Just two months ago, the Brookings Institution published one of the most comprehensive studies on student debt that has ever been conducted. To say the least, the findings were terrifying. As of right now, there are over 44 million Americans with a collective loan debt of 1.48 trillion dollars or roughly 32,000 dollars per person. To help put this into perspective, that’s roughly 15% of the entire U.S. population. Of that 15%, 40% are defaulting on their federal student loans. This figure doesn’t even include private loans. Clearly something needs to be done here, and, in my opinion, there are a few critical steps that need to be taken.
The first step is to go back to the start of the student loan crisis and analyze what caused this massive amount of debt. The first realization that we come to is that tuition rates have skyrocketed. According to MarketWatch, the cost of college has increased by 161% since 1987 (adjusted for inflation). In addition to that figure, the cost of tuition, fees, and housing here at Stevens has increased by 101% for a grand total of a $123,000 increase for a four-year education, according to MarketWatch. That number is absolutely insane, and the fact that it only continues to rise is even worse.
What has allowed colleges to get away with charging so much over this time period? Part of the issue is increased access to private and public student loans. This increased access caused an increased demand amongst the general population, but there was a very limited supply increase from colleges. Also, a large portion of college students is obtaining degrees in worthless fields where not a single job exists. Basically, we are giving loans to people who we know can’t pay them back! If that line rings a bell, this is exactly what happened when the housing market crashed in 2008 because people got mortgages on homes they couldn’t afford.
It’s also important to note the rise of the administrative monster. Over the past 30 or so years, new regulations have forced places of higher education to hire more people to just keep up with all of the paperwork and useless programs. In many colleges, including the Ivy Leagues, they actually decreased the number of faculty members and exponentially increased the number of administrators. All of these new salaries mean more revenue the college must bring in, especially if those people are going to get raises over time.
So what can we do as individuals and as a country to fix this problem? First, we remove the stigma that people who work with their hands in blue-collar jobs are stupid and end up going nowhere with their lives. The truth of the matter is that these people can easily out-earn anyone with a liberal arts degree and keep pace with those who have a degree in a STEM field. If a blue-collar worker decides to open up their own business, they can do better than people with college degrees. Second, we need to increase access to vocational training and make the public aware of its many advantages. Vocational school is both shorter and cheaper in the majority of cases. There are instant savings right away, and you get to start working earlier. On average, these workers get to retire earlier compared to their white-collar counterparts. On top of that, those who are fortunate enough to go into one of these fields can take care of a multitude of home maintenance issues without having to pay someone $150 just to walk through the front door and figure out what the issue is.
The average age of the blue-collar worker is increasing at a rapid pace because no one wants to take on these jobs. For example, the average age of a machinist is 55 years old! Sooner or later there is going to be a huge deficit of workers and there will be a crisis in the manufacturing sector as well as any sector requiring blue-collar workers.
We need to take down the administrative monster. How exactly we can do this is beyond me. However, at the very least, we should be able to review the role of every administrator and find out if there are any duplicates to attempt to simplify the process.
I guess everything in here boils down to the age-old concepts of supply and demand. If we are going to fix the rising cost of college, without an illogical Bernie Sanders free-college-for-everyone plan, we need to increase the supply of professors to teach and decrease the number of people going to college by instead guiding them to rewarding professions in vocational fields.
And I know this is ironic coming from a college student. But I really enjoy engineering, and it is a very lucrative field to get into. I have the option to remain an engineer for my entire career, but I could also work my way into management, take a job as a financial consultant, go into patent law, open my own firm, and so much more. The situation would be different if everyone was in STEM, but that’s simply not the case.
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