By Jeff Scully
In Virginia, 60% of college graduates have over $25,000 in student loan debt. The cost of a four year education at the University of Virginia is almost $50,000 for residents of the Commonwealth. At William and Mary, tuition is nearly $40,000 per year. Since 1985, the costs of higher education have gone up 500 percent. That means it’s five times more expensive for us to get a college degree than it was for our parents.
We need our elected officials to support policies that provide relief from this unfair burden. And despite Senator Mark Warner’s recent claim that the student debt crises “isn’t a political issue,” his actions suggest he is more interested in pandering than solving the problem.
Democrats in Virginia have been crisscrossing the state – everywhere from Virginia Western to UVA – selling political ideas rather than actual solutions. They’re hawking everything from government mandates to bailouts for recent graduates, but they refuse to support a single policy that would make college more affordable.
Education is meant to empower young people but it’s hard to feel empowered when we’re $25,000 in debt, unemployed, and living in our parents’ basements.
Perhaps the most glaring flaw in our current system of higher education is the accreditation process. Accreditation operates under the guise of granting institutions “seals of approval” but in reality it functions as a cartel. Accreditation is granted to institutions by a peer-review process in which accreditors effectively act as gatekeepers to federal funding. The process is so expensive and time-consuming that it deters creative new educational endeavors with limited start-up money from even seeking accreditation.
Because there are so few new competitors entering the education marketplace each year, the cost of higher education continues to climb. This lack of competition has hurt consumers to the tune of 500% hikes over the last ten years. Further, innovative approaches to post-secondary schooling are unable to receive federal funding and essentially become defunct from the get-go.
My generation is always looking for new ways to do things but when it comes to higher education our options are limited. A traditional degree may not be the best option for everyone and young people should have choices when it comes to education. Reforming accreditation is a win-win: it allows students pursuing these alternative forms of education to receive financial aid and it also drives down the cost of traditional higher education for everyone else.
By reforming and expanding accreditation, our elected officials could empower young people by giving them more choices and helping them avoid thousands of dollars of debt. If our lawmakers really care about young people they would be wise to support common sense solutions like accreditation reform and stop offering sound bites instead of solutions.
Jeff Scully, 26, is the Virginia State Director for Generation Opportunity, a youth advocacy organization.
