That student loans should be interest-free

Benji Alexander Smith

Thanks, nzlockie.

"For now, the resolution has been firmly negated", my opponent concluded. I would like to point out that the opposition is begging the question, and I would like to respectfully ask him to refrain from declaring himself the victor at the end of any round. Interestingly, the very last thing my opponent said was this: "Vote Con - We paid our way through college!". Although my opponent’s last comment is tangential to the question at hand, and was likely intended as a throwaway remark, I would like to say a few words about it:

  There are reasons that tertiary study is largely subsidised and that student loans exist; one of those reasons is to ensure that higher education is not the exclusive domain of the rich and privileged. This wasn’t always the case; in Victorian-era England, tertiary education was indeed limited to the wealthy and powerful, and it ended up in what was essentially an elitist, class-based system. It was largely agreed that a societal system in which it was very difficult to be upwardly mobile on one’s own and outgrow the financial and social environment one was born into was not a good system. We hence try to give people the opportunity to out-grow the negative circumstances into which they were born, essentially through hard-work and diligence. This is known as ‘equality of opportunity’ (not to be confused ‘equality of outcome’).
 
  Additionally, any field - doctors, nurses, lawyers – should aim to ensure that the people who make up that field are representative of the communities from which they come, as those are the communities they will most likely be serving. Opening these fields to candidates from an array of different socio-economic backgrounds is one obvious way to achieve the diversification required for a field to adequately represent its community... and of course; any individual student can still pay their fees up-front, should they choose. That option remains.

 
 Regarding my opponent's introductory statements, and the numbered points that followed:
 
  Firstly, my opponent is confusing terms; the ‘lender’ is the party that lends money, the ‘beneficiary’ (or ‘debtor’) is the person to whom the money is lent. I am not trying to nit-pick, but it is important that we get the definition of these terms correct.
 
 Yes, I am arguing that it is unethical for a government to seek to profit off any particular demographic it governs, and this includes students. I content that it is unreasonable for any government to expect their student to pay back interest on an educational loan. My opponent goes on to pose the rhetorical question about this contention in the form of “…(Why), because they can’t afford it?”. Yes. Obviously during a period of time in which the beneficiary cannot afford to pay back anything, it is unreasonable to expect them to pay back that loan, and it is unreasonable to add interest to a loan during a period of time in which the beneficiary is unable to pay anything back. It is unreasonable for me to expect anyone to do anything that they are guaranteed to be unable to do. That is practically the definition of ‘an unreasonable expectation’.
 
 K-12 students owe a debt to society in a very real sense, but the government must not attempt to profit from that ‘debt’. We understand that as members of a civilised society, there simply must be a bit of room for push-and-pull with regards to economics and education, and for consideration towards the plight of any given individual in that system at any given time; this is to allow society to grow and flourish in a broad sense.
 
 1) My opponent states that I must convince the reader that “for some reason, ‘students’ are a group that should receive special treatment in the form on no-interest loans for study”:
 
  Students ARE special in this way, because full-time students are unable to earn a wage during their period of study. In the same way that is unreasonable to consider a severely disabled person as being just as capable of earning an income as the average person. This is the whole reason we make these distinctions between groups with regards to their economic viability. Both groups are at a significant economic disadvantage, relative to the rest of the population, at least for some length of time. If it is reasonable to give special social welfare considerations to people who are disabled and unable to earn an income, then it is only logical that we extend this same consideration to other groups of people who are equally as economically nonviable.
 
  I would further like to clarify that ‘NORMAL’ is not interchangeable with ‘REASONABLE’ or ‘ETHICAL’. It’s ‘normal’ for people to die in traffic accidents. It’s 'normal' for politicians to be murdered in some parts of the World. That doesn’t mean it’s reasonable, nor does it mean it’s ethical. I chose my words carefully and they are the words that I mean to defend. I did not say it was abnormal to pay interest on a loan.
 
 I must skip 2), 3), 5) and 6) for now due to issues with character count, and will address them in the next round.
 
 4) Here my opponent is making a vague point about how the government should be slapping students with an interest rate on their student loans as a means of preparing them for the ‘Big bad Real World’. Let me just make a few observations first: A U.K. Study finds that suicide rates in tertiary students has reached an all-time high. A Michigan study reveals suicide as the 2^nd highest cause of death for university students, after traffic accidents. The study also reveals that one of the most significant factors for depression in those students was ‘financial concern’. The American Association of Suicidology has previously stated in a report that “There is a clear and direct relationship between rates of unemployment and suicide… Similar findings have been documented internationally." and states further that “Economic strain and personal financial crises have been well documented as precipitating events in individual deaths by suicide.”
 
 With that in mind: my opponent argues that what students really need – students, who could come from any ethnic or cultural background, be in any economic situation, be of any age, from any country, have any level of life experience, and so on – what they really need is a good dose of financial stress, courtesy of the government. Would my opponent also argue for the regular government-sponsored spanking of children under the age of six in order to toughen the little snowflakes up a bit? It is absurd to claim that something that is generally considered to be bad for individuals is somehow good for this particular group of individuals.
 
From a purely economic perspective; having one’s debtors commit suicide is not good for business.
 
 To re-iterate: It is reasonable to assume that students in high-tier education programs are already learning enough, without needing some kind of ‘kick in the backside to remind them of the realities of life’ courtesy of the government. Placing a psychological burden on a student in the form of a flag-fall interest rate that starts accruing the very moment they begin studying can hardly be regarded as a healthy strategy for ensuring long-term mental stability in a student, given that financial stress is so often quoted as the main source of stress amongst students.