Lawyer and former Harvard University President Derek Bok once said, “If you think an education is expensive, try ignorance.” But the staggering numbers associated with student loan debt in America today are enough to make any young, broke scholar think twice about post-secondary academia.
Fort Lewis College students joined scholars from more than 100 campuses across the nation Thursday afternoon for Million Student March in protest of the plight that plagues the vast majority of American students.
“Who’s ready to make a change?” student senator Haydn Collard shouted as he led about 25 sign-waving students and faculty across the Fort Lewis campus. “Education isn’t a commodity. It’s a basic human right!”
The student-organized march was part of a nationwide show of support for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ promise to do away with post-secondary education tuition. Thursday’s rally was also a call for a $15 minimum hourly wage for campus employees. It began at 4:30 p.m. at Whalen Gymnasium and proceeded to Reed Library where sociology professor Carey Vicenti told students he didn’t envy them.
“Many of the people you run into have no access to education, no idea what minimum wage is and are dealing with the effects of that,” he told the students. “One of the worst things is that I can teach you to have a level of consciousness about the world, but when you graduate you’ll realize you’re fighting an uphill battle. The way you build access is to get rid of tuition.”
U.S. college pupils have amassed more than $1.2 trillion in debt, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports. And according to The Institute of College Access and Success, about 70 percent of Americans attending public and private colleges had an average $28,950 each in student loan debt. Students with debt increased by 4 percent in the 10-year period between 2004 and 2014.
Collard said his father, a Texas Tech University graduate, is still paying off loans in his late 40s.
At $25,064, the Colorado student’s average debt is slightly lower than the national average, and in 2014, 62 percent of FLC graduates had an average $19,507 to pay off. The school graduated 803 last year, TICAS reported. This past spring, The Wall Street Journal congratulated America’s graduating class of 2015 for accepting a record-high student loan debt average of $35,000 along with their diplomas.
“I’ve always supported education because it’s important to the foundation of a nation,” FLC sophomore and Spanish major Alyssa Prespentt said. As an out-of-state student from New Mexico, she’s facing debt when she graduates, just like senior and political science major Ana Moran, who helped organize Thursday’s event. Moran took out a $10,000 loan just for her first semester.
“I just want to support this cause,” biology major and Colorado native Kit Barton said. “I won’t graduate with debt, and I’m super blessed and thankful that I will have more opportunities when I graduate because of that.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
