I remember sitting down with my parents while applying to colleges and calculating in my head where I would go off to school. It wasn’t about where I would find the most success but in where I would end up less in debt.

All of them, even the in-state universities, were unrealistically priced. There was no doubt in my mind that I would take out student loans in order to receive a higher education and I had to be okay with that because that was the reality for the millions of others pursuing the same dream.

My student loans contributed to the $1.57 trillion Americans owed at the end of 2018, according to the Federal Reserves. To be exact, the average student debt in Connecticut is $38,669, according to The Institute for College Access & Success, and is one of the highest in the country.

Even if I earned a salary of $60,000 right after graduating and made payments of $500 per month, I would still be paying off that $38,669 for over 8 years.  Including the Stafford interest rate of 6.8 percent, my cumulative payments would be $51,029.06.

This in itself isn’t realistic at any point since the average American salary is $46,800, according to The Street.

My education should not come at the cost of my livelihood later in life, nor should it be that way for anyone else. America’s higher education system is in need of a makeover and not just a simple haircut with highlights, I’m talking full on Queer Eye takeover.

Throughout the country, states vary on their solutions to reducing/eliminating student loan debt.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer is pushing to provide debt-free tuition to high school graduates and adults, along with offering $2,500 scholarship to nonprofit or public four-year universities.

New Jersey government is looking to create a tuition-free community college program in order to have 65 percent of “adult population earn a post-secondary degree by 2025.”

Along with reforming higher education on the state level, some presidential candidates are looking to make change on a nationwide.

Democratic candidates Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, are advocating for public colleges to become tuition free or at least reduce tuition to the point where loans will be unnecessary.

“In a generation hard hit by the Wall Street crash of 2008, it forgives all student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education,” Sanders stated in an interview with the Washington Post.

Sanders is pushing to eliminate all $1.57 trillion to relieve those in debt basically overnight. As lovely as his plan is, I don’t believe it will be that easy  to accomplish nor is it entirely the government’s fault to fix the system.

Universities are the ones setting the high price so they should be the ones fixing the problem. If there are graduates filing for bankruptcy while receiving their diploma then universities should rethink their methods.

Holding the colleges and universities accountable should come first, forcing them to implement better forgiveness policies in order to eliminate some of the debt should be the first step. Once the debt is substantially reduced then the process to eliminate student loan debt through government funding would be lighter.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to remove all of my student debt in the blink of an eye, but the United States government is in no financial state to perform such an act for all millions of people suffering along with me.

The steps needed in order to get through this student loan debt are not simple but something needs to happen soon to save me from this crippling financial death.

Until the U.S. government decides to turn around the higher education system, my only hope will be for a stranger to kindly donate $30 million to the coming graduating classes at CCSU. I wish this good fortune onto the fellow members of the CCSU community.