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Are Student Loans Burying Graduates?
DrHogie asks: "This is an interesting Op/Ed piece on student loans -- and how they bury the graduate in a load of insurmountable debt. As someone who is considering going back to college to finish his degree, are student loans (and the degree they get you) worth the debt load?" Update: 05/09 5:45 GMT by C :I apologize. The link in this story is bad, and I can't locate the original story on Yahoo. In the meantime, here's a replacement story in the same vein, and an article about student debt and how most college kids are having to work more to offset rising tuition costs. The original question is still valid, however. Is college getting to be too expensive for the average high school graduate?
My wife and I have had quite different lives. She came from a family where the mother didn't give a shit about educating her four daughters, but managed to get her son interested in commmunity college (an old-school Mormon mentality, where her daughers were to be perfect wives/baby-makers and nothing else). She dropped out of HS, got knocked up (before she met me), got a GED for herself, and has worked shit jobs ever since. I came from a middle class family that paid for 5.5 years at a decent state college, but I never finished. I'm a sysadmin. Sometimes she gets irritated that I can gross $25/hr sitting at a desk at a job that I love while she (when she decides to work) usually busts her ass for (at best) $10/hr.
The quicker route would be to take that $40k for college (if you have the savings) and simply jump to the final step above (own real property with no consumer debt). But the 4 years of living poor will really make one appreciate the value of money.
You might think that both of us would be huge supporters of the college degree thing. Oddly enough, we're not. We've both filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy at different points in our lives. She did mostly due to hard times (single mother anyone?). I did because I was a dumb-ass who racked up unsecured debt and then lost his job.
Once we both we jarred out of consumerism, we became much more accutely aware of just how well-off most people could do with modest income. The problem is that most people choose not to. They piss away countless money on eating out, cable/sattelite TV, new cars, homes in the 'burbs, and countless other crap. It's sad, really.
But it doesn't matter what demographic people are in, they'll waste money just the same. There are just as many DirecTV dishes in poorer neighborhoods as there are in your typical middle-class 'burb.
Ever hear a parent advise their kids: "When you graduate, I'll buy you a reliable used car. I want you to find yourself a cheap place to live. Share a house or apartment with 2-3 other kids your age (in a college town), or find a cheap efficiency, whatever it takes. Then find the best-paying job you can find right now. I don't care if it's labor shift work at a factory, waiting tables (decent money for the work), or whatever. If the pay-to-rent ratio is too low, I'll relocate you. You're young, you have your health, and you have no family and/or kids to bog you down. Live like a pauper. Scrimp every spare penny you can for 4 years and put it somewhere where you can't touch it -- bonds, CDs, even a savings or money market account at your local credit union. I'll cover disasters for you (you break a leg or your car gives up the ghost), but you handle the rest. You may not believe it, but in 4 years you'll be far further along than 95% of your classmates who went to college. Many will have loans, and nearly all will have credit card debt. You'll have at good-sized wad of cold hard cash and you can use that to put down (or buy outright) a fixer-upper house or a piece of land to throw a trailer on. From there, if you're smart, you'll be on a very short road to financial freedom, and you won't owe anyone a dime (excepting property taxes)."
Of course you'd never hear that. Any parent who said that would be shunned as an evil parent. Note that I didn't say to kick the kids out the door and hope they have a good life. I think a life of financial freedom (note, not "idependantly wealthy") is better than any typical middle-class life that I know of.
Maybe slightly idealistic, but true freedom is possible for most everyone until they head down the road of consumerism and debt. The sad part is that most people want Shiny New Things (tm) instead.
Man, if I