How to Make College Affordable
For Students and the Nation
Nationwide there is a lot of concern about college affordability. Almost 70% of students graduated with student loans in 2019, and with an average loan balance of almost $30,000. Total student loan debt is over $1.6 trillion dollars which totals more than that nation’s credit card debt. These high levels of student loan debt weights down graduates and makes it harder for them to save for retirement, buy a house, and all the other things you start spending money on after graduation.
Naturally there are a number of plans politicians are proposing to lessen this burden. In particular, Senator Sanders plan to forgive all the student loan debt and have free tuition going forward has garnered a lot of media attention, with most of the other Democrat candidates for president having less aggressive but similar plans to address student loan debt.
The problem is that these plans don’t actually address the cost of college or make it affordable. They just transfer who is paying those costs from the students and their families to the rest of the taxpayers. They do nothing to actually bring down the cost of tuition each year.
In 1987 students at a public four year college would have paid approximately $3200 (that’s in 2017 dollars). But 30 years later in 2017 that would have risen to…
