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A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant h

• Implicated 11y ago
  I had this very experience. Everyone I encountered in my schooling and personal life basically pushed me to take out loans and get a degree by whatever means necessary. Even after I explained that I had no idea what I wanted to do (at the time). Thankfully I thought it foolish to put myself in significant debt for an education I wasn't passionate about and a direction I wasn't sure about. The whole "just go and get it done" excuse is thrown at a _lot_ of young adults and those loans are sure easy to get. Just crazy.
• pmiller2 11y ago
  > A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further. > I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.) This rings true for me. The main reason I even went to college was because I bought the story that "if you do well in school and get a college degree, you'll get a good job and be set up for success in life." Yeah. That didn't quite work out as planned. I enjoyed school and the things I learned from my degree were cool, but I use literally 0% of it on the job now, and it doesn't even help get me interviews very often, because it doesn't have the magic letters "CS" in it. Thirty years ago, a bachelor's degree might have been a ticket to a decent professional job, but those days are long past. I'm not sure what I would have done as an alternative plan, but I'm sure it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. Not starting out behind a very expensive 8-ball could have possibly helped me a lot.
  • sushid 11y ago
    Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?
    • pmiller2 11y ago
      I'm a software engineer now. I majored in math. I've literally had recruiters tell me they couldn't offer me an interview because I didn't study "computers," including once at a college career fair. I wanted to tell that woman about the people who invented computers, but I held my tongue as she threw my résumé back at me.
      • e40 11y ago
        Many of the people I have worked with had degrees in math. I'm not sure if more had CS degrees or math degrees, to be honest.
        • hkmurakami 11y ago
          This is the problem when the gatekeepers (recruiters) are not your peers. It's a shame that we've somehow structured our systems so that we clearly do candidates a disservice, even though we keep saying that attracting talent is of the utmost priority.
      • Spooky23 11y ago
        I work in a big beauraucric .gov. We had a guy who majored in robotics and was one of the best programmers hired in some time. (Iirc, he had some health challenges that made getting underpaid attractive) He got demoted to some horrible computer operator position because an audit of HR revealed his degree, and the auditors found that robotics wasn't computer sciencey enough. The union grieved it and he was eventually made whole a few years later.
        • EliRivers 11y ago
          God bless the union. Exactly the kind of thing they're for.
• shogun21 11y ago
  I saw taking out student loans as just another hurdle I had I cross. Same with taking the ACT and writing admissions essays. I'm doing fine now and paying back my loans. But I wish I better understood APRs and monthly payments and what those numbers actually meant in context.
  • NDizzle 11y ago
    Did your parents never talk to you about this kind of thing? I have already had this discussion with my 10 year old. For what it's worth, I never went to college but I understand the importance of compound interest and understanding financial contracts which involve you.
    • ethanbond 11y ago
      I hope your ten year old has more options available than "go to college and take a gamble on being underwater" or "learn a vocation and hope you retire before it's swallowed by outsourcing or automation." Despite the statistics, there is no obvious choice here. Why are the wise old people encouraging young people to choose the path their generation just got screwed out of? This generation of students has only ever heard of our parents longterm careers getting vanished by computers or foreigners.
      • smileysteve 11y ago
        > I hope your ten year old has more options available than "go to college and take a gamble on being underwater" or "learn a vocation and hope you retire before it's swallowed by outsourcing or automation." There are still many state schools w/ scholarships that are low priced; or upper tier schools if the family doesn't make enough money.
        • ethanbond 11y ago
          None of which guarantee a job anymore, which is exactly the problem. The average student loan debt for graduating undergrads is somewhere around $30,000. It's not like they're taking out loans to buy their way into Dartmouth. They're taking out reasonable amounts of money to go to a reasonable school to get a reasonable job. The "unrealistic idealists" in this situation are the people who think it's the student's fault for planning on getting the job that was more or less promised to them by society. And when they are woken up by the fact that there aren't jobs waiting on the other end, the rhetoric seems to be, "these stupid kids listened to what every adult in the country told them for the first 18 years of their lives!" It's shameful to act like kids should've known better than to pay for a quality education. What the hell kind of society actually places that blame on children? Now, the alternative is the same thing. Now adults are telling kids to go to vocational schools. Okay. By the time they get established in those fields, those jobs will be gone too. Then we can blame the kids for listening to us again!
• vonmoltke 11y ago
  I personally never got that message. I got the "you will go to college" message, but it came bundled with a "don't borrow $40,000 for college" message. In fact, I turned down my first choice school (Rose-Hulman) because I would have accrued $50,000 on loans over four years. That seems to be unfortunately typical now.
  • alanh 11y ago
    I really wanted to go to MIT, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when they were bragging that average student debt after graduation was “only” the price of a brand-new minivan or sports coupe.
    • kmonsen 11y ago
      The return on investment on an MIT degree and a sports car is pretty different. If you graduate MIT with a decent degree in a wanted field you are going in the right direction.
