I wonder if allowing bankruptcy for student loans would allow the market to price them correctly (based on job prospects, etc)?
Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
41–50 of 108 posts
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#42I 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…
Those who earn bachelor's degrees do indeed earn more than those with only a high school education. But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit.
Not to mention that this is not a controlled experiment. Maybe those who earn degrees would have earned more anyway. (Though I do suspect that college is very beneficial, for the reasons you cite.)
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#43$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.
Probably more true for grad school than undergrad.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#44"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 shou…
"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."
So his mother and father, who both work for the Navy on the taxpayer's dime, got their son connected with an internship program for the Navy on the taxpayer's dime.
I have no doubt that this was 100% through merit, and had nothing to do with both of them having jobs there.
The Navy has another paid-internship and training program for college graduates with no job: it's called ENLISTING.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#45I see a lot of people blaming the government for college costs, but the fact is that, unlike for graduate school loans, the amount of guaranteed undergraduate loans individuals can take on is capped at $12,500 Stafford + up to $5,500 in Perkins loans. Beyond that you need parents to sign on for PLUS loans, which require a credit check.
The real problem is that we've been indoctrinated to overvalue education and artificial college rankings. If you're a Virginia resident, going to UVA will cost you almost $30,000 a year, in-state, including room and board (unless your parents happen to live in Charlottesville). But you can go to George Mason for only $11,000 a year living at home. But few people who can get into UVA go to GMU because you're giving up a lot of job prospects in the process, plus have to deal with the "commuter college" stigma. And employers don't really ascribe a much higher value to a UVA education versus a GMU one--they just want to sort people who managed to get into UVA from people who didn't.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#46$200k for journalism and media studies was a bad investment. It's a tough message, but you have to invest in education more intelligently than 'throw money at it and hope for the best'.
The U.S. educationnal system is wrong. If you go to Canada, you will pay less than 30k$ for you entire program. It's illogical to waste 4 years if you don't have solid chances to get a job and make it profitable, maybe it is not the place to go and/or the career to follow.
That's about how much it would cost if you get a degree from an in-state public university. At that cost I can only imagine that he decided to go to Rutgers as an out-of-state student. That was the big mistake here.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#47"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 shou…
> "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."
... or he could have just driven 40 minutes north and gotten a CS degree at George Mason University, which is a far, far better program than Mary Washington. OR if out of state tuition is not an issue, he could have driven another 30 minutes further and gotten a CS degree at U Maryland, which hovers in the top 15. Both of which are basically the same price as Mary Washington. Is it worth mentioning that the Navy has close connections to both schools? Particularly GMU.
Indeed of nearby schools, the following are all superior to Mary Washington in CS and cost about the same: GMU, U Maryland, Virginia Tech, UVA, ODU, VCU.
So one son decided to blow $200K on a journalism degree, and his parents helped him. Now the other son, already $60K in the hole, is going back to school, and has picked the worst of several options to get a computer science degree. And no doubt his parents are helping him again. One wonders if the problem is the parents.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#48A Bachelor's degree doesn't really do that much for you these days. It's become like a high school diploma was 30 years ago (which almost no one paid for). I keep trying to advocate that people not go so far in debt for a college degree. For med school or law school (although I would argue that this is not a great investment with the current glut of law school grads) it makes sense to go into debt of that size. But I…
I agree with the sentiment but I think somewhat higher loans are reasonable.
The rule of thumb that I use is total student debt shouldn't exceed the normal starting salary for a job in your field.
If you are getting an engineering degree, go ahead and feel free to drop $60k+ on an education, but if you are going to be a teacher start looking for grants.
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#49From a different point of view, the parents are age 57 and 59 and if everything went well, they would already have retired.
In contrast, European Union asks Greece (and other PIIGS countries) to set the minimum retirement age at 67 if it wants to stay a member...
Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement
#50I 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…
> Most psych/business majors would be better served working their way up through the ranks. A little anecdotal story backing this up... My wife started as a paraeducator (teacher's helper) at a school after graduating from high school. A few years later she started working at another school, helping homeless & migrant children. She eventually left that job to work with migrant/bilingual daycares. This process took 8…
Interesting, which online school if you don't mind me asking?