Stephan: In the United States, as a culture, we have only one social priority: profit. As a result instead of a health care system, we have an illness profit system. And in our college education system, unique amongst the developed nations of the world, we have people in their sixties still with five-figure student debt. Did you know there are people near or after retirement with that kind of student debt? I didn't. When I went to the University of Virginia as part of an honors program called Echols scholars, my family paid $476 a year for my tuition.
In the 1970s when my daughter Katherine went to the University of California - Santa Cruz, in her own honors program, I paid about $4,600. Today, at a public four-year college (for in-state students) the average is $9,410, while for out-of-state students it is $23,890. For a private four-year college the average is $32,410, more than some families total income for a year, where the necessary living family income across the U.S. is $67,690.
There are all sorts of social outcome effects that arise from America's profit-based college system. First, of course, is the debilitating debt itself. Second, a profit-based college system means many who would like to go to college don't have the means to do so, because they can't handle the debt. As a result, only 36% of Americans over 25 have graduated from college while in Canada over 56% have a post-high school degree, and the U.S. ranks 6th in terms of college education.
But there are all kinds of other social effects. For instance, there is a strong correlation between being a Trumper and not having a college degree. Only 30.2% of the police in the U.S. have college degrees which helps to explain why American law enforcement is so violent. It also explains why so many scientists and physicians working today are immigrants.
Key Findings:
There are more people over the age of 50 with student loans (8.7 million) than people under the age of 24 with student loans (7.8 million), and they owe, on average, far more ($41,058 compared to $14,807).
There are more people over the age of 35 with student loans than under the age of 35 (22.7 million vs. 22.6 million), and they owe far more on average ($41,881 vs. $27,256).
A common popular belief about student loans is that they are a young person’s problem. We assume that, by and large, most borrowers are able to have their loans repaid by their mid-30’s. Sure, there may be a few stragglers who take until their 40’s or even beyond to repay their loans, but the conventional wisdom is that people 50 or older who haven’t yet been able to repay their loans are the outliers. The exception to the rule.
Well, it turns out that this is completely wrong.
This is Department of Education Data for the fourth quarter of 2020. For comparison purposes, we combined the source data to find statistics for the […]
Rev. Dean
on Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 5:14 am
The price of education is an incomprehensible obstacle to those in the lower class, or even the middle class for most people. I just cannot believe it. A good education should be FREE.
Will
on Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 6:44 am
Agreed an education in todays world should be free or close to it. I have always found it odd that many Americans don’t agree. A quick google search shows at least 10 countries in Europe offer free college education even to internal students.
Will
on Friday, January 15, 2021 at 5:02 am
A correction “college education even to internationalstudents”
The price of education is an incomprehensible obstacle to those in the lower class, or even the middle class for most people. I just cannot believe it. A good education should be FREE.
Agreed an education in todays world should be free or close to it. I have always found it odd that many Americans don’t agree. A quick google search shows at least 10 countries in Europe offer free college education even to internal students.
A correction “college education even to international students”