I posted the item in the paragraphs below on FB back in 2019. The issue of student loan debt comes up again now, and Republicans try to frame it as a giveaway to rich families who sent their children to expensive Ivy League schools. Bullshit! The majority of student loan debt is shouldered by students and families who went to trade schools, public colleges and universities. The majority of the unpayable debt is saddled on the backs of students whose educations were disrupted by life events – personal or family illness, pregnancy and childbirth, etc. A few years ago, I asked my son, also a physician, how he would feel if the government decided to accept the burden of student educational debt rather than forcing every debtor to shoulder it themselves. “I think that’s fine,” he answered, “It’s no different than you guys helping me when I had that debt. Not every student is so fortunate to have a family that can help.” I think we raised him right – so did his teachers and mentors.
I went to college in 1965 at a time when tuition at a major state university was perhaps $140 per semester with a few extra bucks for fees and a per-credit-hour charge as well. I think that my total tuition for a semester was less than $300. I worked a half-time student gig in the physics department for $1.25/hr, and my Mom sent me $35/month to pay the rent. I’ve written about it before. I finished my degree without ever taking out a student loan; it was a simpler time. The only student debt that I owed was to my mother and to my school who both supported my education with no expectation of repayment.
I earned my Masters degree while working full-time, it wasn’t a big deal, but it did make for a full day’s work. Many of my peers did the same. I put my first wife through undergraduate school those same years. Again, I took out no student loans, and accumulated no debt.
I enrolled in a state-supported medical school in 1976. Working and going to medical school was untenable. There weren’t that many jobs for students, and I frankly didn’t have fortitude for both full-time study and work. I found myself divorced and without the financial assistance of a spouse. Tuition was about $400/semester, and I managed to get tuition assistance from the school. The big expenses were books, rent and meals. It was time to borrow money for books, rent and food. My medical school’s educational model was three years of study with minimal breaks and no summer vacation. I had to borrow money each year, but at least it wasn’t a four-year program. Things can always be worse.
I began my residency in Internal Medicine in 1979 with a salary of $15,000/year. I had accumulated about $20,000 in student loan debt, and I began to pay it back as soon as I could. Susan and I lived together through our residencies; so, there was an additional $15,000/year in income. Together we had about $40,000 in debt. When we looked for a starter home to buy, we couldn’t qualify for a loan. I joked that we already had a home, but it had neither walls nor roof; it was our medical education loans. By the time we completed our residency training in 1982, we had managed to pay off most of our loan debt. We bought a starter home, and after a few years of medical practice, we qualified for a loan to purchase the house that we live in today.
Throughout our careers, we have lived well within our means and saved money for our child’s education and for our retirement. That’s what our parents, Susan’s and mine, said responsible adults were supposed to do. It is easier with one child than with several. Having children makes one poor; I mention that because it is true rather than because I think that people shouldn’t have a family of the size that they want. When our son arrived at the age for college admission, tuition was thousands of dollars, and spending $30,000/year or more on college was commonplace. If you hadn’t set aside $120,000 for your college-aged kid and your offspring hadn’t qualified a full-ride to his or her college, the kid was going to rack up serious college debt. We had planned sufficiently well, and he earned several scholarships. So, he managed to get through college without being saddled with college debt. Many of his peers and their parents were less fortunate.
By the time our son finished medical school all of his educational endowment was gone. He found himself indentured to providers of student loan capital. He has never burdened us with his financial worries, but we and his grandmother have helped him as much as we could. Despite that assistance, he was indebted throughout most of his residency and fellowship years. But, he was luckier than many of his classmates who graduated with $250,000 or more in student debt. Whatever you may think about physician incomes, it is difficult to discharge that much debt even with a professional income. If you choose a low-paying specialty like primary care or non-procedural sub-specialties like Infectious Diseases or Child Psychiatry, it is tougher still.
All this personal history, perhaps TMI for some, goes to address some political sentiments that I have recently read. It seems that there are some conservative critics of Democratic presidential hopefuls who propose student loan forgiveness in various forms. Some of those critics point to the financial struggles that my generation faced in order to pay back student loans. This is an appeal to inter-generational resentment, of course. And, it follows a familiar conservative refrain, “I’ve already got mine; fuck you.”
I, for one, do not resent our tax dollars going to relieve younger folks of crushing educational debt. Student debt has ballooned because we, as a society, have chosen to pull back on tax dollars for higher education shifting the shortfall to the shoulders of parents and students. Perhaps you think that’s fair; I do not. I think that it is short-sighted and selfish. My generation needs a well-educated workforce earning top salaries and contributing to the society at large and the tax base specifically. Without them, the social safety net will disappear for all of us. Lower taxes are not, in and of themselves, a virtue – especially not when they destroy the future for all but the richest among us.