OPINION
College graduates are turning to democratic socialism in droves because they are strapped with massive college debt and abysmal job prospects and don’t see a way to better their lives, argues USA Today columnist Dace Potas.
They feel misled after being told a college degree is the only way to improve their lives only to land jobs that don’t require degrees — or jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees, Potas wrote.
He argues its a vicious cycle:
Those frustrations are easy to turn into energy for a political movement, and democratic socialists have built their agenda around it: debt cancellation, Medicare for all, free college, rent-controlled housing.
Generally, as income and education rise, voters trend more Democratic. But that pattern breaks down at high education and low income. Using data from Harvard’s Cooperative Election Study, statistician Nate Silver identified this group as the most Democratic voters in America: 61% of four-year graduates earning $30,000 to $60,000 a year voted Democrat across the past three presidential elections, along with a staggering 70% of postgraduates in that same range.
The Democratic Socialists of America’s own membership data from 2021 confirms this: 80% of members 25 or older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, well above the 37.5% national rate, while 45% of DSA members earn under $60,000 a year, compared with just 19% of degree holders nationally who had annual household incomes of $60,000 or below.
Their income looks close to the median American’s, but their education level is far higher.
Ultimately, Potas argues for free market reforms that get the federal government out of student loans altogether.
“Under a market-based system, young people would be forced to weigh the return on investment of a degree upfront, rather than reckon with reality after they’ve already built up debt,” Potus wrote. “Eliminating the federal loan program would turn students over to private lenders, who can approve or deny loans, or adjust interest rates, based on how likely someone is to repay.”
“Those signals would push students away from poor decisions on the front end and toward degrees that actually pay off.”
