I am a proud 1978 graduate of Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Denison was a perfect place for me: an academic \u201ccastle on a hill\u201d in a small rural town. I could focus on academics, gathering my thoughts as I hiked the hills and forests nearby. The Denison professors were challenging and incredibly helpful, and the community knew how to have fun as well as study. Denison gave me the academic freedom to explore all of subjects that fascinated me \u2013 the intersection of history, government and politics in American life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A bigger institution wouldn\u2019t have \u201cflexed\u201d their program the way Denison did.\u00a0\u00a0I managed to graduate in four years, while I spent a semester as a political campaign operative, a semester studying in Washington, DC, and a semester student teaching.\u00a0\u00a0While I did have some early struggles, in the end, it was the perfect place for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I attended Denison from the fall of 1974 until the spring of 1978.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the Great Depression, my Dad worked his way through the University of Cincinnati, living at home.\u00a0\u00a0Mom went to London University staying at home as well.\u00a0\u00a0It was my parents life-goal to take care of all three of their kids\u2019 college educations.\u00a0\u00a0So I was privileged to not be saddled with college debt, and my parents were able to afford the room, board and tuition of less than $18000 a year.\u00a0\u00a0It was a great gift for life.\u00a0\u00a0I still managed to build a student loan debt, but it was in graduate school. I ultimately paid that off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today to attend Denison, it costs $73000 a year.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s lots of financial aid available, and a high percentage of students take advantage of that.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s no surprise:\u00a0\u00a0it\u2019s hard to imagine being able to afford to pay for a four-year college degree costing almost $300000.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s still a great education, and small liberal arts colleges still have an important place in American education.\u00a0\u00a0But the costs are truly amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To send my son to a public university a decade ago, was $40000 a year. America\u2019s reality is, no one is \u201cworking their way through school\u201d the way my Dad did in the 1930\u2019s. In order to get a four-year college degree today, there are only three alternatives: be so gifted in some way that you get a scholarship, be so wealthy that you can pay, or borrow the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, the educational requirements for getting and advancing in the workplace increasingly require a four-year degree.\u00a0\u00a0And this is the \u201cAmerican dream\u201d:\u00a0\u00a0working to gain an education in order to advance.\u00a0\u00a0Parents would love to \u201cgift\u201d this to their children the way my parents did for me, and we did for our son.\u00a0\u00a0But to do it today, most have to borrow the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday President Biden announced that $10000 of college loan debts would be forgiven.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, if a student qualified for Pell Grants, an income based award, $20000 will be forgiven.\u00a0\u00a0Forty-eight million Americans owe college debt today, a total of $1.75 Trillion.\u00a0\u00a0The loan forgiveness President Biden offered will reduce that by $500 Billion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden compared his student loan forgiveness program to the PPP program for businesses during the Covid pandemic. In that program $800 Billion was loaned and forgiven to businesses to maintain employees\u2019 wages. Biden made it clear that he recognized that in any program like this, there would be unfairness. Some businesses went under during Covid despite the PPP program and some businesses survived without qualifying for PPP. With student loan forgiveness, there\u2019s always going to be those who \u201cwould\u2019ve gone\u201d or \u201cwouldn\u2019t have paid\u201d if they had known. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf I had known there was going to be a PPP program, I would have started a business.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf I had known there was going to be student loan forgiveness, I would have borrowed more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no way to be \u201cfair\u201d when solving a problem that\u2019s gone on for far too long.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are always those that suffered before things were improved \u2013 we should still fix the problem now.\u00a0\u00a0Student loan debt has saddled millions, stifling their economic lives.\u00a0\u00a0They can\u2019t start families, they can\u2019t buy houses, they can\u2019t participate in the economy.\u00a0\u00a0They can just make their monthly payments to MOHELA or the other student loan services.\u00a0\u00a0The only \u201cbig winners\u201d from the student debt, are the loan companies. For the good of our society, we need to resolve this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it does mean we should look at the greater issue; the cost of education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States we \u201cguarantee\u201d free public education, Kindergarten through twelfth grade.\u00a0\u00a0But in our modern, technical world, we find that thirteen years simply isn\u2019t enough to prepare both a workforce and an intelligent voting citizenry.\u00a0\u00a0We need to add four more years to the program, two years of pre-school, and two years of post-high school education.\u00a0\u00a0The two years after high school could be the first two years of a four year program, or it could be some kind of vocational education or certification.\u00a0\u00a0But to take eighteen year-olds just out of high school and say \u201cIt\u2019s all on you now\u201d,\u00a0\u00a0in our modern highly technical and highly expensive society, just doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the cost of college education soared well beyond inflation in the past forty years.\u00a0\u00a0Certainly easy access to student loan money was part of that spiral; and the entire way we pay for higher education should be up for examination.\u00a0\u00a0But in the meantime, it\u2019s good that the government is taking steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So thanks President Biden for addressing the problem. You\u2019re going to take a lot of \u201cguff\u201d. Some are going to say that it\u2019s the \u201c\u2026plumbers and construction workers\u2026\u201d who are going to pay for those \u201csnotty college kids\u201d. But we know that\u2019s not how it should be \u2013 it should be those multi-billion dollar corporations who don\u2019t pay any income taxes that should be picking up this tab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I know you\u2019re working on that one too.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Real Problem<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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