As a former college professor, I have told my students that I believe they have no moral obligation to repay student loans. Several intelligent nations provide free university education so their youth will be better citizens.
The corporations which they would repay have stolen their futures, by destroying America's industrial and financial base, while MediCare and Social Security are drained.
It is the obligation of elders to communicate essential knowledge to new generations painlessly, so that society may progress.
Therefore, rather than worry about loan repayments, graduates have a greater moral obligation to do with their lives what is best for themselves, their families, communities, the nation and the planet.
Ordinarily we are obliged to honor contracts. This contract, however, chains graduates to decades of debt servitude which they must repay often by doing work they dislike and which damages their future.
When the alternative to signing such a malicious bond is having no college education, it is made under duress and should be broken. Both education and health care are rights to be enjoyed by all, not just the rich.
The game is rigged by bankers and Wall Street, who are screwing an entire generation. Their mismanagement of the economy has broken the implied contract between college diplomas and dignified jobs.
Again, the greater moral obligation of graduates is explore lives and work which repair communities and nature. Obligation to bankers is last on the list.
When parents cosign the contract the student is on the hook. Millions of such students and parents will need to create broader political challenges.
But when the student is the only signer they have complete discretion. Their penalty for defaulting loans is that they'll less easily be able to buy a home or car in their name. You can live in a home or drive a car anyway. Owning cars and homes has been overrated. They easily become anchors rather than wings.
Universities will be forced to accommodate new realities. Most curricula are less relevant to the urgencies of rebuilding civilization so we live well with less fossil fuel, reliant more upon neighborhoods than corporations. Those universities will fade whose teaching is designed for service to corporations, and whose giant bureaucracies and buildings demand higher tuition.
New universities and new curricula are emerging to serve needs for low-cost and enlightened knowledge. When you don't see education of a style and price you prefer, get together to create your own curricula and university and credential. By effective promotion, you'll overtake the Ivies.
I've taken such initiatives to create renegade grassroots money, health insurance, free clinics, planning departments, etc.
Am intending to start a school system in Philadelphia which credentials and rewards low-income neighbors for teaching skills to neighbor children, who are also rewarded and credentialed.
Glover is author of the book "How to Take Power" and the article "Time for Millennnials to Take Control."
