I don’t know that much about Obama’s new financial aid package—so don’t take my word on any of the details—but it seems like a lot of bullshit to me (read about it here). Nice rhetoric, Obama, but how about figuring out a way to discern whether or not a school is actually giving a good education rather than just a cost effective one? And what about the enormous burden of debt my generation already owes in student loans? How does the government propose to prevent that bubble from popping, because there aint no one’s gonna pay back that money.
How about spending some money hiring competent people to filter through who needs loans and who doesn’t, based on their history, field of study, and future career aspirations? No one in their right mind, given that I want to be a “writer,” should have given me two years tuition at Columbia University to get a master’s degree in, and I quote: “Critical and Curatorial Studies with a focus on contemporary art.” Not even all of that is capitalized on my diploma.
But they did anyway, despite the fact that I already had an Ivy league degree paid for by my parents, and a steady career in my chosen field of study, and really no economic need for it. I’m grateful for it—I absolutely loved graduate school—but there needs to be some kind of responsibility when the government hands out large sums of money.
The woman who led me through my financial aid process at Columbia never remembered my name. She couldn’t explain to me how interest rates worked, or what private bank gave the best rates for the private loans I had to take out to supplement my government loans. I don’t even think she looked at my bank records. All she did was make sure that I could breathe, and hand me a pen to sign my documents. Then she signed them herself, and sent me on my way, never to be heard from again.
Now I owe the government and Citibank over $50,000, and I have no idea if or when I’ll ever pay that back. Because the process was so easy, it didn’t even seem real.
