I’ve occasionally discussed the social factors of higher college tuition, which, to summarize, conservatives and libertarians prefer as this moves the costs of education onto the student, who they see as directly benefiting from that education, and thus should be responsible for covering the cost. My view, which I may not have stated quite this succinctly before, is that the benefits to society of an educated populace, both in vocational training (targeted training) and in liberal arts (the ability to think effectively), are such that a good conservative or libertarian should, on principle, require that society subsidize the costs of such training. The rationale that the student’s immediate benefit is substantially more is only accepted because measuring the value to society of an educated citizen is far more difficult than conducting a statistical study of the earnings potential of a medical doctor or a plumber.
Just because you can’t measure the value of something, or even understand the proper metric to use, doesn’t mean value doesn’t exist. To my mind, living in a society in which only the wealthy can afford the education which can make them wealthier is completely unacceptable and un-American. By the evidence, many people agree with me: witness the educational grant and scholarship communities (but not the educational loan community, which exists purely for profit).
But another cost of our current style of requiring students to pay more than substantial amounts for their education, of which I’ve never considered before, is the emotional burden it places on the student. Consider the study, “Suicide among veterinarians in the United States from 1979 through 2015“, Suzanne Tomasi, DVM, MPH, et al, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. From the abstract:
398 deaths resulted from suicide; 326 (82%) decedents were male, 72 (18%) were female, and most (298 [75%]) were ≤ 65 years of age. The PMRs [proportionate mortality ratios] for suicide for all veterinarian decedents (2.1 and 3.5 for males and females, respectively), those in clinical positions (2.2 and 3.4 for males and females, respectively), and those in nonclinical positions (1.8 and 5.0 for males and females, respectively) were significantly higher than for the general US population. Among female veterinarians, the percentage of deaths by suicide was stable from 2000 until the end of the study, but the number of such deaths subjectively increased with each 5-year period. …
Male and female veterinarians who worked in clinical positions had higher than expected PMRs for suicide. One potential contributing factor associated with this finding is exposure to occupational stressors. Veterinarians working in clinical medicine, particularly companion animal medicine, are exposed to high levels of occupational stress related to long working hours, client expectations, unexpected outcomes, communicating bad news, poor work-life balance, high workloads, rising veterinary care costs, professional isolation, student debt, and lack of senior support.
These stressors, in turn, can negatively effect the work of the veterinarians, so it’s a self-reinforcing problem.
Of course, a cold-blooded statistical study can fail to impart the proper momentum to an issue on its way to a possible appropriate, if partial, resolution. WaPo provides an antidote:
On a brisk fall evening in Elizabeth City, N.C., Robin Stamey sat in her bed and prepared to take her own life. …
The path to rock bottom was an unexpected one for Stamey. A chipper animal lover who went back to school at age 36 to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a veterinarian, she had previously worked in a few small clinics before eventually opening her own.
Pulling this off wasn’t easy; Stamey graduated from veterinary school with more than $180,000 in student debt. Her first vet jobs paid about $40,000 a year, forcing her to work long hours to scrape together enough money to get by.
These financial troubles were compounded by the strains of the job, which is known for taking immense emotional, physical and mental tolls on its professionals. But like many people who work in medicine, Stamey had always thought of herself as a caretaker and was afraid to ask for help. Instead, she swallowed her frustrations and soldiered on, ignoring the creeping depression that began to cast a shadow over her life and her work.
$180,000 in debt. That’s a lot, and yet for many of the top professionals, it’s not particularly high. I came out with no debt, and about $50 to my name – but that was 35 years ago, it was a Bachelor of Computer Science, not a DVM, and I had some help from my parents. I probably should have been more adventurous and run up some debt in the process.
But don’t let me get off-point here. When our professionals are so burdened with debt that they can’t hardly hope to live in the cheapest apartments available, does that presage positive or negative outcomes for society in connection with those professions? Are such educational debts really desirable?
And is society really benefiting in its frantic urge to reduce taxes by moving the costs for its own benefit on to the students, when society as a whole actually benefits from it? This is societal cheapskating, and while I understand that many consider the taxes onerous, it’s my contention that those individuals who benefit from higher education contribute far more to society than those taxes they consume.
