Posted on 03/27/2021 8:30:34 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
One can think of college as 'breakfast' for young adults and a mortgage as 'lunch' for middle-aged adults. Because the federal government via the Federal Reserve has made 'lunch' artificially cheap, 'breakfast' has been made more expensive.
College tuition has gone up 1400% since the 1970s because colleges knew they could charge anything they wanted and the dumb 18-year olds they exploited would take out the government loans and hand it over to them.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/College-tuition-and-fees/price-inflation
I graduated in 1977 with $10k + student loan. My first job paid $11400 a year. That was normal for the time. Your loan was about 1 years starting salary.
One has to wonder about the wisdom of paying 100s of thousands of dollars to learn to do a job paying $15 an hour.
I went to college in the 70s and early 80s. I checked to see what tuition and fees are at colleges I went to, compared to what they were when I attended. Tuition and fees have increased far more than the rate of inflation.
I wonder what the debt burden is for today’s new grads, based on salaries of the jobs they get after graduation, considering what such jobs paid now vs. Years ago.
I worked and paid my way through college in the early ‘70s.
Paid my first year on a dollar an hour at McDonald’s.
Never took a dime from my parents or the government.
This touches on the fact that some college majors just don’t lead to job and career fields in the job market. People should choose college majors wisely.
In 1986 I bought a house with a $77,000 mortgage at 10 percent. That's $209,866 in today's money.
I drove a used car until 1987, so no payments there. Got married in 1987 which helped with the debt burden. She had a paid off car too.
Today's young adults have bigger student debts, pay rent, pay car loans, and stay single. Too bad for them.
Add to this, the ability to take out loan after loan for a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving.
Kids are leaving college with loans in the 6-figures to get a Masters in Social Work. To get a job that pays what? $30-40,000 a year to start, so they can help people. And all they do is help do nothing more than providing paperwork for Section 8, WIC, SNAP, etc. Who needs a Masters degree for that?
Same can be said about so many degrees offered these days.
You’re all a bunch of suckers. In 1978, after high school, I joined the Navy and THEY paid ME! And, they’re still paying me 43 years later!
(I should point out that the above is a joke. I do not, in reality, believe that you, or anybody else on this thread is a sucker. The above post was in jest, and is not meant to insult anybody or hurt anybody’s feelings. I feel I need to post this disclaimer these days.)
That is simply not possible today. I did the same as you, but my kids could not come close to the same thing.
My kids worked through school, and probably contributed as much as I did (percentage wise.). But they also make twice what I did upon graduation. In 1983 I made about $16,500. My daughter makes about $45 an hour.
That is not the norm though. Kids are still getting loans for business and accounting degrees. There were useless majors 35 years ago.
That’s because the feral government started handing out student loans like candy.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/College-tuition-and-fees/price-inflation
It is a matter of expectations. When you graduated college with an engineering degree, say, and expected about a years salary for student loans, your expectations were about right. Today, when a recent college graduate with gender studies and victimology degree graduates with a $150,000 student loan debt, they are looking at five years of gross pay at their $15.00 an hour job at Starbucks. They expected someone to offer them about $125K annually for the skills they obtained getting their degree. So they look at their paychecks and how much they are laden with debt and (true to their victimology training) say, “Poor me! I have it so bad!” Mom or Dad should have straightened them out on the demand for majors in Hispanic balladry and the expected pay for such people. But, if it happened, it did not sink in.
The photo of the NYC Occupiers that blew me away was a guy who had a sign complaining that he owed "$100,000 for a Masters degree in (drumroll) PUPPETRY" and couldn't find a job.
I thought it was a spoof but searched and found one university that offered a Masters in that severely limited field:
Puppetry Master's Degree Programs. Individuals who are interested in puppetry as well as drama, the performing arts, and theater may want to consider earning a master's degree in puppetry or taking puppetry coursework while earning a related master's degree. These degree programs prepare students for careers as professional puppeteers in various on-stage or filmed productions.
As I understand it, there are yearly and total federal loan limits for undergraduate students whose parents are able to obtain PLUS Loans:
https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsidized
some:
First-Year Undergraduate Annual Loan Limit - $5,500(dependent students)/$9,500 (independent students)
undergraduate Aggregate Loan Limits - $31,000(dependent students)/$57,500 (independent students)
Graduate or Professional Student Annual Loan Limit (yearly) - $20,500
undergraduate and graduate Aggregate Loan Limits - $138,500 for graduate or professional students
“If you are a dependent student whose parents are ineligible for a Direct PLUS Loan, you may be able to receive additional Direct Unsubsidized Loan funds.”
“The interest rates for Direct Subsidized Loans and Direct Unsubsidized Loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2020 and before July 1, 2021 are shown in the chart below.
Undergraduate Borrowers 2.75%
Graduate or Professional Borrowers 4.30%”
“If it is your first time receiving a Direct Loan, you will be required to complete entrance counseling, a tool to ensure you understand your obligation to repay the loan”
I quit college because I was too immature and wasting my father’s money. I joined the Air Force instead. By the time I finished my 20 years, I had two associates, one BS in Technical Operations, and two MS in advanced aerospace and spacecraft engineering. My total student loan debt? $0. I do not have any sympathy for the snowflakes with massive debt on degrees to nowhere. Every time I hear them complaining, I ask for more fries with my burger.
Funny thing about that. I started college in '62 taking basic courses. I told my adviser that I was thinking about becoming a petroleum engineer. He advised me that the only way to get a job in that industry was to wait for somebody to die. Well, we all know what eventually happened there.
The government at that time was sponsoring all sorts of courses and aid in language learning so I majored in Spanish. Several degrees later I'm teaching at the university level and pursuing the last degree. By the time I finished, there were 200+ applicants for every college teaching position as the hippie revolution removed the language requirements from most colleges.
Well, I ended up in insurance and eventually consulting, making a fairly decent living, but I learned that what is useless at one stage or in demand at another may not always hold up.
Nevertheless, much of the current crap being taught will never produce anything worthwhile.
“If you are a dependent student whose parents are ineligible for a Direct PLUS Loan, you may be able to receive additional Direct Unsubsidized Loan funds.”
I suspect that is where most graduate repayment problems arise.
Most of college is useless. The woman that does my taxes isn’t a CPA and she knows the tax code inside and out, especially for folks that work outside the US.
The government shouldn’t be in the business anyway, like Soetero did it.
I had loans through the Dept of Education. They ripped me off for about a year and this was before being able to do anything on line. Got an envelope every month with a bill.
I tried to send extra money to pay down the balance, to pay the loan off fast. If I had stuck to their loan payment schedule, I would have paid back well over $40k on about $22k in loans. Anyway, rather than put my extra money toward the principal they applied it to future monthly payments. Called and it made no difference.
Eventually got a private 3rd party and paid them off on my schedule rather than the governments.
If they still want to help with loans from the Dept of Ed, cap it at $10k, total. Anything you need after that, go to the private sector.
But some accommodation could be made for something like medical school or some other STEM related degree.
I know people who spent a summer in Europe on student loan money and paid all their tuition with it.
They aren’t very happy people now.
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