Easing the student debt crisis

LOUISVILLE — In a new book, Dr. Jamal Watson explores one of the nation’s most pressing civil rights questions: who gets to go to college?

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Watson, whose “The Student Debt Crisis: America’s Moral Urgency,” will be published Tuesday, was the most recent guest of Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their 53-minute conversation here.

Watson is also Professor and Associate Dean at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., and executive editor of “Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.”

Watson called student debt “a complicated issue. We all know education is, or tries to be, the great equalizer in our society. Yet there are many people grappling with this whole question of, should I even go to college? I’m concerned I won’t be able to get married or be able to afford to buy a house or a car because I’ll be so much in debt.”

For people of color and Black women in particular, “who are impacted more than any other group, these are even more challenging issues to discuss,” Watson said. Legislation and executive orders by the Biden administration to forgive student loans and make them easier to repay have “imploded under the new administration,” Watson noted, “but I think there are other ways. You have the private sector,” which has “basically stepped up to the plate to say, ‘we will try to provide opportunities for disadvantaged individuals and give them a leg up so they can access education.’”

Watson grew up in a church in Camden, New Jersey, which every year took an offering to help its high school seniors attend college. For Watson, that meant the gift of $9,000, secured in a plastic trash bag. A grateful Watson took the bag home and counted the offering after worship.

“These were working-class people. They were not wealthy, but they believed in education so much that they wanted to send me off,” he told Catoe and Doong. “These are what I call invisible forms of philanthropy, and they’re taking place in ways people don’t often understand.”

Black women face even more financial barriers because they can be caregivers of children and their parents and they’re also “battling with racism and sexism,” Watson said. “The sexism piece is they’re often underpaid and undervalued. They’re often trying to shoulder work responsibilities in which they’re not making enough money to pay back their debt.”

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“One of the things I argue in the book is we ought to think of student debt as a civil rights issue,” Watson said. In many other developed nations, “education is less expensive or even free.” In the United States, “we tell young people that when they graduate from high school, they ought to go to college. Shouldn’t we be cultivating a society where we make [higher education] much more accessible without people having to go into debt?”

Add to those barriers “the lack of accumulation of generational wealth because of racism and white supremacy and the way it’s been instituted into our financial system,” Doong said, adding that many students who can’t afford the cost of a four-year institution are instead earning an associate’s degree, then transferring to a state-supported university because that’s what they can afford. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Doong said. “Some folks give them a hard time, but they were doing what they can do with the means they have. They should be proud of that.”

The reality is that “the vast majority of students in this country are at community colleges, and yet community colleges are treated like second-class institutions,” Watson said. “They often don’t get the funding they need even though they are servicing traditional-aged students who are coming right out of high school and many older individuals or those who have been laid off and are coming back to get reskilled.”

The moral piece of the accessibility discussion is over reparations, Watson said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we said, ‘historically this county had excluded a lot of groups.’ It’s not just race. It’s class, too. … Can’t we just say there is some form of reparations … that will allow people to go to public institutions for free? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could spend four years focused on learning,” without having to hold down one or more part-time jobs, Watson said.

“We call the book ‘America’s Moral Urgency’ because we have to be willing to say we aren’t going to allow a generation to be mired in debt,” Watson said. “We want them to achieve the American dream.”

During Covid, many faculty and administrators got creative, Watson noted. One college president told him that students were sent home at the start of the pandemic, but the rural community where the college was located suffered from inadequate internet capabilities. Professors adapted by teaching what amounted to correspondence courses, mailing the coursework to their students and then awaiting the return mail.

“We often don’t understand there are pockets of society that don’t have access to the technology we take for granted,” Watson said.

Doong asked Watson about the role faith communities can play supporting nearby students, or students who grew up as part of their congregation.

“I would love to see more religious institutions take on sponsorship of colleges and universities in their area and create a safe space for students” not only for Bible study and worship, “but the church becomes the congregating place for students in that community,” Watson said. “One thing I found out writing this book is there are many churches filling the need by helping students and inviting them over to their homes for Thanksgiving or Christmas” or housing them when their dormitories are closed.

“This gives students a sense of comfort and support. I’d like to see more of that,” Watson said. “I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen.”

Because it’s a book arguing that access to higher education is a civil right, Watson was pleased when the Rev. Al Sharpton agreed to write the Foreword. “He’s been on the cutting edge of calling out injustices,” Watson said. “I’m glad he realized all these issues are connected in many ways.”

“We need to end the student debt problem in our country,” Watson said, “once and for all.”

Churches “say we want to support young people,” Catoe said. “This is a very real way to do so.”

The PC(USA) provides student loan support and guidance for public service loan forgiveness (PSLF) through a partnership between the Office of Financial Aid for Service and the Board of Pensions. To register for the service and find out if you are eligible for free student loan coaching, visit pcusa.org/loanassist.

Listen to previous editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” here.