Still Drowning

Imagine a movement that urged former students striving to pay off their student loans to just stop. Don't make the payments, dry up the coffers, and force an overhaul of the system that many of us are drowning in. Sounds fun. And it would probably open up some funds for a Playstation 4.

Two problems spring to mind, though. One, it's hard to imagine the agitators of this hypothetical movement not getting taken down on some kind of criminal conspiracy charge. This would need to be an overwhelming movement with a lot of visibility and a central leadership to keep this borderline-extortionist movement steady. If the point is to send a shock to the system, we need everybody. Which leads us to problem number two: if even a third of former students continue paying up, those of us opting out are sunk: still in debt, and now also defaulting on our debt, with no message being sent and little leverage to be had. I'm pulling that "one-third" number out of my ass, but you see my point.

As Matt Taibbi's recent Rolling Stone piece, "The College-Loan Scandal," makes painfully clear, the only thing worse than owing the government for that diploma of yours is defaulting on what you owe and watching your $38,000 debt balloon to $100,000. That's the actual story of Alan Collinge, one of several cases that Taibbi highlights in his investigation of the government's surprisingly well-run student loans racket.

Taibbi is most interested in these cases of default, the mob-like tactics of the creditors--whose returns on defaults are stunning (see 'Collinge' above)--and why no one in government is willing to do anything about it (in short: Democrats like to brag about sending people to college and Republicans don't care about anyone who isn't them). The defaulters provide dramatic examples; students paying off their crippling debts is less dramatic because it's more commonplace. It's commonplace because these debts are, well, necessary. Taibbi mentions the New York Times article from earlier this year about how a bachelor's degree is what a high school degree used to be and writes,

"If they don't have the degree, then they have no chance at all. So if they even want a clerking job, they must dive face-first into the debt muck and take their chances that they won't end up watching the federal government take bites out of disability checks while their law degree gathers dust downstairs somewhere. So, yes, a college education is a great thing, and you probably need one now more than ever – the problem is that it may very well be mandatory, may have less of a chance of ever getting you a job, and you may still be paying for it on your deathbed no matter what."

And there's the rub. College is no longer a status symbol for the manor-born. Those still-spiking tuitions are the entry fee to adulthood for people my age.

I've sung this song before. I piled on debt (fairly light compared to my peers) mostly obliviously because I was a goddamn teenager. Now, I can live with that. But, in order to have the career I want in the field I want, I'm going back, knowing it'll fling me further into debt on the chance that it gets me where I want to go. That's the gamble I'm taking and while I'm not exactly forced into it, neither am I doing it entirely willingly. If you don't understand the difference, you may not be ready for this debate.

A final note: in the next lane over from myself and my cohorts are all the teenagers choosing not to go, as enrollment continues to fall. Opting-out in a different way. I don't know whether this will be a wake up call to schools to reassess tuition rates (I suspect not) or how these people will fare in a job market still not inclined to let go of its degree requirements (well, I hope). But perhaps it's a start. It might at least get some heads out of the sand.

The Student Loans Grotesque

There's nothing like starting the week in a boiling rage over this country's surrealistic student loans situation. For me, it actually started last week, when a friend of mine posted this Seattle Times article to Facebook, describing how, once upon a time, summer jobs could pay for college because college costs were stunningly low. And how that experience taught an entire generation--the awesomely responsible people who are in charge today--that hard work and elbow grease were the ticket out of debt, so they can comfortably look the other way on the debt their children have incurred. They graduated debt-free (or debt-negligible, anyway) and then shut the door behind them. As Danny Westneat writes,

[L]ast week The Seattle Times featured a crop of harried UW students looking rueful and broke. The story said skeptical state legislators often say how “they worked their way through college. And then they ask: Why don’t students do that today?”

Of all our delusions, we old farts cling to this bootstrap one the most. We worked our way up on sweat and chicken grease, we say. Can’t this generation? What’s wrong with them?

What’s wrong is that after we got ours, we cut it off for them.

