Slashdot Mirror
Beating the College Bubble
An anonymous reader writes "The real estate bubble is long gone. Oil prices are sliding down. Are we in
an education bubble? The author of
Beating the College Bubble says so.
He's written a short, simple guide to avoiding the crushing college
debt that he thinks is about to bankrupt all of us. Just as easy loans encouraged people to dream big and buy a
McMansion, big college loans are tempting students with too much Comp Lit and Frat
Parties. When they graduate, the debt is so hefty that the students are stuck living
in their parents' basement for 10 years until they've paid it all off. I can
tell you from personal experience that there's some real truth to the hangover.
The beer headache is gone after a week, but the monthly payments just keep going." Read below for the rest of cdog40's review
Beating the College Bubble
author
C. Davis
pages
140
publisher
Edububble Press
rating
9
reviewer
cdog40
ISBN
1438235909
summary
Don't go to college. Save your money.
The author spells out why he wrote the book:
his kids are graduating soon and he wants to do the right thing. Should he encourage
them to spend big on an impressive, Cadillac-grade education or should he
be really cheap so they can be free of loans? Which will help the kids?
Chapter 2 works through a handful of examples of people who spent too much on education. Of course he brings up the fact that all of the big guys in the computer business skipped out on college after a few courses. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started the trend and now it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is following in the famous footsteps.
The author writes out that some of the people in Chapter 2 really did benefit from their education. The lawyers and the doctors who sell their credentials did very well with fancy diplomas.
Chapter 3 is a largely obvious summary of what we all know: lots of college courses don't have any real use in the world. It's not as bad as jokes like: What do you call an English major? (Waiter!) The problem is that the Internet is very good at exporting bits and most college degrees specialize in manipulating bits. The Internet can and will ship this work to the lowest-wage countries in the world. So if you're interested in making money by manipulating bits, the Internet is going to cut you off at your knees. The real secret to making money he says is getting a career in something like sewer maintenance because that can't be exported despite what that famous Senator says about the Internet just being a bunch of pipes.
Chapter 4 is a great piece that explains where the money is going: into the pockets of the college presidents. Many of them make more than a million dollars a year in salary. Well, that's not all true. Some of it is going into the big, expensive buildings. Apparently long ago, students put on shows without fancy state-of-the-art, high-tech arts complexes. They just used an auditorium. No longer. Schools love to spend money on big-name architects. There's a good mention made of the high price tag, the bar, and the leaky roof at MIT's Stata Center.
Chapter 5 is a kind of a nice guy section added so the author couldn't be accused of being completely cynical and nasty. It points out that most schools aren't just spending the cash on the president's new yacht, but on things the students use like fancy dorms and swanky exercise rooms. I know this is true of my school. The dorms are much better. You can't even see the mortar between the cinder blocks any longer. He's still annoyed by this because all of the fancy features pump up the tuition bill.
Chapter 6 is where the book starts to get useful. He talks about how to negotiate for better terms on the debt or how to avoid picking up too much. You can pretty much skip Chapter 7 and move right on to Chapters 8 and 9 which describe how to save money by getting cut rate degrees or skipping college altogether.
I'm not sure whether I buy all of the techniques. He suggests that internet forums like Slashdot are more informative than a college classroom, something I'm not sure I believe. Yes, there's more discussion and the moderation system does a good job of shutting up that bossy know-it-all in the front row, but it would be nice to have a professor. I guess that's what they mean when we're supposed to read the article before commenting. Hah. No one did at my school either.
There are good ones. He tells of low-cost degree programs at most schools. You can save 80% of the price of going to Harvard, for instance. I think he's pretty honest about this because he does point out that you lose something when you take the cheap route. But freedom is just another word for nothing left to pay on your loans.
The book's website is trying to make the book interactive by posting new news stories and alternative solutions for college. It listed the new School of Everything as an alternative.
This is where the meat of the book lies. The only way to avoid getting hurt by a bursting bubble is to get out early. This book made me think long and hard about college. You can't go back and do a scientific experiment because you can only live life once. But I do think that's how he put it. We're really in love with the idea of college that we'll spend anything. It's like when you fall head over heels over some beautiful girl that you don't even know. Then you run up your credit card on an expensive meal to impress her only to find out that she's kind of snobby or flakey or just not interested in the right things (PS3, BitTorrent, Android, Erlang etc). When the bill comes a month later, you feel kind of dumb. This book is trying to help the next generation avoid that headache.
You can purchase Beating the College Bubble from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Chapter 2 works through a handful of examples of people who spent too much on education. Of course he brings up the fact that all of the big guys in the computer business skipped out on college after a few courses. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started the trend and now it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is following in the famous footsteps.
The author writes out that some of the people in Chapter 2 really did benefit from their education. The lawyers and the doctors who sell their credentials did very well with fancy diplomas.
Chapter 3 is a largely obvious summary of what we all know: lots of college courses don't have any real use in the world. It's not as bad as jokes like: What do you call an English major? (Waiter!) The problem is that the Internet is very good at exporting bits and most college degrees specialize in manipulating bits. The Internet can and will ship this work to the lowest-wage countries in the world. So if you're interested in making money by manipulating bits, the Internet is going to cut you off at your knees. The real secret to making money he says is getting a career in something like sewer maintenance because that can't be exported despite what that famous Senator says about the Internet just being a bunch of pipes.
Chapter 4 is a great piece that explains where the money is going: into the pockets of the college presidents. Many of them make more than a million dollars a year in salary. Well, that's not all true. Some of it is going into the big, expensive buildings. Apparently long ago, students put on shows without fancy state-of-the-art, high-tech arts complexes. They just used an auditorium. No longer. Schools love to spend money on big-name architects. There's a good mention made of the high price tag, the bar, and the leaky roof at MIT's Stata Center.
Chapter 5 is a kind of a nice guy section added so the author couldn't be accused of being completely cynical and nasty. It points out that most schools aren't just spending the cash on the president's new yacht, but on things the students use like fancy dorms and swanky exercise rooms. I know this is true of my school. The dorms are much better. You can't even see the mortar between the cinder blocks any longer. He's still annoyed by this because all of the fancy features pump up the tuition bill.
Chapter 6 is where the book starts to get useful. He talks about how to negotiate for better terms on the debt or how to avoid picking up too much. You can pretty much skip Chapter 7 and move right on to Chapters 8 and 9 which describe how to save money by getting cut rate degrees or skipping college altogether.
I'm not sure whether I buy all of the techniques. He suggests that internet forums like Slashdot are more informative than a college classroom, something I'm not sure I believe. Yes, there's more discussion and the moderation system does a good job of shutting up that bossy know-it-all in the front row, but it would be nice to have a professor. I guess that's what they mean when we're supposed to read the article before commenting. Hah. No one did at my school either.
There are good ones. He tells of low-cost degree programs at most schools. You can save 80% of the price of going to Harvard, for instance. I think he's pretty honest about this because he does point out that you lose something when you take the cheap route. But freedom is just another word for nothing left to pay on your loans.
The book's website is trying to make the book interactive by posting new news stories and alternative solutions for college. It listed the new School of Everything as an alternative.
This is where the meat of the book lies. The only way to avoid getting hurt by a bursting bubble is to get out early. This book made me think long and hard about college. You can't go back and do a scientific experiment because you can only live life once. But I do think that's how he put it. We're really in love with the idea of college that we'll spend anything. It's like when you fall head over heels over some beautiful girl that you don't even know. Then you run up your credit card on an expensive meal to impress her only to find out that she's kind of snobby or flakey or just not interested in the right things (PS3, BitTorrent, Android, Erlang etc). When the bill comes a month later, you feel kind of dumb. This book is trying to help the next generation avoid that headache.
You can purchase Beating the College Bubble from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I'll just get a loan to pay for that.
Just because you live in your Mom's basement surfing Slashdot all day doesn't mean you can blame it on college debt.
big college loans are tempting students with too much Comp Lit and Frat Parties. When they graduate, the debt is so hefty that the students are stuck living in their parents' basement for 10 years until they've paid it all off. I can tell you from personal experience that there's some real truth to the hangover.
Well, here's my anecdote. I didn't rack up $100k worth of loans like my friends. I worked nearly full time through my undergrad and didn't receive a penny from my parents. I came out $20k in debt and had to prove that I actually put a lot of effort into my public college undergrad degree. I graduated in 2004, made my employer pay for my Masters from a private college (which I got in 2007) while, again, working full time. I will be making the final payment next month and be debt free for the first time since I was 17.
... " or "if trends continue" followed by "you will save a shit ton of money." I know because I received these offers ... hundreds of them. They all turned out to be variable rate bullshit. I did my homework and only needed minor math skills to figure out the scams. Maybe 5% of the people I know have had loan consolidation work for them (all one of them who graduated years before me). At a Halloween party, one of my friends lamented about trading up 3.5% & 4.5% fixed rate loans worth $80k for a consolidated loan at 3% in 2004. The company now sends her biannual updates informing her that her rates will be going up and she's looking at 7% now. Imagine that. She signed up with a company that doesn't even bother justifying it, she says some of the letters are just one sentence. The sad thing is that she can still afford the monthly payment so apathy wins for the next 10 years.
... I've doled out more than my fair share and often call my friend who is now a CPA.
I know a lot about some of my close friends and if I may impart some wisdom (I have no idea if this is covered in the book), do not consolidate your loans. Just don't do it. So many people consolidated their loans after reading a letter from a third party that used words like "at the current federal reserve rate
I know I am lucky, I was able to sleep 3-5 hours a night with little repurcussions. Most people can't live off of a cup of noodles or day old wheat bread (animal consumption only FTW) for 30 cents from Erberts & Gerberts. Make smart choices, if you aren't good with finances, ask a friend who is
If you want to pay for a brand name college, I'm not going to stop you. Their are plenty of schools like the University of Minnesota that have great engineering programs and although I can't walk into an interview and drop a name like MIT, I don't mind proving I'm worth what you want to pay.
My work here is dung.
And the great thing is that bankruptcy does not wipe out student debt.
As much as I understand the need for that not to happen, this has become a dangerous trap and something may need to be done about it.
I think a lot of it depends on whether you know what you want to do, whether you need a degree to do it or not, and whether you can find a reasonable priced school that teaches it (like a state school or start at a community college).
There are way too many people going to college just for the experience. In addition, many people don't think about how they will pay for it later. Not all degrees will raise your earnings enough to make it worthwhile.
On the other side of the issue is that there are many jobs that either really require a degree or are just impossible to get without one. Which is why it really depends on the person, the career, and the school.
How to beat the "College Bubble:" 1. Go to College. 2. Become deep in debt. 3. Sell a book about being in debt. 4. ??? 5. Profit!!
What a wonderful message to send to all our recent high school grads.
This is not going to help any of us.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Sure, except the colleges are a business like any other (at least to some extent) and they have to attract customers (i.e., students). The prospective students have been enticed into expecting fancy rec centers and cushy dorms. Once a few schools start offering those features, pretty much everyone else has to do so to stay competitive.
It's also worth noting here that the nominal price of tuition typically doesn't pay for the actual cost of sending student to college. At my alma mater (graduated ten years ago, for reference), our tuition -- huge those it was -- paid for about 1/3 of the actual expense.
Also note that most people don't pay full tuition. The high tuitions seem to exist so that those who can (apparently) afford it can be charged for it, while being "nice" and knowing the price down for others.
The book part is not the same as out side of us books costs are a lower.
The book market is not like oil.
Humm.. the article quotes "stuck living in their parents' basement for 10 years" like that is a bad thing.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
My alma mater (an unnamed private technical school in upstate NY) has consistently raised its tuition by inflation plus 3%. This means (based on the Rule of 72) that in the 25 years or so since I graduated, the tuition has more than doubled, even adjusting for inflation!
If I were looking today, I'd be looking at public schools.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Boo paying back my debt!!!! I want a bailout for me damnit.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
This reminded me of how lucky I was to have done my college degree in an engineering program at McGill, Quebec! Top20 university in the world and it costed me only about 3grands in tuition fees per year. I was debt free straight out of college while having worked only during the summers and got a job in the weeks after I started looking.
Can't say the same for the girlfriend from USA who'll get out of school with a debt equivalent to what I make per year now ;)
I wonder if Barrack "the savior" Obama will do anything about school fees?
