How Much Debt
I sometimes wonder how many ways Satan has invaded our culture. I can’t get a conversation out of mind that I had recently with a late twenties woman who has a mountain of college debt. She has a good job making a good living. Unfortunately a large portion of it is taken up in her monthly payment of school debt.
My own kids went to an urban high school that had a program for students who would be first generation college attenders in their family. This program connected these kids with very good schools. These schools also had huge price tags and the program’s idea of financial aid was to get the students loans to pay for their schooling. Many of our children’s friends were in this program and we watched – wondering how they were going to pay for it – as they headed off to universities like Franklin & Marshall, Bryn Mar, and Lehigh. They were bright and got some scholarship monies – it still left a load to bear.
Today all of these friends have graduated and are working and making big monthly payments – think mortgage sized – on their school debt. No one warned them about how hard this would be – “Don’t worry, you’ll be college educated you’ll be able to afford it!” Even their parents must have believed it. This is not just a problem outside of God’s people. Christians fall for the same faulty thinking.
The young woman I talked to the other day said she feels totally taken advantage of by her high school counselors as well as the university that advised her where to sign and how much loan she would need to apply for this semester. No one ever sat her down and helped her do the math. She trusted adults in positions of authority and hired to guide her. No one said, “This will be the payment and this is your potential earning power.” Today she understands finance and feels duped.
We have become a culture obsessed with college educations. We so want our children to earn good livings and have everything that everyone else has and anything we didn’t have. We think the higher the degree and the more prestigious the school is, the more earning power – or at least the more popular and envied they will be. In our coveting these things for them we are leaving them so much worse off. They are strangled by school debt and most seem to think that on top of that they should have a new car and live in the best section of town. Credit is their new best friend – only to find out how betrayed they are by this “friend”.
These young adults are postponing marriage and children because they owe so much. (Interestingly, I just misspelled “owe” as “woe” – that’s true too!) Is our own love of money at the root of all of this? Aren’t the lending agencies – many subsidized by the federal government – also guilty of deception as they lend amounts that have trapped a generation?
As Christians this may be even more debilitating because young adults may have to postpone a call of the Lord to pay off the debt. Ministry is notoriously less lucrative than the business world. Some find they have to stay in secular jobs until the debt is paid – by that time they are in debt with mortgages, car payments, and the expenses of keeping a family. The call to ministry is shoved aside to keep their heads above the financial flood they find themselves in. They miss the blessings of serving God as He calls them.
Hebrews 13:5 says, “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” If earning money is our highest goal we have to think past the earning to the paying off. Someone needs to do the math for every child that heads to any institution of higher learning. Will it be worth it? Does it make financial sense? Would it be wiser to stay in our means and spend a couple of years at a community college and stave off some expense that way?
For those who have a burning desire for a college education, who have the ability, and intend to enter a field where the cost and effort of a college education will be properly compensated, I say, “Go for it.” But if a child is going because of vague ideas, or is being pushed into it, or has mismatched the cost with the potential reward (like a $200,000 degree in social work) then I’d recommend another plan.
Proverbs 17:16 says, “Why should a fool have money in his hand to buy wisdom when he has no sense?” I am afraid after talking to my young friend that the students are not the fools here – they are treated as fools by those who want a generation locked in debt to a system that has fewer and fewer jobs to offer them to get out of it.
For the record my husband and I aren’t so sure we made the wisest decisions either. Our children graduated with no debt and we are very grateful for the opportunities that has afforded them. Our daughter can afford to be a stay at home Mom and our son has successfully started his own internet copywriting business. These are wonderful things. But, our retirement account is way less than it ought to be. We promised our children we would pay for college – and we kept the promise. In hindsight – we probably wouldn’t make that promise as open-ended as it was.
Parents, the Bible tells us that we are to teach our children the commands of the Lord. If we love Him above all else we will have priorities that consider Him first. When we allow the next generation to be the prisoner of financial debt, we have not put God first.
Deuteronomy 6:5-7 say, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Today a student has many alternatives to a traditional college education. There are on-line degrees and training facilities that may be better options. I am hoping that this will cause some to stop and think about what will benefit everyone. It isn’t all about the money but it is a major factor that has to be considered to make a wise decision about higher education and how much debt is doable and still allow the student to have a life after college that’s more than indentured servitude.