Posted on 10/26/2011 8:29:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Two-thirds of all college students now graduate with debt, and owe an average of $24,000, as student loans are quickly becoming the only way many Americans can afford a college education.
As a result, thousands of young people -- who are also facing high unemployment -- are forced to tackle mountains of debt immediately after graduating, and many are uncertain about their futures.
Shannon Johnson, who has been a lawyer at a small, family-owned firm in North Dakota for two years, said she owes more than $150,000 from her undergraduate degree and law school.
"Because of my choice to attend college and law school, I live every day paycheck to paycheck and am forced to rely on credit cards to get by," she said. "I don't feel like I will ever be able to get to a better place, buy a home or start a family."
Others are wondering if going to college was worth the cost.
"I cannot find a well paying job," said Robin Snyder of Perkasie, Pa. "I equate it to the housing market crash -- I now owe more on my education than it's worth."
The total U.S. student loan debt is quickly approaching the $1 trillion mark, and last year it surpassed credit cards as the highest debt that Americans carry. That is in part because the cost of education has skyrocketed in the past 30 years, up 900 percent since 1978.
Shockingly, one of the biggest jumps in college costs came in the last decade. According to CollegeBoard, tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities increased 5.6 percent each year beyond the rate of general inflation.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
My own experiences in teaching math in today's public schools, and a lot of anecdotal evidence says that kids today have especially poor basic match skills, especially of the sort needed to understand the cost of long term debt. This is despite SAT math scores rising since the late 1970s. How can it be that my experience bests the SAT score tracking? SAT math tests have been dumbed down! And why is that? The protection of the higher education industry.
Moreover teaching of the basic accounting and finance concepts needed to understand borrowing as an investment is exceedingly rare.
College costs have gone up at a rate beyond all other common lifetime expenses. The rate of unemployment for the recent college grads has gone up, also at an rate beyond that experienced by most alive. This means that the parent's and grandparent's sense of the value of an education, balanced with the long-term burden of loans for college, is not founded in experience, is at variance with that experience.
Student life has become a intense mix of ammorality, immorality and chaos, to which the each student will respond differently, but only a few without significant damage. Damage to the spirit, to the intellect and to to body.
Anarchy, Ignorance, and STDs.
Depression, brain-washing and arrogant rudeness.
Making exactly the kind of persona least likely to be able to pay back long-term debt either by inclination or ability and hampered by the kind of life-cycle accidents and bad choices the moral chaos in which the modern college soaks and drowns nearly all students.
Where do the big money come from? From big dadday government! Who gives a frig about Alumni anymore. Interest by the higher ed establishment in their alumni is diminishing quickly.
You can say, “Too bad, it was their choice,” and you’d be right. But remember, these are 17-year-old kids with no life experience being asked to make the choice. All their lives, they’re told, “You have to go to college. You have to choose the right courses to get into college. You have to take an SAT prep course so you can do really well on your SAT and get into a good college.” All their lives, from the time they’re very young, that’s all kids hear—from parents, counselors, teachers. No one ever says, “You could be a plumber and not have to go to college. You could fix cars. You could be a production splicer for the phone company. You could start a landscaping company,” or any of the other things people do to make a decent living without a degree. These aren’t presented as desirable alternatives for the average middle-class kid, and indeed, they’re not: given a choice between working in a nice clean office doing something you’re good at and snaking out other people’s toilets, most young folks would not choose to be a plumber.
So don’t be too hard on them. When you hear nothing else your whole life except “Go to college,” it’s unsurprising if you do decide to go to college. Especially if you’re just 17 or 18 when you make that choice. And when even a state university costs so much that you can’t work your way through, as I did, it’s not surprising that the inexperienced kid signs up for loans. The colleges make it very hard not to get financial aid.
typo fix: “The kids can NOT do the basic financial math needed to understand long term debt, return on investment, and cash flow analysis.”
