Student Loans: Why I Ask About and Talk About Money

I am concerned profoundly about student loan debt in the United States and its effects on the current generation of college students. Like many people, I have been reading about student loan debt on the financial pages of major newspapers, where some analysts portend that student loans are the next sub-prime mortgage scandal. I do not know if that is the case, but I know first hand from my peers and from teaching at the university that serious concerns about student loans are warranted. But, what can an individual do? Particularly an individual like me, who is paid in part by student loans? (I feel like it is crucial to acknowledge my own complicity in the system and the benefits I receive from the ease of financial aid in the form of loans to students and their families for college education.)

After mulling these questions for a number of months, I have committed to the following strategies to address the current state of how individuals and families pay for education in the United States. These are not strategies designed to topple the system; they do not address the fundamental challenges facing us financially in the United States. Rather, they are a set of individual commitments that invite examination and awareness about the current state of the costs and expenses of higher education.

My three strategies are these:

In individual, one-on-one meetings with students, I ask students about their future plans and how they imagine paying for their future lives. These conversations are always interesting and engaging to me. I recall very clearly my own anxieties about being self-supporting when I graduated from college; no one discussed it with me and I think speaking about the issue would have been helpful to me.
In my classes, I talk about money and financing education publicly and forthrightly with students. Last semester, I asked students to disclose in small groups how much money they earned last year; it was a jarring and challenging exercise, but it allowed students to think about different values and taboos about money. Similarly, last semester, one of my students was accepted to medical school; we talked about how she would pay for it—including student loans, quantifying the amounts. Keeping this information shielded from others does not help us all to understand the costs of life in the United States today.
Finally, I ask everyone who requests a letter of recommendation from me for graduate school to tell me how they will pay for graduate school.

These are my three commitments to act on the issue of student debt. As I said, they are small commitments, but they are my action to highlight increasing social stratification in the United States with the hope that through awareness, action may emerge to challenge it.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: graduate school, money, student loans