Editorial: College costs and debt crushing the best and brightest
By the Editorial Board of St. Louis Today | Posted: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Not all that long ago in the American experience, a million was a big number. Then it was a billion. Today the word "trillion" is thrown around casually. The number is so big and so hard to comprehend that it has a certain cachet. Deficits and debts seem to matter when trillions of dollars are at stake. When they were in the billions, not so much. Which was a mistake.
Which brings us to the latest trillion-dollar-baby: America's student loan debt.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported last month that the debt owed by U.S. college students has topped $1 trillion for the first time. That figure doesn't even take into account the loans owned by parents on behalf of students. This number is not just the result of inflation or population growth but of a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward helping our next generation reach for the same dreams the previous generation had the opportunity to achieve.
Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago, partly because states have reduced their support for higher education. In the meantime, with ever more kids wanting to get in and willing to borrow to pay for it, colleges keep raising prices.
In 1984, tuition was less than 25 percent of the overall revenue for the nation's colleges and universities, according to association known as the State Higher Education Executive Officers. By 2009, tuition accounted for 37 percent of higher education revenue. The same study found that per-student state appropriations for public colleges and universities was lower in 2009 than at any time since 1984.
America's middle class is being priced out of an opportunity to succeed.
But smart kids know that their lifetime earning potential is significantly increased by obtaining a college degree. So they saddle themselves with debt to keep alive the hope that comes with an education. That hope is being crushed by bills that outpace post-graduation jobs, if the jobs even exist.
So it's not hard to understand why, in many cities, a major source of the anger fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement comes from students seeking student loan relief.
Slowly but surely, the threads of the tapestry of the American dream are being pulled away. First came the homeownership bubble, which in some ways contributed to the original Tea Party anger. Now comes the student loan debt bubble.
About two-thirds of graduates with a bachelor's degree have student loans, according to the College Board, with the average debt about $24,000. The promise was that you'd get a good job coming out of school, so you could handle that. But not if no one's hiring. Not if you're working at Starbucks.
Congress, President Barack Obama and state legislatures must get beyond the political battles of left and right and see what is happening to the next generation of Americans. Most of them don't yet have any political allegiances, only a desire to start building their own nest egg.
Mr. Obama reached out to the students dragged down by debt last week. For six months, beginning in January, borrowers with both federal loans and federally backed loans can consolidate them at a sightly lower interest rate.
It's a modest start, but far more serious work needs to be done.
Editorial, “College Students Should Vote Responsibly”
November 9, 2011, Louisville Cardinnal
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner’s visit to the University of Louisville on Oct. 31, brought light to some important issues facing college students. Issues of college loan debt and unemployment affect many of us and the upcoming elections are our way to let our voices be heard.
With the country in its current state, it can be quite discouraging to even go out and vote. It would be easy to assume that our votes don’t matter, or that the politicians will follow their own agenda and disregard the voters’ concerns. But this is a democracy and our leaders only get to where they are through citizen support.
Although one election may not turn the tide or change the way our representatives operate, over time, if we students show high turnout rates at the polls, the politicians will have to consider our concerns in their policy making. Our vote is our way of contributing to the political system, and although it’s hard to be optimistic at this time, it is important that we exercise our right, our duty, to ensure the best leaders are representing us.
If our leaders aren’t doing their jobs properly, then it is our duty to dethrone them. It may take several election cycles to make a change, but if we continually throw out politicians for a lack of leadership then eventually someone will step up and realize that they are there to represent the people and the voters and not elected for their own interests and agenda.
This will take time, but if we are persistent and show our representatives that the college students of America are a growing population in which they must pay attention, they will have no choice but to either listen or step down. The only way in which this can happen is if we perform our duty and vote.
When you do vote however, do not check the box to vote straight for one party or the other. This mindless mentality of believing that one side is better than the other or choosing teams is one reason our country is in its current predicament. We are so infatuated with choosing sides and evening the playing field that we lose sight of the real issues. We should be voting for individual people, not parties. We’ve gotten so caught up with parties that right and left have become a bigger rivalry than U of L and U of K.
