The other day I was talking with someone online about student debt forgiveness and free college. And he asked “do you think it’s fair to make the taxpayer pay for your college?”
Yes. Yes I do.
I am a civil engineer. My degree took me five years and, if you include my living expenses, $100k. I went to a public university, I had scholarships grants and work study. I still came out with over $50k in debt. At the end I had to forego the masters in structural engineering I really wanted because my husband lost his job and I got an offer that would pay my bills and was well above average for a new grad.
And for what? On my desk right now is something in the neighborhood of $1B in infrastructure projects. Many of these are extreme rehab projects that needed done 20 years ago. I am stressed and tired. I’ve had to turn down large projects because I just don’t have the time. And I can’t even rebuild the best way because the existing infrastructure is in such bad shape. I literally was told I could not get materials to site because the bridge wasn’t structurally sound and I was shit out of luck because the DOT doesn’t consider these areas high priority.
I work to make sure the people of my state and six other states can have functioning infrastructure. I have volumes of codes and regulations on my shelves that I reference daily. And I make far more than my peers who work for the DOT, who can barely make their loan payments. I didn’t get into this to be rich, but maybe I shouldn’t have needed to go through all that for a degree that is so badly needed.
But no, this person thought that it was fine that only the wealthy would get degrees without debt. They thought it was fine for their skilled labor live in debt peonage just because they didn’t want to pay for free college. This person who crowed about individual self-sufficiency and pulling bootstraps admitted fully that they rely on the kindness and goodwill of others for his lifestyle, and that he was ok with that.
Fuck the hypocrisy. And fuck student loans.