The common misconception about college is that there is a guarantee on your investment. But this has become less and less true as inflation has raised not only the cost of education but also the interest rates on loans. In an article on NBC by Freshman Year, Jill Rosales about student loan debt says, "But to some degree in the United States, it's just a part of living here. There's some debt that you have to take on to get ahead." That is the problem, as the cost of education skyrockets and becomes unreasonably expensive it just becomes a way of life and no one thinks twice about it. Debt costs you time in savings, pushes back when and whether you can buy a home, start a family, open a small business or access capital (Applebaum). The more educated people become the more relevant student loan debt will be in politics and everyday life. As Jeffrey Williams said in "The Pedagogy of Debt", "We need to talk about it because it affects so many of those in the classroom seats in front of us and because it has increased so precipitously." Student loan debt and interest rates have skyrocketed to the point that without a quick resolution, every facet of society will see direct consequences. The best way to do this is through politics such as choosing the right presidential candidate; throughout the 2016 presidential race, Marco Rubio has consistently been the leading candidate regarding the student loan debt crisis.

When high school students first start scoping out what colleges they want to go to most go to their parents for advice. But what these students don't know is that the average monthly payment for student loans for one of the roughly 6 million college-educated parents under 40 is $404, that is slightly more than what the government says the average college-educated family spends at the supermarket (Freshman Year). Along with knowing their current financial situation, as far as how much their parents still owe, students should also research each college or university's graduation statistics. One place to find this information is from The Institute for College Access & Success's Project on Student Debt where it outlines multiple statistics about each university or college in every state regarding student loan debt. If the student wanted to go to either the University of South Carolina-Columbia or Coastal Carolina University, they could compare different average debt of graduates from each. The average debt of graduates at the University of South Carolina in 2014 was $28,233, the average debt of graduates at Coastal Carolina University in 2014 was $35,207, and the state average was $29,163 (Wright). Seeing that USC-Columbia was not only significantly lower than Coastal Carolina University but was also lower than the state average. Lower average debt means fewer loan repayments, which means having money to either buy a house or start a family.    

The common belief is that straight out of college there will be a well-paying job waiting

at the other end. But even with a middle-class job, the loans pick up interest and become a substantial monthly payment. Forty-year-old Andres Aguirre has been repaying his loans for over a decade and still he diverts $512 a month to loans and owes $20,000 (Freshman Year). His daughter excelled in high school, but he strongly suggested that she go to a community college to prevent her from the debt that hovers over him many years after graduating (Freshman Year). Stories like Andre's are not uncommon around the country as the cost of education skyrockets. Many parents between the ages of 35 to 50, who carry student debt, have on average $4,000 saved for their children's college tuition (Freshman Year). For most Universities and Colleges around the country, $4,000 is barely half of the tuition, and that is for in-state students. The result of this is that many of their children will need to borrow heavily for college or pursue cheaper alternatives, thereby perpetuating a cycle of family debt (Freshman Year). This outlines the student loan debt crisis perfectly, the longer we prolong this cycle of family debt the less money will be put into the economy and more towards repaying debts or there will be fewer students who will actually attend a university or college.

All that is in the news today is the rise in gas prices and the demand for higher minimum wages due to the inflation. What most students and parents don't know is that not only has the cost of attending college has continued to grow faster than the rate of inflation, but also the accompanying loan burden has risen appreciably (The Landscape). All students can do to tackle this issue is to be at the top of their class and apply for every single scholarship they can find. But even then, seven in 10 college seniors who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,950 per borrower (Wright). 

Speculation on student loan debt by everyday citizens and politicians can be made that it is not as important as other issues such as gas or healthcare. With the federal loan debt at $16.7 trillion, student loan debts measure 6% of the overall national debt (Applebaum). As student loan debt continues to add to the national debt it becomes harder for students to repay the loans as inflation accommodates for the debt. Six percent is no small figure, and national debt carries many consequences including slowing economic growth resulting in unemployment and rising interest rates (Applebaum). 

