You talk a lot about the problem of paying for school and how tuition assistance has shifted to put a bigger burden on students. Do you think universities, especially private universities with big endowments, should be pressured to cut tuition?
Actually, last spring there was this tuition movement at Yale -- my alma mater -- where they had a sit-in at the president's office and students got him to change the payment requirements for a family earning under $45,000 a year. I think that's great. And it's happened at almost all the Ivy League schools now, though obviously there's a limit to how many students that will reach.
Generation Debt: Why Now Is a Terrible Time to Be Young
Anya Kamenetz
Riverhead
288 pages
Nonfiction
The problem is that the public universities where most people go to school don't have the power to do that because they depend on state support. And I would hate for people to point it out and say, See it's no problem, you can just go to Harvard. But if you don't go to Harvard, well, off to the vocational school with you.
Researching this book really made me realize that my opinions about college were patronizing and wrong. There are a lot of images in our society about what it means to go to college and what a good college is -- and there is an insanity about it in certain affluent pockets. I think what kids really need to learn is how to manage their money, how to live within themselves and find out what type of work they really want to do. Filling out the perfect college application and going to the perfect green campus are not going to solve that for us. There are a lot of people, I think, who aspire to college who should maybe think differently about their choices.
Because what is really getting painful and cruel now is that about half the people who go to college are not finishing, which has never happened before. The number of people who are going to college has doubled, but the percentage of people who have graduated has stayed the same. I couldn't figure out how that made sense, and finally someone pointed out to me that up to 50 percent of students don't finish. Well, then maybe they shouldn't have done it. It's not that I want to discourage anyone from going, but I do think there needs to be a clearer understanding of the costs and benefits, instead of this monolithic idea that college is the only path to success.
But don't you think that in most cases higher education, when you finish it, does pay off?
Of course, I am not saying that college is not important. In my perfect society, more people would go to college because I think it is an enriching and wonderful experience. Ideally, I would like to see an educated citizenry that plays piano and speaks French and enjoys all the benefits of a liberal education. But it doesn't necessarily pay off financially, and you can't expect it to. That is basically the point. On the average it does, but there's no guarantee. And the problem is, the people who face the most challenges in going to college are also the ones who are at the most risk for not succeeding. The real point is that we are ending up with a less upwardly mobile society because the barriers to education are so high -- when really they should be the pathways to security.
I interviewed a few people who told me they actually regretted going to college. One woman was over $47,000 in debt from tuition she charged on her credit cards while studying as an English major. After all that, she went on to have a successful career as a chef, but she told me that if she could do it over again she wouldn't have gone to school.
You talk about the generation's debt as both a spiritual and an economic problem. What do you mean when you call it spiritual?
Coming through your 20s and establishing your place in the world, you look around and say, "What place is there for me?" And I think part of the feeling of debt is feeling that you have a lot of holes to fill, that there are a lot of obligations you have to meet by virtue of your moment in history. So there is basically a sense of having debts that have been taken out on yourself that you have to pay off. There is so much uncertainty, and there is a fear that we may be at a pinnacle and we are going to go down.
And you think that is somehow unique to now?
No, not necessarily --
Because you could argue that that is just characteristic of youth.
Absolutely. And there are times in history when people feel like everything is ending and there are times in history when people think that everything is beginning. And it is cyclical and it is characteristic of youth. I guess I go back to what it means to be an American now -- and I feel like so many generations of Americans were born expecting to inherit the world and we are just not.
But is that necessarily so terrible?
No, no, it's not a tragedy. Look, my life is not a tragedy; I am a very happy person. I think there is a lot of room for people who are going to live very happy lives in the country that is coming up, but there are things that are going to be lost. We used to have a very privileged view of our place in the world and really believe that the values of freedom and social mobility were our birthrights. Now, it may be that we evolve into a more global understanding of our place in the world. But I wonder what will happen to those ideals when they're not linked to our own success and about building a better world for our children and ourselves.
How can we try to fix things?
First by removing billions of dollars of subsidies to banks and returning to the direct-loan program that was instituted by President Clinton in 1993 -- which is much, much cheaper -- and then diverting the billions of dollars saved (something like $60 billion over the next 10 years) to grants. And you have to get universities on board, which is very hard because you need to call on the state government and universities and private philanthropies and, increasingly, private corporations too. And all of those forces need to come down and tell universities they can no longer raise their tuitions in a vacuum.
There also needs to be an integration of community colleges into the state college system because their role is incredibly important and they are the ones on the front lines. Forty-two percent of college students are at community colleges. So obviously they need to be a bigger priority when it comes to college funding and the whole discussion about it.
Do you think those kinds of federal, state and local changes might also affect personal consumer behavior?
They might. I mean, if you change the paradigm and you don't force people to go into debt, then they have the opportunity to realize they have a choice. They have a real decision over whether or not they are going to have a credit card. And hopefully you make it harder for them to get one.
About the writer
Sarah Karnasiewicz is an associate editor at Salon.
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