Let’s Talk About Student Debt

Let’s talk about student debt.

I hate talking about student debt. The mere thought of the hole I’m in tends to give me panic attacks, but right now everyone is talking about student debt, so I’m going to talk too.

If you’re a Millennial, you were probably raised from your earliest years being told you had to go to college. College was the way to get a real job, with a necktie and a briefcase, so you could buy a house and provide for a family. A BA was the ticket to a good job and an MA was even jobbier. It didn’t matter what you majored in as long as you went to college so you could get that job. The more diplomas hanging on your wall, the more initials after your name, the more money you would make. I cannot even express how deeply this was drilled into our heads. Millennials learned college was something that happened after high school unless you were one of those evil slackers who worked in fast food instead of having a real job with a necktie and a briefcase. Working in fast food was an occupation only fit for high school and college students who were building up to their necktie-and-briefcase careers. It wasn’t appropriate for a grown-up. That was why we were supposed to go to college. The real career, with your college degree, would get you a normal house in a pleasant suburb and an ordinary life where you could easily pay back those loans. The grown-ups we trusted taught us that this was the deal.

We did as we were told. We went to college and grad school. We took out five and six-figure debt to do it, because we were told that was “good debt.” And we graduated, in the middle of a recession, when no one was hiring and there were no jobs. And then the Department of Education sent us the bill.

They’ve been billing us ever since.

Michael and I borrowed the cost of a small house in a bad Steubenville neighborhood each. Ten years later, thanks to interest, we owe the government the cost of a three-bedroom house in a nice part of Pittsburgh, each. There are fifteen years left on our Income Based Repayments, and that’s if we’re lucky and we get the debt forgiveness after twenty-five years, which the government has been parsimonious about doing. This is normal. This is what happened to a whole generation. Some, through a combination of stunning good luck and extreme penny pinching, were able to pay the debt off, and most of us are stuck. We don’t buy houses, we don’t make investments, we don’t have savings, we have debt. Debt is where the money goes when it could go to goods and services that keep our economy running.

I’m lucky. I was an English major for undergrad and I studied philosophy and Catholic bioethics in grad school, and I now work as a writer who writes about Catholicism. That means I actually USE my obscenely expensive college experience to make a living or close to one, most of it in tips or getting paid for one book or article at a time, never a nice steady paycheck with the taxes already taken out. Most Millennials I know don’t use their college degrees at all. They didn’t help them get a job, they’re just a ball and chain on their ankles for whatever job they managed to find. Many of them work in fast food, that much-maligned career that was supposed to be a punishment for not going to college. And every time they talk about maybe making a better wage from that job, they get laughed at. It’s just fast food. If you wanted a better paying job they should’ve taken out more debt.

We’re told that we should stop being spoiled babies and just pay off the debt, but income hasn’t gone up with the cost of living and the debt keeps ballooning at a faster and faster rate. It can’t be paid. The math just doesn’t add up. It’s not a matter of not wanting to, it’s a matter of not being able because we never made the money we were promised when we were conned into taking out the debt. Student debt is a trillion-dollar problem.

Truthfully, the little bit of debt forgiveness that the Supreme Court told us we couldn’t have today would’ve only erased about two years’ interest, for me.  But for some it would’ve been life changing. And it would’ve been a start. We need so much more, but it would have been something. Now, we don’t even have that.

Giving an enormous number of people who were lied to by the people we trusted a chance to crawl out of financial ruin and contribute to the economy– giving us a chance at buying homes, at starting businesses, at making investments, having a savings account before we’re elderly– isn’t a handout and it sure isn’t socialism.

It’s promoting the general welfare and a necessary part of saving the US economy from the mess it’s in.

Meanwhile, If you’re a Gen Z kid wondering what to do with your life, I wouldn’t advise you go to college if you’re not rich. Just save time and get the fast food job now. If you’re a millennial in student debt like me, I encourage you to look into the new and improved REPAYE program which hopefully will be starting soon; it could give you a greatly reduced payment and stop the ballooning interest, if all goes as planned. Also look up what the president has done with the Income Driven Repayment account adjustment, changing the number of payments we have credited toward eventual debt forgiveness, that will hopefully happen sometime in 2024. You might need to consolidate some loans by the end of the year to qualify for it. This is your chance.

And please notice how tentatively I’m speaking and how I keep saying “hopefully,” because right now, everything is still up in the air.  As has been demonstrated today, fixing this mess is not something the president can accomplish by executive order alone. It’s going to take legislation, and our Congress isn’t exactly churning that out right now. Taking back the House and drastically fattening our majority in the Senate so the entire country isn’t at the mercy of Joe Manchin would be a huge help. The one thing the Supreme Court didn’t destroy was our elections. We’ve still go those. We all need to vote. I’m deeply cynical about our democracy and about the Democratic party.  I’m well aware that politicians, including Joe Biden himself, are part of why we’re in this mess in the first place. But it’s the one chance we have.

I don’t know where the country goes from here, but I hope things get better.