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Obama to college students: "We've been in your shoes"

April 24, 2012 11:13 AM

President Obama spoke at UNC-Chapel Hill where he called on Congress to stop interest rates on student loans from doubling. He told the crowd that he and the first lady only finished paying off their loans "about eight years ago."

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by hypnotoad72 April 24, 2012 4:54 PM EDT
http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/26/qa-with-senator-barack-obama-on-key-technology-issues/
(Given his understandable encouraging of people to go back for college...)

Has he really been in our shoes? Are today's situations identical to the situations he endured 30 years ago?

Let's take a small glimpse into things:

1. College had cost less when the President attended college to earn his degrees
2. The power of the dollar had more weight to it - with smaller amounts of money going to necessities, it was easier TO save up
3. Semi-related to the previous point, not only has the power of the dollar gone down, it doesn't help that wages themselves have stagnated or dropped
4. When Obama mentions people "saving for college", and noting that he and his wife racked up student debt as well ($120k, that is for two people combined)
5. With "the new normal", retraining will have to be done more quickly - which means more time and money. And I surely will not buy a house, if the average job length is 5 years, where any replacement job might be hundreds or thousands of miles away. And in this housing market, it's not quick or easy to sell.
6. How many colleges turn a blind cheek to instructors inflating grades, letting wastrels who do nothing but make advances on other students (in terms of cheating or getting a quick lay), schools providing substandard materials or equipment, and other factors within?

I could go on, but today's issues are not the same compared to his, some 20~30 years ago.

So, yes, he has been in our shoes. Or, rather, he's been in one of our shoes.

I'll keep doing my part to get educated and apply myself, but a society requires all within to do theirs. And I've posted a number of times of every corporate subsidy handed out to corporations, who do nothing in return. Apart from the corporations that get taxpayer-funded money in return for offshoring jobs (meaning our education is then worthless since we can't apply it...))

Even a coworker, who is paying for her daughter's education (holy bleep!!), is skeptical of the future.

An acquaintance is demanding her daughter pay her own way.

I'm paying my own way. I'll be happy to do my part.

But when I see corporations getting handouts and bailouts and have done so for decades, and when I see lazy do-nothings who deliberately get pregnant at 13 or 14 get free housing, maybe people like me and others, who want to learn and contribute and be productive are wondering what sort of mental illness we must have, if everybody else is getting handouts for screwing everyone else over. Figuratively or literally, that is...

And I haven't even begun the tangent of poor quality products and services coming out of corporations yet, and workers know that if they stand up to counter managers' decisions to cut corners, they're hit with "insubordination" (so why workers get blamed for everything and not management...)

I could go on forever...

And the student loans affected by 'doubling' only apply to one type of loan, at 3.4%, that is slated to go up to 6.8% that every other student loan endures.

How many more issues and relevant contexts need to be mentioned, as to why people are skeptical OF education, a decreasing return on it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

Thank you for reading.
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