Cancel Student Loan Debt, please!

To be completely transparent, I am $163,500 in debt with student loans. This is my only debt outside of a small car loan. I don’t have credit cards, I don’t have a mortgage and my cell phones are not on payment. I have had this student loan debt longer than most marriages; almost 20 years and it has been wedded bliss either. For me, it is a combination of undergraduate and graduate debt. Unfortunately I did not have wise financial advice when I signed up for all these loans and I really didn’t understand how low paying the social work profession could be on a long term basis. While I make a decent wage, it also hasn’t come with its own share of trails and tribulations working in some really high stress and high trauma jobs. I have also been in the field for over 10 years and while I am currently in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program with Fed Loans; I also came to this program a bit late and unorganized. So, I will be paying on these loans for even longer.

Why should we cancel student loan debt?

According to Fortune magazine, the current student loan debt is over 1.7 billion dollars and a good chunk of this debt impacts people of color as well as people who are in a lower socioeconomic class. People want to go to school and they want greater education opportunities but it often comes with a cost. Tuitions rates are rising, incomes for many people has stayed flat and opportunities for people in certain school districts are not the same as white, wealthy school districts who in Michigan can count on higher property taxes in order to have higher per pupil spending in their school districts. The system is not fair and it is not doing all it could be doing to make the playing field more equal. Our best and brightest are not going to schools or getting additional education to make our large communities better. This student loan debt is also strangling people’s lives. It stops people from investing in retirement which is critical since most jobs no longer have a pension and if there is a pension there is not any guarantee it will be funded. It stops people from purchasing homes which creates more community and family stability, it delays career opportunities, people are not as willing to have children, and it makes many people struggle to meet just their basic needs.

Canceling student loan debt is a start, not an end.

We still need to fix the way the school system is supported by taxes in the United States. We need to make opportunities for people to obtain education; not just at the university level but for skilled trades and skilled work. Not everyone wants to attend college but everyone should be able to get the education they want to grow and achieve their goals. Education is not a business or a commodity but needs to be classified as another entity within our economy. It is a vehicle to achieve it dreams, helps move our society forward through innovation, ideas and ways to thinking that are different, and have the change to have stability within our families or our individual selves.

I know what I could do with my student loan debt being cancelled; take additional career opportunities, obtain an PhD and even buy a house.

Reposted nextgenamerica.org who advocates for cancelling student loan debt.