Read this whiny letter somebody wrote to NYU because she could no longer afford to attend.I have my own thoughts on the manner, but would like to know how others feel....full letter is at the end of the article. I feel like they are trying to make people feel bad....but nope not in my case.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/1 ... mg00000063
Stopped reading when she wrote "When I can't pay what the institution asks there is no help for me". You mean, like the additional financial aid they offered you, on top of the financial aid they are already giving you. Her parents saved for her college and the community raised money for medical bills so they could keep providing for your education and you don't want to have any debt. How entitled can she be. I have been paying off my student loans for over 15 years and never missed a payment. I hope the school president responds to her with a simple Fuck off.
Truer words have never been spoken. Edit we could run a whole thread on how self entitled some can be.
It really is fucked. I don't know how kids can afford to go to college today. I graduated from UConn in 2001 and had in state tuition. I changed majors so it took 5 years to graduate. I think with books it was an average of $11,000 a year including room and board with the meal plan. Today, 13 years later it costs about $25,000 for the same thing and around $45,000 if you were out of state. I don't think I would be able to go today.
I consider myself lucky that after graduating school my wife "only" has 24k in loans, while I will make sure that is paid off as soon as possible it's still a good chunk of change that pales in comparison to most people I know. In 19 years when my son is ready for school I can't even imagine what the schools will be charging, all I know is I won't be paying for it.
We have a couple of high school interns at work and we talk about college tuition costs all the time. They just keep going up. I wonder what the end game is? I mean it has to backlash on the government at some point when kids can't pay back the loans. Do the taxpayers just get to eat all the debt? Will we collapse under inflation from the government printing money to pay off the universities? All I know is that I am super lucky that my parents paid for my engineering degree. I'm also sure I could type another page coming up with a remedy for the situation but instead I'm going to drink a lot more beer and contemplate calling in sick tomorrow.
The average American college student graduates and enters the working world at over $24,000 in debt. As great an investment as college is, student loans are the single most evil scam that I can think of.
You don't think it's a little screwy that you have to incur decades' worth of debt to get a college education? Don't get me wrong, being financially responsible is definitely a positive thing, I'm just not sure that we should be setting benchmarks like that or holding it up as if it were something to strive for. There are concerns on both sides, of course... I don't think students should be putting themselves in terrible financial situations just to attend a "dream school." If you can't afford it, you should be selecting a school you can afford. That's a practical issue, though, and I think the whole system is fundamentally broken, from the schools themselves right down through the high school guidance counselors and parents.
I'm going to nutshell this a bit - and no, I won't be tooting my own horn (We did a thread several years ago wherein I stated that I didn't think college was necessarily the right move due to the reasons below, and was consequently vilified for it - ok, tooting my own horn a bit) but there are many, many reasons that the higher education system is broken, but ultimately, it comes down to money. First, Americans have this view that education, especially formal education, solves every societal problem. It never has, it never will. Education is a great thing (including formal education), however, American society over the last 50 years has held up this ideal that education, no matter the cost, is absolutely worth it. Second, college used to be about expanding the intellectual horizons of students. It was not a job training program. This changed during the Vietnam war because if you were in college - you could defer being drafted. Hence, many 18 year olds that could afford it went to college, whether or not they needed to. Obviously educational institutions found out that they could make a lot of money. Knowing that the war would end at some point - the whole myth of 'education based employment' began in earnest. Thus, college became about getting a job. My parents' generation seized on this and instilled in their children the idea that you had to go to college to get ahead. For a bit, this was sound advice and true. College graduates make more than high school graduates. Unfortunately, the 'job' bubble burst in the late 80's and there was a rush to hyperinflated degrees (essentially doubling down on a faulty idea). THAT bubble burst about 10 years ago. Until recently most mainstream media have reinforced the idea that college is the only path to financial success. Only because of all the evidence to the contrary has this mantra changed. Recently, in a gasping effort to keep the system (such a money maker, college debt is second only to mortgage debt in America. The advantage of mortgages? You have a tangible item you can sell to offset that mortgage if need be, you can't sell a degree, just asked me, I've tried) going, the powers that be have blamed the 'victim' - i.e. 'Well of course your college degree is economically worthless - you picked the wrong one, you need to get a STEM' degree.' And people have bought that argument wholesale. That will buy the education corporations another 10 years, maybe. Why? Because everyone will get STEM degrees and be just as unemployed as us poli sci/communication/English/History majors. It is at that point the higher education system will collapse under the weight of its own lies. The reality of America isn't that education is lacking (we have more college educated people than ever - by raw numbers and by percentage - check out the 2010 census), it is that our economy is lacking. The nasty truth of it is most jobs don't require a college degree. Probably 80% of the goods and services you use can be procured from people with high school degrees. Your bank teller, your check out lady at the grocery store, your garbage man, your policeman, your firefighter, your building inspector, your mailman, your construction worker, your mechanic, your salesman, your administrative assistant, your customer service representative...and on and on and on. Yet, many of these positions require a degree. Why? Because employers can. It's that simple. Ultimately, in a pro-employer economy, see the period of American Industrialization for further discussion, more and more is required of employees for less and less compensation. It requires zero effort for an employer to require a degree of applicants. It requires 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars for you. Ultimately, 'the end game' is when enough Americans wake up and say 'why the fuck am I going to go X amount in debt to make barely more than I would have made with just a high school degree?' The answer will eventually be 'no, I'm not going.' So in the end, the money will determine when that end game occurs, but my guess is sometime before 2022. Education costs will either have to go down, or we (America) will have to create a shitload of higher paying jobs for people to justify the obscene cost of going to college.
