
Many Americans Feel Cheated by Their Student Loans - rafaelc
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/student-debt-college-public-service-loan-forgiveness
======
freeopinion
This article frustrates me. I suppose the whole debacle of student debt
frustrates me. I would fall into what the article labels a "retributive view."

'“I think there’s this assumption that millennials are spoiled, naive, and
entitled,” Jen said.'

That's because they often are. Jen racked up $50K of students loans in one
year at an Ivy League school. My daughter is finishing up her first year of
grad school at a state university, debt free. She works multiple jobs while
going to school. It's hard. Sometimes it's really hard. And when she's done
she won't have a diploma from an Ivy League school. But she won't have any
debt, either.

Jen's case is intentionally special because she had a stroke in the middle of
all this. So we can't criticize Jen. We have to sympathize with her. By
extension, we are supposed to sympathize with everyone who has racked up
student debt.

The cost of a college education is crazy. I agree with that. But the onus for
student debt should fall on the debtor. Just like the onus for a car loan so
that somebody can drive to work. Or the onus for a mortgage, or credit card
debt. You can't repossess an education. When a student defaults, that
knowledge and experience can't just be transferred back to the bank. So it is
fair that such loans are secured differently than debt on hard assets.

If you don't currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a
$2000/month mortgage payment, don't take out that mortgage. If you don't
currently have a cash flow that would allow you to make a $500/month student
loan payment, don't take out that loan. If you could afford a $200 monthly
payment, find a degree that fits your budget. Try a $3000/semester school
instead of a $25000/semester school.

Don't rack up $50K/year and then pretend that you're not entitled.

~~~
m_ke
I got into an ivy league school and ended up going there because I was offered
a fairly generous financial aid package. Then in my final year my grants went
from covering 80% of my tuition to practically 0 because my father was working
80 hour weeks and made 5k more than the previous year. I thought I would
graduate with around 20K in loans but ended up having closer to 70K because of
that.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Was it worth it? You could have went to a cheaper school?

~~~
m_ke
Having a CS degree from a top school on my resume has opened a ton of doors
for me so I'd say it was worth it. I have high school friends who ended up
getting CS degrees from state schools with pretty good GPAs who couldn't get
interviews with any of the top companies and ended up doing IT or working at
banks.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Okay. So the system worked as designed.

------
anongraddebt
I attended an elite institution for my grad degree, but attended a state
school for undergrad. My parents are also middle-class but reside in a low-
income area of the country. All of this being said, I can attest (anecdotally)
to the following:

(1) There are low-income, middle-income, and upper-income individuals with
student loan debt so large it will never be paid back. I know at least two
people in each income bracket. The ones from the upper-income bracket come
from families that are well-off, but not so well-off that they are willing to
throw away a quarter of their life-savings to payback their child's student
loan debt.

(2) I know people with $200K+ in student loan debt, but who pursued degrees
which have career trajectories not aligned to paying off such debt.

(3) Even at elite institutions, and even within different acclaimed grad
programs, the 'country club' experience of American undergrad education is
creeping in. That is, even at elite grad programs, students are beginning to
treat education as secondary and socializing, partying, etc. as primary. Grade
inflation, among other signs of systemic institutional rot, is rampant.

\----

Having graduated and joined the professional class, as well as being connected
to various professional social circles spanning different industries, I can
also attest (anecdotally) to witnessing only ~20% of the people I know
spending the vast majority of time at their job doing work rather than playing
around. To those with limited data on what actually takes place at the mid and
senior levels of management in large corporations and firms, I can tell you
many stories of people making ~$130-$200K/yr while spending a non-trivial
amount of work time shopping on-line, scrolling social media feeds, etc.

Take that FWIW.

~~~
dba7dba
I personally know someone who went to a state college AND a private, expensive
private law school (not top tier). All while getting loans/grants. That is 7
years of borrowing. Not graduating from a top tier program meant the lawyer
job with really high enough income was out of reach.

I just remember hearing that individual amassed about a quarter of a million
of US $ in debt. And he will be paying about $2000 - $3000 a month to repay
the debt, till he reaches 40ish, provided there is no hiccup in employment.
That's enough for mortgage for a really good house in most parts of US.

Was it worth it? I think not personally. Not with that kind of loan.

And yes, people in mid/senior management spend non trivial time doing non-work
related activities on computers behind closed doors of the private offices.
I've seen it as a help desk guy.

