Biden extends pause on student loan payments

[Future Lovers 7,688]

On 12/23/2021 at 3:06 PM, HuffsAhoy said:

Because they are choosing that profession, no one is forcing them. They don't deserve a free pass. They made the bed, they should lay in it. This is one of the many reasons I no longer associate with liberals, y'all think everything should be FREE. It's sickening. 

First of all, "no one is forcing them" is a blatant lie when students are being forced down the college career path as early as elementary school. Every public K-12 school, and indeed most private ones, are a college pipeline and are structured in such a way as to push students toward higher education. Year after year, students are beat over the head with the "you will not be successful without a degree" narrative and while that narrative is not entirely true, it's hard to argue with when you look at hiring trends for most professions. I went to two years of community college for free under the Tennessee Promise program and even there, in a school I wasn't paying for, they were promoting a transition to a four year school like it was their new album.

I'm aware you're a teacher and I'm sure you're going to say "I don't force four year schools down my students' throats" or "my school doesn't do that" and if you do, I'll believe you. I'm glad to hear it. But that is unfortunately an isolated experience. I, and I'm sure many here, went through K-12 having a four year college path shoved in our faces constantly.

Yes, there are trade schools that are at a significantly reduced or completely free tuition, but to pigeonhole a student who cannot afford higher education on their own into one of these institutions just sets them up for failure. These institutions work for many people but are not appropriate for the majority of people. If you don't take up a trade, then your choices become working in minimum wage or worse jobs (which is not shaming those jobs by any means, what they provide is necessary but to say that they're sustainable for living is false) or obtaining a degree of some sort in order to provide a job with a livable wage. 

One look at job postings for jobs with livable wages, you're going to see degree requirements. Some ask for nothing more than a associates, but many require at minimum a bachelors but would prefer a masters. This simple facts makes things far less of a choice than you're presenting them. Some students have to go into these professions because it's the only way they're going to survive. Not everyone can skimp out on a degree specific job and be fine for the rest of their lives, some people have to go into those fields with loans and then spend the rest of their lives paying of loans because of it. Which sucks but you know what? It's a better alternative than living in poverty, and especially ending up homeless. 

A statement like this also fundamentally misunderstands the trickle down effect that higher education provides a country with. There's a reason that the US lags behind so many countries in every conceivable field and it's because we have the best education system in the world in terms of structure, yet we aren't even in the top five in the world in literacy (we weren't even in the top ten until recently) and we lag behind most of Europe in mathematics and science. We have at our disposal the ranked greatest educational system in the world yet we do not capitalize on it and make access to it incredibly difficult. 

And it shows. We are in so many of the messes we're in because the elites are the ones that have had unrestricted access to higher education while the little guy has to jump through hoops to even scratch the surface of what our educational system can provide. 

Yes, for nationwide tuition free college, you'd have to pay more in taxes. Some estimates say 20% more. I won't argue that that's not a lot, because it is. But I would raise the question: is it not worth it? Is it not worth paying more to invest in your country's future? Is it not worth paying more to ensure that the generations behind you are going out into their adult lives with the tools they need to be successful not just for themselves, but for the country that they're inheriting? 

It's not just as black and white as you paying for someone else to go to school, it's you and every tax paying adult in this country doing their part to make their country a better place because that is what a full and complete education provides us all with.

It's not a hand out, it's giving someone a fair chance.