Posted on 12/06/2021 7:46:40 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Insider (formerly Business Insider) published what was meant to be a heart-rending story about a single mom burdened with $430,000 in student debt and a sick child, all to help promote student loan forgiveness. Instead, the article should remind us that degree jockeys in the liberal arts are, for the most part, incredibly foolish.
“Maria” is a 48-year-old with a Ph.D. in some unidentified major (but it’s clearly in the liberal arts), who took out $360,000 in student loans to get her degree. Insider assures us that Maria was very thoughtful about borrowing the money:
Maria had a goal to teach at a university full-time. Today, she "absolutely" regrets pursuing that goal.
While Maria’s undergraduate education, which she completed in 2001, was funded through scholarships and Pell grants, she knew more advanced degrees would give her a leg up in university teaching — especially as a woman in the industry. So she pursued a master’s degree and a PhD, the latter of which took seven years to complete.
It was not a decision she took lightly, and at the time she believed the commitment would be worth it. Maria, who requested her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, extensively researched the program, and its statistics for employment post-graduation looked promising. However, she was unable to land a full-time university job after graduation in 2014 and found herself unable to afford her student-loan payments.
Now, at 48 years old, Maria’s student-loan balance is $430,000 — all from her advanced degrees, per documents reviewed by Insider.
No wonder Maria says “I feel like I’m in a hole that I’m never going to get out of.” She’s right.
The only genuinely sad thing about Maria’s story is that her daughter got leukemia, sucking up much of Maria’s money.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
LOL!
She needs to run for the Senate as liberal Democrat “Dr. Maria” - she’ll have that debt paid back with a single speaking engagement. :)
What!? She paid for her graduate degrees? If she had to pay, that was her first clue that she’s never going to get a tenure track position. If she had promise the school would have covered her tuition, books and maybe covered living expenses. Seven years to complete a Ph.D is another clue. Two years of coursework maybe and five years to write a dissertation. Yikes. Obviously she wasn’t publishing and bringing in grant money.
It’s sad and hard to believe that she could be so uninformed about the probability of finding a job in the academy. Now if she was in a STEM field and a minority she might have had a slim chance.
Take time to watch this interview with Mike Patey & his twin brother Mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVlq4iRe65k
SocialFlight Live! - The Never-Before-Told Stories of Mark & Mike Patey
Their sign painter dad went blind when the boys were 15 years old. To help support their family of 11, they started a business building decks. Later, Mike was in college, 19 years old , trying to attend classes and at the same time, sometimes working double shifts to keep their deck building business running smoothly.
Oh, by the way, they had 200 employees at that time. Mike took a long hard look and dropped out of school.
One of their companies, Best Tugs, now sells about $1.4 million worth of aircraft tugs annually.
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