college costs, student loans ect...

[kiryan]

http://finance.yahoo.com/college-educat ... ollegeprep

so many problems in this article. the excuses are terrible and self serving. the big bad colleges and lenders villianized for loaning you money to educate yourself and get a better job. The solutions are even worse, have (hire) people to tell you what you should do and to protect you from colleges and lenders, make colleges financial aid departments responsible for your financial planning, put more responsibility on anyone but the college student....

the final paragraphs answer the real question of what went wrong with a college graduate with $97,000 in debt making $22 an hour.

She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies.

Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me."

Yep... a degree in religious and women's studies. What reasonably high paying, skilled job did you expect to get with that degree? Why does it "feel wrong" to her that she spent 4 years in college studying something useless (in terms of job prospects at least) that she doesn't want to spend 10 years paying for? She wants a do over, who is supposed to pay for her do over? Government (tax payers)? Colleges (college students and the tax payers?)?

[Corth]

Not only did her degree fail to convey any type of marketable skill, but in fact it's a real turn
off to a high percentage of employers. If someone comes to me looking for a job with a Woman's Studies degree I think the first thought that comes to mind is that she is a prime candidate to bring some sort of perceived sexual harrassment claim.

Widespread availability of student loans, largely subsidized by government, has among other things resulted in a lot more people going to college and has resulted in much higher tuitions. College should be where exceptional students go to further their academic training. Not where everyone goes to get drunk and laid and end up making $15.50 per hour after 4 years and $100k+ of expenses.

[kiryan]

yea excellent point about the lawsuits. I have a degree in biblical theology. I worry that it has an affect sometimes, but I also count it as a positive when applying to faith based organizations or non profits that came from faith based organziations (most hospitals and many non profits).

[teflor the ranger]

In my opinion, she is the responsible party for her poor decisions and she should live with the consequences. At this point, if she doesn't want to be a slave to debt, she'd better get a sugar daddy (or mommy), or live at home and work that debt. Although, it would have been easier to not have gotten into so much debt in the first place, especially when public schools would have come in around half the cost or even less.

And yes, it is wrong, what you did to yourself and how you wasted the easy credit that the people made available to you. The shared failure is bullshit because the loans were made to an adult.