Student loans are a scam. I said what I said.
Sure, you might be thinking that students choose to take out loans and for that reason you may not think of it as a scam because they consciously make the decision to take a loan out in their name knowing the amount of money they will have to pay later, but it is nothing short of a scheme. They fill out the FAFSA (The Free Application for Federal Student Aid) or apply for private loans through a bank, and upon acceptance from either the government or a bank they grant the loans and take out the money. However, students have their hands tied when it comes to finally making the decision to go to college. Not many families have hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their student to college free of any loans or debt. Even if the families do, the students often don’t; which is ultimately what matters considering parents generally do not pay for their kid’s college education unless they’re filthy rich. Period.
The U.S. Department of Education (the government agency that facilitates the FAFSA) is the ultimate scheme that sets student debt in motion. The FAFSA does not use student income or tax information to generate the loans or grants the student gets. Instead, it uses the parents’ information. As you can probably guess, the parents definitely make more than their student, so it creates this inaccurate representation of what the student has to put towards college because, as stated earlier, parents usually do not pay for their kids to go to college.
A private loan is generally from a bank or a third-party organization that lends money to students to pay for college. Usually these are only used if FAFSA did not cover as much of the student’s tuition as they would have hoped. These are even worse than the government loans in terms of finances. They have higher interest rates and include credit checks. A student going into their first year of college does not have much of a chance to build credit, so their credit score is sub-par; thus, resulting in these banks giving out ridiculously high interest rates which can turn a $25,000 loan into $50,000 very quickly.
Present-day society pressures kids to go to college because they feel that if they don’t they will not make a sustainable wage in the future. In my opinion, this is entirely untrue. Trade work is not only needed to have a functioning society and economy, but also very easy to get into. Since trade workers are so hard to find nowadays, a lot of industries offer a considerable salary. Sadly our society does not consider trade workers a “real career” which is where the pressure for kids feeling the need to go to college comes into play. Pressure can do crazy things to a kid that age and make them feel that they need to do whatever they can to get where they feel they need to be. Including accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars without even batting an eye.
Which brings me to my main point of this post. Relieving student debt.
As of June 23rd, 2019, the student debt crisis has reached $1,644,193,760,855. $1.6 trillion that looms over young adults across the country. Fresh out of college and trying to put their $100,000 degree to use, they are hit with their student debt 6 months after graduation. Asking the government to relieve that kind of money sounds outrageous and almost impossible, but it really isn’t that hard to tackle if we are all on board with it.
The only way we can relieve this kind of money is with taxes. I know, I know; you are all probably moaning and groaning that another chunk of money will be taken out of your paycheck, but I promise you it’s not as bad as you think. I took the courtesy to grab all the numbers for you, but feel free to fact check me if you feel they are incorrect. The United States has a total population of 327.2 million people. As of April 2019, the unemployment rate is 3.6% which makes 11,772,000 million people unemployed. Leaving the remainder of the U.S. (the workforce) equal out to 315,228,000 people. Hypothetically, lets just say everyone in the workforce, all the way from the janitors to the billionaire CEO’s pitches in $5 in taxes PER YEAR to alleviate the debt crisis. That equals out to $1,576,140,000 in just one year. Obviously, that is a downplay as to what would really go towards the student debt because those that pay into the highest tax bracket (37%) would pay far more than just $5 a year. Not only that, but most people would pay more than $5 a year. Now don’t get so fixated on the $5 a year thing, that was just a number I included to prove a point. Taxes don’t work that way as we all know, but even if $5 is taken out of every paycheck that only increases the money in the pot to help get the process rolling. As with any other government program, it would take years to instill and create. There are several hoops the government has to jump through to even get this to become a program with funding, but it’s better to start now and stop it before it gets any worse.
As a student myself, I see no issue with this. Even if money comes out of my paycheck every week, it is worth it in the long run. Being able to go get a career with my degree and not having to worry about the rain cloud of student debt following me everywhere I go is a huge plus, but it benefits the kids who may come from an unfortunate background go achieve their dreams without being discriminated and set back by the fear of being hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Once student debt is relieved, the money in the pool that helped it get there would go towards the continuation of the process and keeping the debt crisis at a minimum. Hopefully by this point FAFSA and universities will perfect their methods in giving out loans and scholarships and students can live debt-free and not have to worry about tuition while trying to better themselves and their future families to get a good career. Basic rights should not have to be fought for, they should come standard with life.
To better further my point and facts, I wanted to include an article from Forbes that better articulates the statistics of the student debt crisis and just how detrimental it is to young adults just entering their career. Check it out here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/#477f1dff133f
Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts on this and feel free to let me know how you feel about the student debt crisis. Until next time!
every little thing 