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After four (and more) years of hard work, study and learning, college graduates are ready to take on the world and start their career. However, these college graduates face obstacles soon after graduation. After studying for years and specializing in a field, their career should be ready for them, but this is not always the case. College graduates struggle to find careers after college, making it increasingly difficult to pay off student loans as well as start life. Student loans are crippling college graduates and making it incredibly difficult to pay anything back.

Children were always told that without a college degree, there would be no steady job for them in the world, a career that would allow them to pay all the bills and support a family. So growing up, these kids worked incredibly hard in school and did extracurricular activities so they could receive scholarships and grants to pay for part of their school. Even though they may have received scholarships, college tuition has skyrocketed, so they have to take out student loans.

College students after four years of college owe an average of $38,000. Almost doubling the amount they took out due to interest. Now this poses a big problem for students who are just beginning their career and beginning to stand on their own two feet. On average, forty-four million students take out loans to pay for college tuition, and for the average year of 2016, there is $1.2 trillion in debt for college graduates alone. A research study was conducted that surveyed college students and created data on which student loans they had taken out and how much of each. The study showed that 30.5 million students took out direct loans, totaling $911.6 billion, as well as 16.8 million college graduates taking out the FFEL loan totaling $342.6 billion. Perkins loans totaled $8.0 billion, borrowed from 2.7 million people (Josuweit, Andy). Now, on average, this doesn’t seem like much compared to the number of kids going to college, but this number will double by the time it’s time to pay them due to a delinquency rate of 11.1%. Which makes it almost impossible for the average college graduate to pay off their student loans in a short period of time, creating a lot of problems when it comes to starting their career and taking care of themselves.

Research has found that when comparing four-year universities and private colleges, as well as community colleges, student loan debt was much more significant at four-year colleges than at community colleges. Additionally, they found that more student loans were taken out with students attending public four-year colleges rather than private colleges. The research also found that students who received Pell grants were more likely to borrow more money than other students. Forty percent of the $1.2 billion dollars taken out for student loans was used to finance graduate and professional degrees. All of this statistical information has shown that of the forty-four million students who take out student loans to finance their tuition, most of them go to four-year public universities and rely on the lower-middle class ladder. Now, just because these people are from the lower and middle class doesn’t mean they have to pay for it when it comes to attending college and striving for a better career. Student loan debt is a problem that needs attention and a solution to the crippling problem.

The topic of student loan debt for college students is something that hasn’t been talked about much in recent years. Attention was drawn to the issue when the presidential election came around and Bernard Sanders (also known as Bernie Sanders) began proposing on the forum that college should be free to avoid student loan debt. Shortly after this proposal was announced, the real statistics on the subject emerged. Student loan debt has nearly doubled in recent years due to the rising cost of tuition, making it almost impossible for an average college student not to take out student loans. The interest rate on the loans was raised, causing the amount being withdrawn to double before you had a chance to start paying it back. Sanders also called attention to the idea that a college degree is the equivalent of what used to be a high school diploma. He is arguing that students should not be forced to pay for the education they should have received in previous years of schooling.

Many solutions have been proposed to eliminate the problem of student loan debt. Current President Barack Obama has drawn attention to solutions such as student loan forgiveness, which allows college graduates to apply for loan forgiveness, eliminating the remaining balance of debt. The requirements for this are that the college graduate must be employed by the government or a non-profit organization, and must have made at least 120 monthly payments under a qualified payment plan while working full-time for the current employer. However, this solution also caused some problems, such as the student loan forgiveness program will not completely eliminate student loan debt, it would only reduce the burden slightly. While it does do some good things, the solution would end up costing taxpayers a whopping $3.5 billion to pay off student loans. This idea of ​​taxpayers paying out of pocket caused a big problem on the issue.

Another solution that was proposed was something more local. Companies have allowed recent college graduates who have started careers at their company right after graduation to offer contracts to pay off their debt. College graduates who sign contracts with companies allow the companies to pay off their student loan debt if in return the students work for them for a certain period of time. Many medical students have found themselves signing ten-year contracts with a company to pay off their medical school debt. Now, although this solution may seem like these students are selling their soul, each student has the final decisions on whether or not she wants to accept the offer.

Student loan debt can be resolved in many different ways, but the most effective way would be to make college tuition free, eliminating the idea of ​​student loans altogether. When Wall Street crashed, the middle class helped bail them out. Wall Street can help wipe out student loan debt. Bernie Sanders has come up with a great idea, and with the help of a few small revisions, it could be the end of student loan debt for college graduates. Taxing Wall Street with a speculation tax would generate enough revenue to allow college tuition to be eliminated. And even if the income isn’t enough to eliminate the cost of college tuition, it will reduce interest rates on student debt exponentially. Also another way to get income would be to raise taxes for the upper class. Both ideas would bring in a significant amount of revenue to fund college tuition costs.

Although the topic of student loan debt for college graduates has just come to the public’s attention, the problem has been going on for quite some time. Growing more and more over the years. Not much has been done to fix the problem, but some ideas have been proposed to ease the burden on college students. With combined efforts of significant numbers, we could find America creating a real solution to the problem and eliminating student loans and even college tuition altogether. Although the idea seems unrealistic in today’s economy, there will come a day when a student can strive to get a better education for her future without having to worry about going into debt for what it takes to get there.

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