The Great College Hoax
forbes.com
The Great College Hoax
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Re: The Great College Hoax
#2"Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, Kellum couldn't swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work."
That choice of a law school was probably crucial in how the story unfolded. That's not a law school with a high return on investment in that local job market.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#3In this day and age college is worthless. Its pretty much 4 more years of high school, except this time you are paying $40-160K for it.
The problem is that most college students deceive themselves. They go to school thinking that all those people who graduate and get $80-100K jobs are the norm, when they aren't. So they get into debt to pay for school, because "its an investment" and then when they graduate they find out that instead of $80-100K, they have to settle for a job paying $30K a year.
So you pretty much put off 4 years of salary, 4 years of raises, 4 years of building contacts, 4 years of climbing the corporate ladder, all on the premise that it'll pay off in the long term. But it doesn't.
As long as the person didn't get a job at McDonalds, he'll be making more money after 4 years, than you would as a fresh college grad. And he won't have the huge debt, like you do. And that goes double for a person who majored in liberal arts.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#4I'm reminded of (Good) Will Hunting's zing to some jerk in a bar, right after calling him out (in a pretty spectacular way) for plagiarizing:
"See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years you're going start doing some thinking of your own, and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fucking education you coulda got a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library."
"Yeah, but I will have a degree," he says in return.
It's an open question whether the markets in general (i.e. not just startups, tech, etc.) will get over the apparent value baked into a college degree / GPA, and start worrying about what kids can do, what they know, and how they think.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#5In this day and age college is worthless. Its pretty much 4 more years of high school, except this time you are paying $40-160K for it. The problem is that most college students deceive themselves. They go to school thinking that all those people who graduate and get $80-100K jobs are the norm, when they aren't. So they get into debt to pay for school, because "its an investment" and then when they graduate they find…
Being one of the college students who deceived themselves, I have to admit that I could not have put it better myself. Is it my own dumb fault? Yes, it is. I was an adult and like to think that I was smart enough to have made the decision under my own merit. Should I have researched the reality of post-graduation life more? Yes, again. It is very true that they sale you the dream of 80k - had I only known then that college wasn't a requirement for realising the dream, I could have saved 40k...
Re: The Great College Hoax
#6The fix is to not go into debt just to go to college. A college education is a luxury - but it's one that can be had at an affordable cost if you're ambitious, work your ass off, and take advantage of every grant, job, research position, etc. you can find. IMO, it's the people who do the leg work to get into those kinds of programs and reduce the cost of their own education that ultimately succeed in the end anyway.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#7I wonder what the effect on the economy would be if parents or the government gave kids a choice - you can have 4 years of college loans or the amount of 4 years in tuition as seed funding for your start-up.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#8"Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, Kellum couldn't swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work." That choice of a law school was probably crucial in how the story unfolded. That's not a law school with a high return on investment in that local job market.
Article states that he and his wife landed six figure salaries, but graduated with 194k in debt. I think more crucial to how the story unfolded is that they probably didn't live below their means, probably didn't consolidate the loans to a lower rate (they were paying rates at 9%-12%), and probably didn't pay the loan off aggressively.
I wouldn't blame going to college, or college choice for poor financial sense.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#9What the hell were the couple in example #1 doing with their $200K income? If they wanted to pay off their debt in 10 years, they'd need about $2800 a month, assuming the rate was the full 12% the whole time.
I agree with a lot of the article, but a couple of idiots who pissed away the fruits of their education on too many vacations and fancy cars (obviously not any real investments, otherwise they could have refinanced their student debt) don't give a very good example.
Re: The Great College Hoax
#10I'm reminded of (Good) Will Hunting's zing to some jerk in a bar, right after calling him out (in a pretty spectacular way) for plagiarizing: "See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years you're going start doing some thinking of your own, and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. And two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fucking educatio…
A degree is far from useless.
the couple was $194,000 in debt. each landed a six-figure job. interest accruing at up to 12% a year.
"the pretax median household income in 2007 was $50,233," they where both making twice that in 1995. Even 12% of 200k = 24k/year should be easy when the couple is making over 200k/year. OMG, they only get to live off 3 times the median household income after graduation how they must have suffered.
Granted it would nice to have zero debt, but I suspect their real problems had little to do with debt.