Life Off-Label

One of the big issues with Occupy Wall Street and politics in general is student loans. I just read an article that talked about how total student loan debt in the US has exceeded total credit card debt, which is truly amazing. But what I really love is when older generations scoff at that and call my generation irresponsible because they were able to graduate with much less debt. They forget that education used to be more heavily subsidized by the government, and tuition was far cheaper than it is now. For perspective, my friend’s dad went to UT, and his tuition for all four years is cheaper than a semester was for me.

The situation also hasn’t been helped by the famous picture circulating all over Facebook of the supposed student who pulled his or herself up by their own bootstraps and was able to graduate debt-free:

First of all, if this is even true, I can almost guarantee their scholarship was need-based, not merit-based. Most “moderately priced in state univerisities” don’t have as much to offer in scholarships compared to private universities. What they do have is saved mostly for grad students and athletes. Yes, there are some merit-based scholarships, but the likelihood that they cover 90% of her tuition is very rare. It’s a lot more likely that, if she did get that much help, at least some of that came from the fact that her parents make an extremely low income. I’m sorry I didn’t work harder to make my parents make less money?

The things is, my story isn’t that much different from hers. My high school didn’t calculate GPA on a four-point scale, but I think a 98+ average would, at minimum, put me at a 3.8. I was also in band, an officer in German Club, NHS, volunteered through church, took as many AP classes as I could, and had a part-time job my senior year. I had a FastWeb account and could remember applying for any scholarship I remotely qualified for. My scholarship grand total? A couple thousand. My tuition at UT (also a moderately priced, in-state university) was roughly $4,000 a semester. So… $2,000/($4,000 x 8 semesters) = 6.25%. That’s close, right?

So, in addition to 93.75% of my tuition, I had to cover living expenses. I lived in a dorm my first year and then a cheap apartment with three other roommates in a bad part of Austin for the last three years. I took the free shuttle to class to save money on gas. Sure, I went out to eat every now and then. You try living in Austin for four years and avoid stepping foot in one of their amazing restaurants. I’m just being realistic here. I also worked as much as 30 hours a week (at a job that paid above minimum wage), so forgive me for using some of that money to treat myself every once in a while.

In a nutshell, I feel like I also pulled myself up by some strong bootstraps, but I still didn’t come out close to debt-free. I was also blessed with VERY supportive parents, so I only had about $20,000 in loan debt for undergrad, some of which I already paid down in the past couple years while I was working full-time. Not as many people get to have parents like that though, and I can see why the debt for some is even higher.

Admittedly, using my situation as anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove the person in that picture is lying. So say they did get this magical scholarship, and good for them. There are many students that max out their loans and piss that money away on things they don’t need while in school, so I applaud this person’s responsibility. But I still don’t like the message behind this. Is anyone who has to take out loans for their education making a bad decision? Sure, I could have saved a lot of money by staying at home and going to UTA or UNT, but I didn’t. I worked my ass off in high school to get into a school like UT, so why should I feel irresponsible for going there? Why should the student who got into Yale or Harvard be forced to go to a less prestigious school because they can’t afford it?

Maybe it’s just me, but educating yourself should never be considered an irresponsible decision. Even with all the loans I plan to take out for pharmacy school, I still consider it a worthwhile investment. When less privileged people start feeling guilty about doing the one thing that can have such a huge impact on their social mobility, there is a major flaw in the system.