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I understand that universities could offer more information about loans, etc., but I still believe that the final responsibility must come the students borrowing those incredible amounts of money to cover careers with dubious potential earning, and living in the most expensive states. It's like those people that live great maxing their credit cards. In one word, unreal.
Although the final responsibility is from the students, blaming them for every does not make much sense. The universities make absolutely no effort to help students make good choices and most people start college when they are still teenagers. Not everyone has parents that are financially savvy either (I certainly didn't).
The amount a student can borrow should be correlated to the average salary commanded by their degree program.
Same here, but if people are adult enough to go to college, to drink, to drive, to vote and other activities, why aren't they adult enough to take care of their finances. it's one more bill to pay in the end. Universities and banks can't force them into abusive loans or bad decisions.
However, I do agree with you about loans. It's a good idea (at least better than the current system) to borrow according to students' future income.
High schools should offer a personal finance or "What College Really Costs" course. Students are responsible for the loans they take out to pay for school. I wasn't aware of all the expenses involved with college when I began in 2002. I wish someone would have given me a heads up about reality.
Same here, but if people are adult enough to go to college, to drink, to drive, to vote and other activities, why aren't they adult enough to take care of their finances.
Well most college students are not legally old enough to drink and some freshman cannot vote as well. They are teenagers, expecting them to have a firm gasp of finances when its not taught in schools does not make much sense.
The woman in the article has a degree in religous and womens studies. She's surprised that her job prospects are poor? This is another case of a person getting a useless degree that will not get her a good job. What did she think she was going to do with a degree in those two fields?
Articles like this are *waaaaaaayy* too easy on the k-12 system. They leave k-12 out of the equation completely and think that it's just a bank problem or lending problem. But it's a problem of blind faith being created in highschools. At an almost unlimited rate. Highschools now are in the blindfaith business and unverisities and banks pick up the proceeds.
-Blind faith that you'll have success and life on easy street if only you get into this college thing.
-Blind faith that you'll be successful if you do well in school and do what your teachers tell you to do.
The problem is that students are not brought down to earth before they get 1 loan, let alone 2 or 3.
Too much artificial, marked up junk is put in their face before they can make logical and rational decisions about their future. SAT, letters of recommendation, college application deadlines, etc.
Before all of that, students should be looking at the correlations between the average salary with a certain degree and debt. Before any college testing or prep starts, students should be looking at these numbers.
-Symptomatic of the media now, they like making casual/superficial links between things (mortgage crisis vs student debt crisis) but they miss the more important underlying real story. The real story is they didn't get the right information in k-12, too many assumptions about unlimited future "success" by going to college. They're doing a terrible job of sharing the truth in k-12. The faith to earn a degree in womens studies came from somewhere, but the media doesn't like to like at the origins of that.
Much easier to say it's a student debt problem than an origin of education problem. Why are so many flakey degrees being created now days? Why are flakey degrees being created in a rocky and unpredictable economy?
Who decided to send students to earn featherweight degrees in a 2008/2010 "jobless" economy? When you look at the origins of this, being politically correct and "happy" (learning about women and religious studies) seems to take precedence over making harder, more logical future economic decisions. And it comes at the expense of everyone if you can't pay back your student loans. In some ways, everyone is being saddled with politically correct happiness.
-Univesities and banks don't force anyone to take loans that they can't pay back. But students are scooted into them. It doesn't abstain responsbility from those that did scoot students into them.
-More kid glove treatment by the Times. "Then there’s a branding problem. Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni."
If you're offering degrees in religious and womens studies, what "branding" problem do you have? You'll have a branding problem, because the quality of your product (and future earning potential) doesn't match the "brand" you advertise as a prestigious school.
K-12 and colleges have been scams for decades...and likely to remain as such; smart kids figure out which "union cards" are worth paying for to enter lucrative careers...and finish college, w/a useful major/GPA, in <3yrs to minimize costs and maximize income potential
Up to parents to educate kids re: scams of life...or choose to not have kids if they lack time and money to prepare them for upward mobility...kids, like pets, are a discretionary lifestyle choice, not necessities
And any kid who can read and perform arithmetic can presumably find some cash (?$100) to buy a few useful texts on Amazon re: stats, economics and personal finance to self-teach....and google is fairly cheap to investigate what various careers pay...and what cost of living is in desirable regions of US
The lack of personal responsibility amongst both parents and kids is mockable; not a lot of excuses when Net/Kindle/google, etc make self-teaching damn cheap even if one is stuck in Podunk in K-12 (15 yrs ago would read books/mags for free at local B&N/Borders superstore; and in prior era would go to local public library to read and self-teach for free)
It says in the article that the median debt for a student attending a private college is $22,380, the average starting salary for someone coming out of college with a BA/BS is somewhere in the $35,000-40,000 range. When I was in college, attending a private school that I paid for myself-no help from my parents at all, I graduated with $16,800 in student loan debt, my starting salary was $16,500. I think the dept/income ratio TODAY is much better then it was 20+ years ago. Our oldest starts college in the fall and will graduate with about $30,000 in loans. That will be completely manageable--it really isn't any more then a car payment if you think about it.
Now, getting a teaching degree from Harvard and going $100,000 into debt to do that isn't very smart and doesn't give you a leg up on the competition.
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