Aside from what Pensketch brought up, in the US lenders are allowed to steal your shit in lieu of a monthly payment.
5 Likes
And of course Trump’s administration is trying their damndest to make it even more difficult.
9 Likes
-
Four words: Google (americans english college free) and scroll down.
-
Get a trade: electrician, plumber, carpenter etc. You get paid to learn. Then you can pay for college while you work at your trade. You can wind up with a college degree AND a trade and no debt and you may well do it quicker than going into debt to rapacious gangsters.
In 1959 I was paying $23 a year total for all subjects. I suspect the government was subsidizing this somewhat.
/s
best choice financially is be born with rich parents.
second best choice is to not get a college education.
This is Gilded Age and Victorian Era classism all over again. Have we learned nothing? Given that we can’t afford to go to school the answer is probably: not really.
8 Likes
Welcome to BoingBoing!
5 Likes
I have one question: How?
Seriously. I’ve looked into this for my son and I do not see how one breaks into a trade field without a) Knowing somebody who will take a chance on you and show you the ropes (luck), or b) Go to an expensive vocational school and shell out close to $30k (plus tools) for the basic skills needed to get the 1-2 years experience required before you can get hired in that field.
If there’s some magic secret I’m very interested in learning what it is.
10 Likes
Reality check: Do you know which school she went to, and that it was exhorbitant? That there were other schools that were comparable in her area of study that she passed over, because, reasons?
- There are majors or areas of study that have only a few universities where there is even the minimal accreditation. Perhaps even fewer that have a program that is respected within the professional field or among graduate programs in that field.
- The gulf between public school costs and private schools is less than it appears. Private schools have a big $$$ tuition on the surface, but essentially offer significant discounts to students they want in their program. Public university tuition starts lower, but is less flexible on a case-by-case basis.
From the article, it sounds like she makes a pretty decent salary. It’s just that it is excessively difficult, unless you are independently wealthy, to get out from under a near-6-figure debt at 11%. Do the math, the interest over 10 years is insane. She’s actually paid it down remarkably well, considering.
I take real exception to this kind of thinking. You’re saying, on behalf of someone else, that they should have done something different and it would have been easy. That is really offensive. Never say that what someone else does, or should do, is easy. For all you know (and I’m not pulling this out of thin air, I’ve seen it in action), if she had met you at the age of 17 in a Starbucks and she took your advice, she could be worse off or dead. Let’s say she did just what you describe - she went to Local State University, studied Underwater Basket Weaving according to your suggestion (even though it bored her, unlike her true passion, Martian Studies), and was on her way to debt-free financial independence. Except she hates the school, feels lost and alone. She hates her studies, and it shows, and her professors can tell, so they don’t put any extra effort into teaching her. She struggles and drops out. Or gets depressed and kills herself. These things happen. They happen too often.
Instead of sharing your imaginings of how she could have lived her life better, maybe you could engage in the conversation, learn something from her experience, or even do something to help young people prepare for their lives. Something. Because calling her an idiot on a public forum is harm, not help.
6 Likes
I think skyrocketing college costs and predatory student loans are two symptoms of the same disease, or at least two diseases that have locked into a feedback loop.
Something like 20-30 years ago, student loans started becoming more easily available and harder to get out from under. Colleges started raising tuition faster than inflation. Students needed to take on more debt to pay for it, so more loan $ needed to become available to service it. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. That’s how we get to the point where the median cost-to-attend per year for a freshman in college is 2x their median salary upon graduation. It will hit 3x in 5 to 10 years. That’s the trajectory we’re on.
4 Likes
My district in our union local has an applicant queue of over two hundred. That’s just one district. One of the districts in a different local south of us has been recruiting like crazy but judging by their ‘available for work’ queue, it seems that they took on too many apprentices just a little too soon. (I say ‘too soon’ because in the long-term, development in that area should be able to sustain that new pace of recruitment. They seem to have just been overly optimistic as to when that would happen.)
The business agent I spoke with at our last general meeting told me this is exactly what many of those fresh out of high school are doing to advance themselves in the applicant queue. Which, strictly as a matter of learning the trade, seems unnecessary to me. A two-year degree will certainly position you well to learn and advance faster than other apprentices but that’s of little consolation given that you’re still compensated the same. More critically, the sensory-motor aspects of any given trade can only be developed with on-the-job experience.
I don’t have an answer for you right now but I’ll be seeing our JATC coordinator next week. I’ll let you know what he would advise.
2 Likes
Yes, yet she needs to work until late night to make it, in which she puts it in part of her complaint.
Where did I say what anyone does is easy? Relatively speaking, some jobs are easier and better paying than others. If you can find a job that you enjoy and is easier, and more importantly pays the bill, you take it. I believe you misread what I said. Because you say this:
Do you think what I said was to take an easier major? What I meant by not killing herself is her JOB not study! When I pay my (or my parents’) hard-earned money for tuition, you bet my ass I’ll study as hard as I can to get the tuition’s worth. Why would you think I suggest this?? I’d understand why you’d be offended, but I’m baffled why you think anyone would give such absurd advice.
