This week, Elizabeth Warren published her book, A Fighting Chance, in which she illuminates another important issue that, for a graduating high school senior, soon to attend college, has been at the forefront of my mind and that of many other students in my situation.

No matter whom you talk to in my situation, the consensus is the same: It’s rough out there. We’re frustrated. We wish there was some transparency in the process. We wish we could trust that all of our merits were being considered by benevolent strangers who endeavored to understand why we perhaps could not do extra volunteer work two summers ago, and that our hard work will translate into scholarships the way we were promised they would.

Most of all, we wished we wouldn’t have to pay off student loan debt for the crime of being middle class. And, with the interest federal loans pile on, who knows how much an education will actually cost, with no guarantee of any sustainable jobs after we take off the cap and gown.

While the impending doom of student loan debt dissuades many from attending colleges that are priced horrendously high, the government is making billions of dollars off interest from federal loans. Loans for large corporations and banks however, are charged much less interest. Elizabeth Warren condemns this practice and the education system that seems not only to admit people arbitrarily to college, but also is priced outlandishly. One has to wonder where that money actually goes.

Not only does this issue pain all young Americans looking for an education and taking out federal loans, but it also threatens to rip the fabric of the American dream. Cutting welfare, destroying wage caps on campaign contributions (as if their influence on the campaign process isn’t big enough), voter restriction laws and loan traps for college students—it seems like the disparity between the 1% and the rest of us is being encouraged. It seems like corporations are being treated more like people than people. Since when are businesses’ rights more important than human rights? Colleges are essentially corporations. Is it possible for a rags to riches story to happen now? Because for students today, the stories of escaping poverty through sheer force of will are sounding more and more like fairy tales.

However you look at it, the conversation today is very different. Students who have been told all their lives that college is the answer have to reevaluate what $50,000 a year tuition will actually help them achieve. Meanwhile, we have to wonder what kind of power we actually have to change the system.

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For over forty years, I have been an educator. It may sound odd, but I think that the United States should give serious consideration to greatly reducing the number of students who go to college. This is not a new idea; many people have made the argument that a large percentage of college students learn very little during the four years of undergraduate studies. What has changed is the degree to which students and their families go into debt.

In just a few years, tuition and associated expenses at private colleges and universities have skyrocketed, from $30,000 to over $60,000. It’s quite conceivable for a student to “pay” half of his or her tuition through loans. That would mean that on graduation, a student would be carrying a cumulative debt of $120,000 or more to a college or university.

The job market for college graduates is tighter than it has been in over eighty years since the Great Depression. If a college graduate gets a job, he or she draws a salary of forty or fifty thousand dollars. For many, rent has become a prohibitive cost, and they move back with their parents. The payroll tax currently is a 5.65% government revenue enhancer that is deducted from salary and many also pay federal and state income taxes. Basic survival, expenses for food,  clothing, and inexpensive leisure activities eat up most, if not all, of the discretionary spending money. Often, there is no money left to pay the nearly $1,200.00 monthly debt (10 years at 5%) to the college or university that they attended.

It strikes me that there are two ways  to reduce the cost of the college loans that burden students. The first is to lower the cost of college. Universities are presently involved in the equivalent of an “arms race.” Who can have the fanciest dorm rooms? Who can have the most parking places so that the maximum number of students can park on campus? Who has the most high- tech equipment in classrooms?

While virtually anything and everything high tech that is related to science and math makes sense, do English classes need smart boards? They may enhance the learning experience, or they may be superfluous to it. Plenty of people learned how to analyze literature well before there were smart boards. They got by with smart professors.

The second and perhaps more effective way to reduce the cost of college loans is for employers to disregard to a larger extent whether or not students have college degrees or even college studies. If employers use as their main criteria for hiring whether or not someone has the knowledge and skills to do a job, then it really doesn’t matter how they got it. They may have done a lot of reading and writing on their own. They may have learned a great deal of physics through “garage experiments.” They may have learned a great deal of sociology from being a summer camp counselor. And they certainly learned a great deal about being a teacher from the more than 10,000 hours that they spent in classrooms as students prior to high school graduation.

If an individual can get a good job at an age such as eighteen because he or she has the skills to do the job, then why not hire him or her and stop the charade of college for many. Do they really need to be part of an experience where professional athletics are disguised as being amateurs?  Do they really need to be a part of a school that claims that it is the best “party school” in the country?

If that would happen, business might have new workers who are better prepared to fill needed jobs. The morale of these workers will be better because they won’t be saddled with student loans. Colleges and universities will have to compete to attract students by reducing their cots and the consequent student loan repayments. Just a thought.

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