I hear that open course ware thing is pretty nifty for the price.
As for a degree? You got a printer, a scanner and a copy of Gimp? Good boy.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Honestly, the easiest way to avoid debt is to avoid it in the first place. Why do students take out $30k in loans for a school that only costs $6k per semester? It might not be the easiest route, but I worked all through school, and tried to pay off all the debt I could during the deferment periods once I graduated. I can honestly say that I am almost done with a Masters degree and have a total of $3k in debt that will be paid off before I graduate.
Maybe I should sell a book... Then I could pay off that last little bit and move on to pure profit!
Everybody, including me, believed at some point that a college or university degree would bring fame and fortune... which is false.
Unless you study engineering or get a degree in a medical profession, you might get screwed. Oh, and you WILL get screwed with a liberal arts degree (sad for me and my psy major).
Meanwhile, some friends bring home tons of cash by being welders, linemen, plumbers and electricians...
Who is the smartest guy around? The guy that goes to university and studies something like philosophy or psychology, or the one who gets a professional welding formation and earns 75k+ per year?
Think about it...
I'm about 15K in debt (my parents helped) after college with a completely useless degree. That said, I have a fairly high paying job that I would never have been able to get without being able to say that I graduated college.
Even though I don't use a single bit of what I learned, having graduated college makes companies actually consider me.
Unless companies start hiring people based on actual knowledge, not just looking at certification, then college still seems like a profitable formality.
The US can get ahead in the world economy by getting LESS education for it's populace. That way, we'll slowly start getting our manufacturing jobs back because India and China won't be able to compete. I mean, people over there can translate business logic into those magical bits faster and cheaper than here, right?
Personally, I didn't find out how much I liked Computer Science till Sophomore year of College. The theory and beauty behind how different sort algorithms was the turning point I think. Without College, I'd have settled on some part-time tech work and full-time retail employee. College has it's purposes and the masses still need higher education, whether they want it or not.
You want to not get a fuck-ton of college debt? Don't go to a school for prestige or a wife. Go to your local CC for a year then go to a local Uni to get your degree. Otherwise, study your ass in high school and get there on scholarship.
You want it to be easier for your kids? Get a 529 plan started TODAY. Contributions to it are be state and federal-tax free. You can get the money back out at regular tax rates if they don't go to school or get scholarships. I'm surprised that wasn't in the review. Just because you are getting the shaft doesn't mean your kids have to as well.
import system.cool.Sig;
I'm in the same boat... and I haven't had the time to 'learn' because I already made the mistakes.
First off -- Harvard, MIT, etc.. great schools, but unless you're going on a full ride they simply are NOT worth it (at least as an undergraduate). The simple fact is that you're going to waste a lot of time in your undergrad partying, having fun, and not taking it seriously, regardless of whether it's MIT or Harvard or a state school. I wound up going to a private school and graduated $60k in debt, AFTER a half scholarship.
I'm one of the lucky ones though... while my educational loans are very high, I make a good salary and I'm working on paying it off soon. But I am also married and rent out an apartment off of my parent's house -- it helps a lot in offsetting the debt, and I'm working on offsetting even more. Hopefully in another few years, I'll have it all paid off and be debt free. That time is a long way off though, but slowly but surely I'm working there.
I'm trying to convince people like my sister, who is majoring in philosophy and by the time she graduates, will be 40k in debt -- NOT to keep on her current track lest she want to screw up her entire life. Like I said I'm fortunate, and I realize I am -- but most people are stupid in addition to naive with regards to student loans and eventual salaried positions. My sister is going to philosophize why she's broke, and she still has plans to go to grad school and become a professor eventually.
I just hope people don't make the same mistakes, and predatory lending is banished ESPECIALLY for those in educational debt. I've already screwed myself and I'm working it off -- but there are going to be a LOT more who simply can't pay, and they are going to eat up our country in bankruptcies just like the housing crisis is now. The fact that they are deferred on payments only helps that it hasn't hit us at the same time.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Exactly how much are you drinking that it takes a week for your hangover to go away?
Kudos to you sir.
Information can be gleaned very easily from the Internet, but knowledge and the mechanics of synthesizing knowledge are best learned in a university setting. I do agree that in many ways college costs have gotten out of control. It used to be you would goto college to be a school teacher. However, why would you spend $50,000 on job that is at best going to net you $35,000 out of the gate (other than someplace you would rather not teach and danger pay come to mind).
The university setting is best for individuals who need to do high-end problem-solving or research as part of their work not for vocations. Vocations are best learned in a setting where you can skip a lot and go straight to what needs to be known and add a few extras as well. My own family is a perfect example of what can be done through vocational training. My uncle who is dsylexic and color-blind was never great in high school. Instead of moving on to college like he may have been pushed today he went to a technical college where he floushied in electrical power and control and today has been designing power systems for commericial and industrial buildings for over 25 years.
For better or worse, college has become part of the American dream and many who do not belong there are now going. People are going not because they want to but they feel they need to in order to achieve the American dream. The more we due to de-emphasize the idea that college is the only answer and supplement it with apprenticeships, vocational training, etc. , the better will do for all our children.
For many generations a college education generally fulfilled the promise of class mobility. E.G. Dad's a gardener, daughter a lawyer. The key to this dream was two-fold.
1. Cost of tuition/loans were capable of repaying in +/- 10 years.
2. Job you leveraged yourself into PAID the loan + decent standard of living over the 10 year payback.
Neither 1 or 2 hold true any more.
Discussions about class in the U.S. are generally forbidden, but I'll throw it out anyway. I find it almost impossible to see how decades of "winner take all" economics ISN'T creating a massive, permanent, underclass. Economic conditions suggest this is so already.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
He's written a short, simple guide to avoiding the crushing college debt that he thinks is about to bankrupt all of us.
It won't bankrupt me; I've been out of college nearly thirty years. My student loans were paid off long ago.
Just as easy loans encouraged people to dream big and buy a McMansion
Buy into the bankers' hype. My home cost $50k, about a year's income, but the mortgage company just tripled my payments. The government is set to bail out the very people who are causing and have caused our economic collapse. It wasn't people buying above their income, but greedy bankers who prey on the economically ignorant. I know about as much about real estate as a banker knows about how to build a computer.
big college loans are tempting students with too much Comp Lit and Frat Parties
This is deceitful or ignorant. College loans have nothing to do with partying.
Should he encourage them to spend big on an impressive, Cadillac-grade education or should he be really cheap so they can be free of loans? Which will help the kids?
If you can get into Harvard, get into Harvard. It would be stupid to go to SIU (my alma mater) when you've been accepted at Yale. Better schools mean better paychecks. Just be sure to pick a good major.
This is where the meat of the book lies. The only way to avoid getting hurt by a bursting bubble is to get out early.
Since there is no "education bubble", this is where the lies of the book meet.
Free Martian Whores!
The days of the collage/uni drop out raising to the fortunes of Gates and Co. are never likely to repeat... the tech bubble has long since popped and even the suds have fizzled. You need money to make a start up, and how many investors are going to drop cash into a venture with a drop-out at the helm?
and if you don't want a to do a start up, forget it without a degree... companies will not even talk to you without that piece of paper regardless of how great your resume looks otherwise.
I had $4.5k in debt, my husband had $22k, and we were extremely lucky. If all goes well we will be free of it all in about 7 more years.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Cheap, quick, and easy. If you take half of a full 4 year degree there, well, your bills are significantly cheaper later. Work while doing it? Even better. Who cares, your degree will be from the University who gives you the Bachelors or (eventually) your Masters?
Nice way to start and stay debt free.
How about going to college for something that can actually pay the bills instead of some bullshit Liberal Arts degree.
Do you expect your degree (BA, BS, BFA, etc) to be your terminal degree? If so, go for the best you can get. If not, it doesn't matter what school you go to. Enroll in your least expensive regional state school, but work your hardest to build a portfolio you can take with you to your Master's/PhD program at the best school you can get. Yale/Harvard/Columbia will still take you coming from East Nowhere State University if you have something to show.
Don't go to college at all if you are looking for Vo-tech education. Hook up with someone who does what you want to do and apprentice. College is not for people who only want to learn the skills they need for the one job they think they want. It is, however, for people who want to be well-rounded and see that they can apply the skills they learned in their theater stagecraft class to their career in IT.
What?
Is it just me, or did this book stop before it could get to Chapter 11 on purpose?
It's called postsecondary education. Two years of college on the government's dime *AND* you get out of high school two years sooner.
I still spent 7 years paying off my student loans, but it could have been a lot longer.
Best education decision I ever made.
No college debt for me, thanks.
It takes a lot of motivation to do 4+ years of college while working fulltime. I often wonder if that energy might be better spent on learning independently or with a few friends. I've taken this approach to computer science (my degree was mechanical engineering) since I'm kinda discovering a passion for computers... and I feel like it's paid off far more than 4 years in college (in terms of job offers, monetary rewards, etc). Of course this style of education doesn't work for most people... it's worth considering though imho.
1. education isn't strictly for the purpose of future economic earning potential
2. we engage in lots of rites of passage in human society that are unnecessary, expensive, but inconceivable to not do otherwise
such as weddings. nothing wrong with standing on a beach in your shorts all alone with your soon-to-be wife exchanging vows in front of the sun. but lots of people mark the occasion with an expensive blowout. which is superior? neither, its a choice made for personal indulgence more than anything else, and you can criticize that personal indulgence and not sound like a hypocrite just as soon as you prove you are a monk without any personal possessions or indulgences of your own
college is, likewise, just an expensive middle class rite of passage. you don't need to do it simply for social reasons, but nor does not doing it for social reasons make you somehow more, or less, superior, just different. no big deal: do college, don't do college. just recognize the reality of what college is, and what you are actually engaging in/ actually missing out on
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First, skip the 4 year program. The first year of college is just a sieve for partiers and a way for the college to collect a lot of tuition without doing any work. Anytime you sit in a class with 600 of your closest friends, you know you're being taken. Most community colleges offer a two year prep program, which will transfer to a 4 year college. Gets most of the bullshit courses out of the way for MUCH lower prices.
Second, there are two ways to make money in this world. Do something other people CAN'T do, or do something other people WON'T do. There's a reason that brain surgeons and attractive prostitutes get paid so much. A 4 year degree may or may not put you into one of these categories, but so can a 2 year degree.
Finally, the statistics that say a college degree will allow you to make twice as much money over your lifetime. Bullshit! Motivation will allow you to make more money, and it just so happens that motivated people are more likely to finish college. But that statistic may soon be a historical anomaly as degrees will become less directly tied to income when everyone has one.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
In Europe it is NOT normal to have a debt when you grad.
If your parents can't afford your education, you get a job.
If you still can't afford it, work more.
If you're to busy to study then: don't go to college coz you're to dumb.
My MBA not only got me in the door at this Fortune 100 company, but it got me an extra $25k/year over my coworkers who do the same thing as me without the MBA.
While on active duty the military will cover 75-100% of your education.
Once you are out you have the GI Bill, and if you did your homework before listening to your recruiter's lies, the College Fund as well (helps if you enlist with a ship date in february-march).
And depending on the state you reside in, you may get additional kick backs. In Wisconsin, the state reimburses vets for up to 75% of the UW's cost. So going to the local community college is almost free, with the GI bill to pay for your housing while you focus on school.
All in all, if you are willing to take the risk, Military Service is not a bad option for getting a great education.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Education is an investment. You put in time and money up front and at the end you get knowledge, opportunity, experiences, and in some cases, personal connections. It's up to you to decide how much of your own time and money to invest in an education.
College loans are just a way of turning present dollars into future dollars. They may make something that was otherwise impossible possible, but they do not change the "is it worth it" equation. If it wasn't a good buy if you have cash on the barrellhead, it won't be a good buy if you pay market-rate interest.
The nice thing about student loans is they are usually below market-rate. This means an $80,000 education on a subsidized 10-year-loan may actually be a few thousand dollars cheaper in today's dollars, especially when you consider the tax deduction. An education that might not be worth $80K might be worth $78K. Then again, it might not.
Another nice thing about student loans is most lenders offer forbearance for a couple of years if you find yourself unemployed or under-employed. Try that with your mortgage or your car note.
