Another by-product of the Occupy movement has been the growing uproar over mounting student debt. This was a key aspects of the Occupiers and it has been getting more and more attention in recent months from President Obama, Congress, and the media, including this recent article in the Los Angeles Times. It is outrageous that working class and middle class college students are saddled with years of debt, as this Truthout article, “Understanding Student Debt,” and this editorial inThe Nation, “End Student Debt,” reveals. In many other democratic countries, a college education is free or almost-free – an idea that America’s land-grant universities once embodied. My wife got her nursing school tuition paid for by the federal government in exchange for spending a few years working in a low-income area. (She wound up spending her entire career working in low-income communities). I think that U.S. should require all young people to spend at least two years doing community service (as an alternative to serving in the military) in exchange for free college tuition for four years. Doctors, nurses, public health workers, public interest lawyers, teachers, and others who agree to work with and for the poor should get further public support for their graduate education.
