Posted on 05/12/2012 7:26:12 PM PDT by Lorianne
Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.
“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.
Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.
“As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it,” said Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
123 colleges now belong to the 50K club.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37247019/25-most-expensive-colleges-in-the-nation/
She wants to make it everyone else's debt. That would just be so much "fairer".
$900 a month just to find out the only thing your skilled to do is be a waitress. P.T. Barnum was right ... a sucker is born every minute.
...Couldn't be faculty salaries, benefits and retirement costs, could it?
If I'm not mistaken, the costs for college really started to grow wildly shortly after the government stepped in to "make college affordable".
You are absolutely correct. As soon as the government started
handing out our money these colleges expanded in scope and
size and number..
It’s the students own fault. And the lying administrators
who just want the students money,and vote for candidates
who will make laws taking our money and giving it to the
colleges....total racket.
We’re gonna get away from the entitlement society when we
go broke..
The mother is just now getting around to getting life insurance on her daughter for the debt? I’d have thought she’d have done that the same day she signed the loan paperwork. oh well, at least mom’s succeeded in getting her daughter labeled ‘victim’. I guess that’s something.
I read somewhere that more than a few self-made billionaires never finished college...maybe it was here:
I am a Program Chair for a community college in the midwest. Two of the three degrees that you can earn in my program have a 90% success in finding jobs after graduation. Jobs that start at $50k per year and go up to over $100k with years of experience. These jobs also have fantastic benefits. After two years of college ($10,000 for books and tuition.), these kids are making more than I am. And yet, the companies that need these employees have to go out and recruit among high schools and run ads to get people to sign up for these programs.
What are these programs? Power plant operator and electric line worker.
Jobs that pay extremely well but require real work. Physical work.
Spot on. The universities essentially prey upon unsophisticated young adults. It is borderline criminal, certainly should be completely socially unacceptable. This debt cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy, unlike other debts. Now that only gov’t make student loans, we are turning our young people into indentured servants of the gov’t with those loans.
Commie NYT will never post the salaries of these indoctrination camps will they!
I would disagree and stipulate that pole dancers are experts in marketing to men at least.
Of course, these were the same parents stupid enough to co-sign the loans.
We know a single mother whose lovely college grad daughter has decided to stop paying for her student loans. Guess who gets to pay those co-signed loans, mom?
Some years ago, I saw an article discussing the cost of college. They interviewed a college president who said exactly the same thing.
And no jobs thanks to zero!!! stupidity is something taught at commie school as he makes his campaign rounds to all the stupid on college campusses
There are better tracks to obtaining college education. But, they involve some planning and discipline amd plain old hard work.
My own son joined the Marine Reserves out of high school. He did a deployment in Iraq, saved his money and then began college. He holds down two jobs while going to school and is on track for the Marine officer program.
He paid cash for a motorcycle and a good car. He is completely self supporting and debt free completing his second year in college. Oh, and he also is just back from a vacation in the Caribbean.
One thing we did teach him was how to think clearly through a proposed course action and understand that actions always have consequences and to act accordingly. He got it!
Wouldn’t 50K be sufficient for a small start up? Honestly, that is the route I am pushing my kids, although their college education will already be paid for by the time they decide to go.
Yes, I was trying to say that. They are expert at sales and marketing without the $120k debt or loss of 5 earning years.
I'm surprised Forbes didn't mention Guy Laliberté, a street juggler. After co-founding Cirque du Solei he's now worth $2.6 billion. I wonder how that conversation with his parents went, to bypass college for juggling and playing an accordion on the street for tips.
My sons were given the choice: We help and they help and together we pay for it as we go. If they do debt, we are out of the deal. They both got through without debt, but they had to work hard.
More kids need parents like that.
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