CT Blue

Here in the United States we have a pronounced tendency to blame the victim for his or her woes. People are poor because they’re lazy, etc. This may or may not be a universal tendency. I know from my history that it was a commonplace attitude in Britain, where they not only blamed the poor for their poverty, but punished them for it. It’s something we practice in various and often subtle ways, which brings me to this articlein yesterday’s New York Times.

After languishing for a few years, support for teaching money-management skills to high school students has reignited, financial literacy advocates say. They attribute much of the newfound interest to worries about mushrooming student debt.

High school students “are asked to make a consequential decision,” said Annamaria Lusardi, founder and academic director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center at George Washington University’s School of Business. “Whether or not to go to college, and how to finance that decision.”

I’m sure a high school student can learn something useful from such courses, but they will do nothing to reduce the crushing burden of college debt, though they will provide yet another reason to blame the victims of our rigged system for becoming victims. After all, if they were given a course in financial literacy, and still got themselves into debt, whose fault is it but theirs? The fact that they have little if any practical choice in the matter is something we can then safely ignore.

When I was in college, a state university education ranged in cost from free in some states to pretty much negligible everywhere else. I went to a relatively elite private college, and despite my monetarily humble (widowed mother living on pensions and social security) background, I graduated from college with zero debt, and law school three years later owing a total of $1,800.00. When my own kids, not so long ago, were in college, we (now relatively affluent compared to my mother) were able to pay for the whole thing, and pay off their loans on their behalf. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t financially devastating. That was less than 20 years ago, and the cost of paying for the involved colleges has more than doubled since then. We’re in better financial shape now, but there’s no way we could do today what we were able to do then, particularly if, like the parents of most college age students, we were still paying a mortgage. For the sons and daughters of those less affluent than us, the problem is magnified. College debt would not be a problem if we funded our state universities and colleges as they should be funded and educated our children free of charge. Free state universities would also put downward pressure on tuition charges by private colleges. Make those changes, and today’s high school students wouldn’t have to make a decision about their futures based on their financial ability to fund the education they need to avoid being personally blamed for their inability to get a job somewhere other than Walmart.

The thinking behind this course requirement smacks of the blame the victim mentality I noted above. The underlying presumption is that it’s not a rigged system, designed to impose crushing debt on college students that’s to blame, it’s the students themselves for falling victim to that system.