And then this morning, Salon's Joan Walsh explores the toxic student loan culture, aided and abetted by, yep, Congress, those lovable scamps. On one end of the Hill, we have a Senate that apparently refuses to stop the coming student loan interest rate hike from 3.4% to 6.8% (which goes into effect today). On the other end, the House has a bill that introduces market based reforms. This is presumably the same market that's going to take a staggering blow when an entire generation can't buy houses or cars, or generally engage in the "consumer economy" market-obsessed wonks think about when they masturbate.

Walsh links to this piece by David Dayen, who describes how student debts are lot more like indentured servitude than traditional debts. They can't be altered, refinanced, or even forfeit via bankruptcy. Even those who don't graduate end up paying their tab, which would be a reasonable rule, if not for the fact that we're taking about 17- and 18-year olds doing what they're told to do and signing on for ballooning tuition costs. Dayen, after highlighting various congressional proposals, says that "this entire system must be overhauled," which is a terrifying revelation in our current problem-solving climate.

I ended up lucky among some of my fellow private school alums, amassing merely $16,000 in debt. And my wife didn't have any. But now she's just finished grad school and I'm going to start in the fall (at an in-state public school this time). When all is done, she and I could be looking at six figures of debt and can anticipate paying that off for the next thirty years--or longer, if interest rates rise again. And why the hell shouldn't we expect that?

If you want to tell us that the problem is ours, just for having gone to school, you can--politely--fuck right off. We live in a part of the country that all but requires post-graduate degrees, particularly for people whose career prospects have dwindled in a stagnant economy that crippled our generation's prospects before we even entered into it. Maybe we can blame ourselves for buying too much into the allure of education as the silver bullet, and for (speaking only for myself here) not taking school as seriously as I should've. But even those admissions are distractions, shouted into the maelstrom in an effort to downplay the very real concerns about spiraling costs and an economy that still demands college diplomas. The conversation is driven into the quagmire of lazy talking points, from which no problem emerges solved.

This is the problem with issues that affect other people. In the future. As long as the media has aberrational Joe Mihalic figures to point to, student debt will never seem severe enough and it will never garner the attention it deserves. Never mind the fact that it deeply affects a rising generation that has enough problems averting lost generation status, with belittlement and patronization flying at us from newsstands. Student loans will, by extension, impact everyone in the not too distant future. But we can't deign to fix these problems, to examine why college is so expensive, to reinvest in public education, perhaps even to explore debt forgiveness. We can't do those things.

Because... money, I guess.

I'm not even entirely joking when I say that global warming and a post-apocalyptic future suddenly don't sound so bad. As I stalk the wastelands, fending off the hungry fangs of the über-mutants, hoarding the half-gallon of fuel that I wrested from the stiff fingers of a small child--my only currency save my poor, worn out asshole--I will take significant solace in the knowledge that no one will be left to extract student loan payments from me.

Ain't None of Us Special

This Open Letter From a Millennial is making the rounds.  And, as far as these things go, it's a damn good read.  Especially when read in response to the recent high school graduation commencement by David McCulloch, a speech which has, thus far, garnered significantly more attention than this Letter has, a trend which will likely continue.  I'll get to the speech in a bit. 

Detractors of the Letter will likely say that there's some projection coming from the writer, "Sierra," toward her own parents.  And that there's a tinge of rambling, barely focused frustration going on.  To the first point: possibly--no one could prove it either way.  To the second: yeah, maybe a little, but who can blame her?  And in either event, is she wrong?

I don't go in much for blaming parents for the problems of their children.  Even in cases where the parent clearly is to blame--which can be often--I feel that it's also a case of "nothing to be done now."  We can blame everything around us and, however right we may be, it solves very few problems.  But the least I think a generation can ask is a little sympathy and an understanding that no generation is perfect (some far from it); the thing about giving the "you're not special" speech or writing the "you're not special" article/book is that, to retain any high ground, you also have to admit that you yourself are not so special.  Our problems may be our own to solve, but when you waltz onto a stage and belch your righteous hand-washing in our faces, it reminds us why we've always sensed an air of anger and resentment hanging about the world you're preparing to give us.  As you rebelled against your own parents for not meeting the standards you set, now you blame us for not meeting other, slightly different standards.  It's always some other generation and not an issue of human nature itself being annoying.  Convenient, eh? 

