Jesse's Girl

Jesse Jackson paints more Rainbows of Hope

Jesse Jackson, make no mistake is a Pastor. Sure, he runs a highly successful Coalition delivering Rainbows of salvation and for those of you too young to remember- he was the first African American to run for President (twice)- but above all- he is a Pastor with a Pastor's heart who has devoted himself to Justice and Mercy. Educational Justice is now on his plate and he's serious about it.
He headlined the panel this afternoon on Educational Reform at the Campaign for America's Future starting his session by asking people in the audience whether they still had any student loans.
More than half the room's hands went up. He noted no one should feel too bad about this- Michelle and Barack Obama just paid off all their loans two years ago with the booming book sales. Two years ago they were mid-career professionals like lots of us only with a pocket of student debt.
Then Jesse asked people to say how much debt they were in. People were not shy so much as indignant that they had to carry this much- $40,000, $30,000, $110,000 including grad school, etc. The numbers were stunning.
So much for the argument that you can get a college education for little more than a car note.
Wrong!

Jesse noted that we have had a shift in thinking about higher Education from a place where we understood it to be an investment in the future of the country (one vet who went to college on a GI bill noted the country reaped the investment in his higher tax revenue return) to viewing is as a commodity. JJ believes that we should have expanded grants rather than loans, and that the interest rates for loans should not exceed the bank interest rates.
One pitiable soul is paying 17% interest on his student loans. Another carries six figures. Even one panelist said she had no idea how she was going to pay off her $80,000 after attending Pitt when she makes less than $40,000 a year.

Where did the country go off the rails in penalizing kids who have the brains and ambition to go to college with overwhelming punishing debt at usurious interest? As school tuition rises, it becomes all the more imperative to get a handle on this and provide a means by which kids can afford to go to college and know that they are not ruining their life by strapping them with debt- which can never be discharged in any bankruptcy. It stays with them always.

Note to pro-lifers, if more grants were available so young women/girls could still go to college
while having a child they would be less likely to abort. They cannot work and go to college while
the child is young- grants would allow them to continue to go to college and feel like they have the resources to have a child. This would serve to encourage a lot more girls/young women to keep their children rather than abort. One half of all abortions happen to women before the age they would have graduated from college. One Half. Something is wrong here that can be looked at from a prism of educational finance reform.

People need to make their voices heard --Just electing an excellent President is not going to move anything unless he gets the message that we want the Change We Can Believe In and know what it is. Educational reform is a key to economic progress.

One panelist noted that at a recent UNESCO conference she was chagrined to learn that the US is one of the few countries that does not subsidize across the board college education. It's free in France for the most part for example. It's free in England if you can get in most places.

So lets fix it now here.