When deciding whether to take out a loan for college, ask yourself:
For many people, going to a more expensive institution makes financial and personal sense, even if it means graduating with a nearly-6-figure debt. For others, doing their underclassman or undergraduate work at a 2nd- or 3rd-tier school then finishing off at a "big name" school makes a lot more sense. For others, delaying school to save up money or serve in the military then using the savings or GI-benefits to go to school is the right thing to do.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
My experience with federal consolidation was fantastic. I was able to consolidate 80K+ at less than 3% fixed. But as it turns out there is help on the way beyond consolidation. It's called Income-Based Repayment and it begins this year. http://www.ibrinfo.org/ This program has the potential to solve both the consolidation problem and the bankruptcy problem.
We willna be fooled again!
that's all.
you learn everything you need for work outside of class and on the job.
college just proves that you can put yourself through a schedule.
The fish-tank icon chosen for the cover seems straight from this site... The site uses various fish-tanks on different pages... All of them are in the same style...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The author takes a lot of swipes at Liberal and Fine Arts. I'm quite happy with BA in Theater. I own a house, have no college debt, and my wife is able to stay at home with our kids.
Too many people believe they are buying a career with their degree. They see their Engineering degree as a $60k bond investment that will pay off at $100k/year. But education is much more like a stock investment. There's a high degree of risk. There's a degree of luck. But ultimately if you get a degree that educates you, you will find a job. The one thing that employers and universities can't do is teach you to think. So in the long run it might make more sense for employers to train a smart liberal arts major to program than to get an expensive mediocre CS major who got their degree for the paycheck.
what's up with the fish-leaping-to-another-bowl pic on the cover:
cover of Beating the College Bubble
I've seen that pic somewhere before:
cover of STATS: Modeling the World
Coincidence?
First of all, I completed my Bachelor's degree and ended up with no loans. Secondly, Here's how I did it: Work Hard - Full time manufacturing job, paying better then minimum wage. Save money - save up during the summer to pay tuition in the fall. Likewise fall->spring. Educate yourself - Tax form 8863 (Hope / Lifetime Learning credit). Educate yourself - Utilize any and all employer reimbursement of tuition and fees. Bingo, cheap, paid for college.
Hey, it was not my fault — I was encouraged to spend the money, that I'll be repaying for 10 years. There are more of us, debtors, than there are lenders, so let's elect the government, who will force them to ease or forgive our debts for good... Together we can!
Oh, wait, we just did!..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
* If you can work before taking classes, do it. I saved up two years worth of tuition and book costs which saved me loan interest in the long run.
* Don't use credit cards unless you absolutely have to. If you can avoid them all together, do it. Credit cards + college = DEBT CITY. There's just too much temptation in my opinion.
* Pay things down, pick one bill and put more then the minimum payment on it till it's paid of. Trust me as they start disappearing one by one you'll really feel good about yourself.
* If you absolutely need a computer for college, get a netbook. Those things are cheap around $200-300 depending on what you get. You don't need anything else for college and you can hook those up to printers and scanners if need be.
* Pay attention in class and get help if some subjects give you trouble. If you have to retake courses that will increase your debt.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
At my alma mater, Comparative Literature showed up on your transcript as "CLit", or "CLIT", depending on where your transcript was printed. Hence you could take your A in CLIT and proclaim that you had "mastered the clit" in college.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think it's time that as a country we have a serious conversation about the people making blood money off of our children's college dreams. This is a serious question: why don't we just forgive all outstanding US student loans, and nationalize the assets of the Sallie Mae corporation and use the money to jump-start a program to send students to college for free? Also, how much money is the CEO worth? The rest of their directors? Perhaps a dialog about seizing the asse's they've gained during their tenures at SLM, preying on our nation's youth, is necessary too. Discuss.
There's truth to both sides of the argument and there are several arguments.
1. Not everyone should go to college. Not every job really needs a four year degree. There are plenty of jobs that could be sufficiently handled by people with high school diplomas and OJT. But no, everyone has to have a degree, so people go to school and get one and they end up working places where they had to leave the degree off their application so they wouldn't price themselves out of a job. We have more degree-holders than jobs to employ them right now. So many of the honest blue collar jobs have gone overseas that it seems the only options are trying for an office job or becoming a fry cook, there's no middle-ground.
2. Related to this, we have degree/certification erosion. We see this with technical certs where everyone laughs at paper MCSE's who have the framed cert on the wall but don't know shit. And truthfully, do you really need an MCSE to work your helpdesk? But everyone assumes they have to go to college and all the employers keep asking for the degrees when not all of the jobs really require that kind of background.
3. The whole college game is fucked from the start. Yes, some people make excellent contacts for networking, grow as people, have excellent instructors and really get a lot out of their college buck. Some do the Bush route and burn a lot of brain cells with hangovers, and have nothing more than a degree in a topic they don't truly understand to show for the experience. I didn't have money for a fancy four-year school so I went to the local uni. Total crock of shit that was, waste of time. I don't think I had a bad attitude going in, it's just that the program was so divorced from anything practical that there wasn't anything to learn. I have a bachelor's in business admin. Some people will say "oh, it's not until grad school that the learning really starts." You know what? Grad students I talk to hear the same thing about the PhD program, that's where it really kicks in. Bull. I don't knock the idea of education, I don't knock the idea of universities, I'm actually quite in love with the theory of it all. It's just that the practice of it really sucks.
I think if you really look at the heart of the matter, it's difficult for people to find employment prospects that really turn them on in this society. People will go to college hoping to find something interesting, meander about, come out with a degree but still not have any focus. Then they settle for a job to get some cash coming in, are unhappy with it, and drift and float through their careers never really experiencing anything that makes them feel truly alive. And that goes right back to the point of "if you don't know what you want to do, how are you ever going to make a go of doing it?" Too many people go to college because its expected of them, not because they're excited by it.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
An outfit called Sally Mae is the largest student loan financier in the US. It began as another GSE in the 70's and was later privatized.
If you're involved in collections you know that people that can't afford their own debt prioritize who they're going to stiff. First the education dept, then the credit cards, cars loans and finally the mortgage.
Look around and note the number of layoffs. How much time does Sally Mae have left before some overwhelming fraction of their loans become 'toxic'? Boom.
Short sell opportunity there...
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It's not hard to avoid the debt--especially if you're in an engineering-related field. Just work hard to get scholarship(s), do summer internships and you're good to go. I graduate in December having covered all expenses and never being in the red. At my University there are plenty of opportunities to take advantage of, even more so if you're lucky enough to be a minority.
If the government would stop with the easy loans that people don't pay back then less people could afford fancy universities. Universities would have to lower their tuition to attract enough students. As long as the government keeps padding tuition, expect it to continue to rise at a rate higher than health care costs.
I say... stop with all government higher education loans for 4-8 years and see what happens.
"An anonymous reader writes ..." ...and then:
"Read below for the rest of cdog40's review"
Indeed, the injection of cash from eliminating the student debt might well outweigh the overall economic damage of watching AIG implode. I'm pretty comfortable with an imploding AIG myself.
SIG: HUP
So suppose you predict that prices on gasoline are about to crash. Does that mean you should stop buying gas? Well, not many people can just stop driving until the price goes down, so no.
What you do, if you're brave, is to make a financial bet in which you win when the price drops -- you short-sell petroleum companies and oil futures.
Same goes for college. If college prices are going to drop, should you decide to not go? No! That'd be like letting your career gas tank run dry. Instead, make financial bets in which you win when the price of a college education drops.
Now, you can't exactly short-sell stocks in universities, because they're not generally publicly-traded companies. (Let me know if you find one though...) But here's the deal. If people can't afford to go to college, they also can't afford college *textbooks*. And if they can barely afford tuition, they're gonna be buying used books whenever possible. SO. Short-sell Reed Elsevier, Pearson Education, and McGraw-Hill.
Warning: I am not a financial analyst. This is a comic post, for humor value only, and I am not actually suggesting you do this. If you take me up on this and lose your shirt, don't blame me. If you're a lawyer with one of these companies, your stock isn't dropping because an Anomymous Coward said something on Slashdot, it's because you insist on pushing out minor edits to your textbooks every year and charging $150 for that "service".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Your college choice should depend on what your career path will be. $40k/year can buy you many different things and it all depends on where you go. Personally, I think that the $40k/year it cost for me to go to Cornell (luckily, my parents could afford it) was definitely worth it to me. This might not apply to other Ivy league schools, but I know that Cornell's physics courses are much harder than all but the best physics schools. What I got was basically 4 years of undergrad + my first year of grad school in 4 years. On the other hand, the courses do take time away that you could spend doing research or extracurricular activities, but that's a trade off everyone has to make. I spent my summers doing research and got the experience I needed to go to the top institution in my field for graduate school. I also know that practically all the graduate students who go to Caltech (where I'm at now) went to either elite private universities or the top public universities (Michigan, Virginia, Berkeley, etc...). While it's certainly possible to get into a Caltech or MIT from just an average state school, you need to show that you made up for the lack of difficulty through other means.
But, I will definitely say that I doubt it's worth it to spend $40k for most private universities. If all you want out of college is a degree that you can then use to get work experience, a public school is the place to go. And definitely not one of the low end private universities that charge the same as Ivies and are ranked worse than good public schools.
Tar them with 10 years of debt and feather them with a corporate sponsored education. Then they hit the real world and by the time they have themselves cleaned up their spirit is all but gone. Perfect!! Now get back to work!!!
I got through a 4 year degree without any huge debt quite easily.
How?
2 years at a local community college, and then 2 years at a state college.
Every summer, winter, and spring break I worked. Every time I applied for a job I aimed for higher pay. Going through college my hourly wage progression was $8/hr -> $10/hr -> $15/hr -> $20/hr -> $22/hr.
Some internships and jobs I worked at for more than 3 months. Some I remoted in to after I had resumed school. With the exception of my first job, my work was always related directly to my major (CompSci). By the time I had graduated I had a little over a year worth of experience working in my field, which allowed me to be in a better position when looking for a job.
While in college I never paid for cable TV, I did not buy any computers, and I did not go out to eat. I rented an apartment with my GF, the difference cost for the apartment versus on campus housing was more than made up for by the savings of cooking our own food rather than eating at the campus cafeterias. By spending a good deal of effort in looking for and negotiating housing, we were able to find an apartment complex close enough to campus that we did not have to drive, so the only gas we paid for was the gas used to drive back home to see our families. Extra bonus: No parking permit required, yet another $240 a year saved.
After all of this, do I have a degree on my wall from an Ivy league school? No I do not.
Do I work with people who do have such a degree on their wall? Yes I do.
Do I know as much about my field as they do? Thanks to hard work, dedication, and a passion for my field, yes I do.
College is a place where some one who (hopefully) knows what they are doing tells you what to read and what work to do so that you to can know what you are doing.
No, wait, nix that.
College is a place where you learn how to learn about your field. If you love what you are doing and what you are learning about, it does not matter if you are paying $30k a year or $8k a year for an education. Go interview the faculty at the universities and colleges you plan on attending and find out if their passion and devotion to their chosen field matches your own. Find out if where you plan on going is a good place to learn. Even more importantly, find out if it is a good place to learn how to learn, because if you are going to be successful that is what you will be doing throughout your whole life.
And then, bugger the costs, choose the University or College that you feel fits you best. Then follow up by not being a financial moron. College students who have a $5 a day coffee habit are going to be $1800 more in the hole at the end of the year, and will have spent $7200 at the end of a four year program, then students who just go to bed at some semblance of a reasonable hour.
Finally, remember that the dude who is $80k in debt and works at a retailer (or at Starbucks...) and who tells you that "Dude you've got to party and have fun in college!!!" is not going to be having any fun for the next 8+ years.
In comparison, everyone I know who has followed their passions, but in a financially responsible way, has money coming out of their every orifice.
Sheesh, all in all, just stop being so stupid! Any college student who uses loan money to buy a big screen TV is an idiot. Any college student who flies down to some tropical spring break party is an idiot. I knew a guy who spent well over $10k in loans on Warhammer figures. It wasn't that College was too expensive, he was just stupid!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I went to UAF, as in University of Fairbanks Alaska. You don't get much more backwater than that for an engineering degree. My total loans for 6 years of school were 20k, with almost zero help from family, and thanks to working student jobs throughout (hence the 6 years to finish...). Most of the loans were from the first couple years before I could get decent summer jobs, with the last 2 years taking zero loans.