~~~
anongraddebt
It is a depressing state of affairs.

To add on to your point about people playing around behind closed doors:
something I've found quite surprising is the remarkable skill and effort that
is involved in playing around. I know people who are extraordinarily talented
at making themselves look busy and/or productive, but in reality are merely a
drag on their company and the wider economy.

In one sense, this is a type of fraud the market is supposed to self-correct
(i.e. identify and remove). This fraud seems to be increasing.

I'm often reminded of certain types of deceit which increased in the Great
Depression. It was not uncommon for a husband, say, to dress up and go off to
work in the morning, and return home as if he had had a normal day on the
'job'. In reality, he was unemployed, and either looking for work or wasting
his time doing something else. This would go on for 1-3 years as the family
savings was gradually depleted to nothing, while neighbors and family members
thought everything was fine. Then, when the deceit couldn't be sustained, the
husband tried operating a mini-golf business (doomed from the start) out of
the front yard.

------
ProAm
Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS, or at least
by peoples parents. 50k for a 1 year degree when you are already in debt isn't
insurmountable but it is significant.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Basic decision making and investment ROI should be covered in HS_

The "a member of my family once said I deserved student loan debt because I
chose the unrealistic field of history" comment reminds me of friends. They're
smart. But they came from families that didn't teach ROI. (Their high schools
didn't offer , they pursued majors that they found interesting. Nobody offer
economics in a remotely-useful form, either.) Nobody told them to consider
job-placement frequencies and mean exit salaries. (Let alone where to find
these data.) So they didn't.

It's difficult to fault them. Their adolescent brains were given insufficient
information (or, in some cases wrong information) for a series of huge
decisions. They are now left with the consequences of those decisions for
life.

The only way to fix this is to let loans be wiped out in bankruptcy ( _i.e._
give lenders skin in the game). We probably also need to let lenders vary
interest rates by institution and major. (The latter to give borrowers an
early price signal around their choices.)

~~~
ASpring
I agree it is difficult to fault these students who chose majors without fully
factoring in lifetime earnings and that we should allow college loans to be
wiped out in bankruptcy.

However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by
institution and major. Our premise was that these students didn't understand
the full picture of what they were getting into. I'm not sure complicating
that picture by varying interest rates is going to make the situation better
overall.

~~~
theli0nheart
> _However, I disagree that we should let lenders vary interest rates by
> institution and major._

Going to college is a financial investment, so I see the logic in this: just
make it a flat "fee" and let the student decide what to study to make it worth
it. I'm not sure what the ramifications of this might be, though. I can
imagine there might be some unintended consequences.

~~~
Mirioron
The consequences are that certain easier degrees will get flooded and the
degree becomes worthless "because everyone has one". Most of those people
won't be able to find work in their field of expertise. College will still be
useful for them, but only as a signaling mechanism. But it might even be a
negative signaling mechanism, because it would show that the student didn't
think through their actions.

------
mountainofdeath
I need to dig up the article but an article I read a few years ago confirmed
what I already thought about schools in Europe. While it is true that higher
education in Europe is mostly free, it's extraordinarily competitive. There
are far fewer universities and the admissions standards are much higher.
Students are sorted going into high school based on their ability and those
that are not on the university track on placed into normal or trade high
schools.

I have no problem paying taxes toward humanity or other "useless" degrees if
the person is truly profoundly talented. Student loans provide all of the
wrong incentives.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I guess Europe hasn't figured out how that you can make guaranteed money off a
subset of the population whose risk vs rewards centres have literally not
totally developed in their brain, or it has enough ethics not to.

~~~
pnw_hazor
That doesn't explain why Jen or Karyn in the article took out large loans for
vanity degrees.

People make bad decisions at every age. The way to fix this problem is to make
colleges suffer penalties for loan defaults. Then maybe they would think twice
about selling onw year vanity grad degrees for $50K to people who can't afford
it.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Jen went into her masters for public policy. How is that a vanity degree? That
sounds like a "not sexy but it should get me a job" degree. Who is Karyn, I
don't see her in the article at all - there's a Kathryn, but she was a
teacher, clearly a non-vanity degree.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Sorry I meant Kathryn.

"[]Kathryn, a 35-year-old with $118,000 in debt from a degree in museum
studies[]."

