27 April
Woah. DEFINITELY worth the read.
Seconded. And like fucking scary as fuck.
The more I read the more I’m convinced that America started down the fast track to hell immediately after LBJ had JFK killed.
And, no, I’m not even close to kidding.
cite your damn sources people. I don’t know where any of that information came from.
Not that I don’t believe that student loan debt is a huge fucking scam that I will personally be suffering the consequences of. I’m about a week and a half from finishing a Master’s Degree in Library Science, a degree I went and got because employment prospects are relatively good, especially over, say, getting a PhD in English or an MFA in creative writing.
I am disgusted that the government charges me 6.8% interest on loans I took out so that I could learn, get a higher-skilled job and so I could go into being an academic librarian, where I hope to help people learn how to conduct research and think critically.
One of the things that really gets me is the private, for profit colleges who will take anyone who’s able to get the loans for the (high) tuition. I’ve seen students at my job who have gotten through high school, somehow, without getting basic writing or critical thinking skills. The other day, I explained to a student how to calculate 4% of a number by multiplying it by .04. This kid is paying something in excess of 20k/year to get something like an associate’s degree in Entertainment Management or Business. I’ve seen other students who likely spent High School with very intense additional help, who needed and came to rely on the support of aides and special education teachers and who are now in college, fighting through Writing 100, getting passed with a D and then going on the fail spectacularly in Writing 101 where they’re required to build on the skills they barely have. These students work hard, they struggle and there are people here who help them, but after a certain point, the student has to stand for themselves and the college has no incentive to speed this process along. I heard about another student, who’d failed Writing 100, taken it again, worked hard, and then passed. This would be a success story, if someone, their advisor or a registrar told them, that ‘C’ for writing would hurt their GPA so they should take it over (A THIRD TIME!) and try to do better.
There are a lot of obscene lapses of ethics and broken, profit driven motivations in Higher Education. We need to educate people so that they have greater understanding, greater confidence and the skills they need to do valuable work. We need to make it so people aren’t getting rich off of the educations of others. Education is a public good, and should be designed to benefit students first, educators second, colleges as institutions third and banks never.
I’ve wondered if it would be cheaper in a few years to buy a house and then get the balance of my student loan debt added to the mortgage and have the ability to pay a much lower interest rate on that debt.
I could ramble on this stuff for a long time. Why does my savings account get 1.0% when my student loans charge me 6.8% for choosing to get an education? I got a piece of mail about repaying my loans, the slowest play has me making payments until 2033. I am frustrated by this every fucking day and will remain so until something fundamental changes and students get a fair shake that doesn’t benefit for-profit educators and banks.
(Source: remierk, via apoplecticskeptic)
