Up to their eyeballs in debt

[+ Tom Isern]

If people are enslaved by debt, for the most part, it is because they incurred the debt without a realistic plan as to how to pay it back.

 

most undergraduates have always been able to assume that a degree will land them a job with enough resources to be able to pay back their loans. that has always been considered a reasonable assumption, one that stopped working in the recent economic downturn. let's not blame students for the economic meltdown.

[Str8boyluvr]

Just like PurpleKow, you give very little information as to when you attended college and grad school.

 

All you had to do was ask Dear. I got my graduate degree from Harvard in May 2014. I got my undergraduate from Mass. College of Pharmacy in May 2009. And yes it is my opinion, based on first-hand observation, that those who do not invest financially in their own education (including loans) tend to get less out of it. Your results may vary.

[Str8boyluvr]

The rejection rate for Ivy League school is about 90% of applicants -- a little unfair because many people apply to several Ivy League schools plus Stanford, MIT and the University of Chicago.

 

These are Private colleges - they can admit who they want. Fairness has nothing to do with it. In an average year over 37,000 people apply for about 1,600 spots at Harvard. You don't get in by grabbing the long straw. There are quite a few kids who get accepted to multiple Ivy League schools. In recent years there have been cases of applicants getting accepted to all eight.

 

When it comes to applying to most any program the same rule applies - send applications to your "stretch schools" AKA top tier, your "qualifying" schools - ones where you meet the admission requirements, and your "safe" schools - the ones where you exceed the admission requirements.

[+ Tom Isern]

So do not blame the government, the society or the education system, put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the people who took the loans and were not prepared to pay them back

 

so problematic. here's suze orman discussing how the government, ie. sallie mae, in collusion with banks, preys on both students AND parents. can someone please explain to me why it's okay for businesses to be able to borrow at prime, but our students, who know that their futures are, for the most part, nothing without a college degree, are left to be preyed upon by the mercinary forces of corporate neoliberal ripoff artists: ie. big banks, charging outrageous rates?

 

[+ WilliamM]

just false. thoughtlessness should be a crime. here's suze orman discussing how the government, ie. sallie mae, in collusion with banks, preys on both students AND parents. can someone please explain to me why it's okay for businesses to be able to borrow at prime, but our students, who know that their futures are, for the most part, nothing without a college degree, are left to be preyed upon by the mercinary forces of corporate neoliberal ripoff artists: ie. big banks, charging outrageous rates?

 

Thanks for posting Suze Orman's comments, Tom. It is reality, although here I would encourage students to get a part-time job if student loans do not cover all their costs.

[+ stevenkesslar]

so problematic. here's suze orman discussing how the government, ie. sallie mae, in collusion with banks, preys on both students AND parents. can someone please explain to me why it's okay for businesses to be able to borrow at prime, but our students, who know that their futures are, for the most part, nothing without a college degree, are left to be preyed upon by the mercinary forces of corporate neoliberal ripoff artists: ie. big banks, charging outrageous rates?

 

 

Excellent post, Tom. Although to quibble a little, she had me until the last line, when she said something like "there are no jobs to be had." Maybe this clip is dated, but the reality, even in the middle of the Great Recession, is that going to college and getting a degree is what smart people do, because there is a huge wage differential paid to college graduates. The way student loans work makes that way harder than it should be, but it still makes sense.

 

This is a weak argument, but the one good thing about the way Sallie Mae rips off students is that any student who listens to Suze Orman should be aware of the fact that they really do want to graduate and get a degree, as opposed to drop out, and get a degree in a field that will allow them to prosper. If anything, given the fact that we know that everybody - politicians, banks, universities -are all too happy to play the debt game Orman summarizes beautifully, it does give students a huge incentive to make smart decisions about when and how they incur debt.

 

Having said all that, here's the other crusader that I adore, discussing the other way Sallie Mae rips off students. Like Warren, I think it's insane that the federal government uses student loans as a profit center to make tens of billions of dollars a year.

 

[+ WilliamM]

get a degree in a field that will allow them to prosper

Steven,

 

I agree with everything else you just wrote, but not necessarily about putting future salary considerations above the courses you really want to take. College can be a real grind if you want to take English, biology or history courses and can not because you are looking far ahead. I understand this goes against conventionial wisdom. But, the students I know who seldom or ever took couses they might have really enjoyed, barely ever stepped into a class room again.

.

[+ Tom Isern]

although here I would encourage students to get a part-time job if student loans do not cover all their costs.

 

I have been involved in undergraduate education for more than 10 years, William, and I don't think I've EVER met a student who didn't have at least one part-time job. many, in my experience, are working full time AND trying to go to college full time. that is impossible to do and to do well. students are being cheated out of the time of their life for reading, thinking, reflecting, and growing. we are all going to suffer as a result, because students aren't learning to read as well, to think as critically, to write as meaningfully, etc.—those are skills that take time that students today have little of. especially the ones tripping over themselves to get the piece of paper so they can do the only thing this sick american culture validates—make money.

 

people badly need to understand that attending college has become more and more difficult in the last 10 years. so please, if you went to college 5 or more years ago, as I did, your stories about how you worked oh so hard and paid for it etc. and how students today need to "shape up" and do more like you did—those stories don't apply. rather than condescend, listen to people like elizabeth warren (who does know what she's talking about) and educate yourself.

