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This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#11

Post by dmor »

philwelch wrote: post #6
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

1000 words later... She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies. [...] "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me." Words fail me.

If you're going to get a liberal arts degree, either have enough money to afford it, or be so intensely interested in the liberal arts that you're willing to pay back your damn loans. There's no human right to be educated in something useless at no expense to yourself, and I say that as someone with a BA in philosophy.

"There's no human right to be educated in something useless at no expense to yourself, and I say that as someone with a BA in philosophy."

Rock on, we need more philosophers like you.

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#12

Post by dmor »

younata wrote: post #5

So, basically, these people decided "hey, college, dunno if it's right for me, probably isn't, at least now, since I have no clue what I want to do with my life. However, I shall totally spend as much as possible to get a degree." There are reasons that the community college system is being built up in several (many? I know CA at least is doing it) states.

I attended community college for precisely this reason, I had no clue what I wanted to do right after high school and didn't want to spend a lot of (my parents) money on an education I might not use. I ended up leaving school and working instead, but I think it was a relatively inexpensive way to figure that out and I'd certainly suggest it for others

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#13

Post by hop »

My human sexuality teacher in college complained that engineering profs are paid more money, she had no perception of market value.

I'm sure it would go over like the bay of pigs, but if the gov't and colleges starting subsidizing majors based on their projected income, there surely would not be as many post college financial problems and the US would benefit from more engineers, scientists, etc. China is doing it before our very eyes, the next 50 years will be interesting.

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#14

Post by patio11 »

dmor wrote: post #7
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

1000 words later... She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies. [...] "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me." Words fail me.

what's really disgusting is that she spent $100,000 on such a useless degree maybe she should suck up her pride and take a night job at Fedex, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. to pay that off.

Colleges are sort of, shall we say, circumspect about the value of the degrees they issue. They charge the same no matter what your major is, and most do not publish per-major salary studies. That is part of the mystique -- "clearly an education in English is worth as much as a degree in anything else, look, the English professors even say so!" (Substitute your favorite or least favorite degree for English.)

A few of the departments in the engineering school at WashU published their own starting salary study -- using the Internets to get in touch with recent grads -- which did not endear them to other departments at the university. That was an amazingly useful piece of information for me when graduating, and helped me to avoid an offer of employment at substantially below the "going rate". (Then I became a salaryman. Education can't save everyone. sigh ;) )

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#15

Post by liedra »

Yet another reason I'm glad I went through the Australian system... government funded loans and subsidised education (I paid about 2.5k AUD per year for my degree, which is about US$2200, at one of the top universities in Australia), where the loans gather no interest aside from inflation and you don't have to start paying them back until you earn over a certain amount (and then the payments are automatically taken from your pay, much like tax). Great system, imo.

It's changed a bit since I went to uni, but the general idea is still there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aust...

I remember being horrified when I saw my friend's HECS debt was around $8000 AUD... yet compared with this, it's peanuts!

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#16

Post by dmor »

Reading down to the bottom...

"After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren't being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over."

How is $850 not a lot left over for discretionary spending when you are 26 and just starting your career? You eat crap food, walk and take public trans and you make it work. This smacks of the kind of entitlement that just makes me sick.

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#17

Post by marvin »

hop wrote: post #13

My human sexuality teacher in college complained that engineering profs are paid more money, she had no perception of market value. I'm sure it would go over like the bay of pigs, but if the gov't and colleges starting subsidizing majors based on their projected income, there surely would not be as many post college financial problems and the US would benefit from more engineers, scientists, etc. China is doing it be…

On a completely unrelated note, I attempted to get a sexology course as an elective in my CS degree, and failed as my university did not provide such a course... What sort of course was this for?

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#18

Post by stretchwithme »

VCs can evaluate the likelihood of a startup being successful. Banks can certainly assess whether a particular person pursuing a particular education will be able to pay back the loans they will need.

I say if your plan is a bad risk, no one should be coerced to fund it. You'll have to come up with a better plan.

That will leave more money for education that will create more wealth.

Re: This Woman Has $97K in Student Loans. Who's to Blame?

#20

Post by wisty »

How does it cost $40k a year for tuition? It seems that college fees range from $5k to $40k plus. I can understand that better lecturers cost a bit more, but that can't explain much. What are the cost structures like?

Or is the higher cost just being driven by greater availability of credit for the students? If this is the case, unis will find a way to absorb the extra cash, but not in a good way.

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