ROTHENBURGER — The student-loan merry-go-round

COLUMN — I was lucky when I went to university — I didn’t have to go into debt up to my armpits to pay for my education. I worked summers and part of the school year, found part-time work after classes, and relied on my parents for the rest.

University was expensive then. Out-of-state fees were double (I went to school in the ‘States’), everything was done from textbooks (no online material then), and living expenses seemed astronomical. I learned to live on the infamous macaroni diet and kept in shape with a lot of walking.

Nowadays, it’s still expensive, probably even more expensive in comparison. That’s why kids are coming out of university owing tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.

According to the Canadian Federation of Students, the average student-related debt for B.C. students is $35,000 for a bachelor’s degree, compared to the national average of $27,000.

A lot of them default on those loans instead of trying to repay them. So the Liberal government introduced legislation Thursday that would give ICBC the authority not to renew their driver’s licences or vehicle registration.

That is almost too illogical for words. The government, through the universities, keeps jacking up student fees (the TRU Board of Governors annually introduces a motion to hike the fees by the provincial cap in order to pay the bills), forcing students to go deeper and deeper in debt, and now proposes to punish them for not being able to repay the loans they needed for an education that will give them the fundamentals for becoming contributing, taxpaying citizens.

Well, says the government, B.C. students owe $186 million in defaulted loans. Of course they do — secondary education is becoming unaffordable so why is it a shock when student debt is getting out of control?

This isn’t the way the government sees it, of course. Advanced Education Minister Andrew Wilkinson claims 70 per cent of B.C students graduate with no debt. “Unbelievable,” says the B.C. Branch of the federation of students, which says it’s closer to 50 per cent.

“If those numbers seem unbelievable, it’s because they’re completely untrue,” says Steven Beasley with the federation, of Wilkinson’s arithmetic.

“Even the numbers that exist are problematic because they’re based on a survey that relies on the voluntary disclosure of debt and it doesn’t include graduate students or people who dropped out because they couldn’t afford post-secondary.”

So, there are shades of gray in this, depending on whether numbers are based on government student-loan debt or total debt for educational purposes, and so on, but let’s just agree that kids today owe a whack of money for their education. The student federation says student debt “continues to climb off the chart.”

And, says a Financial Post article, “Defaulting on your student loan may seem like a worse-case scenario but it’s reality for tens of thousands of people each year.”

I’m not, by the way, an advocate of free secondary education. There’s nothing wrong with students paying their own way; they just shouldn’t have to face financial ruin to do it.

But, apparently, we need to take the kids’ drivers’ licences away, making sure they can’t get to their jobs to make a wage to repay the loans. We need to up the ante.

Here’s the list of what the government already holds as a stick over students who are “delinquent” in repaying their loans:

“If you don’t repay your student loan you could face:

• added interest charges
• loss of eligibility for future StudentAid B.C. funding
• being contacted by a collection agency
• a bad credit rating and inability to get credit, for example not being accepted for contracts for cellular phones, etc.
• loss of future income tax refunds and tax rebates
• being taken to court
• garnishment of your wages
• liens against your property”

There is, of course, an escape from this — bankruptcy. At which point, owning a car becomes a moot point anyway.

Surely, creating a province of well-educated bankrupt unemployment-insurance recipients isn’t what we’re after here. Surely, the goal isn’t to discourage our youth from getting a university education, either.

There are, of course, students who simply make no effort at repayment. Some even aim to rip off the system. I suggest most, however, actually want an education and have honourable intentions.

“Missing a student loan payment, or paying late, might warrant a telephone call, but certainly not the loss of your driver’s licence,” Azahary Crispin, chair of the federation of students, was quoted as saying.

But the government appears intent not on reducing the number of student-loan “delinquents,” but on increasing it.

Mel Rothenburger can be contacted at armchairmayor@gmail.com. He’s on Twitter @MelRothenburger and facebook.com/melrothenburger.7.