Several months ago Erin (I think) wrote an article called why I don’t care about the national debt. Maybe someone else stole the by line but I remember the conversation that spurned the entry. About a week and a half ago the President reminded us how in a generation we had plummetted from 1 to 12 in terms of countries with the highest percentage of citizens with a college degree. And of course this is Debtors’ Prison so you know how we get down. Let’s explore how the three are interconnected.

Student Debt and National Debt. It’s really hard to care about the latter when entrenched in the former, particularly when the latter is used as an excuse for why the govt can’t help you but they need another fleet of 100 million aircraft to hunt the 50 Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. But let’s look deeper. We as students behaved alot like our country, borrowing a ton for a questionable large investment and assuming everything would just work out because hey, it’s us.

Student Debt and the Education Gap seem to be at odds with each other, particularly our take which on it’s surface can seem to be advocating not pursuing higher education at all a la Kanye West. But really are they? Students today are presented with a choice: take on crippling debt or don’t go to college. Here at Debtor’s Prison we focus on the former but we can never forget that the latter gets screwed as well. Also there is education and then there is education. Saudi Arabia is a highly educated country but 90% of the degrees are in religion. That’s not helping the economy but they are oil rich so who cares? Similarly Mike Triforce majored in theater. This is both unusual for a straight/in the closet guy and useless to the American Economy. What there needs to be are financial incentives for majoring in things that are helpful to the economy, requirements that are less focused on “being well rounded” and more focused on longterm national goals ( this along with a full semester of research should be required at national universities- don’t like it go to Williams. Amherst or Oberlin). So less Theater majors in six figure debt and kids who couldn’t afford an engineering or a chem degree can now get one.

So how do we reconcile the National Debt and the Education Gap? It’s no mystery that I am at odds with Mike Triforce but he did make a good point: audacity goes a long way. Two industries that come to mind are the defense industry and the for-profit college/accreditation programs that survive on student loans from the government. These industries don’t make a profit being market savy, they simply ask for it on the backs of taxpayers and future generations. The government needs to say “no.” If you ask me a defense contractor needs to have their profits capped at 10%.

So I am no pep-talk guru. But let’s get out of debt, get our country out of debt and take back the #1 spot. “USA! USA! Why? Cuz it’s a New Day.”