DETROIT – President Biden’s decision to forgive $10,000 in student loans was, not surprisingly, deeply controversial, as is almost everything in politics today.
“Well, I was a chump,” one man wrote. “I worked and paid off my loans myself.” But plenty of others disagreed. Renee Sebastian, a 41-year-old social worker who still owes $73,000 on both graduate and undergraduate loans, applauded the decision, saying “it’s about time and should be more,” but said it was even more important to do something about the interest rates on those loans.
Virtually no one doubts that the student loan debt burden has gotten seriously out of hand. More than 43 million Americans now have student loan debt totaling $1.75 trillion and rising, an average of almost $29,000 per borrower.
Yet what about another idea that’s being boosted by some liberals and some conservatives — a year or two of voluntary, or perhaps even mandatory, national service after high school?
Participants could choose either military, or in the case of most, non-military service. Those who successfully completed it might then get some GI-bill style financial assistance for college.
Before considering this more deeply, we should look at the real problem, which has largely been ignored by the controversy over the issue — the immense, and for many outrageous, cost of higher education. Yes, it really is far more difficult for today’s students to afford higher education than it was for boomers.
Both Washington and most state governments tried to make college widely affordable in the years after World War II.
Government programs generally paid about 70 percent of tuition costs, and scholarships and low-interest loans easily covered the rest. Mark Bendure, a highly successful 72-year-old appellate attorney, recalled that when he was a student, “with a summer job in the factory and a part-time job during the school year, one could make enough money to graduate without debt.”
The world has changed, however, and government is no longer as willing to foot nearly as much of the expense of education. Ironically, higher education of some form, either conventional college or the skilled trades, is now essential for anyone who aspires to live even a middle-class life.
No longer can high school grads get an unskilled job on an assembly line and make a middle-class income. Nor can the average parents afford to put their children through even a state university.
As long as governments are unwilling to appropriate the kind of funds for higher ed they did during the Cold War, today’s students seem doomed to be priced out of the market or saddled with crippling debt well into middle age. “My generation had to choose between kids and a career,” said Sebastian, who is childless.
But would national service make sense? David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, came out strongly in favor of it in May, 2000, during the worst of the pandemic.
“Has any nation prospered that did not encourage in each new generation the habits of work, the taste for adventure, a sense of duty and a call to be of use to neighbors and the world?” he asked.
Exactly a year later, the Times itself, which is regarded as liberal, agreed in an editorial: “What could be objectionable in asking all young people to pause before plunging into the scramble of adult life to donate some of their time and energies to some socially beneficial, critically needed service at home or abroad?
The paper waffled, however, as to whether such service should be mandatory, quoting Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as saying it should be “if not legally obligatory, certainly a social norm.”
Yet one of Michigan’s most accomplished education experts isn’t at all sure. Casandra Ulbrich, the president of Michigan’s State Board of Education, is a remarkable success story.
Now 48, she has a Ph.D and essentially put herself through college and graduate school – the first member of her family to do so. The daughter of a single mom who worked in a factory, she did it by taking her first two years at a good but low-cost community college, then transferring to the University of Michigan for her last two years.
Later, she worked for both that community college and then Wayne State University, partly so she could take advantage of the huge tuition break employees get.
“You’ll never get mandatory service in this country, and I would oppose it,” said Ms. Ulbrich, who is also vice-chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She’s not even sure that voluntary service is a good idea, partly because careers would have to be placed on hold, “and people would lose their place on the ladder.”
She added that for many people like her, with no family history of higher education, it could be easy to get distracted and not go to college or a university at all.
Still, she acknowledges that money is a huge problem. “I borrowed $22,000 for two years at the U of M; that would pay for one year now,” and said she might be open to a voluntary program that would pay a living wage and provide some educational benefits.
The bottom line, however, is that higher education of some kind is absolutely essential today, and except for those who go into the skilled trades, young Americans are drowning in ever-increasing debt.
And that’s not something that is sustainable — or easily solved.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
