Do Student Debtors Need to Grow Up?
With the deadline nearing to consolidate federal student loans before their interest rates rise to reflect overall lending rates, media sob stories about student debt keep on coming….and getting harder to take.
A CBS News report last night that profiled two engaged medical school students was all too typical.
“Jason DeBonis and Katrina Lust can use any breaks they can find,” reporter Randall Pinkston intoned at the outset of the story. “The two medical students are young and in love. They plan to marry in May. Their wedding gift to each other: a combined total of nearly $500,000 in student loans.”
Ouch! $500,000 — that certainly seems like a terrible wedding present. That is, until you see what the doctors‐to‐be will be getting for that $500,000, which, of course, CBS News didn’t report.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2004 the average family practice doctor with less than two years experience in that specialty – the lowest paid doctor on the BLS list – made $137,119. The average doctor with the same experience in the highest paid specialty, anesthesiology, made $259,948.
Now, assume that both students in the CBS News report become family practice doctors, and for thirty years make the lowest yearly income listed by the BLS. That’s unrealistic, of course, but let’s be conservative. All told, they would make $8,227,140, a profit of more than $7.7 million after debt!
So what’s the problem? According to one of the medical students, this is:
“It makes me upset that I have to maybe not do what I want to do because I won’t be able to pay my bills at the end of the month.”
How sad. Apparently, in order to become a doctor and make her multi‐million dollar profit, this medical student might actually have to give up some other things she would like to do. Reality bites: She has to make trade‐offs between different things she wants just like everyone else!
An even more galling complaint about student debt in the story was offered by Anya Kamenetz, perhaps the foremost spokesperson for young people who feel unfairly put‐upon because they’ve been asked to pay for part of their own education. “When you’re not standing on your own two feet, when you’re still accepting help from mom and dad, when you still can’t pay the bills, when you’re still struggling to stay out from under debt, you don’t feel like an adult,” she complained.
So this is what it comes down to: No matter how big its payoff, student debt is unfair because it keeps students from getting everything they want, and makes it harder for them to feel grown up.
What two more childish reasons could there be for crying about student loans?
