Over 70% of college graduates in America leave school with student loan debt, and I was one of them. Last year, the average amount of debt per student was $29,400 – which is a lot for anyone to saddle, especially a twenty-two year old.
To be clear, I wouldn’t trade my college experience for anything. It was absolutely invaluable and has enriched my life in ways that I haven’t even realized yet. But, like most valuable things, it came with a price.
And that price continues to rise. In fact, college tuition rates have risen faster than inflation every year since 1981. When you add to this equation the major cuts in state funding and the increasing number of college enrollees, you get what Hillary Clinton recently called “one of the biggest problems we have in the country.” To address this problem will require a combination of efforts from colleges and universities, state governments, and student loan lenders. And the federal government must also do its part.
The federal government’s Pell Grant program provides grants based on a student’s financial need. Unlike loans, Pell Grants do not have to be repaid. However, the amount of Pell Grants has not kept up with the rise in college tuition costs, requiring students to borrow more. In fact, the value of the maximum grant available at the average four-year public university fell from approximately 80% in the 1970s to just 31% last year.
Congress must continue the fight to strengthen the Pell Grant program, just as Hillary Clinton did in the Senate, when she fought to restore $270 million for the program that was cut during the Bush administration and introduced a bill to allow students to receive two Pell Grants a year instead of one.
Trust me, when you’ve taken out as much debt as me and my friends, you’re willing to work for any help you can get to pay it off, which is why service programs like AmeriCorps are becoming increasingly popular. AmeriCorps offers loan forgiveness, cancellation, or grants in exchange for community service work. It was created in 1994, and since then, over 800,000 people have participated in the program, totaling over one billion hours of service all over the country.
It’s a win-win situation – at least when both sides live up to their end of the bargain.
For AmeriCorps volunteers, Hillary Clinton made sure government fulfilled its end of the bargain by pushing a bill through Congress to guarantee that every volunteer gets their education award. Teach for America, the program I joined, can only afford to give educational awards to some of its participants, and as luck would have it, I did not make the cut.
I obviously value education or I wouldn’t have dug myself into this financial hole for mine, but I also want to help the next generation of young people pursue an education of their own, which is why I joined Teach for America in the first place. As a 7th grade math teacher at STRIVE Preparatory School in Denver, I’m doing what I love to do. The education award would just lift some financial burden off of my shoulders.
Most importantly, knowing that the federal government is doing all it can to address the increasing student loan debt in America would help reassure that I am not passing along the wrong message to my own students when I encourage them to strive for a college education. After all, I don’t want that message to end in their financial downfall.
