Why Is There REALLY a Student Loan Debt Problem?

It’s no secret – The United States of America has a real student loan debt problem. However, the real question is: Why do you want to start your legal adult life going in debt?

Before we go on, I’d love to know if I my information is correct. If you spot anything wrong, please let me know so I can correct it.

How Much Has the Student Loan Debt Problem Increased?

The cost of college has been rising for a long time now. Take the University of Pennsylvania. On their website, they post how much it cost for tuition, fees, and living expenses.

1960 – Undergraduate Schools:

Tuition: $1,250
General Fee: $150
Room and Board: $950
Books and Equipment: $75
Personal Expenses: $345

Total: $2,770
Adjusted for Inflation (2022): $27,055.13
Calculator.net (2022): $25,790.61
Bls.gov (2022): $27,332.15

2021 – 2022 – Undergraduate Schools:

Tuition: $54,652
General Fee: $5,510
Technology Fee: $900
Average Room Rate: $11,358
Average Meal Plan: $5,946

Total: $78,366

The student loan debt problem is prevalent with more than $1,500,000,000,000 owed. Society, government, banks, and the education system have convinced the vast majority of kids that college is necessary. Don’t you think that’s weird in today’s information age?

Well, I think it’s weird because before we get to college, we already have 13 years of formal education. According to the Census, America spent, on average, $13,187 per student in 2019. By the time you get through 13 years of public education, if that number is constant, we’ll have spent $171,431 on you. Using that number, keeping in mind Pennsylvania has a higher spending average than the national average, a typical student will have spent $249,797.

Now, that’s a lot of money! All of that money, if the student goes to college on loans, doesn’t even come directly out of the student’s wallet. Instead, it’s put directly into the student loan debt problem.

What Do We Get out of 17 Years of Education?

But what are we really getting out of all of that investment? More importantly, out of those 13 or 17 years of education, how much of that do we really use in our daily lives? This is something we really need to ask ourselves because all that time, money, and energy should account for something.

I graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA, and I have 168 quarter credits from a college with a 3.9 GPA. Yet, I’ve spent a long time now wondering how much of all that time, money, and energy I have actually found useful in my life.

I studied hard through school because it was what I was told I needed to do. I didn’t enjoy most of what I was studying. Math wasn’t too hard, but it didn’t interest me. I had almost zero interest in English. Science classes were a little interesting, but I didn’t see why I should work so hard to learn it. I even took Honors classes because I was told to, but I hated it. No one told me what the importance of learning 10+ years’ worth of math was, but I worked at getting almost straight A’s in it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really question education until near the end of my time in college. Going to college was the biggest mistake of my life, and I regret it to this day. Why? Well, ultimately, it was a giant waste of time, money, and energy. I did pick a bad college to go to, but I don’t see how a good college would’ve changed much. I fully admit – I made the mistake of going to college to learn film and video production. Shouldn’t have done that! But truly…how many degrees are really necessary nowadays?

I specifically remember in one class where one student was complaining about how the class was a giant waste of time. This was in my first quarter, so I wasn’t questioning much at first. Perhaps this is because I was going to school on the G.I. Bill. At the time, I wasn’t thinking the G.I. Bill was something I earned and I shouldn’t let it go to waste. Part of me was still thinking the government wouldn’t let us use the G.I. Bill at this school if it was a bad school.

Boy howdy was I naïve.

The Internet – The Student Loan Debt Program’s Worst Enemy

We have this thing called the internet now. It should have made the student loan debt problem almost nil. We even have the internet on our phones, which means we have access basically to anything we want to learn or see anywhere in seconds.

Tuition, books, fees all added up, the Bachelor’s Degree at the now defunct Art Institute of Las Vegas (AILV) was pushing $100,000. If I was able to take just $15,000 and invest into a computer, a decent camera, some standard equipment, some classes on Udemy (which can go as low as $12 for 20+ hours of video instruction), a subscription to Masterclass.com, and a studio rental for 6 months, I could’ve learned everything and then some what I spent nearly 2 years and 9 months doing at the Art Institute of Las Vegas.

I even took one of the video production masterclasses on Udemy and it basically was all the same information I got at AILV.

So really – Why Is There a Student Loan Debt Problem?

I don’t know for sure, but I do know it doesn’t even need to be nearly as big of a problem as it is. Society is choosing to make it a problem, and we’re incredibly stupid for making that choice.

The two big players that could fix the student loan debt problem are parents and businesses.

Parents

Most parents need to realize that they aren’t nearly as successful as they want to be because they simply didn’t want success that much. Even today, so many blame their failures based on the fact that they didn’t go or complete college. If this was the case, there would be no successful people who didn’t go to college. Why do so many parents push their negative hubris on to their children?

There are so many extremely successful people who didn’t finish college. Penn Jillette is a high school dropout. Steve Jobs dropped out after one semester. Henry Ford had no formal education in business or engineering before becoming an apprentice in a machine shop. “Only” about a third of the world’s billionaires didn’t graduate college. If a college degree was so necessary to be successful, how are so many of the most successful without a degree?