While I can't say I got the best engineering education out there, I did get a damn good one, and better than many of my peers from much better known schools (Berkely, Davis, etc). Like many things, you largely get out of it what you put into it. I worked my arse off, and get a good education, paying it off in about 5 years (and never having it overwhelm me in the mean time).
My sister in law is visting us right now, and for her BS in Biology she is still paying off the last ~16k (same as my total loans!) from U of M, a state school. Crazy.
My wife is going back for a better degree (she has one of those English "degrees"), and we planned it out for all cash. She works weekends, we live simple, and are actually slightly ahead of the plan for savings for the last two payments. Why is this ethic not better encourages by schools and society?
Tuition, at least if you go to public schools in your own state, isn't such a big deal.
The cost of college is actually a combination of the cost of housing, food, and transportation, and the opportunity cost associated with being unable to work full time. Compared to these, tuition and books are insignificant.
So if the cost of housing goes up, particularly the cost of housing in the really desirable locations such as one finds within walking distance of the center of a college town, it raises the cost of education as a consequence, not a cause.
I know there are people who have trouble paying the $2200 per semester it costs at my school, but come on, is this really ruining anyone's life?
Seriouly like anything else you have to look at the return on investment. for 90% of kids the best value will be the local state university. Most of them charge "only" about as much as you'd spend on a new car.
That said, years ago (well decades ago) I was taking my own advice and going to UCLA. But then I found some one who'd pay 100% tuition to "any school I could get admitted into". I transferred to a much more expensive school. So I've seen both. A top-end public university and a $200K small private school. One is not really "better" they are just much different. I preferred having small classes with under 20 students, access to the professors who would know me by first name and having a large dose of liberal arts with my engineering. But really I would have gotten a good education at UCLA too. Had it been on my dime I'd have stayed.
The real estate bubble is gone??!?!? Who's smoking crack here? This post should have never made it! What a joke. Amazing that people get paid for this crap and that I took the time to comment only exaccerbates the problem, but it is just too f---ing much!
Not everyone can do it, but work for top grades and find the money. I saved enough money, before starting college, to insure I could go for a couple years will working part time and living cheep. Once I started at a community college I worked my tail off and got good grades. After that I started applying for every grant and scholarship I could fine. By the time I finished my Bachelors at a top school I had only spent a few thousand of my savings, not bad. I am now working on my graduate degree at MIT and they pay me, but trust me I am working my tail off.
If I was not getting scholarships and grants I would not fork out the 40k a year for tuition. You should also consider states that have good public schools, like california, where once you are a resident the tuition is not that bad, considering you can go to berkeley, UCLA or UCSD, all top notch schools.
Do the research. Agrarian economies have the lowest per-capita income. Then comes manufacturing. And the highest per-capita incomes are in countries with service-based jobs dominating.
Why would we want to go backwards?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Far from being the solution, the government is the problem, yet again. While government-guaranteed student loans have expanded college access, any economist worth his salt will tell you that by flooding the college market with loans that anyone can get and that are guaranteed by the government has led to tuition well outpacing inflation. What else could have caused this?
If this sounds really familiar, it should. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a similar effect on the housing bubble. So you'll have to excuse me if I get frightened when I hear "government to the rescue" for a problem it helped create.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
If you can get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc etc, and you're not wealthy, they'll be cheap for you. In fact, all of those schools have already replaced all loans with grants in their financial aid packages. I got $0 from parents and was in one of those schools back when student loans still happened. I racked up the maximum debt they allowed before giving grant money for all the remaining cash - about $21500. I then got payments deferred for a few years through grad school. Now my first payment is due in January, and with no financial help from anyone but my employer, check #1 will be for $21500, settling the account.
I know friends who went to state schools, had poorer parents, and have about $30,000 in loans. I know friends who went to private schools that weren't the self-styled elite and have $100,000 in loans. I think the real comparison is between going to a mid-tier private school and a state school. The quality of education is likely very similar, but the private tends to have much higher debt-potential. Meanwhile, go to Harvard and you'll have $0 in debt, and they'll also charge you less for tuition, assuming your family isn't rich enough to have to pay it all.
Also, another key was to not have any money saved for college. In negotiating my financial aid package, initially my school thought I had $20,000 saved for college. When I revealed that I had nothing saved, they reduced by tuition by exactly $20,000. Of course, a lot of other schools may not do this, and it's not a gamble I'd recommend without a lot more evidence than my anecdote. I think of it like shooting the moon in Hearts.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I was told by my Mom (industrial engineer turned librarian) at a young age that she wasn't going to pay for my or my sister's college, so if we wanted to go we better work our asses off and get a scholarship (which we both did). Look, no debt!
If there is an education bubble, it just burst and no one noticed. Not to be cliché, but as someone who was recently laid off from an education lender who exited the market for private loans, I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
I have to tell you that the problem coming up for new students isn't going to be paying off their huge debt after college, but instead finding a way to get the money to attend.
Lenders are going under quickly. We were backed up by a large bank with a promise of funding for private loans, even in these financial tough times; then a week later they backed out on us (myself and all my friends are all still without employment). At this point (IIRC) there are around 30 private loan lenders in the education marketplace, this is down from approx 100+ only two years ago.
The Feds are going to pull the plug on guaranteed FFEL buy-backs pretty soon (the whole country is out of money, not much choice); this is bad because schools are going to go with Direct Lending (which does have better interest rates, so that's good for students and families) and lenders will have no in-road to sell private loans (once they have a Stafford and they need more, you can recommend a private loan).
Lenders will drop FFEL as there is no incentive to participate any longer (high default rate with no 100% buy-back guarantee, BARELY profitable..I'm talking pennies on the dollar above operating costs), and since that will dissipate volume so heavily, probably drop out of the market altogether.
Thus, state schools, community colleges, and cheap private schools are going to see a huge spike in demand, and larger, more expensive private institutions are going to see a drop in enrollment. As no one can afford the big school and no one can get into the cheap ones (they're full, even after expansions), we're poised to start becoming a lot dumber than we are now unless something tips the scale back. Keep an eye on education costs, this is the "sleeper" of the worries that face the USA.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
As many have already commented, I too paid for my college education and worked through school. I knew in high school I was paying for it in full without help from my parents, so I planned accordingly. I worked about 40 hours/week throughout high school and college. My priorities were to pay for school as I was going AND save money. Most of my friends' priorities were to go away to school, have a good time away from the parents and get an education. I opted to go to a state school close enough that it was an hour train ride away.
Long story short, I graduated with more money than I started with and I own a small condominium, while most of my friends are still at their parents' or renting.
Over here in Australia we have a system called HELP (Higher Education Loan Program) whereby the government covers your tuition fees for the whole of the course. Then when you get a decent paying job you're basically taxed at a higher rate until you repay the loan. It's also interest free (although a small portion is indexed to keep the loan in line with inflation).
The great thing about this is that if you land yourself a crappy $40,000 job straight out of uni you won't be paying anymore tax. I think it kicks in at about $45,000 and it's about 3% more. The highest is 8% additional tax when you're earning above $85,000 or so.
It always suprised me when I was talking to my American counterparts the amount of debt students got themselves into which basically kept their lives on hold for 5~10 years when studying in America. Whilst I was uncomfortable with the recent change from HECS to HELP (HECS was a contribution scheme so it wasn't treated like a loan. More like a gratuity or tithe back to the government) it still seems a whole lot better then have debt collectors chasing you down for your vital organs.
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
I've been searching for a fixed rate consolidation loan (there were quite a few around when I didn't need them), and the credit crunch has destroyed most consolidation loans.
Even variable rate monsters are not easily found. I've found one major bank still offering private consolidation loans, and the terms make the mob look friendly.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This is somewhat petty, but his stance would be stronger if he didn't use examples like Harvard, which has a no-loan financial aid policy. There are plenty of schools in the nation that put people in massive amounts of debt, but Harvard, MIT, and a handful of other "elite" schools aren't part of that. He's only using Harvard because it's sticker price is so high, but not too many people pay all of that, and the ones that do don't need to take out loans to do it anyway.
Great argument for public schools and the majority of their student body, so focus it on them--not the people who are already living loan-free.
I don't know of anyone who gets an academic scholarship these days. My mom and my father-in-law got them in the late 70s with only good grades, but I couldn't get much more than the standard California "congratulations, you had more than a 2.0 GPA, we'll give you $3000 per year" grant when I went to college in the late 90s with a 4.0 GPA, high SAT score, and plenty of extra-curricular activities. Scholarships now go to athletes and under-represented groups, not to good students.
There is no such thing as "too big to fail".
Capitalism fails when companies don't face destruction at the hands of their managers' incompetence.
If congress can't take the popular impact of such massive companies collapsing, then they need to pass legislation limiting the assets of specific companies, compelling divisions into financially separate departments as they approach that cap.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
1. Stay in college the rest of your life building up more and more debt.
2. Buy a lotto ticket each week to pay it all off and retire.
3. ???????
4. Have a life of fun on the backs of others.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"He suggests that internet forums like Slashdot are more informative than a college classroom, something I'm not sure I believe."
Being college educated (B.S. Comp Sci) and with all my generally insightful comments, I add my college experiences to the pool. Using my input therefore, is advantaging yourself at my expense (because I paid for college myself - no loans, took me 7 years though). Therefore, I am instituting the following policy:
Any time you view my post, the following fees apply:
I accept paypal.
(I sure as hell hope this gets modded up)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If people are measuring education as if it were an investment, dollars in versus dollars out, that's a little sick. Even majoring in economics at the University of Chicago should is something you should do because you're dying to do it, not because of the number of incremental extra dollars you judge it will net you.
I know there are people who choose their life companions as a calculation in economics... will my career and financial future be brighter if I marry person X or person Y? The avaricious lawyer in Trial by Jury sings
"But I soon got tired of third-class journeys
And dinners of bread and water
So I fell in love with a rich attorney's
Elderly, ugly daughter."
But we all understand that this is contemptible and avaricious.
Education, too, should be about love, love for the material being learned, not money. Nobody should go to college if they can bear the idea of not going. Samuel Butler wisely wrote:
"Never learn anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good long while by not knowing it."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Student loans are the modern day equivalent of indentured servitute: Just a step away from slavery.
What's wrong with starting vocational and bootstrap up?
Grunt work minimum wage labor while getting a vocational "AS" degree in my field. Easy to pay for, easy classes, etc. The intern program means you get higher pay after only one year.
Finish AS degree and get a vocational level job, paying about 3x minimum wage
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to go to community college
Complete about 1/2 of my degree and get a semi-professional job paying 2x my vocational job (starting to seriously roll in the bucks here)
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to finish my degree at the fancy private college
Get a professional level job paying about 2x my semi-professional job.
Now I'm planning to use that money and corporate tuition reimbursement to get my masters, which will result in a similar increase in pay.
The experience gained along the way is priceless. Err, actually, since it got me about twice what the grads without industry experience got, I guess it does have an easily calculable value. Plus there's the weird experience of taking classes where you have a higher salary, nicer car, more experience and more interesting professional achievements than the adjunct professor teaching the class...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm rather surprised that this would be offered as a suggestion. As a friend of mine recently found out, a lot of jobs are requiring a minimum of a bachelor's degree. Relying solely on your experience (in his case, 5 years as a manager) doesn't quite cut it, as there are people with that same experience and the degree out there.
But it's not impossible to do this without racking up debt. I work for a state university, and tuition here is dirt cheap: right around $1,500 for the semester.
I spent two years at a private school studying math and ended up with $60k in college loans, just for tuition. When I changed to music and went this state school where I currently am employed, I spent another six and a half years (four on undergrad, two and a half on a masters) and took out $40k over those six and a half years, working part time and covering my tuition, books and most of my rent.
I went to private high school on a scholarship, and they drilled it into my head that I needed to go to a "fancy" college. Now that I work as an administrator in academic, I can see how pointless that was. Also, many state schools can provide an excellent education -- we take pride in being labeled a "tough" school. Our teachers don't make lots of money, so you can bet that they probably teach because it's something they love to do.
