She walks across the campus in every kind of weather — clear and overcast days, storms and seasons of still blue sky. In a raucous society, the student offers a quiet lesson in persistence and hope. She works hard on her studies. She spends long hours at the library and picks up shifts as a barista to make extra money for books. But in the face of what appears to be a young person preparing for the future, a laptop and books are not the only items she hauls around in her backpack.
Concealed within is a parasitic, lifelong burden. She doesn’t come from wealth, so she took out loans to go to college. It made sense at the time. How else would she get a college degree, a necessary pathway to higher learning, healthcare, and a comfortable life? Perhaps she didn’t fully grasp how quickly the interest compounds and or how rapidly her balance would balloon. Who could blame her?
After she graduates, she’ll be forced to make life choices based on invisible baggage — perhaps forgoing starting a family or homeownership. Maybe she’ll stay in a job she hates to avoid defaulting on her loans. The girl will feel guilty, shameful and alone, believing her student debt burden is her own fault. The truth is that in Ohio, where she is from, 62% of students graduate from college with an average debt of $30,629. Most borrowers are either behind in their payments, in forbearance, or in default. Nationally, outstanding student debt is approximately $1.75 trillion. Women owe two thirds of that unfathomable sum.
It wasn’t always this way. Before 1965, the federal government had almost no direct role in lending money to students. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided each state with public land to be used to build colleges to benefit agriculture and the mechanical arts. These grants established 69 schools, including Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1944, the GI bill offered various benefits to WWII veterans to obtain higher education, including fully-covered tuition. The proposals behind these legislative measures were buttressed by a belief that a more educated workforce was essential to the country’s economic growth.
That all began to change in the 1970s as Ronald Reagan built his political career, in part, by vilifying college students who spoke out against the Vietnam War. Professor Roger A. Freeman, an advisor to then governor Ronald Reagan, declared, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective about who we allow to go through higher education.” Beyond disparaging the working class, this assertion presaged a shift in the nation’s higher education policy from one financially supported by the government to one funded by private investments, often made by individuals facing rising tuition costs and fees.
In 1987, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett suggested that increases in federal aid enabled colleges to raise tuition because students could borrow more to cover higher costs. Our current student loan crisis proves him correct. What we’ve created is a system that places the onus of covering these costs through loans directly on the students, affecting future decisions like where they will live and if they can afford to buy a house or have a family of their own.
The promise of higher education financed by loans is a trap that disproportionally burdens marginalized groups already experiencing stagnant wages and an ever-increasing cost of living. It’s a structural injustice that ensnares generations in the rigged system of an unjust financial regime. High school teens who prepare themselves for college today are easy targets for a predatory state powered by a powerful few. This is also true for past generations who are stuck paying off debt burdens from decades prior. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?
I can’t help but picture a brilliant young woman carrying a backpack, even as I navigate the weight of my own student loan debt at 67 years old. I think of her sore back as my head throbs trying to figure out how many qualifying payments I’ve made toward cancellation. I can hear her breath quicken as I scramble to switch to a new student loan repayment plan after being forced off of a more affordable one. She is me — my younger self. Years ago, I applied for loans in order to attend graduate school for social work. I sought not only higher job satisfaction, but also to engage in hands-on projects with like-minded people. For ten years, I made payments while my loans were shuffled through different loan servicers. The pressures of work, studying and tracking payments were stressful and harmed my health.
Imagine you’re playing a game and the rules keep changing. No matter how hard you try, you’re destined to lose. That’s been student debtors’ experience from one administration to the next — Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump again. To make matters worse, the Department of Education is grossly understaffed because the Trump administration fired nearly half of the people tasked with ushering debtors through the disastrous system in the first place. Trump also spearheaded the push to destroy SAVE — the most affordable student loan repayment plan to date — but servicers are making grave errors, and alternative plans are often more costly. Even if debtors want to pay back their loans, some loan servicers are falsely telling them that they are delinquent on payments, losing track of payments or reporting debtors as delinquent to credit reporting agencies.
There was a period during the pandemic when loans were paused without political debate. The government managed to send out stimulus checks without going bankrupt as well. Amidst the present misinformation and a crumbling system, debtors can’t be expected to make the best financial decisions for themselves and their families. This is why we need a pause on all federal student loan payments today. The question is: why won’t our elected officials take heed?
We must demand that our government cancel, and in the meantime, pause student loan payments. Attending university is not only about satisfying intellectual curiosity, it is also about how we think, what we believe, and why. Our system of higher education is currently so broken that it isn’t about learning anymore. Instead, it is debt peonage for working class individuals, their families and entire communities. This burden harms 40 million people, many for life. This is precisely why debt relief is vital to the success of the student who carries a backpack across her campus — she also carries the future of our entire society.
About the author:
Lana Kuhns is a Debt Collective member and life-long student living in the Midwest. She owes $30,000 in student debt. Lana enjoys gardening, Tai-Chi and spending time with her family.