Americans with young adults, setting out for the tuition paying years, are in big trouble.
If we aren’t earning at least six figures, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with a rent or mortgage, life expenses, and also pay a tuition ... or two. College in most other nations is free, barring incidentals. Not in America, even as we tout ourselves as an advanced nation and a democracy with equal opportunity for all.
Yesterday’s students – Gen Xers and even some early millennials – are now parents of college kids. As math goes, most of them had the last of the boomers as parents. Some may have been lucky enough to have their tuition paid, because Boomers were the last graduating class of a more prudent America. The economic climate offered Boomers financial opportunities that are gone now. If they were creative, disciplined and frugal, even as average earners, many were able to put their kids through college or defray that debt. If not, their adult children – now with their own college aged children – may still be paying their own college loans.
Gen X’ers who did graduate loan-free, have a viable steady income, and were smart enough to keep a strict budget, may be paying – or helping their kids’ pay – for college now. It’s still a struggle, but it may be do-able. If so, their kids will graduate with either no debt or less tuition debt.
Sadly, most of today’s students will have a huge financial anchor around their necks for the next decade or three, with a salary that either will not make it comfortable to pay back their education investment or, worse and more likely, doesn’t justify their investment at all. Additionally, still paying their own tuition loans, they won’t be able help their kids with tuition, leaving many current students struggling financially into their own parenting years ... and the beat goes on. As each American generation incurs this financial debt, too many of our brightest and best are impeded or get left by the wayside.
What kind of a nation creates a financial impediment to higher education? These practices affect the largest portion of America’s students and their ability to contribute to our nation. Many elected officials fight against lowering or forgiving this crippling debt encumbering our young people trying to become productive Americans. While they do, they continue to filter millions to corporate conglomerates in purchases, as well as granting huge tax breaks and rebates to mega-wealthy individuals and to corporations that don’t justify them, despite the smoke screen of creating jobs. All this purposefully directs more wealth to the elite of America, preventing its distribution throughout America’s working tiers.
Just as bad, Americans are sacrificing for naught because they’ve invested so much in their education solely to be eligible for good jobs in the first place. They are held responsible for the debt incurred, working or not. There are exceptions, sure, but not enough. Working hard and investing to become employable should only be a pre-requisite to actually getting a job with commensurate pay.
Sadly, our supposed-to-be-great nation has even more debilitating practices that encumber us as a whole. Many go unaddressed due to corruption, which, no matter how repeatedly we scream, gets muffled by profit.
Any nation that sets itself on a course of government that operates to the advantage of too few and legislates to that end, charts itself and its people a course for disaster. Such a nation is vulnerable and can no longer be considered a democracy. When it fully converts itself to a legislative system in which the wealthy are the powerful and the powerful are in charge, the result is an aristocracy regardless of how complete, superficial, blatant or surreptitious it may be.
This is counterproductive to a nation’s growth and sovereignty, because it leaves its people consistently swimming against a current they cannot overtake. It’s also dangerous because, as futility sets in, it breeds contempt for government. Ultimately, desperation will create a climate that isn’t safe for anyone and leaves a nation vulnerable to its people and outside forces. That vulnerability will not be abated or insulated even by wealth or privilege.
Despite all the careful planning and all the denial of those who believe to be insulated from the error of their ways, there’s no such protection. We all fall down.
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