Joseph R. Biden officially announced a three-part plan earlier today, Wednesday, August 24, 2022 to provide financial relief to the working families of the United States as they continue to recover from the stresses and strains which are associated with the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic — and part of that plan is to provide up to $20,000.00 in debt cancellation of student loans.
Reducing Student Loan Debt and Travel Companies
This plan by the current president of the United States offers targeted debt relief as part of a comprehensive effort to address the burden of growing college costs and make the student loan system more manageable for working families, as the Department of Education of the United States will:
- Provide targeted debt relief to address the financial harms of the pandemic, fulfilling the President’s campaign commitment. The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000.00 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000.00 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000.00 — or $250,000.00 for married couples. No high-income individual or high-income household — in the top five percent of incomes — will benefit from this action. To ensure a smooth transition to repayment and prevent unnecessary defaults, the pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended one final time through December 31, 2022. Borrowers should expect to resume payment in January 2023.
- Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:
- Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing a new income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at five percent of the discretionary income of a borrower — half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under most existing plans. This means that the average annual student loan payment will be lowered by greater than $1,000.00 for both current and future borrowers.
- Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by proposing a rule that borrowers who have worked at a nonprofit, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit toward loan forgiveness. These improvements will build on temporary changes the Department of Education has already made to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, under which more than 175,000 public servants have already had greater than $10 billion in loan forgiveness approved.
- Protect future students and taxpayers by reducing the cost of college and holding schools accountable when they hike up prices. The president championed the largest increase to Pell Grants in over a decade and one of the largest one-time influxes to colleges and universities. To further reduce the cost of college, the president will continue to fight to double the maximum Pell Grant and make community college free. Meanwhile, colleges have an obligation to keep prices reasonable and ensure borrowers get value for their investments, not debt they cannot afford. This administration has already taken key steps to strengthen accountability, including in areas where the previous administration weakened rules. The Department of Education is announcing new efforts to ensure student borrowers get value for their college costs.
Younger people have been incessantly and repeated pounded with the message as to the importance of higher education throughout their years of development — to the point where they may believe no alternative exists — but that message typically does not include the responsibility which comes with paying back what likely becomes an exorbitant debt…
…so who should pay for that education — the student or the taxpayer?
Before answering that question, one industry has plenty of jobs in which a degree is technically not required: travel.
Each of the three major legacy airlines in the United States claim that you can become a flight attendant without having earned a degree — the only educational requirement from both Delta Air Lines and United Airlines is to have graduated with a high school diploma or General Educational Development certification — although American Airlines adds to its requirements that a “college education or two years’ customer service experience preferred”, which suggests that the other airlines likely prefer graduates with degrees from accredited institutions of higher education as well…
…never mind the fact that flight attendants are required to endure between six weeks and eight weeks of training by the airline, which should satisfy the requirements for doing their jobs well — and even then, not all of them are happy once they are chosen for the job.
The median pay for a flight attendant in 2021 was $61,640.00 per year, according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States.
As for lodging, you can apply for the currently open position of Director, Brand Communications – Focused Service & All-Suites at Hilton as one of numerous examples with which a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, Communications, or a related field is “useful” — but not required. Additional corporate positions with major international lodging companies which pay salaries reasonably well are available with which a degree from an accredited institutions of higher education is not required to be considered.
Those who want to pursue a degree in hospitality can expect to pay between $3,131.00 for an Associate’s degree at a two-year college to as much as $116,224.00 for four years with an undergraduate degree. A graduate degree — such as a Master’s degree — can cost up to an additional $90,000.00…
…but the median pay for a lodging manager is $59,430.00 per year or $28.57 per hour, according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States — and a college degree is usually not required.
Despite many jobs in the travel industry not requiring a degree from an accredited institution of higher education — aside from such jobs as customer service, housekeeping, front desk associate, or reservations agent — the conundrum still arises as to the choice between two applicants: the one with the college degree will usually win out over the applicant with only a high school diploma.
Final Boarding Call
I have been of the belief that higher education ideally should be available free to anyone who wants it — provided that each person is academically qualified and can justify the reasons why investing in a college degree is a proposition that would benefit the taxpayers of the United States — so that the United States can remain as a strong competitor economically with other countries in the world…
…but the problem with that ideal is that anytime the federal government of the United States intervenes with what should be a free market pertaining to higher education, tuition keeps rising — and that does not even include the reality that higher education is simply not for everyone. After all, that money is guaranteed to institutions which offer legitimate undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees. Those institutions in turn charge tens of thousands of dollars per year — and, sometimes, per semester — solely for tuition, which does not include the cost of books, food, lodging, or other necessities, services, optional items, or amenities.
Primarily because of the runaway inflation of the overall cost of higher education — despite my earning both a Bachelor of Fine Arts undergraduate degree and a Master of Business Administration graduate degree — I am not as adamant about the importance of higher education. I have always firmly believed that the best education is through personal experiences — especially while traveling…
…but plenty of jobs do exist — including in the travel industry — which do not require a degree. The competition is fierce, though; and a college degree likely helps.
This leads to the following questions: should student debt be cut by the federal government of the United States — or does the borrower need to be fiscally responsible for paying off the entire debt to which he or she originally agreed? With the plethora of opportunities that are available in the travel industry — let alone other industries which pay reasonably well — should higher education from an accredited institution even be considered because of the potentially substantial burden of debt?
What would you suggest would be the solution to this growing problem?
Photograph ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