What argument will parents present when told that information? Please let me know because I’d love to form counterpoints to them.

I’m sure one point they make is that college will make you smarter and cultured, but in today’s age, who has to be? Again, we have this internet thing on our phones and computers that puts the vast majority in the same playing field. You can look up anything you want to know, and only at work will you instantly need to know something. Experience is best at preparing you for that.

Experience is the mother of all teachers.

You can learn about how to run a business all day, but until you do it, you don’t truly know how to do it.

I know it’s not college, but in the infantry, all you do is train. Sometimes you train for literally weeks at a time in the field. I went through Basic Combat Training, Infantry Training, then trained for a whole year before my first deployment. When I got to Iraq, the training helped, but it didn’t truly prepare me for how operations went.

If you can’t be prepared for life and death situations, how can you be prepared for something not nearly as serious?

You can learn about culture through the internet as well. Surprise! You don’t need college or education to learn about culture. There’s a good chance you already went to school with or work with someone from a different background. There’s a good chance someone or group of a different culture exists in your community. If not, you can always travel (especially if you don’t have that student loan debt problem!)

Businesses

Businesses can play a huge role in eliminating the student loan debt problem. There are many companies, such as Amazon, Walmart and Verizon, that will help you immensely in your education if you feel the need to get a degree. Many jobs nowadays include “education or relevant experience” as requirements as well.

One thing businesses should do is actively participate in the high schools. From my experience, businesses are only interested in college graduates. I’m willing to bet college graduates are a little more mature than high school graduates, but they most likely come with a student loan debt problem as well.

Young people may be more immature, but they most likely will come with more ability to focus on their careers. They aren’t part of the student loan debt problem, they most likely won’t have any kids, and they won’t be as likely have any law violations. Businesses can be leaders and help guide the young, hopeful crowd and keep them on a straight path to their success.

Education also doesn’t truly prepare you for the real world. If you were like me, you were forced to work in group projects in which you know you would be carrying the load of the work. In school, it’s temporary, and you might not get an “A” grade. In the real world, especially if you are in a union, you could be working with a bad individual or group for a while. If you aren’t a true, experienced leader (how many leadership classes did you have in your education?), it’ll be very difficult to make that group productive.

Are Businesses Thriving off the Student Loan Debt Problem?

If an employee needs the job, the employee is more likely to stay, even if the employee hates the job. Not only does the employee have rent, utilities, cell phone, and maybe a car payment to make, but the employee also has a loan to pay. We’ve all most likely have had jobs we’ve hated. We weren’t happy at them. Do we want to spend a third of our lives unhappy?

Especially in today’s low-quality worker pool, how much do businesses really care about a college degree? Recent student loan debt free Bruce Paulson experiences says they don’t.

“’My goal in life was to ski big mountains,’ [Bruce Paulson] said. Saddled by that student loan debt, he said he put that dream on hold.”

From an Article by Elizabeth Economou on FoxNews.com

Mr. Paulson never states if his goal was realized before or in college, but if he wanted to ski big mountains, why did he need college to do that? Is it because it was what everyone told him he needed to do?

Does Education Equal Experience?

When I was at AILV, I had to do an internship. Isn’t that dumb? I paid to go somewhere to work for free? To be fair, I did get paid twice in that internship, albeit it wasn’t as much as one should’ve been paid!

The owner of the business where I had my internship even told me that he didn’t care if his people had a degree. Through his experience, showing up, giving an honest effort, and keeping an open mind were worth more than any degree. Sometimes degree holders could be as unreliable as anyone else.

My education also didn’t qualify me for work at a couple news stations. One station I visited in person looked at my resume and said I could volunteer at the station, but I won’t be hired because I had no experience in a TV station. I tried to explain to the representative that one of my classes taught exactly what the job posting for Production Assistant needed. That didn’t matter because I had no experience.

What Is the Solution to the Student Loan Debt Problem?

Of course, there are some uses for college and high school. It doesn’t need to be totally eliminated, but they do need to be drawn back and/or reimagined.

It’s probably the worst thing to hear. We can blame others all day for any debt issues we may have. In the end, we have to be accountable for our decisions. There’s a reason wisdom exists – so that we can learn.

The more time you spend trying to blame others, the less time you spend resolving problems. Trust me, I spent such a long time trying to find someone to blame after I got recalled back into the Army. Did it do me any good? No. What did some good is when I started to actively tell the truth about what the Army is like and getting people to think more deeply about what it does.

I recently read a book by Maria Shriver called Ten Things I Wish I’d Known – Before I Went out into the Real World. It’s an expanded version of her speech she gave at the College of the Holy Cross. It’s a great book to read at any point, but the earlier in life, the better.

Instead of relying so much on public education to teach us, perhaps we should learn to be more autodidactic. Every single successful person will tell you your education doesn’t end once you are done with high school or college. We should be lifelong learners. This is only realistic and feasible if we learn to do this on our own. The student loan debt problem can’t have that since it can’t exist without your dollars.

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