The American Dream, what do those words make you envision?
Perhaps wealth, family, property, and education. It is a marvelous vision for all. The United States of America’s image is painted with this vision.
Am I wrong?
It creates an illusion to the people’s eyes that we are a great country of fairness and freedom for all who strive to succeed on this land.
Maybe we are. Yeah.
That however is a flawed statement that is continuously repeated in the U.S. Why?
Well the smallest and first step to achieving that dream is not even possible for many.
That single step is the completion of education
Higher education, specifically, is already an obstacle because of the high costs of college. I’ll be going over just how much our nation is affected by this growing issue. The increasing stories of individuals, boasting demographics, and comparison to better education systems will show the lack of access to education.
About 60% of the 20 million college students borrow money, adding to a total of $1 trillion student loans since May, 2012 (Snyder, J. 2014).
This amount is higher than auto-loans, credit, and debit loans combined in our nation. More than half of our college students are facing this issue, who walk out into the work industry with 10-20 year loans. So, majority of the adults in the United States are drowning in debt!
More than half of four-year graduates leave college with student loans with an average of $30,000 in debt.
What does this imply about our government’s care and sincerity for the people?
The issue doesn’t seem to lessen much more as inflation rates will continue to increase by each year.
In school years 2017-18, public four-year institutions had an average in-state tuition and fees of $9,980, but by the 2018-19 school year, the average rose to $10,230, increasing by $250 total (2.5% before accounting for last year’s inflation rate of 2.9 %).
As for private nonprofit four-year institutions, they had about the largest increase of tuition and fees, it being $34,7000 in the 2017-18 school year to $35,830 in 2018-19, increasing by a total of $1,130 (3.3% for inflation rate), (College Board, 2018).
Within just 10 years, the inflation rate could skyrocket through the roof, putting our future generations at risk with their education. At the moment, students and graduates are already struggling.
Take in account, how it would be within a decade?
First Generation Students
For instance, we can look at young first-generation college student, Yee, a Hmong-American female who believed college was a “new journey”, yet she felt first-generation students were limited due to their financial situations and academic preparation. (Jehangir, 2012).
This dream to achieve their life-long goals in education have led many to leave college without a degree, wasting away their large amounts of debts for nothing.
First-generation students, disproportionately students of color and immigrants, in particular struggle the most as their parents most likely come from low-income households.
Unlike students whose parents attended college, first-generation students are more likely to be students of color, immigrants, student-parents, low-income, and above the age of 24. In addition, these populations evidently continue to grow in our secondary schools (Kelly, 2005; Mortenson, 2006b).
In 2002, students of color accounted for 33% of our high school graduates and are expected to reach 40% by 2012 (Mortenson, 2006a; U.S. Census Bureau, 2003). These first-generation students reflect the changing demographics in the United States and are among the fastest growing segments of our population. Despite this noticeable change in demographics, academic institutions and particularly large research institutions are unprepared for creating success for these students (Jehangir, 2012). They are unable to support the dreams of these students, who should very much receive the same support just as their privileged peers. Evidently, low-income students are not given the same opportunities as students who come from privileged, high-income households.
A graduate of college, 28-year old mom Beecham-Watkins, shows that even after many years after college, students will continue to suffer from the overwhelming loans. After 7 years, she owes $80,000 in total. Beecham-Watkins emphasized that
“There’s this dream that you get your education and you’re going to get a good job and you won’t have to struggle to pay your student loans back because your degree is like your ticket to the American dream.” (Kindelan, 2018).
That however, was not how things turned out for Beecham-Watkins. This emphasis of the American Dream is what continues to blind these helpless students into the pools of debt, just like how Beecham-Watkins did but now struggles to pay back.
Beecham-Watkins is only one of the millions of postgraduates in our country who struggle to pay off their loans. Beecham-Watkins, now married with a 1-year-old daughter, said scholarships and part-time jobs did indeed help cover some of her out-of-state tuition to Missouri, but only for her undergrad years. She and her husband, who also has student-loan debt, attended graduate school together in Washington, D.C., but left after one year because of the cost (Kindelan, 2018).
Because there are too many struggling students, it is made into a norm in the United States. It will just allow the issue to expand further for future students!
Without addressing this problem now, students will never realize that their opportunities have been attacked from generation to generation. It will affect themselves, their children, grand-children, and beyond that.
Article 26 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
Based on the facts I stated before… Well,
Millions of students are in debt and the $1 trillion student loans that overbears our total of auto, credit, and debit loans…
How is it fair?
Students across the United States don’t have “equal access” to education due to their financial situations. In MANY cases, their only choice is to take on loans! (Which grow with interest per year, charging every individual more beyond average.)
Some higher education institutions, such as private ones, are rarely ever accessible to lower-income students.
Lower-income students resort to local Universities or Community Colleges, which surely aren’t negative choices either, but unfair to lower-income students. Students with parents able to afford these expensive institutions have more options when choosing their education path.
Australia’s Education System: A look into it.
In Australia, their loans on students are less harsh.
They are also beneficial to students and their future. In Beckie Supiano’s The Chronicle of Higher Education on “What America can learn from Australia’s student loans”, Australia’s government tax system looks at students’ based income and allow payments to be made through taxes, helping students through no charge of interest (Supiano, 2016).
Students and graduates in the United States are charged with interest in loans by each passing year. This adds millions of loans to the issue of the cost of education!
Australia does not allow students to “borrow money for living expenses”, and solely only for tuition and fees for school (Supiano, 2016). This helps prevent their student loans from “becoming no-interest subsidies of students’ purchases of luxuries unconnected to higher education” (Supiano, 2016).
This emphasizes the importance of education for their people in Australia
AND it prevents loans from sky rocketing.
Australia’s priorities are their students’ education, not the immediate feed of money.
Australia also carries a feature in which helps their students and graduates throughout the spans of their lives. Forgiveness provisions and programs in the United States are seen as extremely helpful because they apparently lessen people’s loans, however the added interest doesn’t help much with the issue. In Australia, they’re more successful without the use of forgiveness programs.
When Australian students’ incomes are “too low”, they don’t have to make payments to their loans in the moment until they’ve earned enough to do so (Supiano, 2016). Their debt does stay with them until the end of their time, but it is a fair system for students.
The United States doesn’t have to COMPLETELY adopt Australia’s policy to adjust its education system. But as we can now tell, there is much for the system to learn and recognize from Australia. Millions of our people will continue to struggle in the pools of debt.
Recognizing what change we can make would give much more to our people in the United States, rather than allowing the issue to increase further into the future of our newer generations.
SO… What?
Again, from what the United States can learn, are the substantial facts and statistics of our fellow students’ loans.
The numbers are loud and clear! The struggles of Yee and Beecham-Watkins are only two stories of millions more. With just a simple recognition of another country’s successful education system, Australia being one of many examples, we can improve little by little.
SimplisticsStudio 