Posted on 03/17/2012 8:57:01 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Saddled with college debt By Melissa M. Horton, Published: March 16
“You can go to any college you want.”
“You won’t have to pay for college.”
“You’ll have lots of scholarships and financial aid.”
These are just a few of the things my parents said throughout my childhood. I am a second-generation U.S.-born Latina. Growing up in the suburbs of Fort Worth, I was a straight-A student in Advanced Placement classes, with many civic activities on my resume.
At 17, I never could have dreamed that my parents’ promises were lies.
A decade-plus later, I, like many millennials, have more than $100,000 in student loan debt, most of which can be directly attributed to my parents’ unfortunate placement smack in the middle of the middle class and the fact that our family was uneducated about financing higher education.
My parents — a nurse and a police officer — were the first in their families to attend college, though Dad dropped out and joined the Marine Corps during Vietnam. Both baby boomers who attended state universities, they were ill-prepared for their two public-school-educated daughters to attend private universities that left us drowning in debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Never said what her degrees or military commission were.
Do they still have programs where you can work off your debt? For example, there have been programs for teachers, who go into underserved inner-city or rural schools, and can get loan forgiveness for their work there.
Too many kids nowadays go to college, with no thought of how their degrees will translate into jobs afterwards.
What will a degree in Women’s Studies do for you in job market? Studying women may be fascinating, but how many employers look for women studiers?
Or, Black studies, or even “Gay” studies at some colleges nowadays. How many businesses are looking for philosophers, who majored in philosophy? Maybe it’s fascinating to derive a philosophy of life and all that, but it won’t get you a job.
Too many kids have the idea that just going to college itself prepares them for the future and future careers, regardless of what they major in.
dude!
All you taxpayers need to chip in and pay for my bad decisions! I’m a Latina! I’m a lawyer!
All you taxpayers need to chip in and pay for my bad decisions! I’m a Latina! I’m a lawyer!
I guess that, at 17, neither her nor her parents heard of a community college....just sayin’....
Once Congress passed laws that made it more nearly impossible to discharge credit card and student loan debt in bankruptcy court, they basically turned the whole system upside down. One of the important factors in the collapse of the mortgage industry in recent years is that a mortgage became one of the easiest forms of debt for someone to walk away from.
If someone in this woman's situation came to me for advice, I'd tell her to take out a second mortgage or home equity loan (or have her parents do it, if she doesn't own her home), pay off the student loan, and then mail the house keys to the bank. Case closed. Go to the head of the class, young lady!
This from the washington post....the company that has the money to keep printing their rag of a newspaper because of the profits they generate off the university they own. I wonder if debt forgiveness for student loans would be financially beneficial to the washington post? Nothing but crooks trying to rob the public treasury. We need to be building more prisons to house all these Democrats.
Alas, that never happens.
Therefore, if you knowingly agree with assuming debt you should pay it back and stop complaining about it.
If you can't afford to go to a University, either attend a local Junior College, get a job or do both like I did.
Another wasted Generation of whining Children masquerading as Adults, just like the guy in the White House who never did an honest day of work in his life.
What? Make her move home to live with liars?
It is way past time for the “Higher Education” Bubble to burst, hopefully by now, middle class parents wouldn’t dare to put their kids thru college unless they have the resources or scholarships to make it happen.
Blame, blame, blame-—typical liberalism blaming others for their mistakes. She even admitted she should have attended local college in TX rather than Boston to keep tuition costs lower. Didn’t heed that advice so now pay up. How come liberal, leftist run higher education costs have skyrocketed anyway? Leftisms utopia isn’t free honey. Shut up and pay your debts in full like a responsible citizen.
My house has been paid for for years. Any mortgage principal & interest reduction should be retroactive too!
I am a practical minded person. I look at my situation and then I do what I must do to take care of it.
So yes, I would move into the house of Hitler if it meant taking care of a situation. :)
Mind you she could also take a part time job to supplement her income to pay down the loan. Work an extra two days a week and she could pay down her loan by an extra 500 bucks a month or so.
Cry me a f***ing river...
I’m an American of Hispanic ancestry (is “Latina” some new buzzword?) from a middle class family. I put myself through college by WORKING-something I’d been doing since I was 15. During that time, I also married, had a kid and divorced. I did have help from my parents in the form of a home if I couldn’t afford one, and baby sitting by my mom and sibling. I did have to take off a couple of semesters while I worked two jobs, but I never applied for/got welfare, loans or food stamps.
That whiny young woman needs to apologize to her parents, cowboy up and take some responsibility...
>>My house has been paid for for years. Any mortgage principal & interest reduction should be retroactive too!<<
Absolutely. I am very tired of those of us who take our obligations seriously, honor our promises and pay our debts watching those who shrug their shoulders and blow off their debts get those debts reduced or eliminated.
When our kids were in high school the guidance counselor recommended one of them go to Rutgers in NJ - altho we lived in PA. She said his aptitude was for astronomy (which he was interested in, but so what?) and they had a good program at Rutgers. There was the usual blah, blah financial aid,blah blah... The gap between the financial aid and the tuition would have been insurmountable for us.
We had very low income at the time and my other son was already going to a Penn State satellite campus and living at home for the first two years before moving to the main campus to finish. So that is where my younger son went also. Both worked summers and at times during the school year.
Both kids (now in their late 40’s) got their BS’s and the younger one went on to become a PLS and PE, currently employed by the federal government in mapping. The other has his Ph. D in Engineering Mechanics and is a researcher at Penn State.
While they were eligibile at least one year for Pell Grants, the grants were not funded. They did get financial aid from PA.
They got out of school with minimal student loans. One with $5K and the other with $8K which they paid off.
I do think that responsible colleges and universities should do a much better job of educating parents and kids on costs. I think guidance counselors are probably worthless.
Maybe her parents should have learned the word ‘no’ and insisted that they couldn’t afford to co-sign for her to go to Boston and that she stay home and go to a local community college and university instead.
That right there would have fixed the whole problem.
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