A 1-year masters degree in public policy from an Ivy is a vanity degree. (as
indicated by Jen's current situation)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Ok, yeah, Kathryn's seems a bit spurious.

>Jen enrolled in a one-year master’s program in public policy at an Ivy League
university, where, despite having small scholarships and participating in
work-study programs, she accumulated an additional $50,000 in federal loans.
But by the time she graduated, the economy still hadn’t recovered, and she
struggled to find work. She deferred her loans (meaning she did not have to
make payments, and no interest accrued) and when the deferment period ran out,
she put them in forbearance (during which payments are suspended, but interest
does accrue). In 2010, she found a job — only to be laid off, again, two years
later. She managed to find a contract gig that put her to work three days a
week, and consolidated her loans into a single loan that would be easier to
manage.

I don't know how not being able to find a job in 2008 and then finding a job
but being laid off and then having a stroke qualifies as her earning a vanity
degree.

~~~
pnw_hazor
The stroke came after the poor choice. Jen's case is also a bit spurious --
hers sounds like more of a healthcare/safety net issue than a student debt
issue.

If the crisis is so dire, why do articles like this highlight victims that few
will sympathize with. Maybe the author doesn't know any normal people.

Maybe they should highlight people like my daughter who intentionally chose a
local state school rather than an expensive out-of-state or private school and
selected a pragmatic STEM degree.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Maybe they should highlight people like my daughter who intentionally chose
> a local state school rather than an expensive out-of-state or private school
> and selected a pragmatic STEM degree.

Did your daughter pay for her schooling all by herself? And which letter in
the acronym? I'd argue that the S and M might not be guaranteed to get you a
job either. It's really just "TE" jobs at best.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Honors college CS major. I am paying but she did not know that I would until
after she committed. I told her I expect to be paid back in full -- we will
see how that works out.

I think with room and board it is costing us around $22K per year.

------
danschumann
Make them bankruptable. Make the risk real, causing banks to only give loans
if the kid is gonna pay it off fairly regularly. Fewer kids going to college
will decrease demand, and cause the price to go down, as well. Tech schools
have far better outcomes, and will be chosen more often.

~~~
tomatotomato37
What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the
poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing
opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied
for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature?

~~~
wolfgke
> What happens when someone blames the banking system for oppressing the
> poor/minorities/whatever by denying them a loan and thus not providing
> opportunities for advancement, while leaving out the fact that they applied
> for a degree in 17th century Mongolian literature?

If someone believes that such a person will get a decent salary after
graduating, they should put their money where their mouth is.

~~~
pnw_hazor
I think the schools should play this role. They are the ones with the best
information.

------
dawhizkid
I took out some student loans for a grad degree and still have around $20k
left. This was a few years ago so my fixed interest rate is 5.6%, which today
is only a little higher than the rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage.

I stretched out the repayment to 25 years and it's on autopay. The monthly
payment is around $150/month. Also, interest is tax deductible if you make
less than $85k.

I barely think about this loan at all except for filing taxes. Of course
everyone's situation is different, but even ~$40k in debt for one of the most
forgiving loans you can take out (both in terms of the fixed rate, the amount
of time you can stretch out, and the tax deductibility of the interest) is not
worth the stress.

------
gzu
Its all just a taxpayer (and employee) subsided way to lower high skill labor
costs for companies. "We need more STEM" /s.

What we actually need is a long term solution to middle class destruction.
Everyone/everything is sucking them dry. It’s too bad though once they’re
empty the whole system is dead.

------
roenxi
There are a lot of details here, but from the high level the problem is that
loans that can't be discharged through bankruptcy are unfair. Some very
successful people have gone bankrupt once or twice on their way.

Obviously allowing student loans to be discharged through a normal bankruptcy
isn't feasible, because students leave college basically bankrupt. There needs
to be a sensible mechanism to default on student loans, and probably a
matching hard political conversation about what education is actually worth.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Put schools on the hook for a portion of the defaults.

------
babaganoosh89
Why not limit federal aid and student loans to "in-demand" majors? Do we
really want high school students getting >$100k debt for majors with limited
market value?

~~~
bdcravens
Presumably this would either eliminate certain jobs over time or limit those
who go into those fields to a given financial class. Smells a little too much
like central economy planning to some.

------
wernercd
The old wisdom that "College is Worth It, No Matter What." is no longer true
(assuming it ever was).

Trades, IT jobs and the inability to bankruptcy out of bad decisions... paired
with colleges that are more focused on head count than quality...

