Out of college and into debt

WALKING PAST a newsstand the other day, the following headline from the Seattle Times grabbed my attention: "Young, Educated and Drowning in Debt."

I didn't know whether to scream or cry.

According to the article, the average undergraduate today will finish school with more than twice as much debt as their counterpart a decade ago. The increase has been even steeper for graduate students.

At the same time, the expected boost in salary that comes with a degree is not what it used to be. While college graduates do earn an average of $20,000 more per year, the Labor Department reports that tuition costs are five times as high as in the 1980s, rising at twice the rate of inflation, while wages have remained stagnant for years.

The article described the situation of Tyson Hunter, who makes $41,000 a year and owes $152,000:

His loan payments soon will top $1,000 a month--the amount of a small mortgage, and about a third of his salary. If he makes the minimum payments, he will retire his student debt when he is 53 years old, having handed lenders some $300,000.

"Buying a house? That's not even in the 10-year goals," says Hunter, who has temporarily moved back into his mom's Bothell condo to reduce expenses. "The next two years are going to be crippling. Hopefully, after that, it won't be as crippling."

Despite skyrocketing tuition rates, the worsening economic situation is actually pushing more young people to go back to school rather than face a hostile, low-wage job market. At the same time, it's gotten more and more difficult to finance an education. According to an article in the same paper, 36 lenders have suspended writing private student loans over the past year:

The news is not much better for the thousands of students seeking federally backed loans from private lenders...The nation's largest student-loan lender, Sallie Mae, is still writing private loans but has become “very selective,” spokesman Tom Joyce said last week. That means lending only to students who have clean credit histories, and almost always requiring a co-signer such as a parent.

It helped put my own situation in perspective. I recently graduated with a masters degree, which was thankfully paid for through a work-study position. While I still owe some $10,000 from my undergraduate degree, I'm in good shape compared to the average graduate, and many people I know. All things considered, I've actually been incredibly lucky.

Unfortunately, I am now looking for work in a rapidly deteriorating economy. My plan was to work in a public library, but due to tight budgets, most libraries have very few openings, even though they desperately need more staff.

Ironically, the same economic situation that supposedly justifies shrinking library budgets has also led to increased library use across the country, as people find ways to cut costs by taking advantage of the books, computers, cultural programs, homework help, career assistance and other free services offered at public libraries.

There is plenty of work to be done in this country, and people to do it. So what's the disconnect?

Finding no library jobs readily available, I've been looking for any kind of job I can get (most of which pay much less than the job I went to school for) and in the meantime, applying for unemployment, putting everything on my credit card and praying I don't get sick without health insurance.

The whole situation makes me sick to my stomach. What was the point of working so hard for a better future? To hear our politicians claim over and over that there's never any money for education or libraries or health care or decent-paying jobs, and then turn around and spend trillions of dollars on war and bailing out the obscenely wealthy is a slap in the face.

What gives me hope is knowing that I'm far from the only one whose quest for the American Dream has turned out to be a cruel joke. It's time we demand a different set of priorities.