Without a quick resolution of student loan debt things such as gas prices will increase tremendously. A very important thought that was expressed in an article written by Catherine Millett, "Whether undergraduate debt acts as an impediment to student access to graduate school and to the production of a trained doctoral workforce" (Millett). If the cost of education becomes so much that students do not think it is worth the investment to go to professional school then there will be a significant fall in healthcare quality and quantity as well as the quality of other professional school careers.

In "The Pedagogy of Debt" by Jeffrey Williams, debt is described as not only a check every month but as something that colors the day-to-day experience of my life, whether someone would live in a smaller or larger apartment, whether if they can buy a house, whether they can travel to Europe, whether they can eat out. Student loan debt is usually given as a statistic that is most likely forgotten in two minutes when it should be given as examples like those listed in that article. Another statistic regarding student loan debt, $1.2 trillion in student debt, does not include funds students must divert away from retirement savings, parent borrowing, or credit card debt (Applebaum). In addition to real life applications, comparisons illustrate how influential student loan debt can be. For instance, the author of "The Pedagogy of Debt", Jeffrey Williams, stated "When I went to Columbia in 1976, tuition and fees were about $4,000 and total costs less than $7,000 ... Comparing the $7,000 total cost of an education at a prestigious college such as Columbia in the 1970's to the $20,000 to $30,000 or even $40,000 tuition and fee rates of today's education shows how drastically the cost of education has inflated. If more of an emphasis was placed on student loan debt in the media through first-hand accounts, then politicians or even presidential candidates would take action to it.

Because it is a nomination year, real change can happen depending on the candidate elected. The front-runner of the Democratic Party, past Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, proposes offering grants to states that reinvest in and work with their public colleges to allow students to attend with a minimal, wage based contribution and no debt (Mayotte). This plan is very similar to the plan proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, closely following Hillary Clinton. Under Sander's plan, low-income students would use state, federal and institutional aid to cover tuition, living, and other expenses. He would also like to see an increase in federal aid programs, on his campaign website he specifically calls to "more than triple the federal work-study program to build valuable career experience that will help them after they graduate." (Mayotte). According to Mayotte, the most controversial parts of Hillary's plan may prove to be the $350 billion price tag. But both candidates want to add tax adjustments for the rich. Also using Betsy Mayotte's article, "Explore How Presidential Candidates Stand on Student Loan Debt", the following candidates are discussed; there was retired Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, current runner Donald Trump, and former runner Senator Marco Rubio. 

Ben Carson believes along with working while in college that schools should carry part of the responsibility of student loan debt by paying the interest on the loans for the students they enroll (Mayotte). This is a different approach than the Democrats, rather than using federal aide Carson sees the solution in the institutions themselves. 

Donald Trump hasn't issued an official plan regarding student loans: but he has made his views clear, "That's probably one of the only things the government shouldn't make money off  --  I think it's terrible that one of the only profit centers we have is student loans" (Mayotte). This plays onto Trumps approach to a stance he doesn't know anything about, just tell the people what they want to hear without backing it up with any solid ideas. 

Only Marco Rubio has released a four-step plan that is much more realistic than taxing the rich or making the universities pay the interest. Listed on Marco Rubio's campaign website the four plans are detailed as, creating an alternative accrediting model to allow work experiences and life experiences to allow students who have already mastered something to not have to sit in a classroom and pay to learn it again. The second plan is the student investment plan where an investment group would invest in a student like a start-up business where all the risk is on the investment group. The third plan is called income-based repayment where the amount of debt to be paid back based on what you earn. And the fourth is called the right to know before you go that allows you do compare two universities on how much your major is expected to earn after graduating and how much it costs to attend the university (Rubio).

As Roman philosopher, George Santayana once said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The concept of comparing the average student loan debt can be applied when researching political figures. Finding past resolutions to student debt can establish what is and what is not realistically possible. Allison Minks, a 35-year-old veteran, and mother of two boys owes a staggering $99,326 in student loans  --  a sum her full-time job as a counselor at a nonprofit clinic outside St. Louis doesn't begin to cover (Edwards). 

