student loan debt crisis

“Really, all I’m asking today is, ‘Why can’t we treat our student borrowers the way we treat our banks?’ Because: 44 million Americans? That is ‘too big to fail.’ ”

While testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, comedian Hasan Minhaj called out members of Congress for the student loan crisis by comparing current tuition costs to what they originally paid for the same school, which showed a 110 percent increase in overall tuition costs.

In an effort to sway lawmakers, Minhaj highlighted the stark contrasts between current tuition costs and the more modest pricing for higher education enjoyed in past decades when many current members of Congress had attended college.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, who graduated from Los Angeles State College (now Cal State, Los Angeles) in 1971, paid approximately $1,000 per year for her undergraduate degree, adjusted for inflation. Today’s Cal State students pay more than five times more, averaging about $6,000 per year. Rep. Peter King, R–New York, a private school alum of St. Francis College, who graduated in 1965, paid an approximate annual tuition of $10,000 per year in today’s dollars, according to Minhaj—$15,000 less per year than the average St. Francis student in 2019.

Despite these runaway prices, real wages, Minhaj pointed out, have only gone up 16 percent in the past three decades. “Colleges are objectively way more expensive,” he added. “And yet borrowers are still treated like deadbeats because the government has put their financial futures in the hands of predatory, for-profit loan servicing companies.”



via {nbc news}