Posted on 06/28/2019 12:02:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For decades now it’s been a sellers’ market for American universities. Conventional wisdom held that the most important way to succeed in life was to get a college diploma, no matter the cost.
Perhaps you’ve noticed university tuitions going up and up. And up. Inexorably.
And so has the debt incurred by their students and those students’ parents. It now totals about $1.6 trillion.
This being another tedious presidential election season, such a massive debt burden has attracted the attention of feeding politicians seeking to reap votes from younger Americans tasked with repaying the loans they signed up for.
As we wrote here earlier this week, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro and a growing list of the growing field of candidates have announced various plans to make public school tuitions free and to forgive these massive debts using — you guessed it — new taxes on someone else, namely the well-to-do.
Now comes a new wrinkle in these schemes and the universities’ hopes of continuing to reap huge tuition increases.
A new poll of nearly a quarter-million Americans has found fully two-thirds of them have buyer’s remorse about their diploma, their major and the higher education experience in general. How much longer do you think folks are going to keep paying such fees that produce such dissatisfaction and unhappiness?
Not surprisingly perhaps, the new survey found the top regret was incurring immense debts for that higher education, a debt whose payments run on for many years, causing postponed marriages and families.
An estimated 70 percent of college graduates this year finished school with loans to repay averaging $33,000.
Even older baby boomers are incurring college debts as they return to school for training in new areas not affected by automation and other labor-saving methods. The survey by PayScale found that even Americans over age 62 had some $86 billion in unpaid debts, theirs or their childrens’.
The second largest graduate regret was their choice of college majors. Sen. Marco Rubio has noted in speeches that the occupational demand for Greek philosophers has not been good for about 2,000 years.
Three-quarters of humanities graduates expressed regrets over their choice of study areas, tied to their difficulty finding employment in those areas at higher paying jobs enabling them to pay down the debt.
Most satisfied were majors in math, science, tech and especially engineering. More than a third of computer science grads and four-in-ten engineering grads had no regrets about their area choice of studies.
Interestingly though, teachers expressed the least regrets over their career choices, second least to engineers, despite the chronically low pay of such educators.
Aren’t their laws against selling Commie Snake Oil?
Not if it is Commies selling it -
The reverse of that is SCARY. Almost two thirds of computer science grads and six-in-ten engineering grads had regrets. And these are the most satisfied customers.
corrupt lawyers should not be allowed to run,
except from indictment.
Some college majors lead to jobs and careers which pay well. For those grads ,the high earnings should enable them to pay back the loans.
For many college majors, their majors do not qualify them for any particular job or career path. And they end up at lower paying jobs, jobs which don’t require their college eudcation to qualify for.
Too many people do not think through the consequences of what they major in, and how they will pay back those loans.
They have no reason to care.
They should be allowed to sue to get their money back.
I think part of this, is that we all grow and mature and change as we get older.
Someone deciding at age 18 what they will major in, and get a career from that major, could well have made a different decisions if attending college later in life.
Big Ed has been one the biggest rip offs in history.
I agree. The hard sciences, engineering, medical, physics, you really do need those degrees to learn what you need in those fields. But a lot of liberal arts degrees may round you out as a person, but don’t leave you with much that it marketable. Not a good position when you have 40k in loans and a pretty average paycheck.
“Conventional wisdom held that the most important way to succeed in life was to get a college diploma, no matter the cost.”
This is not a new phenomena. The only thing that is new are the RICO colleges and universities and their outrageous costs. Used to be pretty much everyone could work their way through and paid as the went...no debt.
Too many liberal arts majors, not enough plumbers. Ask Mike Rowe.
If it weren’t for partying and football and basketball games, most colleges would become online training.
He didn't think his Harvard degree was worth the $80K in loans.
“No man is an island.” - John Donne
“No man is a computer.” - blueunicorn6
Consumer sovereignty means profit and loss, or price signals. When customers have freedom, sellers must provide service they value. Democrats don’t “trust” the average American smelly-Walmart shopper you and me, so they feel Consumer Sovereignty is misguided and “wrong.” They prefer central planning [aka, the socialist command economy] to determine the allocation of all resources - including labor resources - your labor skills.
If you wish to enter an employment field and TRY, fail/succeed, but at least try and be the best you can be, that entrepreneurship is NOT permitted..............:
“There is an opening at Pig Farm #349 Comrade, so that is where you will work.”
You may want to TRY and take a risk to become a great rock singer, a restaurant chef, or a game designer, but - that will NOT happen.
The central planning board has a vacancy at the pig farm, someone retired/died, that is where you WILL go, and work...............
For those that graduated and [still] don’t understand fractions, that’s more than 50%——
Around where I live recruiters cannot find enough people with advanced degrees in bio sciences. A lot of them are getting starting base salaries of about $190,000. On the other hand, if you have a liberal arts degree you are in the same position as a high school graduate with no college degree.
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