What We Owe Graduates in the Age of the Great Slowdown
“I’m going to be in debt for my whole f---ing life. How does that even make sense? I signed up for this s--- when I was 17. This should not be legal.”
That’s not a line from a protest, a podcast, or a political speech. It’s a young woman, alone in her car, crying into her phone. In a now-viral video, she breaks down after learning that the repayment and interest plan she committed to when she was 17 would actually cost her more over time than the original school debt itself.
She isn’t irrational. She isn’t dramatic. She’s doing the math—and realizing that the system she was told to trust has left her stuck. She’s a recent graduate, someone who did what we asked: went to school, worked hard, took out loans. And now she feels trapped, angry, and desperate.
She’s not alone. Across the country, young Americans are graduating into a system that no longer reliably delivers on the promises it made. Debt is up. Homeownership is down. Jobs are scattered, benefits are shaky, and the path to adulthood—once clear and predictable—has become slow, fragmented, and prohibitively expensive.
The average borrower leaves college with $38,400 in student debt. One in three—5.8 million Americans—are now more than 90 days delinquent on payments. Many are discovering that income-driven repayment plans, while helpful short-term, often result in paying more in total over the life of the loan—a cruel twist for those who thought they were getting relief.
Even those who do everything “right” find themselves losing ground. While the average starting salary for 2025 grads is around $68,680, that figure hides the vast disparities by major and region. Liberal arts graduates often start closer to $40,000—barely enough to afford rent in many cities—and nearly half are underemployed.
The dream of homeownership? That’s drifting further away too, for many. One estimate finds that the average graduate may not afford a home until 2034, nearly nine years after receiving their diploma. And each additional $1,000 in student debt decreases the likelihood of owning a home by nearly 2 percent.
Worse still, the entire arc of adulthood is shifting. According to new U.S. Census Bureau research, young Americans are reaching core life milestones—marriage, children, independent living—later and less frequently than they did just 20 years ago. This isn’t just cultural drift. It’s an economic reality. You can’t start a family if you can’t pay your loans or afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Business Insider aptly calls it “the slow road to adulthood.” But “slow” doesn’t mean easy. It means extended dependency, deferred dreams, and deep uncertainty.
As a professor, I see it in the faces of my students and so many students I meet around the country—smart, thoughtful, determined, but quietly anxious. They believe in education. They want to build good lives. But they’re also starting to wonder if the system they’ve bought into is setting them up to fail.
And here’s where we in higher education must confront our own complicity.
For too long, we’ve allowed the idea of college to operate on autopilot and assumptions. We’ve encouraged students to “follow their passion” without disclosing the financial consequences. We’ve celebrated the life of the mind, being creative, and following passion while outsourcing the details of adult life—housing, salaries, loan interest, credit scores—to someone else.
But we can’t do that anymore. We owe our students more than inspiration. We owe them the truth about debt, about employment, about what different degrees actually yield. We should be showing them sample budgets. We should be transparent about job placement rates. We should be honest about the timeline it takes to build financial independence.
We also owe them translation. If we believe that the liberal arts are valuable—and I do because it helps students be human and deeply understand life and society itself—we must help students understand how their skills connect to real-world work: policy, communications, nonprofit leadership, research, tech ethics, project management. Philosophy can absolutely lead to employment—but not if students are left to make that case alone.
And we owe them engagement. Career prep should not begin in the senior year. It should be embedded from day one, in advising, in syllabi, in mentorship, in required meetings with career centers and financial counselors. We must meet students not just as thinkers, but as emerging adults with complex futures to navigate.
This generation isn’t lazy or entitled. They are resilient, but exhausted, ignorant, and scared. They’re not asking for handouts. They’re asking for clarity. For a chance. For someone to level with them before they sign away their future at 17.
A recent survey found that only 42 percent of graduates feel confident about their post-college plans. Just 35 percent stick to a budget. Many fear negotiating a salary more than ending a relationship. This isn’t just a failure of individual grit. It’s a failure of institutional formation.
The woman in the car isn’t just having a bad day. She’s giving voice to a generation waking up to a broken promise. We can’t fix the entire system overnight—but we can stop lying about it. We can speak clearly. We can teach responsibly. We can honor not just their tuition dollars, but their trust.
The road to adulthood is slower, steeper, and lonelier than it used to be. But if we’re willing to walk it alongside our students—with honesty, humility, and practical care—maybe it doesn’t have to be so hard.
We owe them that. We always did.
