I think the real difficulty is experienced by students that have no state schools and no WICHE contracts, i.e. students from Connecticut or Rhode Island. They are stuck with a predefined set of choices: Paying out-of-state tuition, applying to schools that would let them enroll as in-state applicants after a year, or moving to a state to establish residency prior to applying.
Being from a state where my only option is a private university, I also feel the crunch as a non-traditional, financially independent student. I will have to make decisions about my career based on financial considerations.
What this will ultimately mean, I think, is that we're going to see a greater proportion of students that were initially well off, going into areas of the profession where they'll continue to earn on the high end of the scale, very similar to BakersDozen's example. Students who graduate with a large amount of debt will be be more likely to delay the pursuit of their true calling because they will be working in areas that grant them loan forgiveness. By the time they're financially ready to, for example, buy a private practice, it might not be the best personal decision for them.
I see this as a reflection of the problems America is facing as a whole right now. The dichotomy between rich and poor in this country is astounding:
The richest 400 people in America have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Also, according to an op-ed article in the
NY Times, "the effective tax rate on the nation's richest people has fallen by about half in the last 20 years, and General Electric paid zero dollars in U.S. taxes on profits of more than $14 billion. Meanwhile, roughly 45 million Americans spend a third of their posttax income on food — and still run out monthly — and one in four kids goes to bed hungry at least some of the time."
I'm including these facts because I believe they, along with the rising cost of Vet Med, are proof that our system is inherently broken. If the cost of U Penn had been $5000 more per year, I never would have applied, and would be stuck doing this again next cycle. I probably would have moved somewhere with a state-sponsored school. If you live in any of the 24 states that aren't home to a state school (and I'm not sure if WICHE or affiliated states get state tuition with their host universities, maybe someone can help me here?), you have some very serious decisions. I really believe that a veterinary education will soon be unattainable for a good part of the population, ESPECIALLY if interest rates continue to rise.
$300,000 in loans, which is roughly what I will have when I graduate Penn, will become $670,000 in payments if I stretch that principle out over 25 years, which I might have to do. If I specialize, and accrue more interest over the 4 years after I graduate, I'll be over $700,000 dollars paid.
SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS
That, frankly, is disgusting and unconscionable to me, especially knowing that higher education is free to residents of many other countries.
I'm going into vet med knowing full well the significance of these numbers, but it took a lot of thought and a lot of introspection. We're continuing to move in this direction, and we will end up seeing the consequences in our profession. At some point, something will have to give, whether it is in our government's handling of student loans and educational financing, or in the structure of the professional degree and the cost of attaining it. But the exponential growth of this financial burden is unsustainable.
