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As educators, we once believed that vocational training and college could serve the common good and that encouraging students to invest in it would benefit them, their families and their communities. Because of the way student loans are now financed in our country, however, the benefits we envisioned are vanishing. Students and their families owe more for their loans than the rest of us for either our credit card debts or our car loans. Something is amiss.
As states have reduced their contributions to postsecondary education by $9 billion over the last 10 years, ordinary families have been left to shoulder the burden, with dire results. Just over 10 percent of colleges have enough wealth to replace loans with grants for middle- and low-income families, with the highest levels of student borrowing occurring in the bottom 89 percent of institutions in terms of endowment wealth and with reductions in borrowing for those in the top 1 percent. For those students entering some of the for-profit colleges, they learned the hard way that the job-placement rates were sometimes inflated and that the return on investment was never going to materialize. Meanwhile, the cost of financing every dollar of these loans increased -- with the most disadvantaged students paying more but getting less.
Who could have imagined that the student loan crisis would widen the black-white wealth gap? Education was supposed to close it. Who could have foreseen couples delaying their decision to marry, or giving up on it altogether, because of their student loan debt? Who would have described a student loan in the same terms as a payday one, with hidden fees and no way out, in the days when student loans were manageable?
Our concerns are based on carefully conducted studies that we’re happy to share. And they are based on the lives of the students many of us teach. They deserve better than the mess our lending policies have created.
Our students have not changed. They still dream of a life of dignity and meaningful work. They still stay up late and sacrifice sleep in order to cross the finish line. And they struggle to repay loan burdens that we did not imagine some 20 or 30 years ago. Many of us who managed to work and pay our way through college could not do so now, even with more effort. To be sure, our students remain remarkable. Their detractors have missed the mark.
Before ruling out the possibility that a better future is possible, please take a look at the wide range of proposals out there to provide relief and reform for student borrowers. Debt cancellation can work, and it can take a variety of forms. (Thankfully, the Financial Security Program at the Aspen Institute has gathered a range of these options in one place, here.)
We have to decide that the future is worth it.
We, the undersigned, ask for other educators to join us (by signing here) in our push for a more just and prosperous future for those entrusted to our classrooms.
With urgency,
Frederick F. Wherry
Princeton University
Tressie McMillan Cottom
Virginia Commonwealth University
Darrick Hamilton
Ohio State University
Lillian Taiz
California Faculty Association, past president
California State University at Los Angeles (emerita)
Charlie Eaton
University of California, Merced
Anthony Abraham Jack
Harvard University
Fenaba Addo
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Jason Houle
Dartmouth College
L. Lacy Barnes
Madera Community College Center
Alondra Nelson
Institute for Advanced Study
Sayeedul Islam
Farmingdale State College
Brett Collins
University of California, Santa Barbara
Ruha Benjamin
Princeton University
Graham Spann
Craven Community College
Adam Goldstein
Princeton University
Michelle Bezanson
Chair of anthropology
Santa Clara University
Megan McIntyre
Sonoma State University
David de Céspedes
Brooklyn Ascend High School
Sarah Leavens
University of Pittsburgh
Sandy Grande
Connecticut College
Jennifer C. Lena
Columbia University
Anne Kane
University of Houston Downtown
Christina Dunbar-Hester
University of Southern California
Daniel Hirschman
Brown University
Bianca C. Williams
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Van C. Tran
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Daniel Krutka
University of North Texas
Michelle Weinberger
Northwestern University
Randa Serhan
American University
Stephen F. Ostertag
Tulane University
W. Carson Byrd
University of Michigan/University of Louisville
Sebastián G. Guzmán
Purchase College, SUNY
Nina Bandelj
University of California, Irvine
Anthony S. Alvarez
California State University at Fullerton
Paul-Brian McInerney
University of Illinois at Chicago
Victoria Reyes
University of California, Riverside
Michael Gibson-Light
University of Denver
Megan Kelly
Arrupe College of Loyola
University of Chicago
Alya Guseva
Boston University
Susan Dobscha
Bentley University
Linda Kaboolian
Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Heba Gowayed
Boston University
Rei Terada
University of California, Irvine
Madeline Louise Friend
Flagstaff Unified School District
Keith Brown
Saint Joseph's University
Karen Gregory
University of Edinburgh
Leonard Nevarez
Vassar College
Megan Bea
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Shea Swauger
University of Colorado at Denver
Jeffrey Himpele
Princeton University
Lilly Irani
University of California, San Diego
Julia Elyachar
Princeton University
Natasha Quadlin
Ohio State University
Lucas Bang
Harvey Mudd College
Akos Rona-Tas
University of California, San Diego
Daniel C. Hallin
University of California, San Diego
Richard Swedberg
Cornell University
Cynthia Buckley
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lauren Williams
College for Creative Studies
Kim Philip Hansen
Mount St. Mary's University
Laura Hamilton
University of California, Merced
Amy Binder
University of California, San Diego
Anastasia C. Wilson
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
David Stark
University of California, Berkeley
Isaac William Martin
University of California, San Diego
Myra Marx Ferree
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Wesley Longhofer
Emory University
Jean Beaman
University of California, Santa Barbara
Philip V. McHarris
Yale University
Briana Mullen
University of California, Berkeley
Julia Elyachar
Princeton University
Sebastián G. Guzmán
Princeton University
Meghan Tobias Neely
Stanford University