The average college student graduating in 2011 had an average of $26,600 in debt, a $1 trillion dollar mark far surpassing credit card debt and only to be surpassed by mortgages. Sadly (although a lot of promises have been made) not a lot has been done about the modern twenty-something indentured servitude, fresh out of college with a degree in medieval weaponry or something equally as unemployable outside of intellectual circles. Until now.
Oregon State Legislature last week unanimously passed a
proposal entitled the “Pay it Forward”
act in order to combat the growing amount of debt (and accompanying stress) students
collect in the process of getting a higher education. The bill would
effectively set a flat 3% payment plan based on graduates’ gross income over a
25 year period, far less than the currently inflating interest rates the
federal government has currently set at 6.8%. These funds would then be used to
finance the next generation of students who would then grow up and pay their
dues to support the next batch of students, and so on and so forth in a
hopefully never ending dream of inception. The “Pay it Forward” act would
essentially make those who enter fields with higher returns more responsible
for feeding into the system educating the next generation than those who
graduate with say, a degree in Philosophy that carry an unequally hard burden
when it comes to finding work that can offset the amount of loan money you owe.
This proposal is great for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it
relieves a lot of disproportional stress that women receive when entering the
workplace and are faced with paying back loans. While it is true that the
number of women in college outranks men, the continued gendering of college
majors greatly affects the amount of women in the workforce in STEM fields and positions with paychecks that are more easily able to pay back loans still
leaves something to be desired, leading to an even wider gendered wage gap that systemically differentiates the means availiable to women to reasonably
pay back these loans. Add in the fact that interest on your student loans
doesn’t stop recurring while women take off work to have children and raise
families (which more and more women are doing without male financial support), and you see why eradicating unnecessary student debt becomes a feminist
issue.
This “Pay it Forward” act also goes a long way in not only
opening up avenues for those who are graduating with debt, but those are
deterred from even entering higher education in the first place due to the high
cost. This bill moves to cut across racial and ethnic lines to promote equal
participation in the educational process— groups that continue remain grossly
behind in the classrooms at a rate nearly a third of the amount of white students attending university. The “Pay it Forward” act
also helps to open up the stigma and accompanying drop in pay grade surrounding
many “feminine” majors most often pursued by women and minorities,
allowing students to more freely choose to follow the major they are passionate
about versus being funneled into ones based on their ability to make money to
pay back debt. Free from the looming threat of decade long debt, you begin to
see actual choice and freedom with regards to gaining a degree. While cost may
not be the only factor keeping these marginalized groups back, there’s no doubt that opening up these
financial barriers will see a whole new group of students and, hopefully in
consequence, a whole new range of professionals with opportunities never before
afforded to them with the high cost of higher education.
While the bill is unlikely to take affect for several more
years, hopefully Oregon’s “out of the box” approach towards educational reform
can help to provide the federal alternative towards modern day student financial slavery.
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