The era of loan defaulting students has finally come. The spate of mounting student debts and repayment struggle is hitting the headlines in the US.
The ABC news estimates that about two-thirds of all students pass out with a debt on them.
The news provider estimates an average loan of $24,000 per student, declaring that loans have now become the only way out for most Americans to get a college education.
With unemployment prospects staring largely at them, they are to tackle their debts as soon as they graduate. There are several stories of students living daily on their day to day wages. The news portal sadly quotes a lawyer fighting student loans as saying ‘I don’t feel like I will ever be able to get to a better place, buy a home or start a family’.
The student loan market has no doubt grown with the increasing college fees. The College Board, an organization dedicated to student’s welfare, estimates that the tuition and other fees rose about 5.6% per year, without considering inflation.
The average declared costs towards tuition, fees and accommodation for the year 2010-11 jumped 6.1% from the previous year.
The unemployment rate for people under 30 years of age is 13%. There is no doubt that as suggested by Ron Brownstein, the editorial director of National Journal, the current generation of students find starting their career more difficult than at any point of time in history.
The portal of ‘The Economist’ recalls President Lyndon Johnson, when in 1965 he said, “Economists tell us that improvement of education has been responsible for one-fourth to one-half of the growth in our nation’s economy over the past half-century.
We must be sure that there will be no gap between the number of jobs available and the ability of our people to perform those jobs”. The president was authorizing a federal aid of $1.9 million towards student loans.
Half a century later, today the relevance of this thought has been lost. There are no match criteria between any parameters. Education has become a victim to the rampant commercialism, evident everywhere.
Education is no more aspiring as a means of academic accomplishment, but rather as a means of economic accomplishment.
Education and healthcare originated from a humane understanding of service. The subjects, theories and laws that the professors and colleges teach today, which enable universities and its professors to make money, were not developed from their own pockets.
These were developed and passed on by passionate people who pursued them without a thought of personal benefit, backed by institutions that were equally passionate on their educational accomplishments.
Times have changed and we shall never get back there. Gone are the days when inspired students could get into colleges and study under their mentor. One of the common terms running through the prospectus of many American Universities today is ‘Guaranteed Tuition fees’. The universities give an undertaking that it would not raise its tuition fees for a particular period.
It is sad that when universities should be giving guarantees to the parent community and the society that it would make students into respectable citizens, the universities are giving guarantees of not raising fees.
No one expects the university to retain its fees when there is a genuine need to raise it.
However, proclaiming that it would not raise the fees, only hints at a possible guilt of keeping the fees high. Why should anyone proclaim ‘I will not steal your wallet?’.
Given the fact that a big number of students from all over the world study in the US, these students upon completing their course rush back to their countries for employment, demanding high salaries, to settle their huge student loans at the earliest possible. This in turn lead to rise in the cost of services rendered.
Education is the core of the society, and an ailing education system indicates an ailing society. The government needs to invest in education and ensure that students pass out without a burden of debt and find jobs with salaries that are mutually in line with the interest of the society and public.
It is from these institutions that debt ridden students take a vow to avenge their debts. The government should step in here and ensure that they look for jobs with a free and happy will.
The US federal and state governments should halt the mad commercialization of education and see relieving students of loan burden, its primary responsibility. The US has for long stood for values of liberty and non discrimination, which no doubt benefited the larger world. However flaws in its societal set up is now not only pulling it down, but also spreading it across the world.
