Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Student loans & TikTok
The March 17 installment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver kicked off with a discussion on TikTok and student loans. In other words, this was the most Gen Z episode known to mankind.
Admittedly, the TikTok discussion was pretty short and existed mostly in order to allow Oliver to do a silly little video as though he was on the social-media app. The student loan part was the main segment tonight and understandably, it was far more substantial. This is a subject that a lot of people are well-aware of already, mostly because a good percentage of Americans have them. They can be predatory at times and they certainly generate a lot of discussion online.
Are they a problem with an easy solution? Well, let’s just say not so much, which is why there are still ongoing discussions about them.
There was a significant part of the episode tonight that was a history lesson, one designed to accurately show how these loans ended up getting so big in the first place. This was not an overnight phenomenon, as there were changes to them that stretched across administrations. For a lot of the population out there, a significant part of this segment may have served to be nightmare fuel, learning a lot about a serious problem that has crept more and more from private to public institutions.
The most valuable part of the segment
To us, it was a reminder of how colleges are becoming more and more like resort-style environments in certain places. It helps to convince students to attend and then, they have to take out larger loans to fund them. This is a hard thing for someone 18 years old and just starting life to understand, and they don’t really get to figuring that out until after the fact.
Beyond that, Oliver also dove into the difficult barrier for entry that comes with not having a college degree. We’ve created a world where this is essential for employment and yet, it is almost impossible to afford.
What did you think about Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this time around?
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