Posted on 04/07/2005 9:57:22 AM PDT by MisterRepublican
WHITEWATER - At the off-campus house Johnny Lechner shares with three other UW- Whitewater students, the stairway to his attic bedroom is lined with photos dating back to his freshman year.
Lechner has lost track of many of the buddies that posed with him at these long- ago fraternity parties and Homecoming parades. They have moved on to new lives - careers, wives, children, mortgages - and that's just not Lechner's scene.
"I could have - should have - graduated many years ago, but I keep passing on the real world's invitation," said Lechner, 28, who is in his 11th year as a student in the University of Wisconsin System, the last 10 at UW-Whitewater. He's taken a full course load every semester except the current one, in which he's taking seven credits.
Lechner has completed 234 college credits, about 100 more than needed to graduate and so many that he's now paying the so-called "slacker tax."
System students who exceed 165 total credit hours - or 30 more than their degree programs require, whichever is higher - pay double tuition. The Board of Regents instituted the surcharge this school year as a none-too-subtle hint that a state-subsidized education has its limits.
The slacker tax doubles full- time tuition at UW-Whitewater (12 to 18 credits) to $4,816 a semester. With the surcharge, Lechner is paying $2,810 per semester for his seven-credit load.
It is a measure of Lechner's campus notoriety that many classmates call the slacker tax "The Johnny Lechner Rule." While he doesn't mind being known as "that guy who has been in college forever," Lechner declines to take credit for the Regents' sweeping policy change.
(Excerpt) Read more at madison.com ...
My thoughts exactly. As long as he is shelling out his own money let him stay in as long as he wants. He'll have to start paying back his $30K student loan as soon as he stops being a student.
I envy him a bit. College was a blast! The best seven and a half years of my life!
Not even the govt. can take what isn't there.
Oh, I agree. You can't get blood from a turnip. If someone has no assets and minimal income, there is very little creditors can do to get their money back.
That being said, having something like that on your credit record pretty much disqualifies you from getting any other type of loan or any job that requires any type of credit or background check. You pull something like that and you've sentenced yourself to a lifetime of living at or below the poverty level.
His middle-class parents pitched in financially for the first two years. Now he owes $30,000 in student loans but otherwise pays as he goes, using money earned as a waiter at the Janesville Olive Garden.
I was recently told by an admissions counselor at NC State Univ that the state subsidizes half of an instate student's fees. So if an instate tuition is $10,000, really the figure is $20,000 and the school is in effect giving you a scholarship.
The state through the taxpayers are subsidizing this "KID" and the federal loan's he has are subsidized by us the taxpayer. Since he has taken every class they have to offer, some of them twice, he is denying the seats in those classes to someone else who may need them. He needs to grow up and move on.
Wonder who's paying?
Most four year degrees nowadays take five years to finish.
Was your undergrad in Basketweaving or do you just eschew sleep?
He better start his own business when he gets out of college, because noone is going to hire him.
" He's taken a full course load every semester except the current one, in which he's taking seven credits.
Lechner has completed 234 college credits, about 100 more than needed to graduate and so many that he's now paying the so-called "slacker tax."
System students who exceed 165 total credit hours - or 30 more than their degree programs require, whichever is higher - pay double tuition."
...and the "journalist" apparently didn't take any math courses to have believed this "student" carried a full course load for 11 years and only has 235 hours.
I earned 144 credit hours in 8 semesters - 4 years, and never took a summer class.
Well, you can certainly make the argument that he's only hurting himself, but I guess that's his right; let's just say that in a competitive job market with a bunch of hungry go-getters, he's doomed. But if he stays in academia, of course, he doesn't have to deal with the competitive job market. At least not now. Later maybe.
At this point in his life, he's pretty much limited to the kind of jobs that college kids have. Part time jobs. Crap jobs. Jobs that will NEVER EVER pay him enough to pay off that $30,000 loan. At the rate he's going, he'll be in his 30's before he qualifies for his first entry-level position.
His only hope is to graduate and apply for grad school. That'll keep him off the street until his college fees go up so much that he won't be able to afford them waiting tables.
He might even wrangle a part-time gig as a teaching assistant. But one of these days soon, he's going to wake up and realize that everybody else; employers, banks, peers of his own age group, even the younger kids who started after him and will graduate before him - see him as an irredeemable loser.
The problem here is that you get older as the years pass even if you don't grow up. He better enjoy the company of those loopy little 18-year old college chicks while he can, because no self-respecting grown-up women is gonna want to get anywhere near him.
Interesting that he isn't take a full load this semester - hope he understands that student loans will become due for payments in six months......
Worked hard and didn't change my major.
We're paying out of state tuition this year - no one has to remind me how much more it is than in state.....lol
Did you take some prelim courses during HS and clep out of anything? If not you have busted your rear! Even so, you have worked hard....congrats
BTTT. This guy seems to love the college atmosphere. If he was smart, he would have used all his various connections on campus to find a job with this university. He could have remained in the college culture, while avoiding the "unpleasantness" of the real world.
My Marine went to school there......his frat was "Tappa Tappa Keg"......
We had a guy like him in college. B was the beneficiary of a poorly-drawn trust by his grandfather which allowed him to rake in the $$$ as long as he was "enrolled." He was a sophomore when I got there ('67) and a junior when I left ('71). The draft ended a year later and B still didn't go. A reunion speaker later said, "... and then there was B -- it took him three terms to finish his junior year -- Nixon's, Ford's and Carter's."
That's the same thought I had. And I agree with you about steering him towards graduate school. I'm one of those wierdos who, if I could afford it, could probably have spent my whole life in academe.
OTOH, had I done that I may never have become a Freeper! ;-)
When I graduated, I had 148 credit hours - 120 is required to graduate, and my junior and senior years were basically all 12-credit hour semesters. Not bad at all.
It's all in the planning.
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