Higher education has impacted the middle class by opening doors to more employment opportunities, which in turn has allowed many of the middle class to move up into higher income brackets. One of the downturns of higher education, however, is that more middle class Americans are finding themselves in non-dischargeable debt. Overall, the expansion of higher education has been a boon for the American middle class by giving them access to more resources, though at a price.
More than at any other point in history, people are going to college to obtain higher-education credentials. This has broadened the professional horizons of millions of middle-class people who are now in careers that would have been unattainable without the qualifications conferred by their degree. In 2005, the participation rate in higher education was 44%, up from 12% twenty years prior (Reay, David, & Ball, 2005). A significant proportion of those students were from middle class families.
Access to higher education has increased the social mobility of the middle class. By rewarding merit over wealth, higher education has offset the importance of social class in determining lifetime earning outcomes (Haveman & Smeeding, 2006). Now that a secondary education is attainable to more people from all economic backgrounds, lower, middle, and upper-class children alike have the opportunity to develop their skills and have more choices in life.
One of the drawbacks to higher education for middle class people is that many students are forced to take out student loans to pay for their enrollment, putting them in thousands of dollars of debt upon graduation. For the seven out of ten college seniors who have taken out loans, the average student loan debt amount is around $30,000 per borrower. When it comes to paying back these hefty debts, students have few forgiveness options, and the debts are not dischargeable through bankruptcy filings (Kieller, 2015; Sparshott, 2015).
Works Cited
Kieler, Ashley. “You Can’t Discharge Your Student Loans In Bankruptcy Because Of Panicked 1970’s Legislation.” Consumerist. 17 March 2015. Web. 25 April 2016.
Reay, Diane, Miriam E. David, and Stephen J. Ball. Degrees of choice: Class, race, gender and higher education. Trentham Books, 2005.
Smeeding, Timothy M., and Robert H. Haveman. "The role of higher education in social mobility." The Future of children 16.2 (2006): 125-150.
Sparshott, Jeffrey. “Congratulations, Class of 2015. You’re the Most Indebted Ever (For Now).” The Wall Street Journal. 8 May 2015. Web. 25 April 2016.
