Transferring schools is never fun. You leave a neighborhood you’re comfortable in, a support system of friends you’ve developed over the years, even the comfortable knowledge of having explored every crevice of your campus.
That was the situation facing my friend, “Bill.” Apart from being a huge Star Wars nerd and a mean basketball player, Bill also happened to be from the Midwest, meaning he had to pay out-of-state tuition. After two rough academic years here at the University and a rapidly decreasing college fund, he was faced with a choice: transfer to a college in his home state, pay less for tuition and enter a less-prestigious business program, or stay at the University and switch majors. Either way, his future after college will be overshadowed by the bane of every college student: debt.
The pall cast by the ever-increasing problem of student debt isn’t going away anytime soon. The days of Mom and Pop putting aside a little money each year so little Jimmy can get a good education are fading, instead being replaced with wealthier families who can pay their children’s tuition fees out of pocket, and the rest of us are forced to find alternatives or sell ourselves to a phenomenon that cripples an individual’s financial independence for years to come: student loans.
Many of the students here at the University use loans to fund part, if not the majority, of their tuition. According to FinAid.org, 65.6 percent of college graduates in the 2007-08 school year left with some debt, while the average debt accrued by a college graduate averages out at a stunning $23,186. This statistic in itself is deceiving: it includes the people who borrowed a little extra to pay for that studio apartment senior year or to help pay for a new ride. Most of the people I know who are using loans are looking at graduating with about $40,000 to $50,000 in debt. This includes housing, food, transportation and tuition.
Completely unreasonable.
Of course, there are alternatives. If you had exceptional grades during high school or did really well on the SAT, you’re eligible for grants and student-success scholarships. If you come from a financially challenged background, you gain access to additional aid in the form of a Pell Grant or the Federal Supplement Educational Opportunity Grant.  But even free federal money doesn’t completely alleviate the stresses of student debt. While it helps reduce the amount of debt an individual will end up with, it doesn’t make the debt more manageable.
Another option is serving in the military. Based on a complex combination of your length of service, your exiting rank, and whether you opted to pay more into the fund, the GI Bill will pay for part of your education. Of course, you may actually have to see combat, but that’s the price you pay for an education. It could be an arm and a leg — literally.
Why, then, do students have to go to such lengths to receive a college education? What is it about higher learning that entails such physical and financial sacrifices? Easy to obtain and easy to forget about while you’re in school, these loans are snakes in the grass. Upon graduation you’re saddled with payments that hinder any sort of financial independence, which is why you went to college, after all. An older friend of mine went to law school, one of the more expensive forms of higher education, and paid his way with student loans. He graduated, and has worked as a lawyer for several years. Unfortunately, the life of a divorce lawyer isn’t as glamorous as it first appeared, and he became a high school teacher instead. Now in his fifties, he’s still trying to crawl out from under his student loans.
Why does school need to be so expensive? What is it about four years of education that costs so much? Is the cost of education really rising, or is our money being spent on other things? The amount of debt a student leaves with after graduating has risen 58 percent since 1993, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit. That’s with inflation factored into the equation. There is no logical reason for the price of education to skyrocket that much in so little time. The professors aren’t getting smarter or pulling in bigger paychecks.  The material isn’t more in-depth. The campuses aren’t changing. Instead, universities are devoting more and more resources to attracting prospective freshmen: ritzy dorms, tours and the all-important athletic programs. Anyone remember the dorm shortage we had a few years ago? Maybe instead of taking their money and telling them to find their own housing, we should have focused on building more economic dormitories.
Instead of bleeding the government dry by relying on federal aid to fund prospective students, universities need to focus more on providing an affordable education to students, as well as offering more aid to the financially challenged. Everybody deserves a higher education; let’s not allow the negatives of debt to outweigh that. The emphasis should be on getting the student into college; as any business major can tell you, the bigger your market, the better off you are.
College students want a new deal. Give them one.
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