What is happening to my country? (Page 2)

Life is hard, and yes I think you should have to work for college.

But when is enough enough?  I have about $64,000 in student debt.  I worked during school, I worked before school.  I couldn't get any good loans because my parents made to much money.  However they were in foreclosure.  Think they were able to help me out at all?  I now work in higher education in a STEM field.  It pays ok and I'm not hurting to bad but I sure as hell could use a break.  I could go into a different sector of work, but I enjoy helping students and helping out the future of our nation. 

I don't want my loans forgiven (well I do but I realize that wouldn't t be good either).  What about interest rate reductions?  Or a zero interest loan?  Those would be helpful.  Something has to be done.  The cost of education is outpacing inflation.

There are almost times that I wish I didn't go to college.  Because I could work a $17/hr factory job around me and make MORE money (probably less stress too!). 

I honestly feel the fix is to completely eliminate the federally backed student loan program.  If you and your parents weren't able to afford a $60-$70k college education you would have been a lot smarter about it.  Community college, work and pay for tuition as you go in a cheaper in state institution, etc.  Student loans backed by uncle sam allow stupid 18 year old kids (we all are stupid financially at 18) to go "wherever they want" and study "whatever they want" with no regard to ability to repay.  At least with a car loan, lenders look at our credit score and ensure that the car we're buying is inline with our income.

I listen to the Dave Ramsey podcast every day and it's amazing how many people call in with $200-$300k in student loans, but they have a museum administration degree or something like that where the max salary potential is maybe $30-50k/year.

I do kind of agree with you Justin that we need to do something to help out people in dire situations, like 0% interest because we taxpayers are the ones who allowed our stupid representatives to come up with this garbage.  If we eliminated the Federally backed student loan programs I would all but guarantee college would be half the cost in less than 5 years.

These are some good points.  You could be right about getting rid of the federally backed student loans.

However there wasn't much cheaper options around.  I couldn't go to community college for most of my classes.  They didn't offer them.  I also went to an instate school.

Did I do somethings wrong - Of course

Could I have done some things better - Of course.

I don't know the solutions for this, but what I do know is what we are doing now isnt working at all.  While I think free college (unless you did service etc..) is out of the question, it should also be affordable.  Education is one of the most important things in our society.

That being said I think there should be consequences.  College shouldn't just be a time to party have sex.  The whole education part is important too =).  I have always thought that your academic standing should play some role in the costs.  Don't ask me how though =)  Im a chemist not a economist

Comedian Hilariously Sums Up How Political Correctness Is Strangling Our Country

Kind of silly, but sadly not that far from the truth.

I would have no problem with cutting interest rates to nothing....and as was said, I blame the stupid loan program on the high cost of college.  The institutions just keep raising and raising costs....and why not, the govt. is subsidizing all of it through the loan programs.  It's wrong.  Tony is right as well.......who in their right mind takes out 150,000 or more in loans to get a degree that will never support a job of more than $30,000 per year.....apparently plenty of kids do.

Have you looked into changing fields to get some of your loan paid down.  Just an example, I know chemists are in high demand in crime labs....there are programs for student loan debt forgiveness in that field.  Sorry I don't know more about it other than it exists, but it could be something you could look into.  You are young....you wouldn't have to stay forever in that field, or some other, but you could get some of your loan paid down and then go do something you really believe in.

Just a thought.

I think this is pretty much where I stand on the subject. As you've all said, I agree that an education is a service you should pay for. Asking for it for free is a bit radical in my opinion, and I think hard work is the key to success, not handouts. But when I hear horror stories about how a 20K loan turns into 80K or worse by the time you can finally pay it back, I just can't get behind that. As soon as I graduated, I dumped all the savings I had into my loans, then worked my arse off for 4 years, scraping every penny to get rid of my debt because I knew the interest would just keep killing me. Why can't we just have interest free education loans, or really low interest rates rather than holding students hostage? My sister has been an engineer for 2 years now, and she just can't get her life started because so much of the money that she makes goes into just the interest. Imagine if she could use that money to buy a house, start a family, etc.

Those are good ideas, and yes I have given it thought about leaving.  Heck I actually had an interview at a place about a week ago. 

it would be hard to leave my job, they are very few and far between. 

That being said it's not like I'm suffering.  Yeah I pay about $400 a month in loans but I can afford it.  I am actually paying extra each month and have been for about 4 years now.  I should actually have my loan paid off a few years early.  Who couldn't use some extra money each month though?

You brought up a great point though.  I knew quite a few people that I went to school with who got degrees in something in which they will never get a job that will pay.  At least I know that If I have to I can go somewhere else if I really need to. 

That girl needs to take a Critical Thinking class.  It's great to be ideological, because otherwise people don't strive for great things, but without the ability to adjust those ideals slightly to function in the real world, you're not going to accomplish much.

