In wake of coronavirus, colleges should refund, then discount

In the United States, the average cost for a single year at a private college will run you about $54,000. For a year at a public institution, you’re looking at $43,000.

The rate at which tuition is increasing in America is outpacing the inflation rate by at least three times.

The overpriced cost of higher education has led to a $1.61 trillion student loan debt crisis that is only going to get worse if colleges are allowed to continue focusing on sharpening margins, rather than young minds.

According to LendEDU, the average student loan borrower owes $28,565 in student loan debt, and many will be paying off this debt for over a decade. In Connecticut, that figure jumps to $38,776, the highest in the country.

This nation’s massive student loan debt problem, which is largely due to unchecked colleges shamelessly increasing tuition for years, has handcuffed countless young Americans. And in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, it became quite clear how many of them were on the cliff ’s edge in dealing with their student loan debt burden.

LendEDU conducted a survey of 1,000 adult Americans that found 55 percent of them that had student loan debt were concerned about their ability to make monthly student loan payments due to the impacts of the coronavirus. Among just respondents from Connecticut that had student loan debt, 100 percent shared this concern.

Another survey was conducted by LendEDU, and this time all 1,000 respondents had some amount of student loan debt — 68 percent of all student loan borrowers were worried about their ability to make federal student loan payments because of the coronavirus, including 79 percent of those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Of poll participants, 54 percent were unsure they could even make their very next student loan payment, including 61 percent of those who were laid off like tens of millions of other Americans in response to the deadly scourge.

Among Connecticut respondents, 80 percent were worried about making monthly federal student loan payments, and 75 percent said they couldn’t have made their very next payment.

Luckily, federal student loan borrowers were saved by the CARES Act, which has halted all federal student loan payments until Sept. 30, 2020, in addition to freezing all federal student loan interest rates at 0 percent until the same date.

Yet still, the coronavirus and its subsequent economic devastation made it plain for all to see just how financially crippling student loan debt has become for a generation.

And because it’s the colleges and universities that deserve most of the blame for this student loan debt burden, they should be the ones that help pick students up from the mat.

It starts with all colleges and universities partially refunding whoever picked up the bill to attend their campuses for the 2020 spring semester that was necessarily cut short in March. If it was a parent that paid for their child’s tuition and living expenses, then that parent should be the one that receives a prorated refund from the institution.

If it was a student who took out student loan debt to attend, then that student should have their respective college partially repay their debt bill for the 2020 spring semester. If the student was able to pay for their own education out-of-pocket, the same principle applies.

Students received nowhere near the full $50,000 college experience this past spring, so why should they, or their parents, have to pay for it while colleges and universities reap the profits of the full semester that never was?

There have already been a number of classaction lawsuits filed by students against numerous colleges, Vanderbilt and Brown among them, based on the idea that students should be paid back by colleges at a rate that more accurately reflects the learning experience they’ve received during the pandemic.

You can certainly expect to see more of these lawsuits roll in if colleges don’t take the proper course of action.

Looking toward the 2020 fall semester and beyond, higher education institutions are staring down an always inevitable reckoning that has been accelerated in its arrival by the coronavirus.

The college price tag has been overpriced for years but has gone unchallenged because there was never a good alternative.

The coronavirus will fundamentally alter the higher education landscape by normalizing and legitimizing online college. It will be widely accessible, it will be cheap, and with degree-earning Zoom classes brought on by the pandemic already causing parents to question what they were ever paying for in the first place, it will be an easy choice.

If colleges and universities don’t drastically lower their prices, enrollment, the main driver of revenue, will plummet and many will close their doors for good. The University of Michigan is already anticipating losses of up to $1 billion through the end of 2020 due to a drop in demand.

The coronavirus exacerbated the student loan debt crisis which has long been exacerbated by the colleges themselves.

It seems that for things to come full circle, a tuition refund followed by a tuition discount is the right, and perhaps only, move for higher education institutions.

The college price tag has been overpriced for years.