>The average US college student graduates with around $30-40K debt depending on whether they go public or private, which isn't all that hard to pay off when our wages are already significantly higher than other countries. We're especially lucky in tech where our compensation differential relative to other countries more than makes up for the cost of university education.
This is such a weird excuse for bad policy. Making more money[0][1] somehow means its okay to saddle students with an average debt of $30-40 thousand dollars. A downpayment on a first home would be a much better use of that money, for example.
Really, the average US citizen is nickel and dimed to death with this sort of thing, from health insurance, to dental, to lots of other required but not accounted for as required costs (like cars and associated car insurance).
Not to mention, we have little safety net in the US, you're really going to hurt if you have a bad run of luck after job loss. No qualms in allowing people to become homeless as a matter of policy.
If someone were to ask me, I would say that we in the US have it completely backwards in respect to how the average citizenry is expected to live. Its not thriving, its constantly having some kind of lingering potential disaster to plan for.
[0]: which I sincerely wonder about the true veracity of this statistic
[1]: Don't forget too, that more and more struggle to pay their student loans each year and the trend has generally been that its getting worse, not better.
What policy are you referring to? Cost-conscious students can (and most should) stay in-state, do their first year or two at a city/community college (my kids knocked out core STEM classes there --- over summers, not for cost reasons --- and found the teaching markedly better), and then transfer into a commuter university. The "average" student debt owed primarily by the top income quintile in this country and captures the cost of out-of-state selective university, which are a luxury good.
The implicit policy that student loans are an acceptable and benign form of debt for the average citizen. Everything said after is predicated on this idea.
This is such a weird excuse for bad policy. Making more money[0][1] somehow means its okay to saddle students with an average debt of $30-40 thousand dollars. A downpayment on a first home would be a much better use of that money, for example.
Really, the average US citizen is nickel and dimed to death with this sort of thing, from health insurance, to dental, to lots of other required but not accounted for as required costs (like cars and associated car insurance).
Not to mention, we have little safety net in the US, you're really going to hurt if you have a bad run of luck after job loss. No qualms in allowing people to become homeless as a matter of policy.
If someone were to ask me, I would say that we in the US have it completely backwards in respect to how the average citizenry is expected to live. Its not thriving, its constantly having some kind of lingering potential disaster to plan for.
[0]: which I sincerely wonder about the true veracity of this statistic
[1]: Don't forget too, that more and more struggle to pay their student loans each year and the trend has generally been that its getting worse, not better.