Paying For College

2001-2022 | 21 years

In this episode of The West Wing, the President looks for a lawyer as Qamar accuses Israel of killing Shareef. The President also is looking for the people who set off a pipe bomb at a college swim meet in the last episode. Meanwhile, Toby and Josh, who in the previous episode met a man who didn’t know how he would pay for his daughter’s college tuition, devise a plan to make college more affordable.

Even going back to when Trump was still President, there were news cycles that had stories about college tuition. Recently, these stories have been about President Biden canceling student debt, most recently this Tuesday when he forgave almost 4 billion in debt for students of a tech school that intentionally lied about the education they provided for profit.

In the episode, Josh and Toby came up with the idea of making college tax deductible by closing a loophole that allows corporate bonuses to be tax deductible.

Since 2006, the amount of money Americans owe in student debt has tripled. Recent data has shown that American Student Loan debt is about 1.6 trillion dollars. Student loans were first paused for 60 days under the Trump Administration; They were then paused for longer and the interest rate was set to 0, which allowed people to take a break from their payments without interest growing. Then, in the Democratic Primary, Senator Elizabeth Warren said she wanted to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt per person. When President Biden got into office, he continued to extend the pause on student debt payments.

Although this is helping people, this was also costing the federal government about $5 billion in debt per month. Some are pushing for the President to cancel the debts. However, many who are fiscally conservative are against spending the hundreds of billions it would take to do this. Besides costs, some are against it because it simply seems unfair: many don’t think that people who are highly educated who willingly took on these debts should be getting the money, meanwhile, older generations don’t see why they should have to pay college costs for the younger generation when no one paid for their college costs. Not to mention, some think that even if the debts are canceled, we will still be in the same position in a couple of years, because college tuition is so high.

In The West Wing, Matt Kelley, the Dad who has no idea how he would pay for his Daughter’s college says “it should be a little easier. Just a little easier” to put a kid through college. Since the episode was released, it has been made easier, and school payments have been made tax deductible for some. However, today Matt Kelley wouldn’t qualify for that deduction.

Many teens are approaching or just starting college, we will see how paying for college plays out for us.