~~~
wvenable
The current wisdom is that "College is necessary" because even your barista
has a degree. Good luck getting a good job without one.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I imagine you're going to get a lot of "I don't have a degree but I have a
great job!" responses, but that's largely because tech is a super weird
industry, and not indicative of the rest of the job market.

~~~
wvenable
I believe that you can be in tech without a degree (and I know a lot of people
who are) but we just posted looking for a new developer and, of course, it
says "CS degree required". If you don't have a degree, you have more of an
uphill battle if you go the traditional employee route and that is where most
of the jobs are.

------
jeffdavis
So many problems here:

* Public service loan forgiveness

* Inability to get out of loans through bankruptcy

* "College, college, college" mantra where college is specifically defined as a big expensive place you go

* Kids' first "grown up" financial decision is a big one

* Majors that don't have a track record of paying off with no real counseling or information to encourage more realistic choices

* Kids taking easy or "cool" majors without thinking very hard about the financial trade offs

* Going back to (expensive) school as a way to hide from debt payments

* Many colleges more like joining a social club than an educational institution. The first two years at university are very expensive but no better at educating than a community college.

We know these are all problems, we just have no will to fix them. Politicians
are looking for a political money-shuffling solution after the damage is
already done, not looking for policies that will prevent the harm.

~~~
hurryskurry
I actually think the problem isn't unrealistic major choices, but the fact
that college shouldn't cost so much in the first place.

There is really no reason college has to be as expensive as it is. It isn't
like college professors pay went up as tuition did or anything, or as if
students got their own microscope or something to make up for the cost.

It just went to staff, and buildings.

------
hurryskurry
I want to point out that university ought to really be about the pursuit of
knowledge.

It isn't, or shouldn't be about prestige or income.

Many people seem to have this massive chip on their shoulder, "these fing kids
just thinking they're so much smarter than me but they're just hipsters
getting useless degrees."

God forbid anyone should pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake.

You want to work in the private sector and make a killing? Good for you here's
a pat on the back.

You might not realise this, because you're close minded, but fundamental
research happens to pay terribly, requires long hours, is super stressful, but
is good for everyone.

Pharmaceuticals, for example, almost always rely on fundamental biological
discoveries made by academic science. You need to sort of understand a disease
a bit, before you find a drug to cure it, and guess who is figuring that stuff
out? It's the grad student over there who went to lab on christmas, because
that's when the mice were born.

Let nerds spend 60+ hours a week in the lab or library doing what they love,
and let's make sure they can eat and survive, so we can all reap the benefit.
These people will literally go to work all day including weekends for fun.
What motivates these people is discovery of new information, and having the
respect of their peers. They aren't motivated by money, but they need enough
to be mentally and physically healthy.

Have the kind of rationality that sees what a terrific resource that is. You
can pay them less than half of any worker in private industry and they will
work twice as much.

Just the sheer ignorance, hautiness, and closed mindedness of some of these
comments. Chill, university isn't really supposed to be there for that
annoying kid you all think of when you think of college loans. There are
literally people trying to give us their lives as long as we allow them to do
research. And y'all are ruining it.

------
wickoff
One person making unwise financial decisions is a dummy.

A generation of people being systematically lured into making unwise financial
decisions is a racket.

How do people rationalize putting young people into debt slavery instead of
having them spend their earnings in the free market, stimulating the economy?

~~~
porpoisely
The government says a 18 year old is too immature to legally purchase beer.
But a $30K loan which they can't bankrupt out of, they sure are mature enough
for that. It's getting teenagers to sign away a significant part of their 20s
to indentured servitude.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Colleges already provide an entire department or two of professionals to guide
their students through the process.

This is why schools should bear more of the risk. They are ones that are
recommending that the kids takes the loans and help them select majors.

I couldn't believe how much financial aid (all loans) I was offered for law
school. (I took about 10% of what was offered.)

~~~
hurryskurry
I never had someone recommend a major to me, or recommend I take on loans.

