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BIG CITY: Student loan bubble threatens us all

Posted on April 26, 2012April 25, 2012 by Staff

By Kirk Ross

Graduates in the Class of 2012 can always say they saw the president of the United States give a commencement speech at Carolina.

Not commencement as in graduation exercises but as in the commencement of the 2012 presidential campaign.

President Obama’s intent was to fire up all young voters and make sure that if July 1 rolls around and the interest rate doubles on Stafford loans – the main source of government student loans – they know where to affix blame.

He didn’t mention her name, but he quoted congresswoman Virginia Foxx, who in an interview a week ago said she had no tolerance for students who rack up big debts. Foxx, whose district in north-central North Carolina was made ultra safe in the redistricting, chairs the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training. It was not her intent to also fire up young voters, but considering that when she was in school here her tuition and fees cost less than your standard meal plan, her words ought to rile them mightily.

Like a lot of politicians and, unfortunately a lot of policymakers in higher education, Foxx just doesn’t get what’s happened over the past few decades.

Thankfully, the president was kind enough to come to town and explain it. After noting that the average debt burden for students graduating this year is about $25k, the president quickly put tuition hikes into sharp focus, and I hope his remarks about reducing federal research dollars – the mother’s milk of UNC – to institutions who hike tuition beyond the rate of inflation woke some people up.
Like a lot of things that happened in the economy in the later half of the 20th century, the nationwide surge in tuition and the loan bubble that resulted was based on the idea that we would never see times like these.

To give you an idea of the magnitude, when I was at Carolina in the late ’80s and early ’90s, tuition for an academic year ran about $350. (When Rep. Foxx attended in the late ’60s, it was about $100 a year less than that.)

Shortly after I left and went to work full time at a local printing company, the university enacted a steady series of tuition hikes, and within a few years the cost had doubled. When I started managing the print shop, I started seeing the real impact on students’ lives. Almost all of our part-timers were students and most of the full-time crew were recent graduates. Between the growing cost of housing and worry about loans, both students and grads were squeezed, and even then, when there was a pretty decent economy, putting our state’s bright young minds through that kind of financial ringer just didn’t make sense.

Later, as a reporter, I got plenty of chances to write about the financial stresses, thanks to a series of university administrations and legislatures that OK’d tuition hikes that made those in the late ’90s seem like chickenfeed.

It got addictive. Once a 10 percent hike seemed OK, a 15 percent jump didn’t seem all that bad. There was always a good reason, especially the bidding war over top talent and big research. Throughout the boom years the university built new facilities, modernized old ones and attracted top-notch researchers and educators. In a way, it felt like Carolina itself was going pro.

There were moves to mitigate the rising costs, including the blessed Carolina Covenant, but to this day the hikes have not stopped, and my gut says that even the president’s call at Carmichael to bring them down to at least the rate of inflation won’t change that.

The university, the system leadership and the legislature have a gambling problem. They’ve gambled on high tuition and fees and have bought into the nationwide bubble in student loans.

It’s a bubble that threatens all of our futures because it encumbers the very people we rely on to stoke the economy with energy, innovation and new ideas. And it threatens higher education itself because for far too many it makes the promise of getting a good education ring hollow.

Like all bubbles, it looked pretty good on the upside. Now, on the downside, we’re in a fix. Half of last year’s graduating class is either jobless or underemployed, and for most of them the loan payments are starting to bite. They and the young people getting ready to walk at Kenan Stadium this year ought to have a better future than that.

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