Four years of college results in 20 years of debt; don’t pay it, and you’re unemployable.

In 2013, of nearly 40 million college graduates who borrowed, about 7 million defaulted on their student loans.

Once you default, 25 percent in penalties can be added to your total student loan debts, according to Student Debt Crisis, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming student debt repayment and higher education loan policies by educating borrowers and higher education experts with lectures, webinars and special events.

Being in default on your student loans can make you unemployable. Employers hold the right to conduct a background check, which oftentimes includes a credit report. A borrower who defaults is ineligible for government jobs, according to Student Debt Crisis.

Sixty-nine percent of individuals graduating from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had an average student loan debt amount of $28,950, according to The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS). With offices located in Washington, D.C. and California, TICAS is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to increasing college access, affordability and success through improvements in student financial aid policies.

With an interest rate of 3.76 percent on Direct Subsidized and Direct Unsubsidized Loans, plus 25 percent added for being in default, your total debt is now over $38,000, and your credit is ruined.

How do you recover from that?

While people use different strategies to pay off their student loan debt in short periods of time, they live very frugally. The Huffington Post reported many of college graduates with heavy debt burdens on earned $10 to $13 an hour on their jobs.

That is not the life we hope for after receiving a $38,000 education.

You enter college to acquire the skills to get a job, but if you go into default on your student loans, you become unemployable, which also deepens your debt. Your college education is almost in vain.

 

Three of four college students will graduate $27,000 in debt; that’s a new car, a house down payment or a graduate degree.

That’s twice the college-loan debt of previous generations.

Tuition at public four-year colleges has more than doubled in the past three decades, even after adjusting for inflation, according to the U.S. Department of Education, created in 1980. Its mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.

Student debt is an economic and political issue. Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton addressed this issue in speeches and on her campaign website. Clinton, born in Chicago in 1947, received a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1973. She served as first lady of the United States to President Bill Clinton from 1993-2001; junior U.S. senator, representing New York from 2001 to 2009; and U.S. secretary of state from 2009-2013.

Clinton has proposed that every student will have the option to graduate from a public college or university in their state without taking on any student debt and delinquent borrowers and those in default will get help to protect their credit and get back on their feet.

American culture teaches us that the purpose of receiving an education is to establish our independence and live the American dream, which usually includes a car, a house, and maybe a family. Independence is being hindered because college graduates are postponing major purchases, marriage and children.

I am a student who will graduate in debt. My debt will hinder the personal goals that I have set for myself. I want to be a homeowner before I’m 30. I would also like to get married and have children, but I want to support my family or at least make a significant contribution to our income. If I marry someone in my generation who is college-educated, there is a 71 percent chance that, he too, is in debt. Once I’m married, our debt becomes one, and together we could owe $54,000 or more in student loans.

This is not the future I want for myself.

Until a serious change is made, such as Hillary Clinton’s propositions, Goodnight Moon’s author, Margaret Wise Brown, might say, — “Goodbye red sports car, goodbye single-family home with two-car garage and eat-in kitchen, goodbye master’s degree, goodbye husband and goodbye kids.”