A lot of states also have tuition assistance programs if the high school graduate goes to a state school. In Louisiana they have the TOPS program -- as long as the student had a relatively good GPA, their tuition was covered. If their GPA is higher, they received additional funds for books, etc.
I'm not in the best of situations with my loans and wish I had taken advantage of some programs like these when I had graduated. With $100k in debt, I can't afford the monthly payments ($750 a month!) so I'm working on another degree (that my employer pays for, thankfully) just to defer payments. Meanwhile, interest is accumulating. I think a book like this -- despite its negative message -- is good for students and their parents.
>The real estate bubble is long gone. Oil prices are sliding down.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Add in the college bubble in this and you are looking at a huge mess ( if we aren't already in one)
It pays off well to evaluate a school in terms of what you're going to pay and what you're going to get before you even apply.
This applies to the courses you take and what you might expect to get paid on the other side, but also to some other factors where the college gets money and may spend it on things that don't really contribute to your education.
Among other things, it is good to look at the number of administrators per student - if that number is not available, consider the number of administrative buildings on campus. If that starts getting high, beware - your money is not going to education, but to fund (usually highly paid) administrators. Not easy to quantify what a high number is here, but look at colleges of about the same size and see if you can compare.
Also check out student fees and athletics. Is there a mandatory fee that supports the sports teams? If so, you're borrowing money to put someone else through college, and often enough (though not always), through a watered down degree. The big teams (football, basketball...) are not just funded through those obvious fees - coaches are often funded as faculty and the buildings come out of shared funds as well. (Not to mention the various ways to avoid NCAA rules and fund coaches and athletes under the table.)
Many top end colleges are now offering low (under $10,000, 4 year debt total) or no debt financial aid plans. Some high end colleges are debt free for all students. Certain majors many get generous grants. Many private schools offer students, in the top third of matriculants, progressively generous merit aid.
It can take lots of time, effort and preparation for one to develop the skills and track record to be a top flight student. Parents should scout these colleges out no later than the junior year, so junior can personally explore the colleges for a realistic choice. My own experience with the kids is that the middle school years were crucial to their development, success in high school, and beyond. Money spent on a private middle school to get a jump on high school may also be a great investment, both academically and for college scholarships.
You offer good solutions and alternatives to the mountain of financial debt, but the fundamentals of higher education are still broken. Nowadays, at a large university, I have to take English, Business Communications, Accounting, and Psychology to get my CIS degree -- and pay extortionate amounts of money to get it. Instead of 2 new Lexuses, I get to spend the same amount taking 15 credit hours of worthless generals. My head assistant got his first of several bachelors degrees when I was 1 year old. He never learned to work, though, so he makes a fraction of what I do. He wasn't getting experience and making money for those 20+ years he spent in school. He was losing valuable time.
The original universities in Paris were founded to allow people to study what they wanted without the rigidity and structure of primary education. Today's universities have become the polar opposite -- where primary education is deemed a preparator for the hamstrung framework students are forced through to prove "I can be taught something from a book well enough to pass a test on it the following week! Give me money!"
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
From my experience in academia, I think one of the best ways to reduce college debt would be to bring back co-op educational programs, particularly for IT and engineering majors. In recent years, American universities have transitioned almost completely from quarters to semesters, which has consequently destroyed co-op programs across the country. Thirty years ago, a student could work and go to school on alternating quarters, in many cases making enough money to cover most or all of his/her educational costs, and graduate in just 5 to 6 years. (The summer quarter was a regular teaching quarter just like fall, winter, and spring quarters.) Furthermore, the co-op student got absolutely invaluable experience while learning what industry was really like before graduation.
Now every school has transitioned to semesters, mainly to cut administrative costs. Consequently there are only two teaching semesters a year as opposed to four teaching quarters, resulting in a drastic reduction in course variety, and making co-op programs impossible to manage as many essential electives are now taught only once a year. And even if a school did offer a co-op program, a student would need 8 years to graduate!
So if you want to make college cheaper for more students and increase the number of graduating students in engineering, lobby for the return of the quarter system and the restoration of co-op programs. Too bad if the registrar's office now has to process course registration and grades four times a year instead of two. College programs should be structured for the benefit of the students, not the convenience of the administration.
Here in Aus our Uni is subsidised... if you pay via the "HELP" loan scheme, which is govt funded and interest free (but inflation adjusted) you pay around 500-600 per unit, so around 2-2.5k per semester. Once you graduate and get a job paying higher than X amount (I think it's $30k/anum) then you start having a percentage automatically deducted to pay off the HELP and it's just like paying a bit more tax.
But, and here's the kicker, if you manage to work your arse off through uni (I chose street walking as my means of income, so I literally worked my arse off, it hurts to sit down to this day) then you get a 25% reduction in the amount you have to pay. all in all a four year Uni course could cost you as little as $18000AUD, which is currently about $13000USD.
Of course the system can be rorted by the "intelectuals" (read hippies) who never get a job and spend their lives in uni... or by people who skip the country and find work elsewhere... but they won't be welcomed back to Aus with open arms.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
As a person who works in the higher ed industry (faculty & scientific research), let me tell you, there are way too many institutions out there.
The fact of the matter is that there are many, many institutions out there that are passing unqualified graduates in the name of keeping the doors open. As much as some participants might disagree, higher education is a business, and students are the customers. If you fail too many students, enrollment (i.e. revenue) drops.
As much as it pains me to say, I believe that we as a society would be better served if 15-25% of this country's marginal universities were to close. The existence of these institutions is not resulting in an enlightened, educated populace, but is instead simply driving down the value of a college degree.
If you are looking for a degree in CS or Engineering try Waterloo. You'll get a Stanford-class education for about half the price.
For the humanities you can try other prestigious schools north of the border such as Toronto, UBC, Alberta and McGill. You'll still end up in a McJob with that but at least your debt would be cut in half.
You were to major in math or science? And I don't mean applied, either. There's tonnes of books and articles written for people who want to just get a paying desk job as soon as possible but none for those of us interested in the Good Stuff(tm).
I went to private school to get my BSci., it was quite a bit more expensive than public uni. But keep in mind, the more you pay for tuition, the more you can deduct in tax. And it carries over year to year (Im in Canada). I've been out of school 4 years now, and this year I will finally be paying normal tax amounts as I've used tuition as a large deduction since I've been out. It also was used as a deduction for my parents for when I was in school, saving more money there.
Things to think about to help your debt: .10 cent wings for every night of the week. Thats cheaper than buying groceries. Working at a restaurant serving usually gets you staff meals and 50% off their menu too.
- Challenge BS classes. Costs like $150 to take a test, or $1100 to sit in something bogus and waste your time.
- Be selective about textbooks (or get used textbooks). Lots of profs teach right from the book, lots don't even use the ones recommended for the class. I sold all the texts I didn't use after I was done for approx $1000 total. Probably saved around $1500 in not buying bogus texts too.
- Part time job. I bartended at a night club while I went to school. Started in a garbage restaurant that would hire anyone and worked my way up in the industry. Made tons in tips, still had a social life.
- Reduce ridiculous trips/nights out/expensive benders, etc. I know ppl who took out a loan to go to Mexico during school, or lived in an apartment that looked like the Taj Mahal. Pizza adds up. So does dropping $100 at the bar every weekend. Your a student, live like one. I found pubs in the city that had
Using the above, 6 months after I graduated I had everything paid off.
I worked low wage entry level jobs that sucked for the first couple years. Job hopped probably 8 times since I've been out, but I found a place I liked, started at the bottom, and now worked my way up to Systems Administrator for a large ISP. Doing quite well now.
It's all what you're willing to work for, and willing to sacrifice that determines how much debt your in. Tuition is just a part of that. And the part that invests in yourself, however expensive that may be. Can you really put a price on that?
Clearly, your English degree did wonders for you. ;)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
That's why I work a full time job in addition to full time school. No social life, but hey, no debt.
seriously, if you cant figure out how to get your debt paid off, cant get a decent job, or are too dam lazy - you shouldnt have gone to college in the first place.
i think a real problem is the colleges teach to the book, instead of cultivating free thought.
I'm guilty of both. But honestly, two institutions that are failing millions and are now thankfully crumbling are "college" and "marriage". The two most overrated aspects of American life, and both cause lots of remorse and compromised lives. What will happen next is good, and healthy: the dull institutions will crumble, while their mission will live on in some new way. *Learning* is good, I suspect we'll see lifelong learning replace 4 years and a sheepskin.
Internet forums and the Internet are only as good as the level of effort and the keenness of direction you use to get back what you can from it.
If you are really going to educate yourself effectively you will have to get a hold of the textbooks anyway, because they are still the most comprehensive on the subjects they cover and forum junkies aren't going to sit around baby feeding education to people in most cases.
The colleges have an amazing racket. When you go, your family must disclose every penny it has. Then, the colleges post wildly inflated sticker prices on their product. They justify this outrageous cost with Hollywood accounting.
This would make a robber baron blush! We forget at our peril that schools are in fact profit-making organiazation staffed by managment thirsting for perks and bonuses.
Debt is an inevitability, to one degree or another, for those who don't have the cash (or their parents don't) to drop on their education and IMHO most of the time makes sense. I worked summers and did an internship, but even with all that still ended up around $40k in debt. The government forgave 10k and I was left with the rest. But I would much rather rack up some debt and be able to really focus on studying rather than having than burdening myself with the additional responsibility of a full/part time job.
Also, working your way through school to avoid debt, as some here have proposed, doesn't always make sense if it will significantly defer your graduation. The $12/hr you're making now cannot compare with the $25/hr after you graduate. Plus how stressful would it be to be working full time with a full course load? Of course if for some reason you actually find yourself with spare time/energy then by all means get a job - but this certainly wasn't my situation.
After you graduate, put in a few solid years with a good company then start jumping. If you have a CS degree then 6 figures is well within your reach and if you're focusing on paying off debt, it shouldn't take you more than a couple years.
Of course there are ways to greatly reduce debt load:
- COMMUNITY COLLEGE: stay there as long as possible. The teacher to student ratios and hence the quality of instruction is much better. 1/2 price tuition. Do your experimenting where it's cheap.
- Live with your parents. Seriously. If your sanity/social life can handle it, then do it. Rent is money down the drain. This probably implies that you're going to a local university.
- Live humbly. Do you really need that car?
- get a scholarship
Yep. The Lunch Lady shouldn't have bought a house, and the guy with the 900 SAT score shouldn't have gone to college. Film at 11. Vo-tech at 12. The return of a decent highschool education at 1? Oh now... we're all too drunk from credit, and have fallen asleep by then.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's a gamble, no degree is a guarantee; they just open certain opportunities. You can just start working as soon as possible and can just focus on developing the skill of making money. From what I've seen the people who manage to do this generally go into business for themselves.
It's a gamble. You probably will be disappointed in you're just looking at your education as a way to make more money. There is a quality of life value to education that will never translate into dollars.
Salary caps are telling; what's the highest wage you can find available for your level of education right now? The degree (or certification) doesn't guarantee the position, but opens these opportunity. In ten years I've looked for the highest opening salaries along the way, it's broken down approximately like this:
-no degree, no direct experience: from (federal) minimum wage to 50% above minimum wage
-Bachelor's: 150% -- 200% of minimum wage (with direct experience)
-Masters: 500% -- 1000% of minimum wage
-JD: 1000% -- 1300% of minimum wage
i find it so strange no one mentioned it already.
the best thing to avoid huge loans is simply to go and study abroad. In most europeans countries tuition fees are around 1 or 2K dollars a year.
as an extended bonus foreign studies are rather well seen by your future employer generally.
That I don't have a degree & still make decent money for someone my age. Oh, and actually am 40 w/ a + net worth.
I was a C student (ace tests, fail homework), so naturally not the most "motivated" scholastically speaking. My spelling still sucks. But when I made the determination to go to UW Comp sci, I was told by peers who had done a semester that 1. I couldn't do it. 2. I wouldn't do it. My dad said NO WAY in Explitave Hell to the bill. We had a huge fight over me becoming nothing, and how can I ever change if I am not allowed to go deep into debt. (granted I didn't see it that way then)
I said Whatever, I'll just drink and do drugs for a few years, race around town, and do a little jail time... (O.K. I didnt' say that but that's what happened)
Somehow, I survived. I am no longer that person (he disugsts me actually, Please don't drink and drive!) I found that I had expensive tastes for things, and I needed to fund them or steal them, and well, it's hard to steal a perfectly cooked prime rib unless you get the whole cow... That only happened once.