 

we now have ridiculous credit hour requirements that make it almost impossible to get aid unless you are carrying so many courses you have no time to study, much less work to pay for college. it's a real catch-22. unless students have parental support, they are today getting fucked over badly by a system that makes it increasingly impossible to get an education, a system that charges higher and higher interst on loans and tuition rates that are simply out of control. this is, by the way, not the result of professors living high off the system, but the result of the neoliberal corportization of the college/university system—we're rapidly approaching the day when there will be an administrator for every teacher. it's absurd.

 

we used to say that this was a country where everyone had equal opportunity to climb the social ladder through education and hard work. and in the good old days when college was affordable that argument made a little sense. today, it's a sad joke.

[+ stevenkesslar]

But, the students I know who seldom or ever took couses they might have really enjoyed, barely ever stepped into a class room again.

.

 

Absolutely. I'm not arguing that students should be forced to take classes they hate. To go to the extreme, if the only thing that floats your boat is basket weaving, get a degree in basket weaving. Just don't take out debt to do it. And if you do take out debt to do it, don't be surprised if you end up in bankruptcy. I'm with PK on that one. Don't blame that on anybody but yourself.

 

I'll personalize it. I was lucky. Mommy and Daddy paid almost my entire college tuition. Because of that, I could "afford" to be a Religion major. I didn't even want to major in Political Science, because that was too practical for me. I enjoyed taking classes on protest politics from Paul Wellstone, and my main extracurricular activity was campus political organizing. But my senior thesis was even more obscure: on Islam and modernity, and the attempts of one Islamic theologian to square his faith with the 20th century. How practical is that? It's even less practical than basket weaving!

 

One of my relatives told me in college that I had "no values," which meant that I had no skin in the game, or no appreciation for what money could buy, because Mommy and Daddy were paying my bills. Fair enough. But mostly I think he was jealous, and I proved him wrong. I spent a few decades community organizing in one form or another, at relatively low pay, so everything I learned in college actually did turn out to be quite practical, and I put my money (or lack thereof) where my mouth was.

 

You could argue that community organizing, like basket weaving, is bullshit. But I'd be the first one to push back. I loved what I learned, and everything I learned in college is still incredibly relevant. Like to what I am focused on now: the misguided prosecution and targeting of Gay men and rentboys by a federal agency that was started to prevent Islamic terrorists living in something like the 7th century from killing more Americans.

 

Now I'll say something that is not very subtle about my intent here. Every rentboy who uses their income to pay their rent, or their college tuition, or has any hope of buying a home, ought to be absolutely ripshit about what DHS just did to undermine your financial security. The reality, according to the report that I started this thread with, is that college education means a ton of debt. Period. Especially if you want a 4 year degree or better. We are all saying in one way or another that debt is bad, and best avoided. So why punish rentboys who earn money to avoid debt? It is insane, insane, insane, insane, and insane.

 

The government is not using the pretext they did when they shut down MyRedBook - that somehow they are protecting victimized women and kids. They are not saying that Rentboy was somehow prostituting imaginary child boys. The closest they get to that is accusing grown Gay men of being part of a "global criminal enterprise." Many of these grown Gay men have used escorting to get college degrees and avoid debt. Granted, I am pretty sure close to 100 % of these grown Gay men enjoy sex, whether or not it is what they did as an escort. What the fuck is wrong with that? If you like escorting, and can use it to get a college degree, and avoid debt, what the fuck is wrong with that? :mad:

 

About a decade ago I was friends with a male escort who was a fill-in professor for a year at a prominent liberal arts college. He had used escorting to pay for his PhD. In his college days, in NYC, he had a small and rich group of regular clients, that included Elton John, Calvin Klein, people who are now openly known to have hired, as well as other people with very well known names that I won't name, because it genuinely surprised me that they hired. He despised Rudy Giuliani, who he thought "ruined sex" in NY by closing down seedy stripper bars and driving sex out of public places like the wharves. He wasn't talking about prostitution, he was talking about seedy public Gay sex.

 

Whatever you think about Guiliani, deBlasio is fronting for a prohibitionist campaign that takes this to a very different place. Now what DHS is going after are websites that allow Wall Street lawyers to hire people like my friend, who was paid to spend weekends with them in a nice house in the Hamptons, doing whatever they did in privacy, and which he used to get a PhD.

 

If you go with the Suze Orman theory, maybe the real problem is not that Rentboy turned nice young men into sex slaves. Maybe the real problem is that it helped them avoid being a slave to Sallie Mae.

[+ WilliamM]

people badly need to understand that attending college has become more and more difficult in the last 10 years. so please, if you went to college 5 or more years ago, as I did, your stories about how you worked oh so hard and paid for it etc. and how students today need to "shape up" and do more like you did—those stories don't apply. rather than condescend, listen to people like elizabeth warren (who does know what she's talking about) and educate yourself.

 

Actually, I have been one of the strongest people here against the argument that students today need to "shape up" and do more like I did. What I did what be lucky enough to get a scolarship, but worked every summer (often overtime) and work sometimes during the school year for basic necessities that scolarships do not cover. I also worked my junior and senior years in high school. I could manage high school, but working full or part time in college for all four year and during the summers would have ended with me flunking out. So I appreciate your comments more than you know.

 

I have been taking at least one college course each semester since I retired 10 years ago. The tuition is just under $50,000 a year for full-time students. I do talk to the students, and knew a few very well. They must come from very rich families rather than upper middle class, or have multiple scholarships because I seldom hear work mentioned either during the school year or in the summer. Internships, yes. (Since I have been invited to some of the students' homes, I should have been much more aware!).