Student debt is keeping millions from achieving the American dream
Statement of Alderman Khalif J. Rainey September 1, 2023
Younger Americans are already facing an immense uphill challenge in matching, let alone exceeding, the economic achievements of their parents. Well, that challenge is about to become almost insurmountable for untold millions in the U.S.
The cost of living has gone up since 2020, and inflation has significantly affected everything we need to pay for in our lives. Some loan holders have new health challenges affecting their finances, some may have lost jobs or downsized since 2020, and others may have taken on new debt or expanded their family.
Since 1980, the cost of four-year public and four-year private college in the U.S. has tripled, and with it, the student debt burden here and across the country has skyrocketed. Earning a college degree should not deprive a person of a better life because of a mountain of lifelong student debt.
When will we truly come to grips with the fact that student debt is killing the American dream?
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
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I agree with all of this. Why is college, even in the UW System for residents so expensive?
And when the big shots with the big mouths attack this kind of relief while pocketing say, $300,000 from the feds, the truth is revealed (You hear that Vos?). This is class warfare where the rich get loan balances wiped out while young people just starting out get crushing debt.
In addition to the college graduates – and non-graduates – who incur and live with big student debt, there is a whole other group whose lives are diminished by today’s cost of a college education. That second group are those young people who never enroll in college or get the benefits of a college education because the cost is a front-end red flag.
A personal case-study. As a first-to-graduate high school (barely, 350 out of 380), with low-income, grade-school educated immigrant parents, there was virtually no support for me going to college. “When is he going to get a job?” For me, at that point, going to college meant two things, neither related to an education: not going to work on the assembly line at American Motors and not getting drafted into the Army.
My salvation: UWM, which had three immediate – and one not so immediate – qualities. The immediate ones were tuition, $80 per semester (about $1,600 in today’s dollars); “open admissions,” if you had a high school diploma, you were in; and Mike Green’s Used Book Store, “I know you’re good for the money.” Since it was basically free, there was minimal opposition to my going to UWM, getting four years of free room and board at home.
The enormous “non-immediate” quality. If I were that kid today, with the current tuition and other costs, I would have never gone to college, and would have never had the life-changing experience that a handful of extraordinary UWM professors gave me, mostly helping me discover that I had a brain and providing a whole range of other supports. At that time, the State accounted for something like 90% of UWM’s budget. Today I believe that number is roughly 20%. A lot of working class and poor kids will never get to college – and have my opportunities – because of that last number.
With the U.S. Supreme Court being revealed almost daily as a biased political entity, their ruling against Biden’s attempt to apply some relief to an economic crisis looks very much like politics over ruled the common good.