I support Bernie Sanders, because I think his heart is in the right place. However, I have issues with many of his policies or attitudes. Here is a tweet he posted today:
I remember talking to a young woman in Vermont who left medical school with $300,000 in debt.
Her crime? She wanted to become a doctor and work with low-income people.
She shouldn’t be punished with a debt of $300,000. College indebtedness is a horror.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 4, 2020
First of all, I don’t think anyone is saying she is committing a crime by being in debt. Her debt is not punishment.
She is now a medical doctor. In that profession, she is at the very top of the income scale, both for entry-level positions, as well as for long-term employment opportunities. We are short of medical professionals in this country, which means she is not likely to ever be unemployed. Her job won’t ever be outsourced and it won’t very soon be taken over by automation. In addition, her profession is highly esteemed by the public and she will enjoy the prestige that comes with it.
When she entered medical school, she knew exactly what was going to happen. Eight to ten years of college, during which he had to live, eat, pay rent, buy books, and – yes – pay tuition. She knew it was going to take many years and she was going to take on much debt to finance that investment in her future.
She didn’t all of a sudden fall prey to a loan shark who gave her $300,000 at high interest rate. She had to apply and qualify for those student loans over and over again, every semester anew. She picked up $15,000 to $20,000 every semester at a reasonably low interest rate, interest deferred, one grab at a time. Nobody forced her, nobody twisted her arm, nobody made her do that. She didn’t make an impulse buy of a medical degree. She worked at it for a decade, and she took loans out to finance her life for that decade.
She also didn’t decide for a lower-cost option. For instance, she could have joined the United States Marines via the ROTC program. She would have been a cadet in the undergraduate years and drawn a salary. She would have been a commissioned officer during her medical studies, and the military would have paid for all her education. She would now be debt-free, she would be a captain in the Marines, and she would be a medical doctor. The only thing the country would now ask of her is to serve as a medical officer for six years or so. She didn’t choose that option.
She chose to finance her education and be saddled with $300,000 of debt when she got out.
We, the country, owe her nothing. We don’t think she committed any crime, we don’t think she is being punished by her debt, and we don’t think her indebtedness is a horror.
Let’s compare this to a young family who bought their first house in California in 2005, right about the same time our young doctor finished her high school. 2005 was at a peak in the housing market. They found a nice place for $330,000. They had saved $30,000 for a down payment and took on a mortgage of $300,000. However, when the housing crisis hit in 2007, the value of the property they paid $330,000 for dropped to $140,000. They were hugely upside down. It would take more than 12 years before the value came back up to a reasonable level. They were saddled with punishing debt and there was no way they could sell their house.
Should the tax payer now bail out that family that made a perfectly reasonable decision in 2005 to buy their first house? Of course not! They had bad luck with timing of their real estate deal. Millions of Americans, tens of millions actually, experienced exactly that. We don’t think we should bail them out. They took risks, there were potential gains, but they ended up with severe losses.
The tax payer is not responsible for that young family’s mortgage.
The tax payer is not responsible for the medical doctor’s student loans.
Bernie Sanders is flat out wrong when he tries to pin student debt on the public. I know many bright young people who chose not to get a medical degree because they didn’t want to be burdened with crushing debt when they were done.
If the young doctor is not happy with her investment today, she needs to deal with it.
And that’s why I think Bernie will have trouble. Some of his ideas don’t even make sense to his own supporters – like me.
My sister was a Navy doctor. It paid for medical school (Howard) and I believe part of college. She was lucky in doing her radiology residency in San Francisco (Oakland Regional Medical Center) and five years in Honolulu (Pearl Harbor Medical Facility). She left as a Lt. Cmdr. It wasn’t all red wine and roses but that’s another story.
This doesn’t detract from the point of your post, but radiologists are one area where doctors are threatened by automation. AI supposedly can read X-rays and scans as well as or better than doctors and robots are being developed to perform surgery. My former profession, law, is the same. Law schools are pumping out more young lawyers every year, and many are saddled with huge debt. But computers are now doing legal research and even writing legal briefs and memoranda which was formerly the job of young lawyers.
