Not looking forward to the large groups graduating with gender/culture/journalist degrees. A large generation lost. The smarter ones will figure out how to squeeze money from government grants like they do in Sweden.
Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
21–30 of 108 posts
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#22$200k for journalism and media studies was a bad investment. It's a tough message, but you have to invest in education more intelligently than 'throw money at it and hope for the best'.
If you're paying that much for a degree, colleges usually have good contacts in the industry and can really give you a leg up on networking and finding job opportunities.
There are 100 people in your class and 1 job - there is no amount of "networking" than can fix this for 99 of those grads.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#23"Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy."
Smart move. Maybe he will pay it all down some day. In this thread there are a lot of people saying you shouldn't take out a lot of loans to get a degree like journalism, and you shouldn't. I agree that is the type of degree that I would encourage someone to get as a second major, and/or from a state school.
Part of the problem here is that all of these people's parents grew up in a different time period where having a technical major was less important, schools were much cheaper, and it was easier to find jobs in general. Combine this with the utter lack of skilled and proper advising for freshmen coming into college.
You get there and you are 18 years old, have little concept of money and underdeveloped judgement skills. Then you go to your advisor who is a scatter-brained English professor with books all over his office. Advising for him is just one of those things you have to do as a professor but he isn't really there to advise and has no idea what to tell you, or his 100 other advisees. So then he asks you what you like and you tell him you like writing. There you go, major in journalism. Even then, some people might want to sign up for CS or Business but they lose the class signup lottery because those departments are under funded and don't have enough sections. Then they lose again for the next 3 semesters and are forced to declare a major in classes that they already have experience in.
There is no point where they explain the value of a degree to you and it can be difficult to understand for most people until they are 2 or 3 years in and suddenly realize that they are stuck in this path and can't go back to change majors because it would take more school and they can't take on more debt. You can't drop out and start over later because then you have to start paying those loans and don't have a degree at all.
tl;dr; it isn't just these kids making bad decisions, it is a dysfunctional system that leads people down paths that are convenient for the school, not necessarily for the students.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're paying that much for a degree, colleges usually have good contacts in the industry and can really give you a leg up on networking and finding job opportunities.
Good luck in journalism though.
It says he was trying to get a Hollywood career.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#25$200k for journalism and media studies was a bad investment. It's a tough message, but you have to invest in education more intelligently than 'throw money at it and hope for the best'.
Indeed. Although I have respect for the highly educated journalists... the industry has been demolished by online blogs. The popularity contest that is the online blogosphere is more important financially than hard work and legitimate, high-quality journalism that they teach. There's almost no money in that business anymore.
Besides that most of the top papers only hire from the top ivies.
Which generally don't even have journalism programs.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#26a bachelor's degree in journalism and media studies. He's especially interested in a Hollywood career, but has found it hard to land a job there. These folks went into debt to the tune of nearly 4x the average american pre-tax income, for a theater degree. No, the lenders shouldn't have let them do that... but come on.
Astronomical tuition costs for _some_ colleges is a broken system... Taking out massive loans to attend those overpriced colleges is a bad decision.
I can at least sympathize with 17-year-old kids who sign papers without adding up the numbers, but can't feel bad for parents who willingly let this happen.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#27$200k for journalism and media studies was a bad investment. It's a tough message, but you have to invest in education more intelligently than 'throw money at it and hope for the best'.
$200k for many majors is a bad investment. There are a handful of careers where that kind of education investment will pay off (technology, medical), but most will not.
Even for majors with high post-grad salaries (eg, engineering of any kind), you can get a degree for much less than that.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#28I was a writer for Wired Magazine for three years and never took a single class in journalism, and nothing beyond the required english classes in college. I think we need to do more to help educate parents and prospective students that in most cases a college degree is next to worthless. For-profit schools like the University of Phoenix get a lot of negative press, but how about these little known colleges referenced…
>I think we need to do more to help educate parents and prospective students that in most cases a college degree is next to worthless.
Do you have a source for this? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the exact opposite. [0]
>Most psych/business majors would be better served working their way up through the ranks.
Source? Again and again, people only seem to look at the cost of education like education is a product that you buy at a store that could be gotten cheaper if you follow this One Weird Trick. College education is an experience, an exposure to new ideas, a gradual development of ancillary skills.
>This is easier said than done when most entry level gigs require a college degree, but you can still get an affordable degree at most state universities.
Why would anyone bother to get an affordable degree when they are "in most cases... next to worthless?"
Again, another person who went to college advocating that other people don't go to college. Every time this topic comes up, people who have clearly benefitted from higher education start claiming no one else needs a college education.
The same attitude that led us into the student loans debacle -- "education is a product" -- is the same attitude that pervades every thread about this topic, but somehow the participants think they've 'hacked' the system by advocating people not get an education. It's bizarrely short sighted by otherwise educated individuals.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#29Never cosign a loan. There is one reason that lenders required a co-signer -- they know that the borrower is high risk for defaulting. If you can't afford or didn't save for college, go to a cheaper school. In-state tuition and fees at most state universities is more than it used to be but still generally under $10K a year. There is no reason to go into six-digit debt for an undergraduate degee. With very few excepti…
Given that you can't get out of student loan debt through bankruptcy, they're at basically no risk. It might take them your entire lifetime to collect, but they'll get it eventually unless you happen to kill yourself at a young age.
What happens if you stop living in the US? (I realize very few people would do this, but I'm curious)
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#30Never cosign a loan. There is one reason that lenders required a co-signer -- they know that the borrower is high risk for defaulting. If you can't afford or didn't save for college, go to a cheaper school. In-state tuition and fees at most state universities is more than it used to be but still generally under $10K a year. There is no reason to go into six-digit debt for an undergraduate degee. With very few excepti…
Given that you can't get out of student loan debt through bankruptcy, they're at basically no risk. It might take them your entire lifetime to collect, but they'll get it eventually unless you happen to kill yourself at a young age.
Time value of money: they don't just have to collect the original amount, but the interest they would have gotten from putting the money somewhere else. So even a lifetime may not be enough time if the borrower cannot keep up with interest.