“student loans are quickly becoming the only way many Americans can afford a college education.”
No. Wrong. Bad reporting. Not objective. An outright lie.
Here in California, you can do your two years general ed for hundreds of dollars — not thousands — at any of dozens of community colleges.
Anyone can hold down a job and pay those fees as they go.
Then you transfer to the Cal State system or the UC system for your final two years. Ten grand a year for books and tuition.
And since one in eight Americans is a Californian, I’m on much firmer ground in asserting that THIS is how most Americans are affording college, you hacky ABC reporter.
This agenda-driven article is just trying to build the case that I’m somehow obligated to pay for someone else to go to the Ivy League school I couldn’t afford.
Public education is fantastic in California, but apparently it’s just not good enough for the entitled darlings who want East Coast validation, even if means borrowing a hundred grand. Then they can smug it up toward suckers like me who went to state colleges — and have no debt.
No sale.
“Because of my choice to attend college and law school, I live every day paycheck to paycheck and am forced to rely on credit cards to get by,”
Yup. It was YOUR CHOICE to go to law school right after college, instead of working for a few years to earn the tuition. I paid cash for my first 2 years after working for 4 years after college, took out commercial loans for the last year, and paid it off before my 4th anniversary of passing the bar. And that was a private law school. And I ain’t nobody special.
Colonel, USAFR
I worked and paid my way through a BS in accounting then went to work for a private university that allowed me to get my Master’s through them for free. Took me 9 years to get it all but in that time period alot of the people I went to school with should not have even been there, let alone on student loans.
Exactly. Even time in the Guard and Reserves will build up Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits. Well done, and thanks for your service.
Colonel, USAFR
gubmint subsidized education has the same outcome as gubmint subsidized health care.
what a shocker.
and the “solution” is always more gubmint intervention.
Our daughter went to a lot of trouble getting every scholarship she could apply for and graduated with little debt. Her grandparents had set up the Texas Tomorrow Fund for her when she was in middle school, which locked her tuition at the rates for that time.
my choice to attend college and law school
her choice....
the bankruptcy rule was put in place to protect the ivory towers.
The ugly truth is that bankruptcy SHOULD discharge student loans.
If a graduate can not find a suitable job in 5 years, the degree is worthless. The number of graduates who declare bankruptcy SHOULD impact a universities ability to qualify to recieve these types of monies.
This would cull the nonsense degrees.
this is in agreement with my friend who has made a great living the past 10 years doing student loan collections. it'll never happen- Uncle Sugar can never say 'no' to his most spoiled rotten children.
Perhaps they should’ve thought about how to pay it back before they borrowed it?
Yep and this p*sses me off beyond belief! Why because hubby and I are two white kids from Appalachia who couldn’t afford to go to school but now I’ll be on the hook for someone else’s education!
The first thing potential students should learn is basic-basic economics. Not economics 101 but economics .001.
It has some very simple facts to consider before going headlong into a debt it will take many years to pay off.
Econ .001 Rules:
1. Before you spend one penny, choose the course of education that will make you valuable (a good income producing tool) to your future employer and not in a field that is popular today but won’t be in four years. Worse yet one that will be saturated in four years.
2. Choose a field that provides two avenues of career progression. One is to work for an employer and the other is to work for yourself.
3. The most important rule...determine whether you need to go to college at all! Learn a trade or self-educate yourself.
Students with good grades; and who study in needed fields such as engineering, can find money.
They can also earn college credits while still in high school.
There are many ways to get around college debt if students want to work hard.
If they want to screw around in high school and college; things are different.
You have to develop a ‘knowledge portfolio’ that is just as diversified as any good financial portfolio, the norm now is for people to have several careers over the span of their working years.
That said, I have family that have kids that are out of college living at home. Or out of college and working as a waitress.
Or out of college and working at a fast food joint.
Yeah..they got degrees in "Foreign Dance" and "World Religions"....and wonder why they can't get jobs.
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