I also found out what I didn't want to do. I took some Classes at a Community center for slightly higher education. I learned all about programming from a guy who never programed a day in his life. On the 5th day of class he told us "I'm learning this as I teach it so bear w/ me." I learned about Database structures and relationships from a teacher who the school wouldn't pay to do her job so she left (She was awesome). I started to learn C from a guy who was so Jaded that his educational message was overshadowed by his agression. Lets not even go near my 1st Calculus teacher who had a honest to goodness personality disorder. My 1st time w/ Bash was taught by a good kid, 4-5 years my jr. He was a great teacher, but they didn't pay him crap either. My 2nd calculus teacher rocked. He took me to The Limit, and we had a beer there. I had to take a human relations class, and realized that here is someone (a psychologist who taught the class) who really needed therapy.
Then it all hit me... I love computers, and HATE programming. I loved Logic, Hated coding. What happens if I OJT, and just work hard, really hard? What if I learn how this business runs...and then... apply my knowledge to that. what if I just work my way into IT? I stopped school and focused on work. I felt unfullfilled for a while. My wife left, I ran over my cat, and life generally sucked... for about 5 months. Then it happend. I started to get promoted.
Since I started where I work, I've doubled my salary a twice and working towards my third. Plus clients. I have been "seen" by my organization. The higher ups have fast tracked my career, and even waived education requirements for the job I have. Yeah, it's taken me as long or longer than it would have had I gone to college, but I got some things out of it. Sallary negotion takes a little more research. I learned what I want, what I can get from working for someone and what I have to do to work for myself. (I feel for small business owners... Collecting on a project is a PITA)
There are some things I never got to do, like Study, or have some greater social interactions, but that's what WoW's for anyway. I now make more in gold (just kidding about the in gold part) than my dad and mom combined. My dad has 2 degrees.
If I had any advice to give to the youth, it'd be Learn. From school if you can, from your surroundings eitherway, and especially from your parents mistakes. Don't put off your homework, but don't put off partying either, you only live once, and hot people are at their prime between 20-30.
A small part of me may still wish I would have gone to college, and I may do some time in the future. I regret some decisions I have made, sure who doesn't? Now, I realize that I make the decissions that affect my life so do you.
If you can make a commitment to your future that will earn you more money down the road then why not? ...
And as for America as a whole, as my Diffy-Q's teacher says "There is a student somewhere in Siberia learning his Diffy-Q's, getting better grades than you, and someday he will try to take your job, you have to stop that." ... I like my Diffy-Q's teacher :)
The USA only has socialism for the rich, as they are the ones who need it the most. Us lower classes have to get by on hard work alone. I mean, you don't really expect the rich to lift a finger or have to take responsibility, do you? That would be the death of the American dream.
The American dream of course being to lie, cheat, steal, or do anything else it takes, possibly including work (THE HORROR!), to make it to the top where you can also completely ignore any and all responsibilities to society.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Does anyone have good statistics on where univeristys spend there money, eg, x% for instructional salary, y% for grounds, z% for research facilitys, etc.
Trying to get a more quantitative handle on why costs going up faster then inflation - some people say its simply demand, others the labor intensive nature of education means cpi not good predictor.
The thought that everyone must go to college in order to succeed is prevalent in our society. I have lived with a couple guys that could hardly read, barely graduate from high school, or struggled to get a GED. Unfortunately, they all believe that with government help, they can get the college education to which they are "entitled" I believe that the entitlement mindset is the root problem.
The youth are told they are the greatest and can do anything they put their mind towards. There is only a fine line between encouragement and outright lying. If they feel entitled to succeed, where does the desire for hard work come from? For the coup de grace, ineptitude is not eliminated by hard work.
Trying to shove ALL students into the college mold is what schools try, but not every student fits. But, every student pays with the same money, so why should the schools care? Trade schools and apprenticeships are looked down on the the US, although they are a great alternative for students who either don't want to or cannot do the college track.
Everyone is missing the point: college degrees are a proxy for an intelligence test (illegal for employers to give). Why are employers lining up at University of Chicago but ignoring Mississippi State?
of course, predatory capitalism comes with 'unregulated' in the package.
noone is coming up saying 'hey ! under these conditions, collece education becomes another form of indentured servitude, this is not fit for 21st century civilization', and preventing it.
after all, market knows best, right ? market regulates itself, right ? market is efficient, right ?
we all know that how well 'market' did these stuff in regard to riding on free credit for the last 10 years, and then the credit crisis.
one has to be a fool to not be able to see what this going will do to american education, and its generations of educated workforce.
Read radical news here
this question?
How come a bank is "suddenly" in trouble if it hits a few foreclosures? It'll still get it's money from property value right? This property is a tangible asset right? It's just not liquid. How come they didn't say "hmm, mortgages have been defaulting 3% more than normal... maybe we should tighten standards for a bit to reduce our income loss?
From my perspective:
I grew out of the sub-prime market on my own thank you. A rare success story these days. I was in it because my ex wife left w/ the assets that our 2nd mortgage paid for (I fought tooth and nail for the house though). When I asked my sub-prime lender for a prime rate, they couldn't come within about 1.5% points of what I was now being offered.
My perspective is that they were greedy. Really greedy, and instead of mixing up there portfolio w/ some good quality credit and medium credit, and of course "poor" credit they just risked it all, at who's expense? Ours the taxpayers who now have to pay for this crap.
When times were rough, Greenspan issued warnings...they held on... and held on, and loaned more and more. Poor Bernake (sp?), he never had a chance. Then a small bubble popped and everyone freaked out. Had the downturn resulted in any bank losing assets? (obviously not counting a home owner who should be held just as liable as the banks IMHO) Why can't they (the banks) just hold on to the assets, as historically realestate returns ~10 apy? Yeah they have to pay taxes, but that's cheaper than putting it into the market right now.
While my life may be affected by the implosion of a large bank, insurer, or auto company, I still want it to implode. If people don't learn from mistakes, they are destined to repeat the lesson until it is learned. Some times, you need to hit your thumb with the hammer to learn how to hit the nail. These guys set off dynomite while it was still in their hands on PURPOSE. Anyone who thinks that this wasn't an accident has not read about mitigating risk, risk tolerance, or any other basic investment methodology (like dollar(people cost averaging too).
I sit pretty well now w/ a 5.75% fixed loan paid bi-weekly w/ about $100 extra a month going to principal. No one so far, (I have asked several friends, banks, etc...) has been able to tell me why you wouldn't want to upgrade a loan someone who grows out of subprime if they are leaving. If you could answer that, I'd be very pleased.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
That would explain why college education is less expensive per capita, and of comparable quality, and free across much of Europe. Oh, wait...
Any economist worth his salt will also tell you that giving out government loans to private institutions that exist purely to make a profit will always lead to price increases, while service industries like education, health care, local utilities, etc, are almost always better served by a single entity, regionally operated, that has no profit motive.
The only problem is when the false idea - that free markets solve all problems efficiently - is run up the flag pole, again and again, despite evidence to the contrary.
It's much easier to have an open government institution providing common necessities than it is to try and regulate private institutions that have no public interest, yet receive massive public funds. If you're serious about finding a solution, all you have to do is look around, and see what other countries have been doing successfully for years.
Everyone here laughed and laughed that the European governments charged a 100% tax on fuel, until about a year ago. Since those countries foresaw the inevitable, that tax reduced consumption, funded mass transit construction, and made them less dependent on countries like Saudi Arabia for their daily transportation needs. Here it would be called socialism; elsewhere, it's just common sense.
By the way, there is $350 billion in securitized student loans, and now they're having trouble.
Don't let the liberal arts majors know that their tuition is used to pay for our fancy buildings and labs in science/engineering.
How come a bank is "suddenly" in trouble if it hits a few foreclosures?
Umm... a "few" foreclosures? Dude, we're not talking about a "few" foreclosures. We're talking about truly massive numbers of foreclosures.
This property is a tangible asset right? It's just not liquid. How come they didn't say "hmm, mortgages have been defaulting 3% more than normal... maybe we should tighten standards for a bit to reduce our income loss?
ROFL. 3%. Try 55% . Meanwhile, those "tangible assets" were massively overinflated, and so the banks will take a loss no matter what.
While my life may be affected by the implosion of a large bank, insurer, or auto company, I still want it to implode.
You only say that because you don't understand the true extent of the problem. Imagine your local small business can't get a loan in order to expand their business. Or your city or state unable to get a loan for infrastructure development. Or how 'bout people unable to get mortgages to buy homes? The list goes on and on.
The fact is, credit plays a very important part in any health economy. What you're proposing is an effective freeze on credit issuance, and that would be a disaster.
I sit pretty well now w/ a 5.75% fixed loan paid bi-weekly w/ about $100 extra a month going to principal. No one so far, (I have asked several friends, banks, etc...) has been able to tell me why you wouldn't want to upgrade a loan someone who grows out of subprime if they are leaving.
Fear. Fear that housing prices will continue to decline and the bank will end up with a liability on it's books. Fear that the individual will be unable to cover their loan because the economy turns sour as credit dries up. I'm sure there are other reasons, but number one on the list, without a doubt, is plain and simply fear.
There are a few things in play here. First, banks are huge leverage machines. They borrow money on the short term market (that is, they borrow deposits from you and sell commercial paper to lenders like money market funds) at low interest rates and then they loan that money out at high interest rates on the long-term market (e.g. mortgages, car loans). From accounting, assets = liabilities + owner's equity, right? Assets are your loans, liabilities are the loans they took out (the cash in your savings account is a liability, not an asset), and then whatever's left is the bank's equity. Banks are leveraged high enough that the owner's equity is very small relative to the assets and liabilities, so if the assets drop a few percentage points, they're easily wiped out.
Second, we're not talking about a few foreclosures. We're talking about a *lot* of foreclosures. Worse, we're talking about the market realizing that there are likely to be even more foreclosures in the future. That lowers the market prices of the loans that banks have that *haven't* been foreclosed upon. Loans across the board become less valuable. If it's bad enough, banks can become undercaptialized simply because a of a major swing in the market for debt.
It looks like one of the big precipitating factors was the failure of Lehman Brothers. Lehman was allowed to fail, it defaulted on a lot of debt, and a few money market funds started to lose value. That signaled to everybody in the world that money market funds are not necessarily safe, so there was a massive run on them. People pulled out of the market for short term debt and dumped their money into government bonds and cash for safety. Suddenly, if you're a bank whose short term debt is turning over and you need to borrow more money, you find that the money you would have borrowed on the commercial paper market isn't there any more. At least, not without paying a ridiculous interest rate. This sort of thing happens across the board, stopping most loan transactions between businesses. That's why you hear that the credit markets "froze up".
That's true. But there's a chain reaction going on here. A bubble is popping. Credit markets tighten up, causing house prices to plummet. People weren't paying cash for houses. Now the asset backing the bad loan may not be enough to cover the bad loan. Banks are stuck with a choice between owning huge swaths of land that won't cover their debts (not to mention the operational problems of essentially becoming real estate companies, and the fact that if they flood the market with property, the problem will only get worse), or dealing with people who aren't paying their debts on time, causing the value of their loan portfolios to drop. Again, remember that these guys are *hugely* leveraged, so they can't afford to take much of a haircut.
On one hand, you're absolutely right. Loan standards were awful. The problem is especially bad when it comes to the "nonbank" entities that put out most of the subprime paper. At least normal banks were regulated to take some of the edge off the problem. Investment banks and little shops that loaned out money and then resold the debt--not so much. Not only that, those guys don't have any rules about how much they can leverage. That's why the first ones to die were the investment banks. Their positions were riskier and more heavily leveraged.
There's way more to it than this, but these are a few highlights. Those should at least cover the big picture
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
First let me thank you for taking an interest in this discussion!
"Umm... a "few" foreclosures? Dude, we're not talking about a "few" foreclosures. We're talking about truly massive numbers of foreclosures. "
I don't think they all dropped at once... I'm pretty sure someone somewhere spotted a trend long before the mass media put it out there. I am not that niaeve.
