I caught part of a discussion on the local AM station about USC mandating medical insurance either through parents or purchase the university brand for thousands more.
Excellent information. Very scary for ALL of us, parents or not.
My two attended Tech College. One is a City Planner and the other is an IT Guy. They lived at home while they went to school, drove beater cars, worked and paid as they went. No debt. Good salaries. Not living in my basement!
Younger Sister was coddled by Mom & Dad. She defaulted on her student loans and Mom & Dad picked up the tab. She went to a snotty, private, all-girls college; never has used her teaching degree, she’s never done anything other than Secretarial work. Do you have to ask what political stripe she is? Yeah. I didn’t think so. *SNORT*
I joined the Army and they paid for 90% of my education.
I am 100% debt free and I retired at 56.
It can be done. :)
There’s this thing called cost-benefit analysis.
Too bad it’s illegal to apply it to investing in a college degree.
Send your kids to cheaper schools.
“...and increasingly mortgages and home equity lines...”
Yeehaa...crank up the casa cash machine. It worked so well before...
I think a lot of these kids think if they graduate from an elite university (usually at a cost of 5+ times state schools ) with a “C” average think they will then waltz into a high paid job. Then reality happens.
College loans should be based on ‘degree marketable worth’. For instance, a humanities degree would be worth a loan of no more than 20% of that degrees charged cost. A degree in the sciences/math would be worth a loan of 80-100% of costs. At present, colleges/universities are in a win/win situation as they are paid ‘upfront’ whether one achieves their degree or not. Place more burden on said institutions and their interest on your success after graduation should be heightened along with a more ‘competitive cost situation’ for their degrees. As mentioned before, institutions of higher learning should be required to present a cost/benefit ratio analysis to ALL perspective students for their chosen field of study.
"Young man, your parents left you this fully-paid condominium worth $500,000.00. Unfortunately, it will have to be sold to pay off the student loans they took out to finance your bachelor of arts in gender studies. This could have all been yours."
"And now?"
"Not!"
"Not."
At some point, we are going to care more about qualifications than which school a student went to.
That’s a shame.
one of the things not talked about that is causing the student loan crisis is that a kid at 18 does not have a understanding of debt so they don’t think about taking out loans. that gets combined with parents that are totally irresponsible having there kid take out the student loans to use as free money. they don’t need this money while going to junior college. the money is then spent on everything but education and eventually the kid graduates with a debt that is 2-3 times what it should be and the parents who spent the money walk away saying that it is there debt even though they were the one who pushed the kid into taking the loans so they them selves could get ther money from the kids.
I saw my sister do it to my nieces
Finance, Engineering, Medicine or Science or stop subsidizing bloated administrators.
I can understand a 20 year old not understanding debt, interest, and amortization. But if their parents are that stupid, I have no sympathy at all.
There’s really an easy formula - the debt for a degree should not exceed what one can reasonably expect to gross during the first year of the first job you can get with that degree.
He got a job as a purchasing agent for the school. One of the benefits was reduced tuition for staff's family.
But I was expected to pay for the actual tuition, so besides carry a full load of classes each semester, I worked three part-time jobs to pay for my schooling.
My highest paying job of the three, paid 90 cents per hour.
Tuition was $145 per semester.
Why doesn’t jr take a semester or a year off and work while living at home to earn the tuition instead of having mom and dad take out loans?