Or how about the students putting themselves into terrible financial situations to attend sub-par schools. I work with a dumb bitch who has mentioned on several occasions that she is about 55k in debt. She goes to the same school I graduated from. It's a university and decent, but it is no Uconn, Georgia Tech, or Berkeley. She is 20 years old and has a couple years to go. WHAT? This is also the chick who is perpetually high on lortabs. I'm going to start calling her pillbo baggins to her face. I was very lucky to have parents pay for my college education. However, if I was in the same situation now (waitress with a BS, been looking for about 2 years now) with 30k in debt, I think I would be rioting in the streets. 18 year olds are not mature enough to make the decision to take on that much debt for an intangible degree. 18 year olds can't typically get a mortgage, even if they have a decent job...but they can incur that much debt to go to school? Wtf?
Have you ever heard of someone getting completely denied a student loan? I haven't. That's a big part of the problem. The housing market cratered in large part because people were getting loans they couldn't afford. The same thing is happening to college education. If the government will give anyone a loan, and the colleges get the money up front with no risk, what incentive do they have not to charge as much as possible. We're either going to have to transfer some of the financial risk to the schools or else accept that not everyone actually deserves to go to college.
That's a large part of it. If the loans are backed by the government thus absolving the schools from any risk and on top of that they'll give the loans out to anyone who will be attending, why wouldn't the school raise prices?
BS, MS, PhD VI, makes many excellent points. The biggest joke to me today, is that "the university system" propagates this idea of the noble system of higher learning. 95% of colleges (including the two I went to) don't matter. They are corporations, plain and simple, and everything about them is designed to make profits and create a special snobbery group of "educators." And, so I would add to what VI was saying - I don't want to hire an 18 year old, either. They aren't mature enough, they're not old enough to drink - which, I don't think is coincidence, by the way. The college "scam" is perfectly set up to allow males to drink and party and get laid and get a lot of that out of their system on somebody else's dollar, instead of joining the military for 4 years. If I'm hiring you, I barely care about your degree, I don't care about your GPA, and I don't care what college you went to. I care about whethere or not you "fit" in my company, whether you're mature enough to get to work right now without wasting my time, and whether or not I can teach you what you need to know to do exactly what I need to make me money.
Another girl I work with was denied a student loan, but only because she has about 1k outstanding on her last loan. This probably wouldn't be as big a deal if she had good credit or a large income, but she has neither. The university I attended jumped 37% in cost while I attended it over 4.5 years. It has continued to climb. This is partially becuase the state of Alabama has been cutting their funding for higher education (interesting that certain states do not allow themselves to go into debt but the fed government has no such restraint) and partially because they can. It has nothing to do with "deserve." Phrased like that, higher education becomes this reward or prize for being a special snowflake. You have to weigh your options, your financial burdens, your life goals, and make a choice that works for you. However, most 18 year olds are not good at this decision process, and besides that, all that shit VI wrote is true. I didn't go to college because I deserved it. I went because it was already paid for and I could therefore afford it. Making value statements like that aren't really fair or accurate.
I'm not denying that education in America is broken, I am not denying that it is way too expensive. My biggest WTF about this particular case is her sense of entitlement to go to NYU. Her parents saved money for her to go to college, great for her,for many that isn't the case. It was obviously important for her parents that their children have the opportunity to get an education. She could have used that money to go to a state school and likely have had enough and finished with a degree. Based on their website, it looks like NYU has anticipated expenses of 73K (is that annually???). She lived in Virginia, which happens to be the state where I was a resident when I entered college. They have damn good colleges as their "state" schools. I went to UVA which is a top 25 college (which happens to be higher than where NYU is ranking), based on their website has estimated expenses of 27K. But I imagine that a degree from NYU is just cooler than one from UVA so that is where she MUST go. I paid for my entire education (BA, returned for a BS, then returned for MS) and took out loans too. Yes,they sucked. One day I'll figure out where the break even point was for me as far as how much I paid vs. how much my salary increased after completion. In my case, I think it was money well spent, but not the case for all degrees.
I was denied a loan years ago, but its different here and because my parents had GOOD credit, they denied it. My guess is they want someone who would miss their payments and be in 3x as much debt as they should. Putin could take lesson in evil from student loans. I hope whoever determines their interest rates eventually gets broken on the fucking Rack.