Sunday, May 3, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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In a time of uncertainty for everyone, college students aren’t being spared. Amid heavy student debt and a tightened job market for graduates, the idea of college as a gentle transition time between adolescence and adulthood has been completely upended by the COVID-19 crisis.
But within this difficult situation lies an opportunity for students to ease their own situation and for the nation to get help it desperately needs to cope with the pandemic as we emerge from lockdowns in the coming months.
Here’s the solution: Create an opportunity for students to offset some or all of their student loans by spending a year or two working in public health-related national service.
There are all sorts of tasks that students could perform, but this new structure could be especially effective in filling a huge demand for contact tracers.
Credible estimates of the number of tracers who will be needed nationwide range between 180,000 and 300,000, but that number could go far higher depending on the trajectory of the pandemic. Yet when National Public Radio did a survey of all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the results from the 41 states that responded, plus D.C., showed 7,602 tracers currently at work.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who estimates that his state alone will need as many as 70,000 tracers, likens it to recruiting an army. He’s right.
That’s where college students would be invaluable.
There’s precedent for this, and in fact a version of it is already happening in Las Vegas. UNLV students have been volunteering with the Southern Nevada Health District to help with contact tracing, assemble data, provide information to the public and perform various other duties.
If students like those could work off their loans in the process, even better. Not only would they graduate with less debt or possibly debt-free, but they could attain real-world workforce experience in the process.
There are plenty of models for this idea. Programs in various states and municipalities provide debt forgiveness for doctors, dental students, teachers and so forth who commit to work in underserved communities, for example. It’s time to expand the approach to the federal level.
There’s also an example of how not to go about setting it up: the George W. Bush-era Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which was designed to provide relief to students for going into teaching, nonprofit charitable and advocacy work, positions in government and similar fields. But the terms were extreme — forgiveness required 10 years of service and 120 loan payments — and the program was plagued by bureaucratic snafus. As a result, only a tiny portion of qualified applicants got relief.
By modeling programs that work and learning from one that failed, lawmakers have a clear road map for creating a new service program in national health.
Even after this pandemic is over, the pressing need for this initiative will go on. Public health issues exist for the homeless, the poor, in Native American communities and throughout rural America, where helping hands will be in demand on an ongoing basis. Moreover, giving students opportunities to work in this field prepares the nation for the next pandemic.
The pandemic has presented a dizzying number of challenges, but it’s also stretched us to think innovatively about how to recover and protect ourselves in the future. We think this idea is a proactive and pragmatic one that will keep young people moving forward in their education while improving the health of all Americans. We’d urge our elected leaders to run with it.
