Liberating education in the debt society
Students around the country – not just in California – are protesting in unity against the state of affairs that turns our brightest students and most ambitious academics into debt slaves of the modern banking system.
As the price of education has risen at a pace matched only by medicine and the military, it is the very young adults who are trying to improve themselves and their communities who are being left with big bills that will take decades to pay off completely once the interest is added in. While some federal loans allow students to avoid most of the predatory rates, these legislatively set funds can only cover a small part of the total cost at today’s university tuition schedules.
The inefficiency of our educational funding is a wide-ranging issue that does not stop at the local university – these financial problems follow our young professionals throughout their productive lives. As an example, most medical doctors are graduating with a total debt load of around $250,000 – and that cost is going to primarily benefit the banks who lent the money at the expense of those who need the doctor’s services. So while defenders of the status quo will often point to the relatively high incomes of our doctors, they do not seem to notice how we have fewer doctors per capita or that they report a lower job satisfaction and general happiness with the work they do.
Maybe if they weren’t constantly worried about paying off debts? Maybe if they could work as free human beings with a passion for doing good, and not as a slave who must labor just to be fed?
Free education will benefit everyone in the long run. Its not just about the students, its about the jobs they will create and the problems an educated population can solve. Perhaps most importantly of all, its about the freedom of those who chose to pursue knowledge to then seek whatever goals they feel compelled to tackle as opposed to the ones that currently pay enough to satisfy some bank’s balance sheet. We really don’t need another generation of MBAs right now…