Just this week, everybody’s favorite comedian Hasan Minhaj was invited into Congress by chairwoman Maxine Waters. He urged Congress to take the US student debt crises more seriously. Minhaj is best known for his on-going show on Netflix called Patriot Act, and is also a political commentator.
Previously on one of his episodes of the Netflix show he brought up the topic of student debt in America. It turned out that there was a $6 million student debt among the 200 people audience.
In his speech at Congress he pointed out that 44 million Americans owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loans. Minhaj also went on to say,
“This issue is sidelining millions of Americans. People are putting off marriage, kids, home ownership and retirement, especially my generation”
In this present day two-thirds of jobs in America require you to have a college degree, but the problem lies here that people aren’t making more money and college is considerably getting expensive.
Hasan Minhaj had his team of researchers run a check on each of the Congress committee members, and to calculate their college tuition fee (inflation adjusted) at the time. So about 30 years ago college tuition of all members combined to a total about $11,000. If calculated to today’s rate, it combines to a total of $25,000.
This meant that there was a 110% increase in college tuition, when wages only increased by 16% overtime. And yes you read that right, college tuition went up by a hundred and ten percent.
Borrowers are treated like “deadbeats”, Minhaj claimed, since students are at the mercy of predatory for-profit loan servicing companies. And it is such that they don’t get to choose their loan services because the department of education chooses for you. There is basically no competition for these companies that would provoke them to provide a better service.
He ended his speech with,
“Why can’t we treat student borrowers the way we treat our banks? Because 44 million Americans, that is too big to fail.”
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