Law school tuition is insane, I can only imagine if you paid for your room and
board and tuition with loans and that was only 10% of the aid offered you must
have been offered like 500k.

~~~
pnw_hazor
I went to LS at night while holding down a programming job. Quitting my day
job would have made the opportunity cost way too high to consider LS. Still
had to pay mortgage and family expenses while my wife was a stay-at-home mom.

------
cschep
Because they are cheated by them. :)

------
_bxg1
I was privileged to have parents who paid my tuition, but this phenomenon that
I've watched many of my friends go through is so unjust it's giving me a
headache as I type.

------
mountainofdeath
About 1/3 of the US federal government's receivables are student loans.
Allowing people to default on their loans has huge downstream consequences.

------
victoro
It seems to me that a relatively simple to implement (I'm not going to say
simple in aggregate, because the knock-on effects would be hard to predict)
solution to all of this is to make student loan debt dischargeable in
bankruptcy.

At the very least, this would shift the burden of determining which degrees
are "worth it" from high-school-aged kids and their families to large lending
institutions that are much better equipped to analyze risk.

------
alando46
Student loans reinforce existing socioeconomic boundaries. Effectively, if a
student can't afford to pay tuition and living expenses upfront then the cost
of a college education is 15-50+% more than for a student who comes from a
wealthy family. How is this equal opportunity?

------
Stronico
An open question to people born after 1980 - did you hear "what will you do
with that degree" early and often?

The end career was an important part of the decision making process when I
started college, harped on by parents, advisers, processors, etc, - but maybe
things changed over time.

~~~
freedomben
I _never_ heard that from teachers, school counselors, or anybody in the
educational system. In fact I heard the opposite: basically "go to college for
something (anything) or you'll flip burgers for a living."

~~~
Frondo
I also never heard that, not once.

The entirety of the pro-education message I received all through my youth and
schooling was, "get a degree, it doesn't matter what in, and you'll get a
white-collar office job."

That's it.

My parents weren't of the socio-economic class to give me any more detailed
information, either. They didn't know better, no one else said better, and I
know my experience is common among my peers.

------
apta
It makes a lot of sense why what are known as the Abrahamic religions prohibit
interest/usury. It's an exploitative practice that destroys societies. Of
course, that's one part of the issue at hand here.

------
vidro3
Everyone is ignoring that 98% of students doing the Public Service Loan
Forgiveness are rejected for some vague inexplicable reason.

I don't think 98% of people are doing it wrong

------
jonahrd
I see a lot of HN comments on these issues treating college education as a
commodity/investment, blaming students/society for making poor "choices" (I'd
like to remind you of the cost and selective nature of STEM programs, not
everyone is able to enroll in the highest valued degree due to circumstances
beyond their control-- it's not always a choice), and using economic
indicators like ROI to measure the "value" of degrees. Some commenters go so
far as to even suggest letting the free market lower the price of education by
restricting access to education [1]

However, I'd like to propose that there's alternative value to education
beyond short-term individual capital gains.

First off, having a degree teaches you more than the hard skills promoted by
the individual degree program, it opens up new pathways to learning that you
can use to later-on learn new skills [2] This is increasingly important as the
pace of technology changes, and skillsets will need to be adjusted multiple
times in one lifetime.

Also, the overall prosperity of the economy, as well as other indicators such
as happiness, is tied to the number of college graduates in a particular
society. [3] [4] To me it makes sense to invest in education as a whole,
instead of targeting one specific area, or pitting individuals against each
other to compete over education resources.

I'm surprised by the number of well-educated people on this site who don't see
the value of any degrees that aren't directly related to current economic
trends, and who don't see the value of expanding access to education through
society as a whole. To me, it seems like a case where having been given a
certain set of privileges it's easy to dismiss other situations as being a
result of poor decisions or poor societal structure. I just hope that people
reading my comment will take a moment to step back and recognize that there
may be much longer-term humanitarian reasons to support education as a whole,
even if that means supporting degrees in 'underwater basket weaving'

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138961)

[2] [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040](https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED465040)

[3]
[https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosp...](https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/news/Pages/Nation%27s-prosperity-
relies-on-more-people-of-all-ages-going-to-university.aspx)

[4]
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147490411877081...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474904118770818?journalCode=eera)

------
tamalesfan
Interesting phrase: “the retributive view”

Apparently criticizing poor decision making is a bad thing and so here we're
provided a convenient pejorative with which to dismiss it.

Recently we've seen many notables dismiss uneducated white Trump supporters as
poor decision makers; their outcomes being entirely their own fault and so we
need consider their views no further. I wonder if they'll be permitted to
demean such behavior as “retributive.”

I don't actually wonder that. The answer is as certain as a physical law.

These kids were sold a bill of goods. One might hope they've learned that good
paying jobs will not magically appear simply by chanting 'Education!' We can't
actually evacuate most of our industrial base to Asia and force the remaining
employers into ever greater oligopolies through regulatory pressure and still
have a middle class.

But I think that's a false hope. Instead they'll do precisely as they've been
trained and vote for the promises of the political class; the very people that
taught them to mindlessly chant 'Education!' in the first place.

------
therobot24
there's going to be a great [http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/) paragraph
from this thread

------
Bucephalus355
I have no student loans. ROTC paid for all of my college.

Yet 15 minutes ago I got a call from “Robbie”, clearly a domestic call as he
had 100% American accent, to talk about restructuring my federal student
loans.

Why is our country so incredibly deceptive and scammy? We’ll never have
European-style socialism here and that’s somewhat liveable / something I’ve
come to accept, but why must we be cheated at every turn and in every
interaction? This is not capitalism as much as it is a predatorial monetary
jungle. Reminds me of the quote: “behind every fortune, a crime”.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Part of human nature. Same is true to varyingly degrees around the world.
Research on deception/cheating is pretty damning of the people in general.

------
malvosenior
There's a lot of effort put into Jen's anecdote but not once is _what_ degree
she received even mentioned. That is suspect and dishonest reporting.

As a tax payer, I do not want to subsidize people's poor educational decision
making. If you get a STEM degree, you can get a job. This article describes
what's long been referred to as:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving)

Look at what fields are in demand and get an appropriate degree. Someone's
failure to do that should not fall on the tax payers shoulders anymore than it
already does.

