as being snobbish when the president called for everyone to go to college. With a residue of racism, white people in the Tea Party believe that the federal government is funding the few Obama-like national elites by taking their tax money.

Apart from political matters in the election year, the debt crisis for college students also reflects “IQ mutation” and “education mutation” in American society. The retention of social status is not about the inheritance of monetary properties — it is about the insurance of the following generation’s “education assets” through monetary means. An expert from Colombia University recently disclosed to New York Times that through the lens of the SAT (a standardized test with a total score of 2400), the most popular American college entrance examination, the average total score for test-takers from families earning less than $20,000 a year is 1320, while those from families with an annual earning more than $200,000 get 1700 on average. Anyone who has been to university understands the critical role that the tight relationship between income and test scores contributes to opportunities in higher education and school ranking.

According to various reports, college expenses and schooling debts are also becoming great obstacles in the way of social ascension for rural or low income family kids, deteriorating rich-poor polarization and worsening hereditary monopoly. Loan crises for American college students should teach Beijing an introspective lesson.