
A multigenerational hit: Student debt traps parents and kids - Mz
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c2a6686412894eb3b908586509a34c4e/student-debt-squeezing-parents-and-children-simultaneously
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sageabilly
I absolutely agree with the article stating that vast amounts of students
borrowed on the "premise ... that virtually every degree — regardless of the
school or the major — could more than pay for itself because college graduates
would command premium incomes". That's driven home in the previous paragraph:
"The treatment led him to study Chinese medicine after graduation and become a
licensed acupuncturist himself in 2004. He had already racked up $45,000 in
college debt; acupuncture school required more."

When I went to college (2001-2005) the thought process was "borrow as much as
you can, you'll get a good job straight out of college and no one can repo
your college degree". I had _the head of the financial aid department_ tell me
that borrowing the max every year was fine and dandy and I should keep doing
it because my degree wasn't like a car that could be repossessed. So I
graduated $38K in debt and spent maybe half of that on actual school with the
rest going towards stupid shit that 20 year olds spend too much money on.

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mfoy_
Isn't there an inherent economic fallacy in the idea that "virtually every
degree - regardless of the school or the major - could more than pay for
itself because college graduates would command premium incomes"?

If everyone has a bachelor's degree, how is everyone going to command a
premium income?

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rconti
That's exactly the problem. An undergrad degree is the new "minimum
education".

~~~
eimai134
The the more people that go to college, the less rigorous the material is.

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coldcode
When I went to college in the late 70's, my parents paid a portion, I got a
few small scholarships and worked every summer and part time through the
school year. It was enough to pay for 4 years at a private university and then
I spent two years elsewhere trying to get a masters, which at least was cheap
as I worked as a graduate assistant.

That is impossible today without either full scholarships or massive
borrowing; the inflation of the cost of a 4 year degree from a private school
from then to now wouldn't allow me to duplicate this any more.

I spent 10 years volunteering at a local public university and most students
had a similar experience (working, some help from parents, a few scholarships)
although a few had to borrow a small bit of money. The difference of course is
it was a public university which isn't as well regarded as mine, but in the
end I bet the actual educational benefit was similar.

Going to college is a great benefit socially and educationally but spending a
fortune on it is only useful for a small set of careers (like go to Stanford
for CS). I never used any of my 6 years of college studying Chemistry. But I
never had to borrow to get my degree. Unless you are talking about medical
school I can't see the benefit to going into massive debt just to get a
degree.

~~~
granos
Unfortunately many employers require a degree to even be considered. They are
basically expecting you to come in the door with skills that they used to have
to train employees in. In highly technical / safety critical fields I can
understand this, but it has gotten out of control.

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retbull
I am seeing this happen to me even with a Computer Science degree. I just got
out and am only making enough to pay for housing and food nothing else. I did
end up in a shitty situation but I was under the impression that this wouldn't
happen to me as I have a "STEM" degree.

I don't have that much debt but I can't get a job that will pay me more than
40k ish a year and Seattle is too expensive to live in for that little even
with a roommate and cooking skills. This will hopefully change and my income
with increase over the next few years but it is scary enough that I am
regretting how I went to school. I should have worked for more than the first
year even if I had to be in school for longer because of it.

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rjbwork
Gonna be blunt: either you're not very good or you're not displaying it in
interviews, or you're not getting the right interviews. I find it mind blowing
that you're making 40k out of school. I was making more than that in my
internship in a non-high cost of living area of the country, and am making
considerably more than that now.

I just threw a resume up on Dice and started getting decent to great recruiter
contacts immediately. I still get hit up constantly on linkedin as well.

~~~
retbull
No interviews at all so far. I am an intern at a company that just got bought
out and so they won't hire me "until they have more contracts" so they are
keeping me on because they like me and want to hire me at some point. This
means that it is very hard for me to get another job because I am not accruing
experience in a "real" job and I am not qualified for any of the jobs I am
applying for so I can't actually get real experience.

My immediate boss would love to hire me but as his boss says no I am stuck
here looking.

