As the first in my low-income family to attend college, I took every form of aid available on campus -- work study, part-time employment -- and held seasonal jobs off-campus. Thankfully, I qualified for federal loans, signing my first promissory note as the sun set on the Reagan era. Their full weight became clear only after I graduated. A teaching salary paid rent, utilities, used-car payments and insurance, but I spent much of the 1990s freelancing, landscaping and doing other odd jobs to keep loan-default notices at arm's length.
In retrospect, I was lucky; my original debt was less than $10,000, compared to the average $19,000 note that the graduating class of 2008 took home with its degrees. And I was able to pay off mine in under a decade -- a time when gas prices rarely topped $1.25 per gallon.
Mine is one illustration of why the nation's largest association of educators is raising the issue of college affordability. The next president's budget priorities will begin restoring America's competitive edge in the global economy, or will serve as a eulogy to days of economic strength gone by. And the signal issue to watch will be college affordability.
The most compelling parts of the post are notes about several Missourians -- college students, recent graduates and parents of students -- and their own struggles with college affordability and their loan debts. For the rest of the Huffington Post feature, click here.
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