Sierra covers most of the big points, from the expectations that were so high that we were assumed to need a hand-holding that crippled us more than helped us, to a shifting of the playing fields that has left us with disadvantages only pre-WWII generations can rightly scoff at.  Part of the reason I don't go in for generation-blaming is that once you start, you can do it forever, but if Sierra failed at anything (she didn't), it was leaving some more specific grievances off the table. 

For starters: we get called the tech-generation, and not as a compliment to our relative savvy with technologies that are more and more defining our economies and societies, but as an insult--slurring our unceasing connection to and with video games/smart phones/Facebook/Twitter/whatever else older generations refuse to simply ignore.  And this is fair, to a point.  We do, in a frighteningly unquestioning manner, embrace means of communication and entertainment that can both enhance and undermine our abilities to function and interact with others.  But it begs twin questions: who gave us these devices?  And why?  If a parent gives their child a video game system, the parent should assume the odds that the child may become addicted to a machine that provides instant gratification and reward for fairly little effort or slightly more reward for a lot (and I mean, a lot) of time and effort.  That's called "entrapment."  And so when our early attachment to these machines helps foster an attachment to electronic entertainment and connectivity more generally--and when similar devices continue to be pumped out through our formative years and beyond, by companies that our generation does not yet run--is it any wonder that we have such reliance on the machines? 

Ours was the generation that inherited the fear engendered by the viewing habits of older generations.  The A Current Affair-type programs that dominated early-mid 90s television coincided with our childhoods.  The first major world events that I remember getting pounded into my head over and over again from middle school through high school are, in order: The Columbine Massacre and its aftermath in our schools, the Lewinsky scandal, the Y2K scare, the 2000 Election debacle, and 9/11.  Every generation has its horrifying and stupefying episodes to endure and I don't want to take away from the generation that experienced My Lai, Kent State, and Watergate.  But wouldn't it be more helpful to acknowledge that our baggage is as legitimate as your own, and guide us through shit like that (when you can't stop it happening) with the knowledge you've gained, rather than simply dismissing us? 

Remember: we did not set up the lavish high school graduation ceremonies--ostensibly for our benefit--during which self-important prigs like McCulloch tell us that we actually kinda suck.  Even when not used for the purposes of insulting us, what kind of attitudes do you expect these farces to instill in us?  To say nothing of the middle school, elementary school, and kindergarten graduations that I took part in growing up.  If our achievements are so banal, why throw the parties? 

We then went to overpriced colleges (I'll let you off the hook for this one and not ask "who made them so overpriced in the first place?") that you told us were necessary.  An amazing gambit, that.  You tell us we need college, so we all go, and suddenly, with so many degrees floating about, it really is necessary!  Those degrees are so necessary, in fact, that a mere bachelor's won't do it in some parts of the country anymore.  We have to go back for advanced degrees, deepening our debt and, in many cases, keeping us away for that much longer from the jobs and real world experience that employers also crave. 

We then graduate into a shitty economy that we, again, had no hand in making.  We have to inherit a debt that previous generations are politically incapable of paying off; the entitlements and tax-cuts that they cannot sacrifice even a portion of become our burdens.  We have to watch while Boomers refuse to retire, either because they can't or won't, and watch once reliable industries go abroad because we literally cannot lower our standard of living to the levels that China and India have done.  I mean, we could try, but where would that leave us in your eyes?  As the generation that let America slip to third world status because we had to eat?

And you wonder why we hide ourselves in video games and Internet message boards.  

Much of my generation is intolerable and self-involved and in dire need of an attitude readjustment.  You won't hear an argument from me there.  The good news is, we're getting that readjustment.  We get it every time we apply for fifty more jobs we're not going to get call backs for.  We get it every time we receive another notice about overdue student loans.  We get it every time our exceedingly patient parents can't quite stifle the eye roll when we have to ask to stay with them a while longer.

