It’s graduation season and students and their families are celebrating. It’s a
wonderful milestone to get that high school diploma and certainly a proud
accomplishment  to earn a college degree. College has long been part of the
American Dream, the key to a better job, higher income, and an overall brighter
future.

But there’s a new study, done by Wells Fargo corporation, showing that 33 percent
of millennials — ages 22-32 — wish they’d never gone to college. They may get
a degree, but 50 percent of them finance their education with student loans and
graduate, on average, $28,000 in debt.

That’s just the average. I know young people with six-figure student loan balances,
young parents who calculate they likely won’t get their student loans paid off before
their kids are old enough to attend college.

Increasingly, young people and their parents are asking the question. “Is College
Worth It?”  That question is also the title of a new book by former Education
Secretary Bill Bennett and co-author David Wilezol. Dr. Bennett is a popular radio
host and author of many books including the very important work, “The Book of
Virtues.” He believes that college tuition will rise as long as federal subsidies are
going up. This includes grants in aid, like Pell grants, and federal student loans. In
the name of ‘making college more affordable,’ all this federal help is pushing up
tuitions and fees and encouraging administrative bloat.

The book contains some telling numbers:  Since 1990, the cost of attending a four
year university has risen four times as fast as the inflation rate. But, since 2007, the
average pay for college graduates has dropped 5 percent. About half of graduates
from four-year institutions, are in jobs that don’t require a college degree. In 2008,
81 percent of Americans thought college education was worth it. Today, only 57
percent think so.

Another disturbing stat:  In 2012, more than one in four student loans went into
default.  And then there’s the abuse. Recently, a thirty-plus-year-old woman came to
our church looking for a handout to help her get through the semester, since she’d
been using her student loan money to pay the rent — something the government
allows. Deacons who interviewed her discerned she had no intention of paying back
her college debt.

Taxpayers bear an increasing burden for this. Under a federal program, payments
on loans taken out since 2007 are limited to 15 percent of income. If paid on time,
after 25 years, the balance can be forgiven. Under President Obama’s latest budget
proposal, the monthly payment requirement would drop to 10 percent of income
with balances forgiven after 20 years….10 years for those who work in government
or non-profit jobs. We’d incentivize more debt and encourage people to choose
government over private sector jobs to get their college loans forgiven. There’s a
whole lot that’s wrong with this picture.