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Death by Student Loans
Wed, 2010-09-15 12:31 — Heidi Bayly
This article tells the tale of a woman enslaved to her college debt. She stepped onto the education ladder and kept climbing, with an increasing amount of debt at every step. Here are two quotes explaining her dilemma:
"When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000."
"She recently entered a rehabilitation agreement on her defaulted federal loans, which now carry an additional $31,942 collection cost. She makes monthly payments on those loans -- now $209,399 -- for $990 a month, with only $100 of it going toward her original balance. The entire balance of her federal loans will be paid off in 351 months, when Bisutti will be 70 years old.”
And now for the clincher:
"The debt load keeps her up at night. Her damaged credit has prevented her from buying a home or a new car. She says she and her boyfriend of three years have put off marriage and having children because of the debt."
While this may be an extreme case, it's a common refrain among women that they must put off marriage and children in order to pay their college debt. You may be asking, “So why does that matter? Not everyone wants marriage. There's nothing wrong with waiting to have children. An education is worth the sacrifice.”
It matters because women have traded what they saw as slavery at home to slavery to debt and career. Women are promised that when they reach the end of the education ladder, they will be better equipped to live a happy, productive, and self-satisfying life. They are not told that, in many cases, they are simply digging a hole that they must climb out of before they can get married or have children.
Rather than having the freedom to “pursue their dreams,” women are shackled to working whatever job is available to pay off their loans. By the time they are financially secure enough to enter marriage or start having children, it's too late.
So, please, take your future family into consideration when you take on debt.
Note: As always, please use a variation of your real name when posting (e.g. Jane, JDoe, Jane Doe). Also, the women who post on our ClearNote Ladies' Blog have requested a room of their own where they are free to teach and have conversations without the complication of men responding to what they write. The blog, then, is by and for women. Brothers, we ask that you refrain from commenting. Thank you!
Comments
"How can it be a small thing
"How can it be a small thing to be a mother, who is everything to someone, and a large thing to be a bank teller, who is the same thing to everyone?"
— G.K. Chesterton
Now, I readily admit there is likely much more satisfaction in practicing medicine than in counting someone else's money all day long. But Dr. Bisutti can hardly be deriving a great deal of satisfaction from practicing medicine when it is her burden of debt and not concern for her patients which keeps her up at night.
What she, and so many like her, have chosen is wage slavery over the slavery of love. She is owned by her debt and it has already proven a cruel master. Her master will not mellow with age, it will never call her "mommy", it will never say, "I love you", it won't send her flowers on her birthday or provide a shoulder to cry on after she loses a patient. And, when she reaches that magice debt-free age of 71, it will leave her cold and lonely, it will dismiss her like an aging concubine and will most certainly not care for her in her old age.
Parents and their daughters would do well to learn from Dr. Bisutt's tragedy. We should all remember that, from the days of Joshua down to the lyrics of Bob Dylan - we have always known that we have to serve somebody. Whether it be the devil of debt or the Lord of Love - at the end of our lives, we will show which has been our master.
Kamilla
There are other sides to this
There are other sides to this opinion: Finding balance is what is key here. Abuse of debt is the real problem. Many people "forget" that it has to be paid off. It is easier to spend the loan money than to pay it off. Often times school loans get abused, thus incurring more debt than what the education honestly cost.
It is wrong for women to not educate themselves. Our culture IS worldy, unfortunately, and whether we are Christians or not, we are all affected by our worldly culture. As a result, men leave women and often leave them with children to raise by themselves. Or, another result of our worldliness,is men often take on addictions of alcohol, drugs, pornography, laziness, sports, or whatever the distraction is of the day. My children and I were once abandoned by a man who was an alcoholic and did not want me to accept Christ as my Savior. As a result, I did not have a college degree, because I chose to be home with my children as long as I could. I had to work harder longer hours to financially support my children. If I had had a degree life may have been much better for us.
Even nice men who don't succumb to wordly pressures can be injured and not able to work, or become ill and disabled . . . marriage is about getting through life together and sometimes that means a woman has to work outside the home. If she is not educated, then her time away from her family is more futile.
In our culture today, one is required to have at least a "certificate" of a trade in order to have a job that pays anything enough to support a family. Scanning groceries, sweeping floors, and serving food does not pay the bills.
But, please don't pressure women NOT to have an education. Rather, teach them to use school loans appropriately (or any other debt for that matter).
Perhaps lower education costs, and more grants/scholarships would be nice.
What all of us need is balance.
After reading the last
After reading the last comment I had to go back to re-read Heidi's post. I didn't remember her discouraging women from getting an education. Sure enough, I was right, she didn't. Please read the post to see what is really being addressed, not what you think is being said.
What Heidi really said was, "So, please, take your future family into consideration when you take on debt."
I could not agree more. I cannot tell you the number of women we have counseled who have taken on debt in the process of getting an education, only to have to calculate how many years they will then have to work when they really want to start a family. Many of them have college degrees which will not actually give them the income they need to service their loans. We know one couple who finished paying off their own school loans the year that their daughter started college.
We cannot assume that a college degree will guarantee a wage which will support a family. We have one friend who had a college degree, but when her husband died, she had to go back to school because her original degree was obsolete. A college degree will not be the answer to many of the hardships that come into our lives, but I do agree with Rebecca when she says, "... teach them to use school loans appropriately (or any other debt for that matter).
This article brings up some
This article brings up some very valid points which gals should think about when weighing their options.
I am pleased Heidi took the time to share her wise thoughts.
It's always interesting to
It's always interesting to watch someone's reaction when I suggest they take a pay-as-you-go approach to education. Do you really need the degree itself ASAP or just the information from a few choice classes to get your foot in the industry door? Is going full-time just to be eligible for a Pell grant or that small school scholarship really saving you money, or is it tying up too much of your time with the college version of "busy work" (also known as "required courses" just to get you hooked and marching lock-step to THEIR financial plan for your next 4-8+ years? Is the package deal necessary in order to be prepared for the future or is there another way to prepare AND do what needs done TODAY (working, maturing, serving, etc.) in order to begin living life now, in the present (i.e. marriage and children)? Common college debt makes it way too easy to turn off the very brain that we insist needs to be educated. Indeed.
I couldn't agree with your
I couldn't agree with your points more, but...what about men who rack up the debt? Why is this specific to women?? Plenty of us are footing the bill for our husband's education - not ours.
You are absolutely right.
You are absolutely right. Heidi wrote about women's school loans because this is a blog to and for women. Men need to be equally concerned and careful about debt. I just heard this morning about a young woman who did not learn of her husbands 70,000.00 school loans until after the wedding. She just had a baby, works in childcare and earns more than her husband who works in a factory.