We're paying $30k a year for my son to get his BS at Pitt.  We're using a combination of savings, loans that I'm paying, loans that his mom is paying, and loans that he's paying.  His major is Mathematics with a focus on Computer Science, and his goal is to work on AI.  If he were studying something in liberal arts that had fewer career opportunities and lower average wages, he would have had to go to a less expensive school.  For us, we viewed it as an analysis of investment and the expected ROI.  The system works fine as long as that's done.

As far as how much should college cost?  I agree with tuwood's comment that it should be based on the market.  There are some degree programs that aren't worth squat, and others that are probably worth more than they charge.

At least with that degree he can understand how loans are structured and what it'll take him to get out from under it.  Another of my friends, when we graduated high school, wanted a law degree at first.  He saw the writing on the wall and quickly jumped over to tech during the dot com boom.  Thanks to some good timing, he doesn't really have to work anymore.

I probably shouldn't make too much fun of liberal arts degrees, but I do think many of those students have their heads in the clouds when it comes to "boring" things like compounding.
Debt is ok if you're using it to achieve a better end.  30k/year for tech, will most likely get paid off quickly.  Or heck, I wouldn't even mind taking a risk on a kid being an entrepreneur if he laid out a good business plan for me.

I'm not making fun of liberal arts degrees.  I think people should pursue whatever career they have a passion and aptitude for.  But the reality is there aren't as many high paying career opportunities as there are for someone with a degree in most of the sciences.  Because of that, I believe more scrutiny needs to be applied before paying large amounts for a degree in the arts.  To a great extent, it becomes an economic decision.

I think part of the issue is the PC "you can be anything you want" garbage that they force fed us as kids.....in fact...being anything you want doesn't necessarily pay the bills

I think you're right.  The thing that seems to have been lost somewhere along the line was the second part of that - "if you're willing to pay the price to be it."

Originally posted by NXS

Originally posted by dmiller5

I think part of the issue is the PC "you can be anything you want" garbage that they force fed us as kids.....in fact...being anything you want doesn't necessarily pay the bills

BINGO! My oldest daughter from the time she was small said she wanted to be a marine biologist. One day when she was in high school discussing careers, I said that marine biology is a great hobby, but what was she going to do for a living. Nothing against marine biology, I have a good friend with his Phd in marine biology. There are just very few jobs. She is now in her third year of med school. You are right, parents don't counsel their children. If she had chosen marine biology that would have been OK with me, but I won't bail out my children for the poor choices they make. Whatcha know, we agree on something!

On eof my twins is an idealist....and she wants to live on the beach somewhere.  Soooo.....she said she either wants to be a Marine Biologist or an LA County Beach Lifeguard.  The lifeguard job is very competitive and pays six figures......with her swim and water polo background I told her to shoot for that.

I'm not sure why, but almost every science kid I remember had a "I want to be a marine biologist" phase, my self included.  It must be the liberal brain washing tactics

I thought this was funny:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lt8lzLhVJo 

I'm not sure why we don't just do away with the private colleges and let the Federal Government run the college system. Look how much more efficient our high schools have become since the Federal Department of Education was formed and how much higher ranked we are int he world for high school education. Not only that but they could provide housing and food so students could focus on learning instead of having to worry about surviving. Teachers could get better pay, students wouldn't have to pay, granted, you would have to collect the money from the masses. As it was pointed out if you took all the wealth from the top 2 or 3 percent who are demonized regularly for being successful and making good deals with the government to get there. 

So here's the fundamental flaw with college being "free".  It's never free, it's really saying that college should be paid for by all because of the benefits which is a valid argument.  
Most people I see proposing "free" college want it to include state universities and leave the private/for-profit institutions to fend for themselves.
The problem I see is that state universities are still huge enterprises with billions of dollars spent on massive stadiums and $100M yoga studios (just made that up).  They're technically non-profit, but they're raising the tuition more and more year over year to spend more and more money on stupid stuff that has nothing to do with education.  By stating that every person who graduates high school can now go 100% paid for by the state or federal taxpayers would do what to the cost structure?  Supply and Demand dictates that it will massively increase the cost of education at that institution and you think college is expensive now...  yikes, it will get crazy if we do something like this which would create infinite demand.
I'm sure the next response is that we'll give them less money and they'll have to take it.  Well, sure we can mandate that through law, but then the university starts to suck in comparison to private institutions and you have yet another crappy public school system with crap educators and there's still zero benefit to society.  This doesn't even take into account the massive waste in our current public school systems.  We already spend nearly the most per student on education in the world but it's so inefficient that it doesn't matter on the bottom line.

The fix to ballooning college tuition costs is to eliminate all federal student loan programs.  I know it sounds crazy, but college would cost 20%(or less) of what it does today if it weren't for student loans (aka infinite demand) and people could actually "afford" to go to college like they used to.

I wonder what the number is for how much we do spend federally on college programs.

There are a ton of grants/scholarships for those in need as well as subsidized loans (Fed pays interest while you're in school).
I bet it costs us as much as the 25% plan (or more) that you're proposing.