Ok, how about “she did a really dumb thing and don’t even realize what was actually wrong”? She is blaming mostly the bank, which is half correct. What is not explicitly stated here is how she ignored her parents’ concern, threw common sense out the window, and not show a single remorse about it. Why would I help a spoiled kid who grew up with all her sense of entitlements attached? She deserves all the rebuke she earned.
Just going to point out that you might not want to tout either of those things as evidence of being special, as you seem to think you are. In a lot of high schools if you can read at grade level you’ll drift into the top 10% of the class. I know for a fact (being a member myself) that National Honor Society membership is simply handed to you by dint of having at or above a certain GPA and requires no effort, application, or further involvement on your part. They just send you a letter that you’re in. It’s like being given Brownie Points; might sound good but it doesn’t mean squat.
5 Likes
Yes, she went to a private university for $60,000 a year, according to the article.
Public school is around $30,000 or less, and she can change residency after a year, which then becomes even less. Her tuition is double that. Kind of hard to squeeze $30k for support from university.
Her goal was to move into upper middle class, not follow a specific passion of hers. There are PLENTY of universities that offer majors that qualifies for a lucrative career. Easy, Enjoyable, High Pay: Pick two.
It was strongly implied when you said she was an idiot and she should have done it this other way and everything would be fine. Yes, you said it quite clearly.
No, you said she should have studied a more financially-viable major. I used silly made-up major in my example, but I’m pretty sure I understood your point very clearly. Your point: if she had made better decisions as a 17 year-old about where to go to college and what to study, she would have had less or no debt and made more money in the workforce. My counterpoint is that, it is delusional to say that if she had followed your advice, she would be better off than she is now. And offensive on top of that.
My point has nothing to do with the difficulty of the hypothetical major, but that different people are different and if she had studied something that you think is “better,” she might be MUCH worse off than she is now. Even if she had studied the same thing at a different school, she might be MUCH worse off.
You clearly did not get the point of her article. The point was not “oh, poor me, I made bad decisions and now I have this debt and it’s everyone else’s fault!” It’s a cautionary tale and a warning about what really happens with the dysfunctional system we have now of obscenely high college tuition and inescapable student debt. You and @Doug_Wheeler can Ayn Rand about it all you want, but the current system serves neither students or society. It serves bankers, and the least scrupulous of that notoriously unscrupulous breed.
9 Likes
I get that tuition tends to be much higher than before, but she chose the expensive school when there were cheaper options out there. That’s not the fault of the system, that’s just stupid person making stupid mistakes.
Doug Wheeler’s life is nothing like mine. I went to local public university and went to get doctorate, then decided I didn’t like it so got another masters to change my career. I went to school where my parents can afford to support me, grad school pays you (albeit slave wage), and I went to night school for masters. I was able to do all this BECAUSE the university existed, and I chose the balance between my passions and careers. Ayn Rand my ass - she’s the very image of ignorance from white priviledge.
Yeah? I get what she was TRYING to say. Her essay failed to mention a few things like how she came to buy things that was clearly unaffordable to her parents(and what she thought about choosing her career )which they kinda knew going in. The cautionary tale ends there.
You keep making that assumption that fine means easy. I never said it, I don’t believe in such things, and it’s purely your imagination at work that I implied it.
Yeah, really no.
According to this Globe and Mail article, tuition at York in 1984 was $1000.
According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, that $1000 is the equivalent of $2214 today.
According to StatsCan, average Canadian tuition this past academic year was $6571 (+196% of the inflation adjusted equivalent of tuition in 1984). At York, it was $7523 (+240%), but that’s on the low side for Ontario, where the average was was $8454 (+282%).
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&id=4770077
Post-secondary education costs in Canada are nowhere near as bad as they are in the US or UK (and lower at my school than most – plug for UBC: among top 40 schools in the world, domestic tuition < $5300 next year), but those costs are far too high, and terrible compared to a generation ago.
Which doesn’t help Americans, of course, because international student tuition is anywhere from 3 to 8x the domestic rates.
Seriously, folks, if you’re in the US, have kids, and value education, move to Canada. Public schools are paid with provincial money, not local taxes, so all the schools get the same funding regardless of how well-off the neighbourhood is, the post-secondary is a quarter the cost, and the federal government will match 20% of your education savings (up to $7200 per child).
4 Likes
Nah, I don’t have advice for someone who already ignored good advice that even came from her parents. She’s probably a lost cause no matter how good an advice is given to her, especially given what she took away from her own experience. There are plenty of people who would did exactly what I described and worked out well. It’s a good advice, albeit not mine. Why are you so offended by it?
