In Google, search for "davidson college loan," and you will find various articles having to do with Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., dropping the loan component from its financial aid packages on March 19. This is historic. Although Harvard, Princeton and Yale have already committed to doing away with the onerous loan requirement for needy students, for Davidson College, a small liberal arts college, to do this is remarkable and telling.
It is remarkable because Davidson is outside the Ivy League and is not known for vaunted stores of wealth. And telling because the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Columbia, Cornell and our beloved Dartmouth have yet to follow suit.
Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg's office continues to recruit and select qualified minority, inner-city and rural applicants and saddle them with crippling post-graduation debt and financial hardship, as those same students later struggle to attain some measure of economic security and success.
Dartmouth's use of statistics concerning its levels of minority and/or poor student enrollment belies the stark reality of poor undergraduate debt accrual akin to and on a par with graduate school costs. When Furstenberg's office proudly publishes its outreach efforts, the glaring omissions regarding the College's creatively thrifty financial program are glossed over in favor of a postmodern image of beneficent charity and philanthropic egalitarianism. The truth is that Dartmouth should fund every poor student's education gratis, without condition and without hesitation. If Dartmouth is prepared to draft students from untrodden countrysides and dangerous city ghettos, it should be prepared to say, "Don't worry, we have it covered."
The unfortunate reality of student loans is part of a larger national trend where needy students graduate and immediately enter a five-year or longer indentured servitude of multiple loan paybacks, including Federal Perkins and Stafford loans, and in some cases private loans financed through national banks such as Chase or Citibank.
These former students are forced to balance the high cost of rent, car payments, car insurance, gas, health insurance, life insurance, food (!) and incidentals on top of paying back their loans in a timely manner, such that their credit reports remain unblemished and they may someday be able to afford to buy a house and raise a family. The disturbing trend is that these high costs force many to start families later and later in life, to the point where the American Dream becomes a brief window between the ages of 35 and 55 where student loans may finally be paid off, retirement worries have yet to be realized, and college costs for one's children loom on the horizon.
To me, the link between the costs of higher education and student loan profiteering is stark and unmatched in the annals of consumer-based loans. Unlike home loans, where one could choose where to live and how large of a home to buy, even irrespective of one's income, student loans are usually pressed by a school's financial aid office and are dependent on that office's specific policies. In some cases, schools even suggest or require specific companies through which to finance one's Stafford or supplementary private loan. This again is unfortunate. The student loan industry is big, ugly, pernicious and its trans-generational nature affects us, our children, our grandchildren, their great-great-grandchildren and so on.
I will not go so far as to draw a link between Dartmouth and the processor for its Stafford loans, the New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation, but this hand-in-hand symbiosis of high college costs and student loans must be eradicated before future generations suffer this unbearable burden. I might also suggest that the Dartmouth Financial Aid Office be audited for any ethical violations of kickbacks between loan officers and loan companies.
Bottom line: Dartmouth, stop your loans.
