Between the Lines: Academic year brings cause for rejoice, reflection
Education funding takes a backseat to greed
By Patrick Callahan, senior writer
Posted on August 31, 2006

For the most part, this academic year begins much the same as any other. Students head back to class and for the first few days they stare at the clock and wonder how they ever sat through so many classes last year. Professors eyeball that one kid in the back whose head weaves back and forth as he struggles to stay awake — it’s OK, I’ve been there too — and for a minute or two they wonder why they chose the hard and often nearly impossible task of educating our nation’s youth. But despite our struggles, the fact remains — we are still here. How many people our age weren’t able to attend college this year? How many gave up hoping to gain a degree at a higher education institution simple because they thought it to be impossible? That number has undoubtedly gained significantly as it has been year after year in this brand-new century, this new millennium that we as a nation speak so confidently about conquering.

As history will inevitably tell, the longevity and prolonged success of any great nation or people is only as great as the youthful generations it chooses to embrace. Yet in a world ruled by dollars and cents, how easy it is for a colossal superpower to so casually forget the crucial intellectual evolution of its youths. The costs of higher education today are daunting for anyone at or around the middle class economic brackets. Young students today find themselves going up against some of the most prepared and embraced exchange and foreign students in the world. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing, considering the overwhelming global competition of the job market today. But yet again the question must be raised — where is our government in the effort to raise young intellectuals out of poverty and harness their abilities so that they might stand a chance at competing for a better than average job in a global market?

That question is not easily answered. As our economy grows, colleges and universities, including our own, have consistently raised their tuition rates. One would logically assume that government grants and loans have also increased in correlation, but it is not so. As the Federal Reserve has consistently raised interest rates in an effort to control inflation, interest rates on student loans have also increased — approximately one quarter of a point every time the board meets, usually every quarter. For those of you who don’t know, when a student loan is taken out, what usually happens is that the initial lender, sometimes even if it’s the government, turns around and basically sells the loan to a big loan giant — the most well known of these is Sallie Mae or Fannie Mae. Coincidentally, Fannie Mae was just under investigation by the Justice Department for what The Washington Post reports many analysts predict to be over $10 billion dollars in so-called “accounting mistakes.” How many people could that much money put through college? And it’s still just a drop in a hat for a company with combined holdings of over a trillion dollars.

So where is the federal government to reign in this massive profiteer of student ambitions? As of this July, they’ve joined in the game themselves. A Republican-led budget bill passed and came into effect this summer, which increased interest rates on all federal loans by nearly two percent while also cutting government entitlement programs like Medicare and welfare. Is this the encouragement today’s students get from our representatives on Capitol Hill? Our satisfaction is of no significance to them until we start to play a factor in their elections — a fact that should be remembered this fall.

Patrick Callahan is a junior political science major.