Millions of people suffer the burden of crushing student loan debt. They borrowed tens of thousands in order to attend college, got their degrees, and had high hopes of paying their loans off – only to find that jobs were in short supply, and what jobs they could get had low wages and often no benefits. They more back in with Mom & Dad, pinch every penny they can get their hands on, pay as much every month as is humanly possible – and still the debt goes up, and up, and up. Often the debt increases faster than they can pay, so they find themselves owing more on interest than on the original loan. To add insult to injury, they can’t get out of this by declaring bankruptcy. Thus, barring the kind of miracle that happens only in silly Hollywood movies, they will be saddled with crushing debt the rest of their lives.
If the Devil ever found himself in a bind and way behind, all he would have to do is offer student debt relief in exchange for souls – and then he’d need to hire a platoon of assistants in order to deal with all those desperate grads. I would not be at all surprised if some people have, upon realizing there was no hope to pay off their debt other than winning the lottery or selling their souls, decided to end it all. Others may have disappeared themselves, or tried to do so – not easy in this age of the Internet and smart phones, unless you plan to hide in the jungles of Central and South America the rest of your life.
Sadly, some respond to this unhappy situation with snark such as “Well, you shouldn’t have majored in 14th Century Peruvian Pottery!” or “There’s an easy solution to your loan problem – pay it off!” Out of the mouths of lobotomized nincompoops hast thou ordained codswallop. To the former comment: These people aren’t getting Mickey Mouse degrees, they’re getting degrees in business and computers and other fields that should help them land well-paying jobs right out of college. They should be able to walk off campus, sheepskins in hand, and drive straight to their new employers, ready to pay off their loans in a year or two. But that doesn’t always happen.
To the second snark: How the Hello Kitty are they supposed to pay off those loans when they don’t have the money for that? How are they supposed to pay off their debts when they can barely afford basic living expenses? The people at whom you direct your vile, ignorant snark are living in rat-holes that they share with other people, subsisting on ramen and lentils, buying clothes at thrift stores, darning their socks and underwear – and this is what you give them? Where human beings have hearts, you have ice-cold chunks of obsidian. You might as well tell starving beggars “All you need to end your hunger is a good meal!” then walk away without offering even an after-dinner mint.
The interest on student loans is outrageous. I recently saw a graphic – which I tried to find – about a typical loan, and how much the grad had payed off, and what remained. The unpaid part of the loan was considerably larger than the original loan. How is this allowed to happen? Permitting interest to balloon like this is not just criminal, it is downright evil. The slimy pieces of worm-ridden filth who run student loan providers have neither hearts, nor souls, nor consciences. They should be arrested and then tried, convicted and sentenced for usury – if not out-and-out fraud.
We need to make higher education affordable, if not free. Maybe community colleges can be free, or education up to a Bachelor’s level. Or we can bring back the apprenticeship system, so if you want to be a computer programmer you learn the ropes under a skilled, experienced programmer. No matter what the best solution, our higher education system needs a serious overhaul. Hell, our ENTIRE education system needs an overhaul. I’ll tackle the joke that is K-12 education in the USA in a separate essay.
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