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Demonstration: Graduate HS, get job at Kwik-E-Mart, live with parents saving everything you can while driving a beater and foregoing luxuries and dining out. Take classes at a community college and transfer to a state university. Pay with your savings while doing work-study. Not insurmountable. Not unlike how I did it.
This is not about entire generations. Some of the millennial's parents actually saved for their educations. Many of the one's who did not, failed their children while putting their priorities elsewhere. I know a guy who put 4 kids through college while nursing a used beater along for 14 years. I also know people who drove very nice cars, took nice vacations and shopped incessantly (for junk) every weekend, while failing to save a nickle along the way. Their kid's are currently acquiring debt. This is about individuals, on both sides of the generational divide. Some are smart and prepared, many are not. Guess which ones will succeed?
Last edited by shaker281; 01-20-2015 at 10:56 PM..
Demonstration: Graduate HS, get job at Kwik-E-Mart, live with parents saving everything you can while driving a beater and foregoing luxuries and dining out. Take classes at a community college and transfer to a state university. Pay with your savings while doing work-study. Not insurmountable. Not unlike how I did it.
This is not about entire generations. Some of the millennial's parents actually saved for their educations. Many of the one's who did not, failed their children while putting their priorities elsewhere. I know a guy who put 4 kids through college while nursing a used beater along for 14 years. I also know people who drove very nice cars, took nice vacations and shopped incessantly (for junk) every weekend, while failing to save a nickle along the way. Their kid's are currently acquiring debt. This is about individuals, on both sides of the generational divide. Some are smart and prepared, many are not. Guess which ones will succeed?
The savers will succeed. But our governmen is making savers pay for spenders. Maybe we savers are suckers.
My federal tax burden hasn't increased for 15 years. My state taxes just dropped 25%. So, far that has not been a problem for me. Even the Democrats seem to be targeting those who earn over $500,000 annually, so not likely to be my problem in any case.
Demonstrate EXACTLY how a student can work at the Qwik-E-Mart and earn a degree from a respected university in 2015. I rest my freakin' case.
Go to the school that offers you the most money. It may not be the respected university of your choice, but almost no one pays "sticker price" so shop around.
My daughter got scholarship offers ranging from zero to almost full tuition. She didn't have to take the best offer, but if she did, she could have earned a degree from a respected university while working at an entry-level job.
Graduate from high school whenever it is you graduated and attend college with no help whatsoever. Or graduate in spring 2015 and attend college with no help whatsoever. Pick one and justify it. I choose the 1980s because that's when I did it. I attended a great school and graduated debt free. Half of my peers did the same -- minimum wage, part time jobs. We paid for school working at the Qwik-E-Mart (and similar). I met my wife at one of these minimum wage campus jobs.
Demonstrate EXACTLY how a student can work at the Qwik-E-Mart and earn a degree from a respected university in 2015. I rest my freakin' case.
Oh, honey...telling your wife "enough of this" may work - but not me. You start up with me, and I'll decide when is enough. If you've had enough of this, that is on you if you continue.
There are no other ways to get through college other than working at a Qwik-E-Mart?
You are moving the goal posts again (as you can see from other posters, I'm not the only one that notices.). Your point earlier was the six figure debt that all these students take on. Which, as I pointed out earlier, is hyperbole. I graduated in the 90's with student debt. My mother graduated in the 70's with student debt. Of course, not six figures.
If I were a high school student who desired college, I would do everything I could to acquire scholarships. If I could not do that, I would do my first two years at community college. I would go half-time and work more hours if I had to. Sure, that would put graduation, but I still would graduate. I would get financial aid. (Actually, I did do all these things). You said that you got stellar SAT scores. But no scholarships?
It is more expensive. But not unattainable. Student loans are needed for some. If I were a hiring manager and found out that a prospective employee was foolish enough to take out $150,000 in student debt, I would have serious doubts about hiring that person. And I believe - again with you and goal posts - you referred to students attending a state school requiring $150,000 in loan debt.The average student has between $28k and $32k in loan debt. That means that some have none or very little, and others have up to $60k ish. The six figure students are extreme outliers.
But more to your point.
Is a 2015 student not successful enough in high school to qualify for scholarships? Do they have no problem solving abilities in order gain a college education without going into six figure debt? I use the unlikely scenario of six-figure debt since that is what you are harping on.
I am going back to school. I'll get back to you on how much debt I have to take on.
One last thing: The economic climate was far different in the late eighties than 1980. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Go to the school that offers you the most money. It may not be the respected university of your choice, but almost no one pays "sticker price" so shop around.
