the major financial crisis of the next generation -- student loans

This is in The Nation online:

Student Debts, Stunted Lives

Nicholas von Hoffman

The Democratic Party did not find her. The Hollywood liberals did not find her. The reactionaries are not looking for her. But the Chicago Tribune did find Margo Albert and did understand how significant her plight is.

The paper wrote, "Margo Alpert is on the 30-year plan. Every month between $500 and $600 is automatically deducted from her salary to pay off college loans. By the time the 29-year-old Chicago public-interest lawyer is in her mid-50s and thinking seriously about retirement, she will finally be free of college debt."

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The most important consequence of the financial hole the Margo Alperts are in, thanks to their education, is that many of them are going to be childless. Many others will have one child at most. How can a young couple, each with $40,000 or $50,000 of debt, think of having three or four kids? They will have to wait until they are in their late 30s to have a family and by then, when they think of college costs, they will feel compelled to limit themselves to one child.

...

There is social control in loading young people up with financial obligations. Burdened with debt and desperate to have and keep a job, there is no way they can take a wild year off and certainly no time for protesting, organizing or causing the kind of social and political trouble young people cause from time to time. Would there have been a civil rights movement? Would there have been an antiwar movement if those collegians had been saddled with the debts our present-day young people carry?

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We need to help our young people ... poor education goes with poverty...

My student loan payment is close to $1000 each month. I'm 50 now, and I still owe about $70K. After a life time of work, I'm looking at retirement in Nicaragua, if I'm lucky. This was for 10 years in public universities, BTW, not expensive private colleges.

on edit-- my Ph.D. earns me about $60K in a state university, BTW, so those loan payments are about 25 percent of my monthly income, and more than my rent. On the other hand, I really like my work now, and I HATED the drudgery I did for a living before I went to school, so there is that.

All over the place, state support for public higher ed is vanishing.

I was actually lobbying for higher ed at the MA state house today, and everyone likes to admit the loss of state support is a problem, but nobody wants to be the one to do something about it.

snip

"How can a young couple, each with $40,000 or $50,000 of debt, think of having three or four kids?"

snip


Perhaps they could sacrifice and manage with only one or two kids. The planet would appreciate that.

$45,000 in debt. State universities.
I should have talked them into becoming plumbers.