I don’t know why that is. Perhaps it’s because that issue somehow has gotten absorbed into the nebulous demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I didn’t expect the presidential hopefuls to mention the Occupy Wall Street movement because of the general conservative disregard for the movement as a whole. However, the issues of a lack of middle-class jobs and an inability of recent graduates to pay off student loans without those jobs is a completely separate issue.

Quite simply, it’s the reason why a lot of young, well-educated people are frustrated with the economy.

Yes, college graduates do have jobs.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August 2011 the unemployment rate for nonmilitary persons with a bachelor’s degree or higher was only 4.6 percent, roughly half the overall unemployment rate, which is 9.1 percent. A college degree still is an advantage when looking to be hired.

But having a job doesn’t mean it pays well. The weight of student loans for many young people necessitates taking the first job they can, even if it’s not what they spent four years and a fair amount of money equipping themselves to do. Recent graduates are told to be grateful to have a minimum wage job in this economy, but that’s simply not enough.

In Michigan, the minimum wage is $7.40 an hour. Working 40 hours a week, that works out to a monthly income of $1,282, which works out to an annual income of $15,392. A college senior who graduated in 2009 left school with, on average, $24,000 of debt from student loans.

With a 10-year loan repayment program at the average rate of $24,000 in debt, these graduates will spend a minimum of $276 a month to pay back the loans.

If the graduate is making minimum wage, $276 dedicated toward paying off student loans is one-fifth of their monthly income.
The math doesn’t add up well for students, and a presidential hopeful on either side of the aisle who realizes that could tap into a wellspring of support from young people.

As one way to do that, presidential hopefuls could propose some forgiveness of student loan debt. As an example, because America desperately needs engineers and teachers, graduates in those fields could qualify for partial loan-forgiveness.

If that’s not palatable, at the very least let graduates dump student loan debt when declaring bankruptcy. It makes no sense for a person to be able to discharge child support payments, but not student loan debt, in bankruptcy.

There were between 22 million and 24 million voters ages 18-29 in the 2008 presidential election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, a nonprofit organization that researches the political habits of young Americans.

There are votes to be had by appealing to recent college graduates. The first presidential hopeful to realize that extending an olive branch to the youth vote in the form of loan assistance would be beneficial could have a huge advantage in the upcoming election.

Laz Jackson is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at jacks920@msu.edu.