~~~
landryraccoon
I can’t disagree more strongly with this attitude.

You’re saying that children basically barely out of high school need to make
decisions that are very high cost and impact the rest of their lives, then
held accountable for them when they make a mistake.

This is on top of the fact that in all likelihood both society and their
parents and teachers pushed them hard that the only way to succeed in life is
to max out on education.

Blaming kids for choosing the wrong college is just a symptom of a broken
system. How messed up is it that almost the very first decision a person has
to make when reaching the age of majority is whether to take on tens of
thousands in debt or more?

~~~
wolfgke
> You’re saying that children basically barely out of high school need to make
> decisions that are very high cost and impact the rest of their lives, then
> held accountable for them when they make a mistake.

Perhaps I am too German to understand this problem, since in Germany, nearly
every child is taught by their parents that you should only go into debt if
you have _really_ , _really_ good reasons (i.e. almost never, except perhaps
for buying a house/flat; and in this case it is a mortgage and not a credit).

I believe this is really sound financial advice.

> Blaming kids for choosing the wrong college is just a symptom of a broken
> system. Blame just doesn’t work.

I think it is right to blame children for ignoring the IMHO sound financial
advice (almost) never to take any credit.

~~~
landryraccoon
How much did college cost in Germany? School, like healthcare, is
exhorbitantly expensive in the United States.

~~~
wolfgke
> How much did college cost in Germany?

Most universities in Germany are public and thus quite cheap. But note that
while they are quite good in terms of quality of education, there is hardly
any handholding offered. Many Germans say that this is two birds with one
stone:

1\. Mostly free tertiary education

2\. Students learn a lot of self-responsibility

So it is a very different system from the one in the US.

So it makes much more sense to compare US universities with the few private
universities in Germany. Under
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19139246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19139246)
I wrote something about that topic. TLDR: If a university does not make an
offer that you can pay off your "tuition" by a fixed amount of the salary that
you earn in the next 10-15 years after graduating, you should be wary, since
this shows that the university does not believe that its respective course of
studies will (in average) give a decent salary to its graduates.

~~~
landryraccoon
> If a university does not make an offer that you can pay off your "tuition"
> by a fixed amount of the salary that you earn in the next 10-15 years after
> graduating, you should be wary, since this shows that the university does
> not believe that its respective course of studies will (in average) give a
> decent salary to its graduates.

I don't know of a single US university that offers this guarantee...

