Posted on 06/01/2010 4:44:02 PM PDT by jerry557
Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.
Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.
This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.
Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn't ask borrowers to verify their incomes.
Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn't have a lot of good options for digging out.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Oh, my dear, you don’t know me at ALL. ;0
>> “She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies.”
Yeah, but her degree is from a really good pricey college!
She should be making at least $22.50, maybe even $22.75.
Life just ain’t fair for these victims.
>> “women’s studies.”... Is that a career???
Back when I was thinking about college, my dream was to make a career out of studying women.
Then reality reared its ugly head.
Great Zeus! What kind of nitwit goes $97,000 in debt for that kind of degree?
If she had a degree in mining or business or ANYTHING practical and high paying I might be to see it. I would still think she was an idiot to be taking on that kind of load but "an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies."
Well technically you can do something with that degree. It’s still a bachelors degree. You can get immediate admission to a technical school or community college no questions asked. It opens the door to law school, business school, and even go back to school and get a teaching degree. Get a masters and a doctorate and be a professor. Etc, etc, etc...
It’s not a dead-end degree unless you make it that way. Most people that do get a liberal arts degree (i’d say over 90%) move on to other things and are very successful. And very few actually work in the field they studied in.
For example, most psychology majors will work in a field that has nothing to do with mental health. They may be attractive to companies as managers or human resource officers as they have a better understanding working with people. And they can apply this knowledge and fly up the corporate ladder.
Statistically a person with a college degree regardless of major will almost always be one step ahead of the employee that never went to college. It has happend many times. The problem is many students have a sense of entitlement and dont want to spend the time to work there way up the ladder.
>>The banking-higher-ed system is saddling these kids with debts they will not be able to pay back in twenty years. Easy money empowers the creeps, snakes and most vulgar to wipe out the herd. Where are the adults? These kids, most of them, come out of coddled lives in public schools where they no real math skills. Most can’t balance a checkbook, much less have any real idea of what even simple interest on a loan is. <<
Dang, you really don’t believe in personal responsibility, do you?
>>Can you pay back a $100,000 plus loan making less than #35K a year?<<
Lots of people do — it called a “mortgage.”
>>You paid your debt because you were damn lucky, in timing and in many things. <<
So, who uses the term “winners in life’s lottery” a lot, huh?
I guess working my @ss off, starting by getting a full time job working 50-60 hours a week AND my college load had nothing to do with it. Then Istarted working and have done so damn near every day of my life, to this day. I was just “lucky.”
And choosing “religion and womyn’s studies” as a degree program is all the fault of the Baby Boomer generation not the girl. Poor dear never had a chance.
Could you possibly be any more condescending?
The cost of higher education is criminal imho.
“The banking-higher-ed system is saddling these kids with debts they will not be able to pay back in twenty years. Easy money empowers the creeps, snakes and most vulgar to wipe out the herd. Where are the adults? These kids, most of them, come out of coddled lives in public schools where they no real math skills. Most can’t balance a checkbook, much less have any real idea of what even simple interest on a loan is. They accept what their elders tell them, and that message is dominated by the ones pushing these loans. Used to be no kid could sign a contract for such an loan until they were 21. The older generation changed that too. The ‘older’ generation dumbed down math in schools, lowered the age of contract, created a cultural atmosphere of buying on credit.
The ‘older’ generation took plush jobs, tenure, pensions, benefits, sabbaticals, in universities en masse — like fat slobbering over-fed house cats, not worried at all for the student life experience — which is amoral chaos at best and tragically immoral indoctrination at worst. Layers and layers of edcu-crats added to the cost burden, the bills for colleges are through the roof. Almost nothing rose faster in cost than a college degree.
Can you pay back a $100,000 plus loan making less than #35K a year?
That 35K a year is high today except in some fields. There just aren’t many jobs.
You paid your debt because you were damn lucky, in timing and in many things.
The kids trusted the older generation, their teachers, parents, society. We f**ked them over. We are f**king them over. That’s the truth of it.”
Granted, higher education has become a big racket over the last 30-40 years but to suggest that the fault that these students borrowed way too much money and now struggle to pay it back is the fault of anyone other than the borrower is irresponsible in itself. Most students have used good judgment when taking out student loans and most pay back what they owe. This woman is the exception. Unfortunately for her, she is learning a painful lesson.
>>Personal responsibility is SOOOOO hardcore evil. Meanie!<<
Just call me “Rove’s shadow.” LOL ;)
>> If she had a degree in mining or business or ANYTHING practical
Keep in mind that quite a few of these “Rhodes scholars” start out with “real” degree plans... then when they can’t cut the mustard, they fall back to less ambitious (and less challenging) studies.
Back when I was a pup, the progression went something like this:
Engineering, Pre-med
Engineering... never mind the pre-med
Computer Science
Business Information Systems
Business Administration
ANY degree plan with the word “Business” in it
History
History of Rock ‘n Roll
“Diversity Studies”
That is the plan.
It’s way past time for some enterprising lawyers to craft a class action suit claiming fraud in inducement of students to take out these loans. The colleges have access to information about the earning potential of graduates with various types of degrees and grades, and yet still actively encourage students to use loans to fund essentially worthless educations, and to continue through a 4 year program even while earning below average grades in a major which doesn’t even provide decent earning potential for graduates with 4.0 GPAs.
In many cases, one could argue that the students should know better, or that their parents should know better. But for students whose parents never attended any sort of college, that’s unrealistic. And students whose parents are deemed incapable of providing significant financial support towards college costs, are simply cut out of the process — the students don’t need their parents agreement to take out $100,000+ in loans and use it to major in something totally worthless at a third rate college.
This woman would have been much better off financially if she had skipped college and worked her way up the chain at Wal-Mart out of high school.
The parents and the school system is the root cause of the problem. It’s that simple.
Should young adults have been smarter before taking out massive loans, of course.
But who advised these kids all their lives growing up, beating into their brains that if they dont go to a good college that they will amount to nothing in life? And that if they do go, they will get a dream job, a dream house, and live happily ever after. That was the PARENTS that brainwashed their kids into thinking that way. And the universities played into it. Tuition costs have soared. And someone is making a hell of a lot of money.
That lawsuit might have a chance.
College...another dying 20th century institution ..on life support...
Most kids do not fall prey to this situation. In this specific case, she must pay her debt. Why should I, as a taxpayer, let her off the hook? I have already subsidized her government student loans and probably Pell grants. Regardless of where the root fault lies, the banks expect to get paid. I don’t care who pays (parents, grandparents, borrower) so long as it is not the taxpayer. She needs to be working 60-80 a week to pay down this debt. The party ended when she graduated college.
>>It’s way past time for some enterprising lawyers to craft a class action suit claiming fraud in inducement of students to take out these loans.<<
Where the heck did I logon to today? Bizarro-FR??
Just who in the heck is the “inducer?” The student applied to the college, applied for the loans, went of their own accord and kept signing loan documents! What was the fraud? I know I was never promised a job as a result of college — I personally assumed that it would increase my CHANCES of getting a BETTER job.
Or did gray matter just disappear in a few generations?
The life time earnings difference between a HS diploma and a bachelor’s degree is a about a million dollars according to the various articles pushing the value of a college education.
Guess what that $100K in student loans is going to cost her in interest? About a million bucks if she makes minimum payments. Federal Plus loans like she has are 8.5% fixed.
The only ones that are better off because she has a degree are the lenders and the college. It’s turned into a racket. Does she really need that BA to be a photographer’s assistant? Really?
Her BA was not a ticket to higher lifetime earnings, it was a ticket to lifetime debt slavery.
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