I left school owing $800, or about $4,400 in today's dollars. These days, most financial "aid" resembles foreign "aid" to developing countries—that is, it generally takes the form of loans whose interest piles up so fast that it's hard to keep up with it, let alone begin to pay off the principal in your post-college life. Some numbers to contemplate: 62% of those graduating with a BA in 2019 did so owing money—owing, in fact, an average of almost $29,000. The average debt of those earning a graduate degree was an even more staggering $71,000. That, of course, is on top of whatever the former students had already shelled out while in school. And that, in turn, is before the "miracle" of compound interest takes hold and that debt starts to grow like a rogue zucchini.
There's much more, especially explaining the strange trajectories of people whose expensive PhD's only qualify them to become poorly paid "adjunct" college teachers, shepherding masses of students through an education of dubious value. Read all about it.
Yet she doesn't give up on the idea of humane learning -- nor can any of us.
Photo is from 2012, but the demand to "Cancel the debt" remains.
1 comment:
I shudder to think of the debt amounts many students incur seeking a higher education. I paid off my undergraduate costs in a couple years. Decades later post-grad and graduate school costs took a bit longer, but nothing compared to what students have today.
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