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.
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.