People like Allison Minks are becoming more and more common as the rate of inflation continues to rise. Luckily, Allison found a key provision from the federal government that allows all federal borrowers to only pay 10% or 15% of their discretionary income on monthly payments and wipes any remaining balance after 20-25 years of public service (Edwards). In other words, because of this program, Minks now pays an affordable amount each month and watches her principal balloon  --  but she'll be scot-free before she is 45. Without the plan, she'd have ended up a quarter of a million dollars in the hole, making payments for decades longer (Edwards). This may seem like a cure-all program, just work in public service and your student loan debt will be forgiven, but there are those who will take advantage of loopholes in this program. One problem of this program is that it overwhelmingly favors the students getting graduate degrees, it allows them to run up vast debts that they can eventually walk away from by working for a time in "public service" jobs that stretch the common definition of that term and to leave future taxpayers holding the bag (Edwards). This program could work if it is heavily revised and more widely known to the public.

An act passed in 2013 by Obama, The Bipartisan Loan Certainty Act, allows students who took out loans in the 2013-2014 school year only have to pay a 3.86% interest rate on the loan (The Student Loan Debt Crisis). Not only did this act lower the interest rate, which according to the Edvisors Network was 6.8%, but it got support from both sides of the aisle. An education reform program sponsored by President Barack Obama is to assign an official government rating to every college and university in the country. The rating system would make colleges more accountable in three ways: First, it would provide students with a quick, easy-to-use cheat sheet on which schools are the most affordable and produce the most successful graduates. Second, it would encourage institutions to compete against one another to get their ratings up. And third, Obama announced that he would seek congressional authorization to reduce financial aid to the lowest-ranked schools. At least, that's the theory (Edwards). The author, Haley Edwards, also describes how smaller private schools such as Lesley University are outraged because they feel that they won't stack up against giant state flagships. It is not hard to see why they would believe that as private schools are often more expensive than bigger universities and being a small, private liberal-arts school the program will most likely pull funding from them unless they drop their costs.

This method of using a rating system to appropriate funding has been used in all facets of federal government. For more than a decade, federal funding for K-12 education has rewarded schools that meet federal benchmarks of achievement. Under President George W. Bush, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services started a rating system for nursing homes in an effort to help Americans choose--and direct their federal dollars to--the higher-quality institutions. And states long ago began using metrics to track their own colleges and universities. As of this year, 25 states from New Mexico to Massachusetts require colleges to meet certain performance standards to receive extra financial aid. In Florida, the government will disburse an additional $20 million this year to four-year institutions that demonstrate that a certain percentage of their graduates are gainfully employed. In Louisiana, some schools will get extra funds for keeping students from dropping out (Edwards). 

Perhaps a combination of the states' legislation along with Obama's rating system could prove to be very effective but also gain support from both sides of the aisle by adopting policies from so many states. But adopting such a plan at the federal level has proved much trickier. This is because, over the past decade, the higher-education industry has spent more than a billion dollars on lobbying and has employed about 1,500 lobbyists a year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (Edwards). The real flaw in today's society is that where there are many people struggling there is likely a company that is turning a profit. This could be the cause behind student loan debt, the banks and universities make too much money from students that they lobby to stall any legislation from taking any profit from them. 

For many students, a college diploma brings with it a less auspicious legacy: sizable debt in the form of student loans. And as tuition cost soar, borrowing to pay for college has become a primary way to finance an undergraduate degree (The Landscape). Resolving the rising student loan debt and interest rates is not a one program fix all kind of crisis. There are many facets that factor into a possible and lasting solution. The first is merely informing students and parents of the growing crisis before they take out loans and not after the fact. The second is to find the right politician and or presidential candidate with the right proposal that will actually enact change. Along with the political aspect, lobbying against universities and banks that stand to gain the most from this crisis. This can be done by holding rallies and protests, really anything to draw attention to the issue. There is one thing that we cannot do and that ignores the problem and wait for it to resolve itself. According to Robert Applebaum, two-thirds of students graduating from American colleges and universities are graduating with some level of debt. 