This property is a tangible asset right? It's just not liquid. How come they didn't say "hmm, mortgages have been defaulting 3% more than normal... maybe we should tighten standards for a bit to reduce our income loss?
ROFL. 3%. Try 55% . Meanwhile, those "tangible assets" were massively overinflated, and so the banks will take a loss no matter what.
What I meant w/ the 3% figure is when the trend rose by that amount (a large # on a global scale) why didn't they tighten lending standards?
While my life may be affected by the implosion of a large bank, insurer, or auto company, I still want it to implode.
You only say that because you don't understand the true extent of the problem. Imagine your local small business can't get a loan in order to expand their business. Or your city or state unable to get a loan for infrastructure development. Or how 'bout people unable to get mortgages to buy homes? The list goes on and on.
This is true, I don't really WANT it to implode, I just want it to be bad enough that people don't ever make this mistake again. It's not that bad right now, or at least, it's not that bad for me.
The fact is, credit plays a very important part in any health economy. What you're proposing is an effective freeze on credit issuance, and that would be a disaster. Not a freeze on credit, a change in the rate that loaners lend to poor credit quality borrowers.
I sit pretty well now w/ a 5.75% fixed loan paid bi-weekly w/ about $100 extra a month going to principal. No one so far, (I have asked several friends, banks, etc...) has been able to tell me why you wouldn't want to upgrade a loan someone who grows out of subprime if they are leaving.
Fear. Fear that housing prices will continue to decline and the bank will end up with a liability on it's books. Fear that the individual will be unable to cover their loan because the economy turns sour as credit dries up. I'm sure there are other reasons, but number one on the list, without a doubt, is plain and simply fear.
O.K. Everything else I understood but this part. Fear that your one PRIME (good credit rating) is going to defualt? so you let the steady income that's been coming in go? That doesn't make sense to me. How can someone who doubled their income, threw 100pts on their credit score look like a bad person to lend to when they are carrying the same loan w/ you allready?
I guess what I am trying to say in simple terms, why be forced to sell a good credit loan and instead keep your portfolio mixed a bit w/ some "safe" credit by giving the consumer the rate they deserve?
For retirement plans, a middle age person "should" have a ratio that's some stocks & some bonds right? Diversify and conquer?
"Why did the subprime lenders kick out all their "bonds" (the good people paying down their debt)and keep only penny stocks?" They did that out of fear? no... I can't think they were scared so they tried to screw up more... that doesn't make sense.
I'm not the only one who has seen this I am sure.
Again, thanks for your discussion, I look forward to a response, and hopefully from some others as well.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I'm also a first-generation university graduate. I watched my parents bust their ass with two jobs each to make ends meet, so you know, I could have food and a roof over my head.
My first job out of university paid more than both my parents income combined.
How could I not avoid going into debt? Even in Canada, where school is cheap compared to you US folks --say 8-9k/year tuition + living expenses, books, etc. I did a degree in Engineering (geological) and had no time for a part time job. It wasn't worth it. I could bust my ass and get more scholarship money with marks than I could by shafting my studies and getting some garbage part-time job during the year. I worked every summer between terms, often in not-nice-but-money-grabbing jobs. A term of field work for DeBeers (aka: lugging rocks on my back, 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day), uranium mining in the middle of nowhere in Australia (don't get me started), and working nightshift (7pm - 7am) on the rigs in central Alaska.
I had a mild, mild surplus of money at the end of my B.Sc. Maybe a few thousand. Job market was good but I took a dive to grad school. Fast forward two years, just started work at the worst possible time with 30k of debt on the books. Could I have done anything different? Probably not. The fact that I have a master's is saving me from the chopping block currently vs. the other juniors (even the ones with 2 years experience).
Some people's parents don't have the money to send their kids to school.
Provided the metal market stops crashing, I should be good shape. But in today's market, with all the cuts going on, you think the people who didn't get to University are getting jobs either? Hell no.
I'm serious. I spent maybe 10% of my time learning important stuff and the rest doing pointless busy work and listening to teachers who'd never worked a day in the real world spout nonsense.
I worked my way through school, so at least I don't have the debt to contend with. But I still wasted five years of my life. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't do it.
I would get an inexpensive online degree or take night classes so that I could do a real job while I was in school. That way I'd have actual work experience (which counts a lot more than any degree when you're trying to make money, and is more fun and rewarding besides).
Your customers are, for the most part, the parents of your students. You can tell, because your students are happy when class is canceled on account of the teacher being hung over to show up. When I went to college, this really upset me. After all, I was paying to be in class. If I didn't want to be there, I wouldn't have paid for it.
That would explain why college education is less expensive per capita, and of comparable quality, and free across much of Europe. Oh, wait...
Not sure what your point is here. Mine is that when the government tinkers with a market in a capitalist economy, bad results often happen. Social democracies in Europe are different. We actually have a pretense of a free market in the US, or at least we did until recently. Lead weights are good for diving but not hot air balloons.
Any economist worth his salt will also tell you that giving out government loans to private institutions that exist purely to make a profit will always lead to price increases, while service industries like education, health care, local utilities, etc, are almost always better served by a single entity, regionally operated, that has no profit motive.
Nonsense, you mean leftist economists believe this. K-12 public school education costs twice as much as private schools per pupil in the US, and private schools do a lot better. If anything, the US needs more competition in K-12, like Belgium has done. The cost of healthcare in the US involves a lot of factors that are not present in social democracies (no rationing, lawsuits, among others), and for those covered have much better healthcare than in other countries. I wouldn't switch my healthcare for any country's. We have the best mortality rates for cancer and heart disease. UK has among the worst.
The only problem is when the false idea - that free markets solve all problems efficiently - is run up the flag pole, again and again, despite evidence to the contrary.
I never said free markets did solve all problems, but they solve most better than government does.
It's much easier to have an open government institution providing common necessities than it is to try and regulate private institutions that have no public interest, yet receive massive public funds. If you're serious about finding a solution, all you have to do is look around, and see what other countries have been doing successfully for years.
Last time I checked, the US has the most college graduates of any country. Our worst college-educated state, West Virginia, has more college graduates than any country in Western Europe.
Everyone here laughed and laughed that the European governments charged a 100% tax on fuel, until about a year ago. Since those countries foresaw the inevitable, that tax reduced consumption, funded mass transit construction, and made them less dependent on countries like Saudi Arabia for their daily transportation needs. Here it would be called socialism; elsewhere, it's just common sense.
I laugh at a 100% gas tax. In America, we have this thing called freedom, and we like freedom in our daily lives, which includes driving. Freedom, economic, political, and personal, has allowed us in roughly 200 years to build an economy that dwarfs any other. In fact, if California were a country, it would be the fifth biggest economy by some measures. Americans simply want a free lifestyle, not one dictated by central bureaucrats. Our oil dependence has not been utopian, but I don't believe in utopia. You certainly have your own problems in Europe, and most Americans wouldn't trade yours for ours.
Frankly, anyone who would quote a nut like Chomsky is hard to appeal to. But I would submit to you that America did not quickly become the largest economy in the world by employing his ideas - and most Americans really like our country. Even our current "bad" economy tends to be better than most countries' economies on their best day. And frankly, it seems a lot of people are literally dying to come here.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Well, college was originally intended for the "well to do" to round off their education. A university is suppose to be a place for you to study to learn about something, not as a career prep. Otherwise you get a job at a company and work your way up. However, it should be said that college serves as a barrier to entry for many occupations. Sort of a test to see if you can handle problem solving, expression or writing. Given two candidates with similar grades, the one with a college education from a better name school is going to have a major competitive advantage over his peers from a less well known rival. I had a college friend who was offered a scholarship to a mediocre school, while just admission to a private elite school. The admission official for the lesser known institute told him, well you can be a valedictorian at our school, or average at the top rated school. Perhaps it makes a difference in your first couple of years. But after a decade, people ask what school you went to, not your GPA. Another one of my friends, short on money, decided to study Comp. Eng. at Univ of Ill at Champana-Urbana. His strategy was to avoid any classes not relevant to his goal. He took preliminary college classes in his junior & senior year in HS and skipped all of his electives and took only the core courses. He got a co-op job after his second year (while taking third year classes). He worked the co-op job as a programmer for a year and managed to get hired full time without a degree. Another smart friend who studied EE at U of WI at Plattville for 2 years [because it was much cheaper a school] and then transferred to U of WI at Madison [much more expensive]. Madison made him repeat most of his 2nd year classes, so in the end, he did not save money by this strategy. He did acknowledge that Platteville was a much easier school. I studied math with the full intention of getting my Ph. D. Somewhere along the line, I finished up my M. Sc., got a job as a programmer and never returned for my Ph. D. In retrospect, I should have studied computational biology, which would have been just as interesting, and probably far more in demand. Now I just sit around, post on www.slashdot.org, and wonder what the hell I want to be if I grow up.
Sweet... You gave very insightful information, some of which I allready know (I did oversimplify my questions a little bit)
You were not condescending at all, another plus! I know it's not a "few" mortgages, but this didn't happen over night. Hence my question about "3%" increase. That was just an arbitrary # but I am sure you know, it takes a geological event to raise a lake a few degrees 10' down. I am glad you saw later what I was frustrated about.
I probably should have saved this rant for an econ forum, but I appreciate you answering my posts.
At the end of my post, you didn't answer the question that has been on my mind most. Why would a company dealing in subprime loans abandon their customers when they grow out of the subprime "market." mostly becuase I tr
I may not be an econ major, but I found my Econ survey class fascinating. Almost enough to major in it instead of Comp stuff, but I had been in computers so long, I knew I would be successful there. It's kinda like having a spanish speaking grandma... and then taking spanish for the easy A. So I'm a little lazy...
Thanks again,
DW
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I certainly don't want to throw perls to swine: If you actually read my text beyond the subject line, you would see the words, "Modern day equivalent." I used to drive a Honda Insight: That doesn't make me insightful? As to uninformed??? You know I must be getting feeble minded in my age. Perhaps I meant to say Share-Cropping instead of Indentured Servitude. What is that thing called? When you worked the land, but you didn't own it and you got a chance to own it after giving up x share of your crops over x amount of time? Also wasn't that a way for slaves to earn their freedom? The comparison is simply that a student is owned by the student loan. I have heard that some of our best students are abandoning their U.S. Citizenship for other countries when they figure that even under the best circumstances 10 years of their life will be spent paying back the loan: Better to start fresh in another country: They can't garnishee your wages internationally...or can they?
As a kid, I blithely did as I was told to do; go to college because that's what you're supposed to do. Most of the students I meet are similarly confused about the reality of things; after being hammered for their entire lives to that point by the education system's insistence on going to college and university, that this is what good little boys and girls should strive for, this is hardly any surprise.
I was lucky. I met a teacher who advised me to get out, and while it caused a huge upset in my family, I did so, and almost instantly became very happy and successful in life.
I recommend apprenticing under professionals in whatever career path you want to follow. --You just offer yourself up as free labor while expressing a passionate desire to learn the craft/trade/whatever. This is impressive to professionals; they get free help and they derive joy in passing on what they know to an enthusiastic kid. --Every teacher will tell you the joy they feel when they encounter actual passion in a student; it's rare and it is a joy, (I know this, having taught a number of up and comers myself in a similar manner). Among the advantages are not having to rack up any student debt, as well as being able to learn directly relevant skills in the workplace much more effectively than any class room can offer; skills which are current and vital in the real world. You also make real connections in the industry which can hook you up with good positions later on. Essentially, as you prove your worth and develop your skills and knowledge, job offers just naturally spring up. In the real world, college credentials are not required for employment if you are clever and earnest in developing your skills.
This is not to say that school can't be fun or useful, (learning Flash, or basic accounting, for example, is worth taking a few classes for), but it's important to go into a school environment knowing exactly what you want to get out of it all. It's also much less expensive when you pinpoint specific skills and learn them in this way. Going into a university setting blind and confused while using the student loan system is a one-way ticket to debt slavery.
Of course, if you want to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, school is pretty much a necessity, but there are MANY other life paths one can follow which offer great satisfaction and a comfortable living.
