Every time that the Minnesota State Legislature cuts state funding to the University of Minnesota and other state institutions of higher learning, it kills or delays the hopes and dreams of our college students. The continuing erosion of state funding means increasing tuition costs that are thrown onto the backs of the sons and daughters of people who have toiled for generations to build this state into a reservoir of educational pride and accomplishment.
If you've been reading the crushed-trees version of this newspaper, you would have to be comatose not to be shocked by the series "Generation Debt" that started in Sunday's Star Tribune. The reporting, by Jenna Ross and Chao Xiong, lays out in stark detail just how costly it is for a middle-class kid from a family of average means to get a college education in this state.
It wasn't too long ago that state government had an understanding with Minnesota families that tuition would be held no more than one-third of the cost of a college education. While this was still a burden to many families, it was eased when coupled with grants, scholarships, some loans, and part time work. That, of course, was when policymakers of both parties knew in their hearts that the future economic success of this state was heavily dependent on an educated workforce. That was before the political class started elbowing each other off the sensibility platform to embrace a "no new taxes" philosophy.
As Minnesotans, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We are now saddling students with a debt that is getting so large, growing so fast, becoming such a back-breaking burden that we are denying them the resources of opportunity that used to be available to all college grads.
Here's a typical picture of what happens in many Minnesota families: A kid grows up, goes away to get four years of college, and gets a degree. With it, the graduate also gets a piece of paper that says he or she has a large financial debt at an interest rate higher than most of today's mortgage rates. This incredible due bill is a direct result of the funding cuts that the Legislature and the governor have made in state aid to higher education. Instead of spreading these costs among taxpayers, the state has burdened individual students with ever-increasing hikes in tuition. Talk about shame, consider this: Our University of Minnesota—for 157 years one of this nation's truly great Land Grant Universities—has been forced to double student tuition in just the past decade
According the Star Tribune's Ross and Xiong, student debt in Minnesota has skyrocketed a shocking 157 percent in just the past decade. Last year, the average 2008 graduate left with $20,897.00 in debt to go with the cap and gown. Fueling this is the Legislature and the governor's willingness to take a fiscal machete to slash state funding for education—all education.
After college graduation, biology takes over, one debt invariably falls in love with another student debt, and they merge their individual debts. Assuming average student loans debt, the newly married couple now owes about $50,000. How's that for starting out in tough shape? A ten-year payment effort repaying the 50 grand, at an interest rate of 6.68%, means a monthly loan payment of about $575. That level of overhead joined with rent, probably two cars, health insurance, and food (and hopefully good family planning), most assuredly limits the grads' professional choices.
In particular, it limits loan-loaded grads in choosing where to live, work and raise a family. Invariably, these college loans force many indebted grads to look for their future careers in the large cities where starting salaries are at a level that makes paying off their loans more likely. No returning to farm and family and aging parents living in Minnesota's rural areas. Who will create the new small businesses so desperately needed along Main Street?
Many years before I was born, my father was forced to leave school after the 8th grade when his father died in a small, rural Minnesota town. His widowed mother moved the large family to St. Paul because that's where there were better paying jobs. Dad became a truck driver and in spite of his limited formal education, he taught me my first and most basic principal of citizenship. He was heading out the door to vote in a city election for a proposal that would raise taxes to improve the city's public school system. I asked why he would vote for that, in as much as my brothers and I all went to the Catholic schools. My father turned and spoke to me quickly and sharply: "These are the people you are going to be living among and working with and they need to be educated to keep our community a good place to live."
I was about eight years old at the time and it is a lesson that has formed the fundamental foundation of my beliefs about government and community ever since.
Our legislators and governor seem to have forgotten that it is called "public education" because it was created to be used by and funded by the public to foster a society that is educated to work together for what my Dad, his generation and many in mine always believed was the public good.