Week 2

While reading the news a few days ago, I came across an article in the New York Times called "Oregon looks at way to attend college now and repay state later." As a graduate student who is already in a fair amount of student loan debt, this really caught my attention. It turns out that last week, Oregon Legislature approved a plan that would allow students to go to state colleges without having to pay any tuition or take out any traditional loans. Instead of paying tuition then, the students agree to repay the state with 3% of their income for the next 20 years. Therefore, those who make a small salary will pay a small amount, and those who make a very large salary will pay more. In theory I think this sounds like an excellent idea. Universities in Australia have been offering students a similar experience, but no university in the United States has ever tried it. It would take a lot of money to get the program started, but once it has been in place for a while, the idea is that payments from former students will sustain it. I think it's a great way to make universities more accessible for everyone. The price of school keeps increasing, while the value of a Bachelors degree seems to continually decrease. These days it seems everyone needs a college degree even to get an unpaid internship. Paying for college is a major issue for a lot of people, and then it is still hard to find a job after that. A program like this would help ease some of the stress students face about loan debt and not ruining their financial future.

I was curious to see what 3% of a teacher's income looks like, since we are in a teacher education program, so I did some simple calculations. If our starting salary is somewhere around $42,000 then that means we would pay about $1260 per year to the state. That is only a little more than $100 a month, which is definitely less than most people's student loans. So where do I sign up?