-FL
Hi,
here is the trick I did. I just did my bachelor and master in Germany, where it is free for everybody and still good :)
Then I went to Princeton for my PhD where I get paid to work for my degree :)
Amen! We've his army of small liberal arts collages that baby their students without contributing anything towards scientific or technological advancement. Otoh, the big universities are turning out people who've survived experiences much closer to real life.
Easy tricks for cheap & effective education :
(1) Move to some state whose universities are free, like Georgia.
(2) Send your kids to Canada or Europe for their education.
(3) Don't let your kids major in liberal arts or beer, i.e. management.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
There's a lot of disinformation out there regarding the nature of the financial crisis, and I can see how one might have such an opinion. However, I have made a genuine effort to research this issue and I can assure you that, as difficult as it may be to believe, our government did allow a 60 trillion dollar market, in the form of, modern OTC derivatives to exist completely and utterly unregulated.
In fact, this market was so "free" that that figure--60 trillion--is actually just an estimate (some go as high as 600 trillion). Nobody knows just how much money has been tied up in what was essentially bets between the mega-rich about the rise and fall of company values. Even crazier, not even the companies themselves know the others' positions because the information is secret. As a result, they've stopped lending to each other, the so-called "credit freeze" or more pleasant euphemism "lack of confidence."
Before you label others ignorant or a revisionist, please educate yourself on this issue. If you think Fannie Mae (an institution which has been around since the Great Depression) was the cause of all this, you have been misled. You need to ask yourself why you have been deceived and whose purpose does this lie serve.
-Grym
Religion being #1, and Big Oil #3, Education is just a huge sell. I mean does it take a rocket scientist (no funny meant, really) to figure out a 100-200 dollar book is a rippoff. I think Education has become a off-the-books IQ test. If you didn't figure out the K-12 lie of "a better job and life was ahead", and you took it hook line and sinker without checking it out, then yes you deserve the indenture you get after graduating. However, with billions of offerings to those with high grades and great aspirations followed with effort there is no reason anyone has to be broke and living in a basement that actually deserves a real education. You can drink on Wed and Friday on a trade job just as well as getting an education in a formal school, both of which will teach you a lesson about moderation and discipline.
One of the main problems with kids being crushed by debt is that they are not given realistic economic advice. If you spend $500K to get a B.S. or B.A. in a job that will pay $40K a year (advanced degrees aside), you might not be so happy. On the other hand, if you are going to be making $100K, maybe that Ivy League education was worth it. There's no right decision, it is up to the individual to decide on their lifestyle. Of course, you have to commit to that decision at the wise age of 18.
Personally, I started college interested in Astronomy until I took my first economics class... then I decided to major in Engineering.
I'm not against rich people, but let me give a bit of the other side.
First, if you are going to compare pay, don't compare wages -- even a slaveowner must feed his slaves; even a farmer must feed his cattle. Compare discretionary income. Now, considering discretionary income, I would argue that most US laborers without a college education work far harder for their dollar, than any of the manager's class and up. I say that, while working with them. Let's then toss into the mix, 2nd and 3rd world laborers, and the difference becomes extreme.
Don't believe me? Let's try a sanity check. Typical career wage earner makes about $12/hr or less where I work in Hampton Roads. So we're talking $12 x 2000 hr/yr = $24000. With overtime, that used to be about $30k, though right now it's typically undertime, at $20k or less. Now, in this area apartment rent takes a minimum of about $700/mo = $8400. Most wage earners never had a chance to buy into that housing bubble. Food for 2 (taking a typical family size of 4) is about $50/wk = $2500/yr. Childcare is another $8000. Electricity is $1000. Phone is $500, minimum. So we'll estimate that the wage earner makes 24k, and spends $20500. So his discretionary income (pre-recession/depression) is $3500. He works 2000 hrs, or makes $4.50 of discretionary income a day. He'll need to be careful with that $4.50, because it also has to cover his vehicle costs, though I'm assuming he lives locally. If he drives farther, he can reduce his rent, but those costs typically balance out. I think if you run a similar sanity check on the manager's discretionary income, it's a tad more.
But now, let's also get down to another issue: the rich say they've earned the right to it, because they've gone after it. Okay, I can get down with that argument, but only insofar as everyone chooses to go after something, and they'll eventually get what they're after (typically speaking). But that does not mean that they've earned the right to profits that were made by others. What I typically see is that the profits are made at the manufacturing level. Cuts are also made, there, but they shouldn't be.
What I mean, is that if they are not paying a living wage to their employees, or if they are not meeting OSHA standards, then they don't deserve those extra profits. But that is often where the profits come from. Even layoffs, to increase profits, is not acceptable, because much of the economic mass of the company is derived from those workers you are laying off, and you are separating those workers from the economic mass that they earned. In other words, you are stealing from them.
So I'm not saying that the rich are horrible, the rich don't deserve to be rich ... but I do not agree with Limbaugh or other pseudo-conservative talkshow hosts who basically want the world to pander to their greed. Let the rich be rich, and let them enjoy a better standard of living -- but don't agree with them that they have the right to force others into a standard of death - which is much what has happened in this last century.
To paraphrase John Paul II, this last century has developed into a war by the powerful against the weak.
That includes the rich against the poor. Think about it.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Yea, there is that deployment to the Middle East but the experience will change your life probably and just about pay for your education. (note, I didn't go into the Military and have 30K of debt still left to pay on my college loans)
I stopped reading when you made the massively stupid comparison between salaries today and "feeding slaves" or "feeding cattle".
It's amazing to see someone so jealous of the wealthy that such an idiotic comparison makes sense.
Let me ask fuckwit, how many slaves owned homes, cars, and had 401k's?
God damn you made a ridiculous attempt to support your world view.
http://www.changemakers.net/node/13808
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Or maybe you just made a stupid analogy because your world view isn't very developed and you're not very bright.
No, I retract that maybe.
When I consolidated my loans in 2005, the average student loan debt was less than 15,000.
Post figures that demonstrate your claim that "most loans are alot (sic) higher than 30,000" or admit you were lying.
By the way you won't find said figures, so don't bother trying, just accept that you got caught lying.
How about the 2 months per year that laborer is paying in Social Security and Medicare taxes that he may not live long enough to collect on? Some people WANT them to be kept weak and dependent but it's not businessmen.
The best thing we could do is to make it easier to start new (small) businesses. That means simplified tax and regulatory paperwork, low marginal tax rates (small businesses mostly use "pass through" taxation, paying business taxes on their owners personal returns, so "tax cuts for the rich" is mostly tax cuts for small businesses) and a stable dollar (good for everyone). Think of which political party is more agreeable to those things and vote accordingly.
A growing economy increases competition for labor and thus the price of labor. If you merely decree that Other People will pay a "living wage" you hurt growth and the ability to pay that wage. High immigration of unskilled labor suppresses labor costs.
Who gets a higher return on capital: small businessmen or Congress? If you want high growth...
This is insightful, although the government conspiracy is a out there.
The market is totally dependent on the risk of failure. It is completely built into the system. Every interest rate out there is predicated on the risk of failure, aka non-payment. Why do people with poor credit ratings have to pay high interest rates? Because the lender is taking a big amount of risk in lending. Loans with low default risk bear low interest rates. The safest investment is government T-Bills but they are a bad investment because they bear very little interest. More risk == More reward.
The bank's owners (shareholders, aka investors, aka lenders themselves) took a risk by investing in their particular bank. They took this risk expecting to earn a reward in the form of a dividend or higher share price. It is their fault that the bank failed by allowing their board of directors to allow such bone-headed financial positions. It is the shareholders who should suffer the fallout of the banks failure by losing their investments. Completely. That's the risk they took. Anything else ruins the market dynamic. Who reaps the benefit of a bailout? The shareholders do. Do consumers? Does my mortgage interest rate decrease? It should... its not as risky for the bank to loan me the money anymore since they are being propped up by taxpayers.
The better solution IMHO, would have been to bail out troubled mortgages. You're in foreclosure and you life is about to be ruined, here's $200K from the federal government. Loan forgiven. 700 billion could have saved every home in america from foreclosure AND it would have saved the banks from failing. The downside is the guys who paid their mortgages on time, every month, wouldn't see the benefit that deadbeats see.... that is unpopular politically and couldn't fly. Instead, mortgage help was the first thing struck from the original bailout proposal. How insane is that? Ostensibly, the package was to help the state of the economy but the only people being helped are the banks. Real working class people don't get any help. Ain't that the way of the world???
I hate to tell you this, but IIT (as in Illinois Institute of Technology) is a very good engineering school. Belongs to the same Association of Independent Technological Universities, that MIT, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon do.
# 70% men, 30% women
# 44% out-of-state (all 50 represented)
also
# Programming team went to 2004 and 2005 world finals
# American Society of Civil Engineers Steel Bridge Team went to the 2008 National Competition after placing second in the 2008 Great Lakes Regional Competition.
# The Formula Hybrid Team, of the Society of Automotive Engineers and IEEE, placed 3rd overall in the 2008 International Formula Hybrid Competition held in Loudon, New Hampshire, and placed placed 6th in 2007.
NOT the same as ITT, lol.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
What you need for a college/university depends a lot on what your goals are.
Back 20 years ago when I was looking for schools for EE, one of the researchers I was working with told me flat out that if I planned to go to graduate school (which I did), then nobody would care where you did undergraduate so long as it was good enough to get you into the grad school you want.
Similar for doctors, lawyers, etc. If the lawyer graduated from Harvard Law you never hear that they went to Podunk U for undergrad.
On the other hand, if you are doing a business-type degree (and not continuing for MBA), then the contacts from your undergraduate degree are vital so you need to make sure the school you choose provides good contacts. Likewise for a variety of other fields, especially those that don't usually involve higher degrees. Not to say that you can't get a wonderful education from lesser-known schools, but you will need to work that much harder to generate the contacts you will need in order to advance in your career (assuming that is what you want to do in life).
But if you aren't sure what you want to do, or aren't sure whether you are ready for the rigor of academic life, the community college is a good place to start to sort things out at a cheaper rate while building a decent foundation. At that point it really isn't worth going thousands of dollars in debt "finding yourself."
http://internationalcashday.webs.com/
Deleted
Why would colleges stop hiking tuition up if more kids apply every year they do? We need some government involvement in my opinion. Education is THE key to successful, progressive societies. Gigantic football stadiums? Luxurious dorms?
You forgot that in America we don't have a free market. We have zoning laws. We have legal/illegal alien laws. We have laws about who can do what, based on this or that group's permission. We have private "for sale" laws. We have laws about who we can do business with, depending on who (or what) we are.
Here in America, "Free market" is very much about privilege.
Personally, though, I find free market to be as bankrupt as libertarianism, on a one-to-one basis: yes, it is very nice if you can do it, but if there is such a thing as wickedness in this world, it hands the key to the chicken coop to the foxes. Arguably in the end, if there is such a thing as wickedness, the foxes get the chicken coop no matter what system you have. But libertarianism and free markets hand it all over much more quickly. I don't know if it's better, or not, but I suspect it isn't.
As far as innovation drying up, I don't think it does. Innovation happens because people like to invent. It is capitalization that you are talking about drying up; but capitalization benefits the inventors very little, and the privileged very much.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I'm in GA (Actually, I'm a prof at a uni here). We have the HOPE scholarship, which makes tuition $0 for any qualified student, and even covers some book costs.
If you pay tuition, it is about $1600 per semester; and you don't pay any more money for hours after 12 credit ours. If you finish in 8 semesters, you got $12,800 in tuition costs. The starting salaries for most of our grads are in the high 40s (Computing, in Atlanta area), say $45K, which means about $30K after taxes; you can pay your tuition in one year if you want (if you live frugally).
So, 1 and 2 hold, if you know what you're doing. BTW, I lived in Louisiana and South Carolina, and both had a similar scholarship program. Maybe things are different in other places though.
Obviously I meant per capita, the rate of college grads. But nice "gotcha" moment. You should work in cable news.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
All them marxist tree-huggin' commies in Europe (or at least a big part of the countries there) offer free or almost free education, and it's not only reserved for their citizens. As a result, students don't feel compelled to get a degree just as an investment, but truly to fulfill their curiosity. They take their time, maybe change degrees half-way through once they realize their true calling, and end up as well-rounded, generalist guys who can talk about anything and can actually place Irak and Afghanistan on a map.