Letter to the Editor 

Samuel Cotta

February 9, 2024

Why isn’t higher education as free as secondary education? 

• Do higher paying jobs really add more to the economy? Are passionate jobs really less impactful to society? Is a major’s pay really an indicator of its social benefit? How much student debt would be better aimed at humanitarian causes, few of which have as direct a relationship to GDP as it might seem? 

• To start with the obvious, teachers are criminally underpaid. Any last vestiges of this phenomenon’s credibility crumble in the face of professional athlete salaries. By any moral metric, the thoughtful engagement of students is better than the spectatorship of sports fanatics. And not only for educators, but also for innovators and constructioneers in any field who can be equally irreplaceable, personal passion tends to be the main drive. Care expressible in one’s work appears to play a central role in benefitting society in worthy ways, an endeavor which unfortunately today can’t humanely be strapped to the question of making good money. Encaged in the lifelong shadow of student debt, living from paycheck to paycheck is hardly being at your most impactful, and the short-term domestic growth cooked up by fossil fuel industries doesn’t say anything good about the survival of our species. 

• Even so, peering through an immediate economic lens, 2023’s fourth quarter saw an increase rate of 3.3%: “The U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter amid strong consumer spending, and shrugged off dire predictions of a recession after the Federal Reserve aggressively raised interest rates, with growth for the full year coming in at 2.5%,” says Lucia Mutikani of Reuters.com. Although positively significant today, this bubble bursts upon a glimpse into our relatively recent past: the 50s and 60s saw a 4.4% expansion rate, and until 1972, the post-WWII period “brought sustained increases in the standard of living that are completely different from what we have today” (Fortune.com). Under Eisenhower, this country experienced the greatest economic growth it still ever has, even under the imminent threat of nuclear disaster. And most tuition was not only free, but subsidized. The GI Bill of 1944 sent over 8 million WWII veterans, who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to school, from 1945-1956 (Khan Academy)--an experience likely as enriching personally as it was nationally.   

• In the first place, using economic growth to justify any system of oppression is a dangerous game too often played. George Fitzhugh, the main spokesperson for southern slavery, compellingly argued that southerners provided slaves a better quality of life they’d otherwise not have because of the fact they were capital on which the US economy depended. Win-win, right? Even better, much of Hitler’s popularity resulted from the promise of a better economy, a key excuse flailed by Nazis and their sympathizers. 

• The US today is far richer than it was half a century ago. At the same time, compared with similarly successful economies like those of Germany and Finland–and even poorer countries like Mexico–the US emerges as the only one of the above with outlandish college tuition. Comparing rates of domestic growth along our timeline, the underlying reasoning for student debt seems to have no economic basis, leaving the floor open for more ominous prospects. Unlike businesses, individuals cannot declare bankruptcy, and the threat of losing social security looms over our heads. Despite these federal disciplinary measures, our collective path is still redeemable considering how it’s mainly legislation of the last half century which has led us so astray.