I think student debt is a major problem. Education is great, but schools entice young people to enroll in programs and incur debt when there is little chance of success in school or even if they complete their studies. It is almost fraud. That should be addressed as well as skyrocketing educational costs that nearly match the medical inflation rate.
I like Bernie and admire his enthusiasm and persistence but am not a supporter because like you I think many of his programs have admirable goals but don’t make sense.
This is very valuable. Thanks. We all heard about “Trump University” and that fits right in with your comments.
The problem is not the cost or the debt, it’s the “marketing” to young people without proper guidance.
There are also many medical doctors who got into the profession for the wrong reasons – money, prestige, etc., but don’t actually like their work.
Your post lies on the ides that the woman knew what she was getting into by going to medical school. This isn’t necessarily true.
Firstly, guidance counselors are not financial counselors. They aren’t even always good guidance counselors. The dr in your post may not have been advised of going into ROTC. I am currently 33, I graduated college (a semester early and taking 8k off my student loans) in Dec 2008. While I had heard of ROTC I didn’t really know what it was or what it could do until well after I had graduated. But at the time of finishing high school I was only 90 lbs, and am a petite asian woman who gets motion sickness with little endurance. I may not have been considered ‘able’ enough to handle the rigors of ROTC. My family also probably wouldn’t have supported this, on top of all this my own opinion would need to be considered.
When I graduated high school and entered college, Bush was still president, who I did not support, nor did I support the war. If I had known of ROTC and even considered it I could have ended up in Iraq on tours and may not have come back to get the benefit of a paid for / discounted education.
Secondly, the dr. like many others may not have been properly advised on what a loan is like. Some students’ parents are the ones who go to the financial meetings, so the students may only get second hand information, or the parents may just tell them its ok, and just take the debt. Irresponsible yes, but it happens. In my case, both my sister and I were the ones to go to the financial meetings. My parents were not reliable on how to advise me on finances and so I did not properly understand the process. But at the time, a loan was the only option if I wanted to further my education, and again, being asian, not going to college was not an option. I did have a better understanding than most about financials because I saw the mistakes my parents made. I got a credit card at 18 and used it responsibly so I would have my own credit. My mother practically depleted her 401k for my sister and I because she didn’t want us to take loans out for as long as possible and this is going to ruin her now and I’m not sure how she will retire. Again, irresponsible but didn’t know what else to do.
Third, even if I had a better understanding of trade schools, I may not have gone there either because of family expectations. Though again, I didn’t know much about trade schools because guidance counselors did not advise of this, I didn’t even know if there were any near me.
Fourth, while even if properly advised on what the student loan process is like, you may not be told in the seriously unfortunate even that you need to declare bankruptcy, your student loan debt isn’t cleared. You aren’t told what it’s like to live under crushing debt. I was lucky to leave college with under 30k in debt (which was from only 3 semesters and I had a half tuition scholarship), I have been paying my loans, and when possible overpaying my loans for 10 years. My debt is only down to 14K, the amount I have paid so far has more than covered my principle. My husband still has more student loan debt than I do. There are people whose loans even after paying are more than when they started because min payments don’t cover the interest. I am lucky enough that while my jobs have not been stellar, my husband and I do have a home and a mortgage. But this entire time, I have practically been living paycheck to paycheck. There is no way I could have family right now, luckily I didn’t want children. While said sarcastically it is true that I realized I could have children or retire. Not both. And even retirement is uncertain. No one can properly advise on what living like this is like.
The takeaway here, is that at 18, you don’t fully understand what you are getting into, ever. Each generations is being increasingly coddled and insulated. Parents don’t want their kids to worry which is just making the problem worse. The pressure from family is there, and while being the best of intentions, is not the best of advice. There is also the impulsiveness which comes at that age. If everyone is getting loans, you don’t realize it’s not a good thing. It’s normalized to take out massive loans. So, if everyone is doing it, you just end up focusing on what you want.
Student loan debt is becoming the next problem and it needs to be addressed. Your posts often talk about how a country invests is telling, well, it’s equally telling that there was a willingness to bail out banks but not people. The student loan debt didn’t just become what it is today without big business profiting, some people not knowing better and colleges irresponsibly investing in unnecessary amenities to lure students, charge more and get more money.