~~~
rjbwork
I was actually kept in the same situation at my internship after I graduated
myself. It sucks...I ended up leaving and getting a pretty significant bump in
pay by just relentlessly interviewing any opportunity I got. I'll try to find
the resume I used at the time and send it over to ya. I haven't had to make
one in a couple of years, so...

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jenkstom
As many articles as there are about this in the press, I wouldn't be surprised
if this didn't become one of the biggest issues for the presidential election.

~~~
logfromblammo
I certainly hope so. It would be a far better discussion topic than D. Trump's
hair, or gay marriage, or immigration, or the ACA.

Speaking on behalf of the entire middle class--and let me assure you that I am
both qualified and authorized to do so--we are getting sick of working our
asses off just to live our entire lives sunk up to our multiple chins in debt.

But no one is likely to lift a finger to do anything about it until after
missing a few meals. Perhaps it will help when Mr. Khan and allied parties in
the tech industry start to eat Academia's lunch. Thanks to the Internet, you
don't absolutely need to pay $100k+ for a degree, and you don't even need to
pay the "buck fifty in late charges from the public library," as suggested in
the movie Good Will Hunting.

Once employers start de-prioritizing an accredited degree and start
recognizing online coursework certifications, it will already be too late.
Nobody will be going to college for anything short of calculus, law, medicine,
or petroleum-related geology.

After all, if your art history degree isn't going to help you get a job
anyway, you could just browse artists' pages on Wikipedia and visit museums
instead.

~~~
pmiller2
Degrees aren't all about credentials. They're not even all about education.
There's the networking aspect to consider as well, and I'd say it's one of the
top reasons to go to college at all. You don't really get to network in MOOCs.

~~~
ryuker16
Idk, I think the networking is vastly overated unless your in some elite
program.

It's not as if new networks would not exist in abscence of college networks.

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eimai134
Sorry, but I have trouble feeling sorry for these people. I know a person who
has more than $100K in student loan debt, for degrees she has decided she
doesn't want to use, who just quit her job to follow a dream of being an
artist. I have other friends with student loan debt who have much nicer things
than me (probably from credit card debt too).

I paid off $10K in student loans. It didn't take too long and i was making
well under $50K a year. Lived in a cheap, not-very-nice apartment, drove an
old car, didn't spend much on entertainment, etc. It's very possible to pay
off even the average of $20K in debt and not have it be a chain on your life
forever.

People also need to make sure they actually want to use the degree, that it's
in a field where there are jobs, work while they are in school, and during
their school time forgo the extras in life.

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SimpleXYZ
Getting an education was the stupidest thing I've ever done.

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ThrustVectoring
A big missing piece in this conversation is the fact that there's essentially
two ways to save on a national multi-decade scale: either you have easy to
exploit oil reserves that you save for later, or you convince the next
generation to build stuff for you later in exchange for things now.

That's the fundamental driving force behind a lot of insane pro-debt policies,
especially student loans and mortgages. If you want the college situation to
get better, attacking the idea of retirement is the way to go. That, and suing
places like fire departments that require a college degree for no relevant
reason.

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bdcravens
I guess I can say I escaped. Got my first computer my sophomore year (I grew
up really poor), and was going to a tiny state school. Was a bad student,
staying up online and sleeping through morning classes. Had to leave school
(bad grades = financial aid probation), got my first real job (worked for
local computer store/ISP), and that turned into my career. So my debt load
from school is actually pretty small relatively speaking (about $6500 for the
2 years)

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dang
We changed the URL from [http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-crushing-
surge-of-st...](http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-crushing-surge-of-
student-debt-has-bred-a-disturbing-new-phenomenon-2015-10) to the AP's own
less sensational version.

~~~
Mz
Thanks.

FYI to anyone who is curious but not enough to check out both: The actual
writing appears to be the same, but they have different titles and different
photos (+, of course, photo descriptions/comments) and I guess one has a video
the other does not.