The bad news is that every time we try to pick ourselves back up, there's a small and irrationally bitter person like McCulloch, standing there, telling us how bad we are at getting up.  You think speeches like that do a goddamned thing for inter-generational relations?  Or encourages us to engage with you on your terms and your terms only?  How did your generation respond when your own parents grumbled about your lack of respect and initiative?  Are our values inherently less important than yours?  If they aren't, if our concerns as inhabitants of the same rock are equally valid, then surely you can find a better way, as the older and more experienced generation, to encourage us to push ourselves through a harsh world that you had your own hand in shaping.  Something that doesn't involve insulting us.

But if I'm wrong there, and you do believe that your generation's values are more worthy of addressing than ours, then, simply put: you ain't so fucking special yourselves.

CNN, Tone-Deaf

So as my time-off wound to a close, I happened to catch this story on CNN.  You can watch it yourself, but a quick summation: Harvard MBA grad Joe Mihalic racks up $90,000 in student debt and pays it off in about seven months.  Impressive by most any standard.

But.

The thing about getting into a Harvard master's program is that someone who does is likely to have relatively significant means in the first place.  And even someone who had to take advantage of every scholarship they could find under every rock they could hoist is likely to come out of it with advantages that students from non-Ivy's don't usually have.  Mihalic says on his site that he "started a job with a modest income (relative to my banking and consulting peers) in the tech industry of Austin."  You may have noticed the use of "relative" there.  Mihalic admits to spending $1,300/month on "entertainment" before he got his act together.  He bought a house, furniture for the house, two cars, and a motorcycle.  His worries were that he wouldn't be able to start a family, or a business, or acquire a business and turn it around.  This was two years out of school.  Mihalic may have had a lot of student debt (more than the average student), but anyone who thinks he had anything else in common with the average student is fooling themselves. 

In the nation of Horatio Alger there's always someone eager to intentionally miss the point of any argument and change the discussion by playing the "stop belittling the successful" card.  But this is not about Mihalic.  Sure, he had means and resources most students could only dream of, but he responsibly put them to good use (eventually) and dragged himself out of the debt he acquired.  I truly mean when I say: good for him.

No, this is about CNN and it's pre-commercial break teaser about "learning a lesson or two" from Mihalic (and following up with a pithy "good lesson for us all" at the end of the interview--who is "us all" and how do I join them?).  Just a day or so before launching their hours-long Jubilee flogging (hosted by outdated British caricature Richard Quest and possible accessory to illegal phone-hacking Piers Morgan), CNN's midday programming deigned to tell soon-to-be and recent graduates that all they need to do is buckle down and acquire the resources of a Joe Mihalic.  No wait, they couldn't even be that honest.  Instead, they set up an insulting chart with five recommendations for reducing debt, based on Mihalic's plan:

• Got a roommate (I may be out of touch, but isn't this standard for most college and post-college students?)
• Didn't go out to eat (one I admittedly don't follow as much as I should, but given how much Mihalic says he was doing this after grad school, I have to imagine that he racked up more significant food bills than most)
• Took a second job (sure, right after I nab that first job)
• Sold unnecessary items (can I keep one of my cars and my motorcycle?)
• Planned free dates (see the thing about going out to eat)

In fact, some of Mihalic's strategies sound decent: dump the 401K, forget about savings (by the way, he had apparently accumulated some $30K in savings--just like all other recent college grads).  These might be extreme methods, but remember that in your twenties, student debt is rather more daunting than retirement planning.  More importantly for CNN: these suggestions wouldn't look so nice and inoffensive on the graphic.  It is Saturday afternoon, after all, can't do anything too heavy.  And heaven forbid they examine why college is so expensive in the first place or why debt amnesty pushes never seem to go anywhere.  No, just show them a clean cut kid who did the implausible and gloss over the privileges he had to both earn and inherit first--that'll let us tell those brats that "it can be done so they should stop complaining."

Young people aren't watching anyway, right?  Yeah, fuck 'em.