While I would love for Bernie to pay for my student debt, I am not banking on it. What I would like to see is this problem addressed and fixed, so that this doesn’t keep happening. While ultimately it is the students who took out these loans, the deck was stacked against us.
chart showing increasing prices of college since 1980, showing this was a problem a long time coming and is now coming to a head:
https://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-how-quickly-college-tuition-has-skyrocketed-since-1980-2015-7
Tuition at twice the rate of inflation
https://www.edvisors.com/plan-for-college/saving-for-college/tuition-inflation/
college amenities issue:
https://phasezerodesign.com/blog/2018/6/1/arms-race
Predatory lending practices:
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/sallie-mae/
blacks and hispanics having the most debt:
https://studentloanhero.com/featured/study-student-loans-weigh-heaviest-black-hispanic/
I am sorry this comment became so long, but I just couldn’t tell if you were unempathetic, or if you just don’t know much about the issue.
Thank you so much for this substantial contribution to this topic. This is very valuable.
I do not disagree with many of your points. There are many different issues around this.
But I vehemently disagree about the young woman not being responsible. We have 18-year-olds who enroll to go to war in Afghanistan. In my day we sent them to Vietnam. A woman that decides to borrow $20k every semester between age 18 and age 28 to get a medical degree is responsible for her actions. That’s where I strongly differ. I am not unempathetic – but she made her bed and now she needs to sleep in it. It is not society’s problem, and it is not the government’s business to bail her out.
I will review all other points you make and likely post about them separately. I very much enjoy the dialog and the education that comes with it.
I understand your plight and all your arguments. Tough life. Tough love. You had to make difficult choices. So did I in my day. Universities in the United States are the best in the world, and everyone wants to study here, and they are businesses. Yes, costs are up. Yes, we have predatory lending practices. But everybody deals with that. It’s a competitive environment. What I object to in Sanders’ proposal is that we make that the country’s problem. Joe Taxpayer has nothing to do with existing student loans for other people. That is not to say I don’t agree with you that some things need to be improved. But that is not the main point here.
I agree that the responsibility to pay is on the person who takes out the loan. Like I said, while I would love for my student loans to be paid off, I don’t expect it, nor do I feel it is owed me. I was simply arguing your point that the dr knew what she was getting into. That’s not always the case. Misinformed decisions are neither good decisions nor fair decisions and that’s what needs to be addressed. The system needs to be fixed, in addressing the shortcomings of the financial system, as well as giving borrowers the tools they need to understand loans. Paying off student loans without fixing the underlying problems is like giving a patient a transfusion without fixing the bleed.
Can’t agree more.
I am strongly in favor of allowing people to take responsibility for their own actions. The government, or any authority, should not interfere. I am probably radical in that. It must come from my own independence from a very early age. My parents divorced when I was 12, and I was virtually on my own and made my own decisions from that age on. I moved away from my parents’ house when I turned 18. That shaped me.
Women should take responsibility for their own bodies. The government should not be able to dictate anything to them. You can guess where this might be going….
Proud of you, Norbert, to take on this troubling issue the way you did. I completely agree. And Sanders has to figure out what in the world he means when he tries to lower or eliminate college debt. It is not as if this is a cost that can suddenly be lowered, or suddenly be paid by the public sector. College tuition, especially at the undergraduate level, has risen in great part because tax-payers refused to support public universities over the last 40 years like they did in the Sixties. This is a mess. And Sanders cannot just wish it away.
To his credit, I don’t think he is wishing it away. He is a “child of the sixties” and I am sure he understands what happened. In fact, if we were sitting at a kitchen table with Sanders, he’d agree with us. He knows that the public used to support public universities, and he knows that support has eroded. He wants to bring the support back, and by putting it on the front burner with a public debate just like this one, he is on his way. I think he also knows that it isn’t going to change by flipping a switch. You and I will not see the effect of any change. Our grandchildren might, when they go to college in the 2040s. The fact that you and I are communicating about this on a public forum shows that he is making some progress.
Thanks, Norbie. You are right about Sanders. And I did what I could for him yesterday. Alas.