ETCETERA

NIGHTCAP

What Happened?

By Harry Kirsbaum

hen I was a senior in 1979,
student debt wasn't much of
a problem at Michigan State
University.
Tuition was $24.50 a credit, rent
in student housing was in the $200
per month range for a room in a
rundown house off campus with a
couple of your best friends as room-
mates, gasoline was about 90 cents a
gallon, and beer was cheap.
No one even thought of setting
fires to couches after sporting events,
in part because most students were
too stoned to get off one. Pot was
selling for about $25 an ounce (you'd
have to ask Justin Bieber what the
going rate is now), and the"War on
Drugs" had yet to begin.
There wasn't a war on much of
anything back then, except for the
Iranian hostage crisis, and that other
war against disco fought at Comiskey
Park (watch it on youtube at www.
ittybittyurl.com/1kul), but I digress.
Back then, the only students who
had to deal with large amounts of tu-

W

ition debt were the ones going to law
school and medical school. Everyone
else I knew had a handle on repaying
their student loans or didn't have any
loans to pay off.
So what the hell happened? The
facts are staggering:
•Tuition at Michigan State is cur-
rently $428.75 a credit, a 1,750 per-
cent increase from 1979, and other
state schools are no better.
•State support of Michigan State
has fallen 17 percent since the 2008-
2009 school year, and that difference
has to be made up somewhere.
•Federal student loan debt topped
$1 trillion last week, and the interest
rate on any new college loans are on
the rise.
•Average student loan debt is
$27,547, and the graduates of the

class of 2012 face 13.3
percent unemployment.
•Almost 17 percent of
men and 10.4 percent of
women 25-34 years old
moved back into their
parents' home.
Against those odds, col-
lege enrollment has managed to in-
crease 138 percent since I was a fresh-
man 40 years ago, and the number of
students applying for loans increased
30 percent in the last six years.
The way things are heading, col-
lege will only be affordable to the 1
percent.
In 1973, high school graduates in
my hometown of Flint had choices:
college or getting into business or a
trade or working at an assembly plant.
In 2013, a high school graduate
finds limited choices. Manufacturing
jobs have gone overseas and, unless
you're lucky enough to have a family
business to fall into, it's difficult to
get a job as a barista, or a server, or
in retail — if your main competition
is a college grad with a degree in
philosophy.

At least you're 18 years old and
living in your parent's basement, not
22 years old, thousands of dollars in
the hole and moving back into your
parent's basement.
But something is seriously wrong
when our student loan debt is higher
than our credit card debt, and the
answer isn't to raise the limit.
We're facing crises from all fronts,
and we can't consider ourselves the
greatest nation on Earth with the
greatest opportunity for becoming
wealthy when it's becoming difficult
for college graduates to come out of
universities with a degree that will
land them good jobs in careers that
have futures, and to do so without
drowning in a sea of student loan
debt.
The days of graduating high
school, landing a factory job for 30
years and having a home, a couple of
cars, a couple of kids, a cottage and a
boat Up North are gone.
Higher education is a necessity,
and we need to find a way that
necessities aren't out of our price
range.

HINKLEY
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42 August 2013 I

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