As students pour into college campuses across the country this fall, many of them for the first time, there is a specter looming over all of their heads.
It is a dark cloud that has floated over higher education for at least 10 years following the recession of 2008, a legacy of America’s failed turn-of-the-century optimism. I am speaking, of course, of the more than $1.5 trillion that American adults owe in student debt.
The student loan crisis, more than any other issue in modern post-secondary education, has colored the intentions and expectations of two whole generations of students.
The Millennial generation, primarily coming of age in the Bush era, have taken out and continue to hold the majority of student debt.
The subsequent generation (commonly referred to as Generation Z) is now being initiated into this seemingly inevitable cycle of front-loading young people with debt to attain credentials for a job market that is increasingly uncertain.
Yet educators, administrators, parents and the students themselves still stand by a college education no matter the cost, which is only growing.
College tuition continues to rise in price even as degrees deflate in value, and there does not seem to be an end to the cycle of usury which now comprises a sizable slice of the American economy.
Despite what we might want to be the case, it is still true that the economy is rapidly phasing out jobs that both pay a liveable wage and do not require at least some post-secondary education. That is likely why many students are here, not because they were excited for college but because they deem it necessary for survival.
This could very well be the way that most students experience college, a drudgery that costs more than it’s worth because they need the degree.
You are more than welcome to think that if you like, but whether your time at UTM is a mere transaction or a great experience is entirely up to you. I challenge the students of this campus to think of themselves not in terms of a buyer of credentials, but in terms of a scholar.
At the end of the day, career and credentialism will only get one so far. They allow people to shore up tangible things, but at the risk of sounding cliché I might suggest that today’s students turn their attention more to intangible goods, assets which cannot be taken away.
One of those goods is knowledge. In my time here I have found UTM to be a great source of intellectual fulfillment if one will apply themselves and work diligently to their benefit rather than abide by that old adage of “C’s get degrees.”
The greatest truth that the recession of 2008 demonstrated to college-aged people was that going into debt did not guarantee a return upon investment.
While you are here, whether you wanted to be or because you felt as if you must be, consider your own investments and what you intend to get out of them.
