Just a short little blurb today about the crushing student loan debt I suffer under daily.
The skyrocketing cost of college is simply out of control, but this isn't news. What bothers me is that I'm going to be in debt for the rest of my life because my parents didn't make plans for me to attend college, or weren't rich enough to afford tuition out of pocket. And people have the brass balls to say that higher education isn't elitist? My loan bills are proof of the contrary.
Now, I'm someone who received greater than 90% scholarships, and I STILL owe more than $20,000 in loans, due to book prices, lab fees, "the dean needs a new Mercedes" tax, etc. Furthermore, I needed loans to finance my graduate education, and guess what? More than half of those loans are unsubsidized. If you don't know what that means, you're one of millions.
What an "unsubsidized loan" means, in a nutshell, is that while you are not required to make payments while you are enrolled in school, you accrue interest. So if you borrow $5000, and go to school for 2 years, you'll end up paying back roughly $6250 at roughly 9% interest. The best part? I say "roughly" because the interest is added to the total amount of the loan, so after 1 year you are no longer paying interest on $5000, but on $5450. After year 2, you're paying interest on $5900. Did we go to college in order to not recognize a scam when we see one?
Something has to give in order for Americans to pursue higher education, especially with the job market in ruins. I've heard the argument that higher education is a privilege, not a right, and I couldn't disagree more. We continually wonder why the EU and the UK and Japan and China and Korea consistently outrank us in nearly all educational categories. The answer is as plain as the "Property of Sallie Mae" tattooed across my forehead.
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