There are millions of students who are staring at the cracked dam holding back the torrent of their student loans, and as graduation day approaches those cracks get wider, the edges crumble away in larger chunks, and more water made of utter fear and desperation comes roaring through, exponentially surging up the sides of their small lonely island.
If I had a genie, what would be my three wishes to help me out of this predicament?
The obvious, but not so smart, wishes might be:
Wish 1: Get me off this damn island.
Wish 2: Make it all just go away.
Wish 3: And just for shits and grins, give me as much money as I could ever want.
And for these wishes and the following problems, I am using first person as the average stereotyped American student facing down that cracked dam and that enormous lake of debt.
The problems with those wishes:
Wish 1: Get me off the island.
Wish 1 Problems: Where would I go? Would the genie simply plunk me down on a raft in the middle of the raging river of my debt? Would he make me stand on top of the crumbling dam so that I fell in as it collapsed? Would he be generous and place me on the river bank so that I could simply watch and marvel at my debt rushing by and devastating everything downstream?
Wish 2: Make it all just go away.
Wish 2 Problems: Where would it go? And just because the current debt in chomping at the bit to get at me goes away doesn’t mean that the lake won’t fill up again, possibly even higher. And that doesn’t fix the dam. It doesn’t teach me responsibility or how to avoid or maneuver in another such predicament. Plus I’d still be stuck on that damn island, once again placed in the position of waiting, watching, fearing, and asking for another genie for more wishes.
Wish 3: And just for shits and grins, give me as much money as I could ever want.
Wish 3 Problems: And what will this do? Sure, I might make some smart decisions to repair the dam, pay off some of the debt, and buy a boat to get off the island. But I will most likely construct a big beautiful home on my little island – turn it into a resort where all my friends and family are comp-ed, everyone is over-happy, over-fed, and over-cared for, and the crumbling dam in the background is simply a quaint natural feature instead of a devastating reality. And all the money I could ever want may, in the end, turn out to be significantly less than the money I could ever need. There’s also inflation. And is my money going to be accepted everywhere at the same rate, have the same value, and represent the same thing? I highly doubt it. See – I still have problems.
Now for the three things I should wish for. The three wishes that I should make, and the three wishes that the genie will not shake his head at while adding another chalk mark under the “idiotic out-of-touch unrealistic wishers” heading.
Genie, will you please grant me the following wishes:
Wish 1: Please give me a new dam with the following specifications: is capable of holding back anything and any amount, allows me to exactly manage and control how much debt flows down to me, generates power or some other thing that I can use to help pay off my debt.
Wish 2: Please give me the tools and opportunities to get through whatever it is I go through.
Wish 3: Please put policies, checks, whatever needs ot happen in place so that this doesn't happen to me or any others again.
And now for the justifications:
Wish 1 Justification: This wish is pretty self-explanatory.
Wish 2 Justification: This wish is also pretty self-explanatory. The tools and opportunities may include shoring up my island, learning new management skills, making my island float so that it can go and down with the water flow, giving me the ability to build a bridge to the riverbank so that I can go back and forth, accept supplies and such, enable me to give lessons and learn lessons to and from others, and other such ideas.
Wish 3 Justification: In the case of tuition and loans, look at some serious policies, rules, options, etc. that help the students and ultimately the economy. Encourage a tuition and fees cap for both public and private schools so that universities don’t have the option of hiking tuition and fees whenever they see fit. Encourage institutions to make more student and work-study jobs available. Encourage institutions to make more scholarships available. Encourage loan companies (private and government) to reduce interest rates and allow grace periods; the lower interest and the more grace, the more likely the loan institution will get their money back. Don’t be greedy, institutions – be fair; do what’s best for the students, the universities, and ultimately yourselves.
Hopefully that’ll be enough, and I won’t have to beg for more genie magic later on.
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