🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
I grew up in middle-class Lawrenceburg, Indiana. As soon as I turned 16, I knew that I was going to need to get a job. I had support from my parents, but the cost of college promised to fall on my shoulders. After high school, I enrolled at the University of Cincinnati to study criminal justice and psychology. As a full-time student, I still worked upwards of 40 hours a week—first in retail security, then at a correctional center. Although the latter paid well, I was required to work nights, limiting both my study time and my social life. But I needed money for rent, textbooks, and bills.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, I lost my security job and took a job at a dog daycare which paid me only two-thirds of what I'd been making. I told myself that something was better than nothing. Now, as of April, I've graduated an entire year early. I knew that finishing my degree in three years would mean adding to my already full workload—all to save on tuition. And yet, despite graduating early, in April, I crossed the stage with a shadow of $40,000 in debt trailing after me. My savings account is higher than ever, but even so, I've barely made a dent in what I owe.
To most, it would seem like I've done everything right. I made sure to get and maintain a job throughout my entire adolescent-to-adult life. I've saved as much as I could. I am, and have been, working for the ability to learn. And yet, people like me are struggling to find a well-paying job. And we're just drowning in student debt while we look.
President Biden has taken action during the pandemic to pause federal student loan payments, moving to extend a moratorium until January 31, 2022. But he has rejected proposals from Senators to cancel up to $50,000 per person from our country's $1.6 trillion in student debt, ignoring stories like mine.
The lesson from my experiences is clear: There is nothing you can do about the socioeconomic status you were born into. And if you weren't born affluent, it doesn't matter how hard you work, there is nothing you can do to prepare for the overwhelming debt you accumulate from getting an education.
As long as this is how higher education works, it will continue to worsen inequality and reinforce class structures.
Across the country, around half of adults with at least a bachelor's degree are struggling with outstanding debt, many in circumstances far worse than mine. The importance of college is preached far and wide, but the average cost of going to college has more than doubled since the 1980s. In fact, there are around 45 million borrowers with an average student debt of around $30,000. And education debt weighs especially heavily for Black Americans, especially Black women.
In December, my group, the Ohio Student Association, published a report on higher education funding in partnership with Policy Matters Ohio. The report found that in order to make college education achievable for all Ohioans no matter our income, policymakers must invest in education through need-based financial aid, which has never recovered to pre-2008-recession levels.
Meanwhile, most people support eliminating debt. According to a 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll, 58 percent of registered voters would support full student debt cancellation as well as making public schools tuition-free.
Fortunately, for the many of us weighed down by debt, there has never been a clearer opportunity to cancel it all. The OSA has been gathering students from different campuses across Ohio—including our historically Black public university, Central State—and setting up meetings with policymakers. This spring, we held a student roundtable with Senator Sherrod Brown, a leading progressive who has the power to push cancelation up the national agenda. We're also discussing the benefits of cancelation with our House Reps, benefits which include fueling the economy and narrowing the racial wealth gap.
Eliminating my education debt would mean that I could live to learn. It would mean that I could go to graduate school to pursue a passion—instead of pushing it aside to focus on paying off my debt. It would mean that I could treat my education as a springboard instead of a burden.
It's high time for policymakers to invest in education for all, no matter our race or income. When they do, everyone will benefit.
Maria Beeler is a Spring 2021 graduate of the University of Cincinnati and a member of the Ohio Student Association, a statewide organization building power for young Ohioans.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
