Dear Honorable Senator Mark Warner,

Thank you for your service to Virginia and the nation.

Nearly twenty years ago I wrote you, then Governor of Virginia, a letter about education, one that you disregarded. I subsequently turned that letter into an essay the Washington Post featured in their Sunday Outlook section (July 11, 2004).  It was only after that essay was published that I finally got a response from your office. Please do not disregard this letter which I send along with my diplomas to get your attention and make a statement about their current worth due to the recent student loan debt forgiveness that the president unilaterally executed this month.

Once upon a time, diplomas such as these meant something—a symbol of competency, seriousness, training in a field of study representing years of hard work. Now, through a culture created by government and the academy, a diploma demarks four years of folly punctuated with a delusional expectation of high paying jobs ex nihilo. Even in the field of high technology and engineering, the diploma has become so meaningless I do better to hire someone without one—at least there is no pretense, and candidates tend to work harder.

First, whatever you may think of the issue, this singular financial decision made by the Executive Branch is strictly a matter that you and your congressional colleagues should have decided—that irksome checks and balances and separation of powers once taught to us in public school. But if you are fine with this breach of authority, then do not feel compelled to call it out when a different President of a different party does a similar thing to benefit their base—handing out public money as a reward for loyalty. Should a similar action be exhibited in a publicly traded company, the SEC would be out for blood.

Second, the outright cancellation of student debt to the tune of $1,000,000,000,000 without recompense, work, armed service, or anything in exchange, is irresponsible in the extreme. I mean, even a zero percent interest rate would return the principle—but no. The debt doesn’t just vanish off the books but becomes the burden of every taxpayer. And to think that men and women who were disfigured, dismembered, and psychologically marred fighting in wars you authorized are left to rot in despair, while a couple making $250,000/year who take vacations in Tuscany are having their debt reduced by our byzantine government. Seriously?  

Third, the debt reassignment does nothing but perpetuate the problem of skyrocketing college costs propelled by unstipulated borrowing. In Virginia the administrators of our public institutions make a cool $1 Million/year salary which pales compared to that commanded by their football coaches. Let us not even speak of the $1 Billion endowments such colleges enjoy. If the holders of these loans were given such a raw deal by such organizations with depthless pockets, what is our government doing to get it refunded? And, looking forward, how will the student loan program be changed or is this some sort of bad habit scheduled to recur every 3-4 years? If the result of the guaranteed student loan program is excessive debt, skyrocketing costs, low intellectual standards, and joblessness, why would you continue to keep it?

Fourth, and on a personal note, the cavalier dismissal of student loan debt is a slap in the face of everyone who worked extremely hard to acquire a real education and pay for it at their own cost, including loans and interest. That one would pay for their own education including the cost of owning a dilapidated car to attend classes is alien to today’s youth. But that is exactly what I (and seven older siblings) did and without borrowing a cent from anyone. Indeed, on two occasions I loaned money to my older siblings to tide them over on tuition; and in my senior year I donated $1000 to a charity which was an insane amount of money. I marvel that I was able to do this given my circumstance. But if you will allow me to explain what it took to get the sacred diplomas that you now possess, perhaps it will inform what to do with them and, more importantly, what to do about this ludicrous student debt forgiveness you tacitly support…

Long ago, before the fall of Rome, I would drive about an hour from Silver Spring to College Park several days a week in an early model Corolla totaled by a drunk driver with the passenger door crushed shut. It was so bad, the mechanics refused to fix it again. It’s no wonder that the next vehicle I purchased had low mileage and a great price; the AMC Gremlin was so hideously ugly, no self-respecting young man would be seen cruising campus in it. But college was expensive, annually increasing, and I was footing the bill along with parking, insurance, gas, and, occasionally, lunch. 

I had to leave home early enough to arrive at my organic chemistry course at 8AM which was murderously dull. Assuming the class ended on time (solipsistic, tenured professor rarely did), I would hustle to the next class clear across campus. This was often necessary since I configured my schedule with back-to-back classes 8AM to 6PM MW giving me 2-3 days to work so I could pay for it all. I secured part time work at various jobs while attending college as a full-time student. This often meant 18 credit hours equating to 54+ additional hours a week. That’s because electrical engineers needed more credits to graduate. I wanted to major in English but that was vetoed by my father supplying room and board at home. Dad grew up poor and fatherless during the Great Depression and non-sense had a way of perishing all around him. College was his ticket out of poverty and my ticket to prosperity and that was that.

Summers were a chance to stockpile money for the upcoming school year which always meant an increase in tuition because no one knows why. During that time, I worked full-time making sure that many hours were on Sunday so I could get 1 ½ pay. I was also a sucker to appease co-workers, especially pretty ones, that needed someone to cover their hours because they needed to go to a party, and I needed the money.

I was employee of the month at Shopper’s Food Warehouse when a new manager that had it in for me (I was a college-boy) wrote up the schedule. It was around Christmas time, very busy, and the time for final exams. I agreed to work extra hours one week with the stipulation he would reduce my hours during finals. In some spiteful exercise of power, the manager loaded me up with excessive hours that week and refused to budge. So, I was forced to quit because I believed graduating college with good marks was an important thing. Nevertheless, for me, not having a paying job was a bad situation with books and bills demanding payment.

Many of my friends and peers attended the college of their choice complements of parents, grandparents, and a very large bank account. Football games, parties, fraternities, rioting, drinking, building Apartheid shanties on the mall in the dark of night—these were the care-free activities of UM student life for the well-heeled. I, on the other hand, never saw Boomer Esiason throw a football, nor Len Bias shoot a hoop. My student life consisted entirely of working, commuting, studying, and sprinting to class hoping for the day my own children would go to college, not have to work, live on campus, and get more out the experience than I was ever afforded. That is, to say, if I ever had children: with routine injections of methotrexate, cyclophosphamides, vincristine, and ionizing radiation in my mid-teens, it was immensely doubtful especially since my pediatric oncologist predicted leukemia in my thirties should I survive to such a ripe old age. Let me assure you that to such people with such experiences, life can seem a sham, and college was looking like the biggest sham of all.

Nevertheless, I took college seriously and got to work because I was paying for it. I graduated with BSEE, 3.72 GPA cum laude, debt free, and a full-time job waiting where I had been working my senior year. Without the burden of student debt, I began prospering on the spot. I later went to grad school and got a MSEE, all while working full time and starting a family (see diploma B). Then, of course, my wife and I saved assiduously for our daughters’ college, again without loans and without student debt.

College was Dad’s ticket out of poverty, my ticket to prosperity, and this nation’s ticket into ruin. It has gotten so expensive it’s impossible for someone to repeat what I was able to do in a previous century. Why has the cost exploded way past the cost of inflation, and politicians have not seen fit to address this incongruity? Does it take longer for students to graduate? Has knowledge become more expensive to obtain? Has Newton’s Law of Gravitation changed in these intervening years? Shame on the lot of you for letting this happen if you were not the outright cause altogether.

Now here we are patching up one cock-up with another; making college free will indeed cheapen it, particularly for graduates who sacrificed for their education. Canceling student debt devalues education further and hyperinflated diplomas will be as precious as Zimbabwean currency, suitable for burning. Society doesn’t need more people with a luxurious “college experience”; it needs more people with a valuable, difficult, college education worth busting their ass. And if a student loan was involved, it needs to be paid back in full by the adult who signed for it—not the public, not the taxpayer, not me.