Technology 7: Student Debt

Recently, I have gotten very interested in student debt. I don’t particularly know why, but I started learning a lot about it and I’m very passionate about why we shouldn’t get rid of student debt. Here are my reasons;

In college, students gain important skills that will help them later on in life, and one of them is how to be economically savvy. Some students with debt work two jobs on top of their studies and remember to make their payments. Others constantly miss their payments and don’t give a hoot about how they’re going to pay off their loans. As quoted by expert higher education analyst Preston Cooper, “If Uncle Sam were to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans today, it would send an implicit message to future prospective borrowers: when student debt gets too high, the government will bail you out.” Also, by paying off all student debt, the government will be rewarding those who didn’t work hard. As described in an article written by Mary Claire Amselem, a policy analyst, why would anyone take the responsible route if they didn’t have to? In most cases, these loans are the first real experience that students have with money, and if the lesson they learn is to just not worry about it, they might believe that this applies to other situations in life. If students don’t pay off their own loans, they may lack vital skills for life and become dependent on the government to pay for their expenses. 

Everyone knows that there is nothing free in life. So, when politicians say that they want to  make college ‘free’ for students, they’re basically saying that someone else will pay, and that someone else usually ends up being the taxpayers. Now in theory, the rich would be taxed for this. But, as stated by financial attorney Leslie Tayne of Tayne Law, when taxes are put on those who are wealthy, “the rich have a way of working to minimize tax consequences, and the middle class is often hit the worst.” Additionally, as stated in a CBS article published on October 17, 2019, “those ultra-wealthy households pay a total rate of about 23% {in taxes}— that compares with 24.2% for the bottom half of households, which includes many in the middle class.” This means that the cost will most likely fall on all the other Americans. Why should they have to pay, especially since only 14% of students who go to college are from low income families? That means that the taxpayers will mostly have to pay for students whose families have enough money to send them to college comfortably. Additionally, many families already have to save up to send their own kids to college. If they can barely afford that, why should they have to pay for the kids of other families? Plus, there is the fact that people who get a college degree usually get better opportunities than those who don’t. If taxpayers are going to help someone, shouldn’t it be all those other people who don’t have a degree which will help them get a high paying job?

Finally, getting rid of student debt won’t solve the root of the problem. The reason that people get into debt is because college is so expensive! Right now, though college is expensive, it has some sort of cap because colleges know that if they charge a million dollars, no one will come. If taxpayers pay, what stops the colleges from continuing to raise their prices? This point was brought up by Mark Tucker in an article that was posted on the National Center on Education and the Economy. He stated that the government obviously couldn’t let that happen, so they would set a limit on how much a college could charge. But what is the cost of education? Going to Columbia costs about $60,000 because Columbia has excellent teachers and facilities and resources. If the government decides that colleges can only charge $50,000, Columbia might have to let go of some really good teachers. Also, colleges that charge a more affordable tuition could then raise their tuition without changing anything, and taxes would have to pay that. Tucker also stated that in other countries where college is free, not everyone gets the opportunity to go. For example, in Germany, about 30% of students go to college. In the United States, after high school, 69.7% of students go to college. If the United States became like Germany, more than half the students who would otherwise have gone to college might be denied an education. So, free college might actually allow less people to pursue higher learning opportunities. 

To many people though, getting rid of student debt seems morally wrong. Politicians argue that forcing students to pay mountain loads of cash to go to college is immoral because education is a right. And I agree with this! But why do kids need to go to college to get an education? As stated by Vince Nortin, a leading expert on college marketing, “why push more students to traditional college, when our country is suffering from a shortage of skilled workers?” Nowadays, a student can make a lot of money through a vocational job. A decent plumber can make over $50,000 a year and some other vocational jobs make as much as $80,000. While a few decades ago, a degree meant success and a great life, that’s not the case anymore. Because of technology, a student in Iowa who is sitting in his parents’ basement can watch the same physics video that someone in MIT is watching, and they could both learn the same things, even though the MIT kid paid more money to be in that position. So what’s stopping students from learning what they want using resources such as books or the internet? That way, they hardly have to pay anything and can learn comfortably at their own pace.

While at first, getting rid of all student debt seems like it would greatly benefit students, it would cause numerous problems. But while we shouldn’t get rid of student debt, we should make it a little easier for students to pay it off. In Australia, there is a system where a student wouldn’t have to pay their student loans and they wouldn’t gather interest until that student had a job with an income above a certain amount. Of course, there would have to be a time limit so that a student would eventually have to pay off their loans, but this would allow students to get back on their feet. Additionally, students need more of an education about debt. It is up to schools and parents to teach students about what happens when they get into debt. This will help them understand money better and may make it less likely for them to get into deep amounts of debt. 

 

Technology 7: Current Events

Recently, our country has been in turmoil. There is chaos in our streets, in our homes, in the media, and in the offices of our politicians. However, I think that some solutions that have been suggested are also ridiculous. Some people are proposing getting rid of the police entirely! That’s ridiculous! While some members of the police force have done bad things, not all police are evil! Honestly, I think that this problem is mostly the result of the fact that America is deeply divided, politically. Many people get their news from one media channel, but all media channels have their bias. They keep some facts and ignore others. For example, many media channels that usually portray a more Democratic opinion go on and on about how great protesters are, what President Trump is doing wrong, and how we should completely get rid of the police because they all of them are murderers. They completely ignore the fact that there are some rioters who kill police, destroy property, and basically commit criminal acts and instead depict all these protests to be peaceful parades that have been overrun by the police. They also ignore that while some police have done terrible, unforgivable things, not all police are like that. Some police are aiding and marching with the rioters, and honestly, many of them retaliate at crowds because those crowds are throwing bricks or bags of urine at them. How can you be expected not to retaliate if your life is in danger? But, from reading articles by CNN, one would think that police are murdering all protesters regardless of what they are doing. On the flip side, media channels that usually portray a more Republican opinion talk about how incredible Trump is, how police are killed or injured everyday during riots, and how all protesters are thugs that should be locked up for life. They don’t care that many protesters are peaceful and are simply trying to fight for what they believe in, they just want to focus on the damage that riots have created. In these articles, one could find pages and pages filled with the problems that riots have caused and how much abuse police have taken, but there isn’t a word about the damage that some police officers have caused. These channels aren’t addressing the fact that in this country, people who aren’t part of the majority are often suppressed or given fewer opportunities, they simply make all protesters seem like terrorists and say that the President is a genius who will save this country, even when he makes misogynistic and racist comments. This is why, from reading articles by Fox news, one would think that all protesters are criminals who have destroyed this country. Now, if two people with no background knowledge of what’s happening right now went into a room and each read an article, one person read one by CNN and the other read one by Fox, they would come out with very different opinions about what is happening in this country. While, one can expect bias in the media, when people get all their knowledge from one source and blindly believe it, they only learn about one side of the story, and this is a large reason why chaos is so present in our country right now.