“No young person should be priced out of college.”
Yesterday, President Obama, accompanied by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, ventured to North High School in Des Moines to discuss college access and affordability. A topic, after four years as an undergraduate student at Drake University and almost a month as a Drake Law student, I’d like to think I’m an expert in.
Side note: Mr. President, if you need an Advisor, just give me a call.
I consider myself lucky in a lot of ways, primarily because my parents have absorbed a lot of the financial burden for my undergraduate education. I worked hard to get scholarships and accepted whatever financial assistance the government offered (which wasn’t much because of my parents’ incomes), but they picked up the rest of the tab.
I recognize, however, the amount of aspiring lawyers, doctors, and writers in this country who aren’t as lucky. It’s part of the reason I’m a Democrat and part of the reason I appreciated what the President had to say about his college affordability plan —
What if the cure for cancer is in the potential of a inner-city Chicagoan who can’t afford to go to school? What if the next Supreme Court Justice decides not to go to law school because she already has too much debt?
“Just as higher education’s never been more important, let’s face it, it’s never been more expensive,” Obama said to the room full of high school students and their parents.
Touche, Mr. President, because by the time I’m finished with law school, I will have accumulated nearly $85,000 (without interest) in student debt, the most recent of which has been accruing somewhere between 4.29 and 5.84% interest since the day I started law school.
My parents didn’t spend $85,000 on their first house, let alone their educations.
Still, you can argue that I took the expensive route, which is a valid point. I didn’t go to a community college or stay at an in-state public school.*
But the bottom line is: there are a lot of students that can’t even afford those options.
So, I want to thank President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and the 2016 Democratic candidates for recognizing the problem and promising to fix it.
Any chance I can be grandfathered into your solutions?
*Caveat for anyone who is considering going to an in-state school in Illinois — my private education at Drake was cheaper than I would’ve paid in-state at the University of Illinois (not a knock on the school… most definitely a knock on our embezzling politicians). Comparison shop, people!