As students, we have our duty to elect the best representative that will listen to our concerns. But the politicians have their job to do as well. Education is a huge issue that not only concerns students but the future of our nation.
It seems that our government would rather create tax burdens than tax payers. Hopefully they’ll soon realize that college students will come out on the other side with higher paying jobs and in turn will generate greater tax revenue for our government. It would only make sense for the government to offer a little help now and receive a bigger return in the future.
Our education is not only an investment for ourselves as individuals, but also an investment for the United States of America. We must let our politicians know how significant we are to the nation, and the most effective way in which to do this is to show up in large numbers at the polls on Election Day.
“Editorial: Guns on college campuses a bad idea” In The Pitt NewsBy: Staff Editorial Posted on 11. Oct, 2011 in Opinions
Would you feel safer if guns were allowed on campus?
Last week, the OregonStateUniversity system decided to allow permit holders to bring their guns onto campus. This raises a host of concerns, and, in short, we are glad Pitt has a strict no-gun policy, regardless of permit.
It’s true that those who will commit crimes in the first place won’t give Pitt’s policy a second thought, but we think giving every individual with a permit the right to carry a gun on campus would do more harm than good.
It’s also true that we live, socialize and go to class in a city. The lines between campus and the city blur in every direction, and safety is — and should be — a main concern among students. At first thought, it seems that allowing guns on campus would act as a deterrent, assist people in emergency situations and provide a safer environment for students. This logic, though, is flawed for several reasons.
First, a gun has the potential to kill. Only allowing permit holders to carry them doesn’t take away this crucial fact. Mistakes can happen. When you allow potentially lethal weapons to enter a large, crowded space, the probability of injury skyrockets. And when those weapons are in the hands of college students and not professionals, the odds of safety look dismal.
That brings us to our next point: The college lifestyle simply does not mix with weapons that can kill. Alcohol, when mixed with immaturity and emotional young brains, is dangerous by itself. Add a gun and an argument could turn deadly. And with the typical Pitt student’s stressful lifestyle of classes, work and being away from home, tension often runs thick. Allowing guns on campus could even increase the number of student suicides.
Imagine a gunshot reverberating through your freshman dorm. It could be an attack or a drunken resident, but we don’t think it really matters. We don’t know about you, but we’d be scared for our safety. Allowing guns on campus gives freedom to some, but restricts many. Bringing guns onto campus dispels fear for some, but terrifies many. We don’t think the potential benefits — such as the ability to act violently and quickly in emergency situations and more freedom for those who choose to carry guns — would be helpful enough, frequently enough.
Instead of taking notes from Oregon, we view the state’s decision as a cautionary tale. And we don’t think allowing guns onto Pitt’s campus would deter crime in the first place. People would still get mugged; houses would still get burglarized. Permitting guns on campus wouldn’t automatically make everyone on campus skilled with firearms. The people who would be attacked would be those who aren’t expected to be packing heat.
Instead of championing a possibly destructive cause in order to stay safe, we think Pitt students should embrace the University’s policy. Use common sense: Travel in groups, stay in well-lit areas and always have a way of contacting emergency help.
Sure, guns don’t jump out of holsters and kill people, but allowing guns onto our campus and into untrained or inexperienced hands would be a deadly measure.
October 18, 2008, Editorial from The New York Times, “The College Credit Card Trap”
Add this to the list of the country’s financial woes: Credit card companies are aggressively targeting college students, many of whom are naïve about money matters and vulnerable to predatory offers that can get them permanently mired in debt.
According to an eye-opening survey by the United States Public Interest Research Group, or U.S. PIRG, which is an advocacy organization, some students reported receiving hundreds of credit card offers in a year. The report also described how companies lure cash-starved students with gifts of clothing and free food. In one flagrant case in Ohio, students who showed up for the food were required to fill out credit card applications before they could eat.
