mllehazelwood:

Remember this cartoon? Well, here are some numbers:

$2,500: approx. tuition for a year at my undergrad university in 2000

$5,000: approx. tuition for a year at my undergrad university in 2005

$9,000: approx. tuition for a year at my undergrad university in 2013

In thirteen years, tuition at my undergraduate university—a regional state university, Western Kentucky University, with, yes, a lot of growth and a few nationally-ranked programs, but a university that lets almost anyone in—has almost quadrupled. After four years, incoming freshmen will now owe at least $36,000 (not counting housing and other fees—or how much tuition will inflate in the next four years!) for a degree at a regional state school.* Now, how much do you think average salaries in this state or any other state have grown in thirteen years?

And now the student loan interest rate is going to rise from 3.4% to 6.8%. By contrast, big banks on Wall Street can borrow money from our government at a rate of 0.75%. (There’s a petition! Go sign!)

Look, I know some of us are by now disillusioned by the American Dream, and we watch corruption grow and grow (or certainly our knowledge of corruption grows). I also know that it’s maybe naive to think that corruption is new; watch the new Gatsby movie and you’ll realize that we have always been less than the country we want to be, less than the ideals we espouse. But the American government would do well to perpetuate the idea that we can, indeed, rise above the circumstances of our birth, because if we don’t have the American Dream, and we don’t have full socialism (look at how much Obamacare has been fought, though it is hanging on despite us), what do we have?

So what I’m saying is this: we have a serious problem with how expensive education has become in this country, and it’s not the fault of your (not) greedy professors. The first start, the very least we can do is lower the interest rate of student loans to near zilch.

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*I love my undergraduate university. I do, I do. I was in the nationally-ranked Photojournalism program, and it has some other great things going for it, including its nationally-ranked Forensics team. But it is still considered a regional state university, which—as I was told when I was getting counseling on getting an MFA or PhD—means you have to work your way up in prestige if you want to get a job in academics. And I’m sure its reputation might not be high in other fields, too.