My daughter got scholarship offers ranging from zero to almost full tuition. She didn't have to take the best offer, but if she did, she could have earned a degree from a respected university while working at an entry-level job.
BINGO! Here's an idea...if you know that college is not going to be affordable for you, but you still desire to go...work hard in high school and get to the top of your class. There are scholarships waiting for those who will work for them.
If I were a hiring manager and found out that a prospective employee was foolish enough to take out $150,000 in student debt, I would have serious doubts about hiring that person. And I believe - again with you and goal posts - you referred to students attending a state school requiring $150,000 in loan debt.
150k in debt isn't sane or common for people acquiring a BA from a state school, but plenty of people with advanced degrees do have these kind of loans for sure.
Okay I want you to follow a hypothetical example with me here for a second. What if someone with a law degree, PharmD, or physician assistant, elite MBA etc. couldn't find employment in their field and for whatever reason were geographically limited for the time being (maybe their spouse has a killer job, their parents have cancer etc). Lets just say you have a company that typically hires mostly BAs/BSs for entry level positions and pays them hypothetically 35-50k a year. Would you outright deny the person due to "poor decisions" you know nothing about assuming they can do the job just because they have high student loans? Perhaps HR would? Maybe the person would be fine working the job offered and going on income based repayment for 20 years, and it's hardly your position to judge.
The problem is Human Resource clowns (if anyone here works in technical fields you will know how worthless and unknowledgeable most these imbeciles are about your jobs or recruiting properly), probably would. I know someone who worked in finance at a fortune 500 company. She said they would hire people and regularly find the people were later denied jobs due to "credit issues" often for previous bankruptcies, high student loans, credit card debt etc. Of course many of these people likely had reasons for financial issues, especially in a high cost of living state like California where an unexpected long-term job loss can wreck even people with considerable savings and good jobs. And then some people end up with million dollar medical bills and the like and declare bankruptcy (fun fact 75% of people who declare medical-related bankruptcy had health insurance to start).
So not only do us Millennials have to deal with wildly inflated school costs, we now have seemingly more and more hoops to jump through to get a job. And we get arrogant older Americans in management in the hiring chair that simply don't understand what its like to be young as they (likely) didn't have to deal with todays mega-inflated tuition rates or globalized wage suppression due to H1-B visas and outsourcing. All we ask is understanding. If all your applicants seem to be in debt and living with their parents, maybe it's not because they're worthless slime with $500 phone bills, $200 a week drug habits, and monthly vacations abroad but due to other circumstances.
Of course the boomers want us to divert around a quarter of the federal budget to social security/medicare and complain about how we're so worthless and entitled. .
Last edited by njbiodude; 01-21-2015 at 06:16 AM..
It wasn't as bad as 2008. And for the student just starting out at the time, he or she could work a part-time, minimum wage job and pay for college without a bit of help. Not everyone did -- some took out loans at bad interest rates (and that was financially foolish when they could have worked).
The point is, again, that the 1980 student could pay for a four-year state university degree by him or herself. The 1980 student could pay for an Ivy League education with some difficulty. Compare that to 2015.
Recessions suck -- I'm not suggesting that they don't. But again, Boomers have a lot of gall to dismiss Millennials as lazy and spoiled when the economic landscape between then and now has completely changed. I'm glad I attended school in the 1980s. I couldn't do what I did today without taking on massive debt.
I believe I've already debunked this fantasy. You would have to work part time during the school year, AND 60 hours a week during the summer break to make $5K towards your tuition. And it still probably wouldn't be enough, since tuition was around $5K a year without room and board then.
I'm not the one suggesting that Millennials can bootstrap their way out of their problems. I'm not the one whining that my youth was hobbled by unfair recessions.
Boomers on this thread want it both ways. They want people to pity them for the mid-1970s recession or the 1980 recession. Boo-freakin'-hoo. But they think that Millennials should tough it out and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
And they refuse to acknowledge that they had it great, comparatively. Just about anyone could work a part-time, seasonal, student job and pay their way through college. And the further back we go, the more likely they could pay their way through the Ivy League with their minimum wage job. Again, boo-freakin'-hoo.
Bootstrappers should look in the mirror. I'm very glad I'm not graduating from high school this year.
So what's the alternative to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? Giving up, and stealing from the older generations? Uh, don't think so.
Millennials DO have it great. They've enjoyed a standard of living that has never been seen in history, and want for very little. But that lifestyle has taught them that they're "special" and don't have to work hard, because they've never had to. They certainly are entitled.
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Ah credit based employment tactics...
