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Morality Play

This WSJ story reminds me of a dinner table conversation with our extended team. Atleast a third of the group that evening had graduated from college less than five years ago. One of them worked full-time all through college and the employer paid most of his college bill. The rest he covered with a variety of gig-work. D often says his life is significantly easier now that he is out of college and only working. Coming from some who routinely works 12 hour days, you have to wonder what his student life looked like. He is 100% debt-free and really proud of that fact. I can see how a person like D will have very little if any sympathy for the woes of someone who has to start paying off their student loan debt. 

There was this other young guy at the table who went to a state school and was sharing his story. In his senior year of college, he and this other kid who went to his high school ended up at the same internship. The only difference was he was paying in-state tuition that his family was able to afford and the other person was attending a top-ranked private school paying over $70K a year.

T admitted to feeling like a failure back in the day when his friend made it to this highly selective college and he did not but in hindsight he believes he came out ahead. The other guy has a student loan to deal with, T does not. There was consensus at the table that there is always a path to avoid debt a student and those who choose not to take it should not be complaining about choices that they made of their own volition. 

Though some debt-free colleagues feel pity—and think student-loan forgiveness would be good for the economy—others can’t stand to hear griping. They tell me they know there are borrowers who didn’t understand what they were getting into and that student loans can be most cumbersome for people who didn’t finish their degrees. Yes, they’re aware that debt, or the absence of it, is often a function of privilege.

Mostly they view the college-debt crisis as a morality play. They did the right thing, paying back what they owe or making good decisions to avoid debt. Others should do the same or face consequences.

That evening, I heard from two people on this topic. D did not come from privilege at all and worked incredibly hard to get his college education and without accumulating debt. T comes from a middle-income family, the youngest of three kids. By the time it was his turn to go to state school, his parents between their two incomes and no other kids left to raise were able to pay for his college. He worked some as well but not as much as D. Both of them could have gone to better schools if they had taken on loans but they chose not to. 

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