The More You Make, The More You Pay?

It seems that with the rising cost of getting an education, graduate students are looking at the expected career incomes to help decide what field they want to enter. For the expensive private schools, getting a degree in a lower paying job is becoming less of an option. But what can we do about the problem?

Former labor secretary Robert B. Reich has formulated a plan that will allow students to follow their dreams, even if they result in lower-paying careers. His plan is that the payback on a graduate student's loans would be a percentage of what their annual salary would be over a 10-15 year period. In simpler terms, the more you make, the more you pay back. All of the money would go into a general lending fund for other graduate students. Now this may seem fine to the social worker or teacher, but what about the law student or doctor? The idea is to be unselfish and support the thought to let other people follow their dreams instead of worry about paying back the cost of their education.

The idea seems rather far-fetched, since we know that the common trait of American people is not unselfishness. But another thought is that if ways continue like they are, the amount of students entering fields with lower paying jobs will decrease, resulting a shortage of teachers in public schools, lower paid physicians, ect. But what if the idea was implemented? Would this cause too much of an increase in the lower paying jobs, which might result in the payback of student loans being lower than the actual cost of education? If only there was an easier solution...