A half-dozen states have placed restrictions on how credit cards can be marketed at public colleges. Congress is considering sensible bills that would restrict the amount of credit and the number of cards that students could be offered. Lawmakers should also focus on the lucrative and often secret deals that universities and their alumni associations regularly cut with credit card companies. Those deals — which resemble the now outlawed student loan kickback deals — often grant companies the exclusive right to market to a college’s students. In some cases, the colleges get a cut of what the students spend, which makes the school a partner in the plundering of young peoples’ meager assets.
Congress must insist that these deals be made public and universities and alumni groups must insist that students be given fair deals from credit card companies. With financing from the Ford Foundation, U.S. PIRG has begun a national campaign urging schools to adopt some common-sense principles that would help shield students from credit card marketers and financial ruin.
The group calls on universities to stop selling the names and contact information of currently enrolled students to credit card marketers. It also says that schools should ban marketers from using gifts to entice students to sign up for credit cards, and it urges schools to do more to educate students on managing debt responsibly.
Most importantly, the group calls on schools that still decide to cut deals to only do business with credit card companies that steer clear of commonly used but unscrupulous credit card terms that take advantage of students. That means an end to hidden fees or unreasonable penalties, including universal default, under which interest rates go up when the customer fails to pay a bill not related to the credit card account.
Schools need to reform their credit card practices. If they don’t move quickly, lawmakers must do it for them.
Editorial: Community college plan has merit
From Visalia Times Delta
Community colleges in California appear ready to get serious about preparing
students for life after college. The message they will give to students: Get
serious. Our message to the colleges: Get serious about helping students succeed.
Reform of a lax system that emphasizes access over accomplishment is long
overdue in the state's community college system. We applaud the initiative to get
students out of college and into jobs.
Currently, too many students are using the community college system as a way station to collect financial aid or as a way to avoid going out into the work force. To be sure, in the current economy, that function has had value. With jobs scarce, many students are getting more training or upgrading skills. However, too many are using the system and not advancing.
In the current climate of crowded classrooms and strained resources, it has
become too expensive and wasteful for that practice to continue.
Education leaders are touring the state to promote a new master plan for community colleges. It's called the "Student Success Task Force," and it calls for refocusing the state's 112 community colleges to emphasize goal completion, rather than the historic priority on open access to all. It includes 23 recommendations. Among them:
ª Create a statewide assessment system so that students can take classes at different community colleges without taking a placement test at each campus.
ª Require students to declare a program of study early in their academic career, create an online advising system that helps students keep track of progress toward their goals.
ª Adopt course-registration priorities that are the same statewide so that students
who are new to the college can sign up early on.
ª Cut off fee waivers to students who are persistently failing or dropping courses.
Chancellor Jack Scott was quoted in the Sacramento Bee on Monday:
"We think with these kinds of policies, we're going to say to some people: 'Get serious. Don't just be a professional student, dabbling in a whole lot of things.'"
Of course, if that is the case, community colleges have a responsibility to those students to create the means for them to reach their goals.
Scarcity of college offerings and crowded classes contribute to the fact that students at College of the Sequoias need at least four years to graduate with an associate of arts degree. Some attend COS for four, five, six or seven years.
The recommendations in the report also have a strong commitment of support for students, including aligning curriculum to the needs of students.
College leaders are presenting these recommendations to various communities around the state this week and next. They are at FresnoCommunity College today. They hope that their recommendations will be presented to the Legislature early next year and adopted no later than March.
These recommendations appear to be on the right track. We don't agree that access to community college should be rationed or that the pursuit of education be reserved for the elite. Any student willing to earnestly pursue practical educational goals should be welcomed and nurtured.
But the days when students can spend years in community college need to end. At COS, for instance, the college is moving toward a plan in which students cannot continue to take courses they have failed. That's a good step. The college ought to also reform scheduling and course offerings so that students can attend full-time. Ultimately, it ought to be the goal at COS that a student be guaranteed the opportunity to graduate in two years, as long as he or she pursues a consistent course of study and passes the requirements.
That has become the norm in many private higher education institutions, and it needs to be adopted by community colleges as well.
The recommendations of this task force pursue that objective. When they are adopted, California community colleges ought to be able to guarantee success as well as access.