    • serge2k 11y ago
      That sounds quite reasonable actually. A degree can be a good investment. The right degree from MIT will open a lot of doors .
      • alanh 11y ago
        Do you think everyone who has gained an education should then be burdened by an inescapable bondage to a particular high-paying career? What if they decided they would rather be a teacher? A musician and band director? A serial backpacker? What if they are injured and can no longer take the 40, 50, 60 hours in a chair at the office it would require to maintain the level of salary? Just because a college degree is often a great ROI doesn’t mean that it can justify the expense for all students, or even for all students with a "wise" career in mind at time of enrollment.
        • zanny 11y ago
          If you want to go to a very competitive school like MIT, probably. Generally the "best" schools are those that have better access to good professors, and resources that the brightest can best take advantage of. Now you can be bright and not want to make a lot of money out of MIT, but generally the assumption is that in capitalism if it is valuable it is worth money, and if you go into a job that pays a lot you are doing a more valuable job than if you were doing something that paid less. If you want to go into a less competitive career, going into a less competitive school can make a lot sense, often because the less competitive schools can have better programs appealing to less lucrative fields because the pressure is less severe than it is for an MIT undergrad.
• Camillo 11y ago
  When everyone goes to college, the bachelor's degree becomes the new high school degree. Then you either split between "good" bachelor's and "bad" bachelor's (depending on the institution), or all the degree requirements increase one step, or a little of both. You can't just expect to give everyone a degree and have a nation of professionals, with "someone else" (people in foreign countries, immigrants) doing the blue collar work. For two reasons: one, there just isn't enough demand for professional-level work. Two, people differ in innate ability, and education level is often more useful as a proxy for that ability than for what it concretely teaches you. Giving everyone the same degree, even if you somehow get everyone to recite the material, will not give everyone the same level of ability - it will just destroy the degree's value as a proxy. I wouldn't blame the councilors, teachers and parents too much, though - they have to focus on the individual case. Blame the politicians and thought leaders instead, who should have been able to see the effect at the collective level. If you're advising an individual, it's fine to assume that the market environment will not be affected by their actions. If you're advising a nation, it's not!
• speeder 11y ago
  I am from Brazil, and was victim of the same thing. Worse, I could if I had spent a year studying or so, join a free university, but even that was unnaceptable, the "right thing" to do was take a loan and dive in a expensive course. I finished college in 2009, I still don't got my first legal job, and I still have debts, I am struggling to buy medicine I need. Meanwhile everyone I know that ignored the "adults" and did whatever they wanted, managed to actually start a life, and now have house, vehicle, sometimes kids... meanwhile I just have a stupid piece of paper that is not good even to wipe my ass with (the university diploma they gave me is just a normal A4 paper printed in a normal inkjet).
  • tomc1985 11y ago
    No seal?
    • nuttinwrong 11y ago
      Gotta have a seal! lol
    • speeder 11y ago
      Nope, when they told me my diploma was "ready" and I showed up, the person just walked off, then I heard inkjet noises, and came back with a half-assed official looking normal A4 printed paper. No seal, also the Rector signature is obviously just a printed JPEG file on what is probably a word document.
• lliamander 11y ago
  Yes, 17 year-olds are being indoctrinated into the idea that a degree is the Key To Success, but it's not like the issue of having to pay back the loans isn't brought up. I went to college not to terribly long ago, and I remember having conversations with various people (guidance councilors, parents, teachers, peers, etc.) about career prospects and the kind of income one can expect. In fact, I switched to Computer Science precisely because of a conversation with a fellow student regarding future income potential. I also saw many/most fellow students actively ignore or avoid the issue of future debt. Granted, they were supported in their behavior by various authority figures, but they still had a choice. Of course, the solution isn't to complain about the stupidity of teenagers. Personally, I think the solution is fixing how the banks give out loans in the first place (i.e. allowing them to refuse to issue loans unless they think they'll get their money back).
• serge2k 11y ago
  > When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.) To some extent people make their own bad choices. I graduated with 30k-ish in debt (canadian). A reasonable sum considering the job options immediately available that wouldn't have been a possibility without a degree. On the other hand I have a friend who went to the same school, but stayed to do a masters. He owes over 70. Still possible to pay down. While he's worried about that I'm 4 years out of school, 1/3 of the way through paying my loan off. We wound up with comparable jobs in terms of pay as well. He's was in his mid-late 20s when he started as well. Not 17.
• TWAndrews 11y ago
  Yes. My nephew is a Junior and starting to look at schools and my main message to him is "wherever you can minimize your debt."
• bduerst 11y ago
  It will only change if there is an alternative. As it stands now, the "Brand" of having a university degree on your resume is still one of the signals used in hiring candidates for jobs.
• IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  >Guidance councilors, This is a profession which needs to be eliminated ASAP. Councilors are absolutely clueless and are misleading millions of youth. They have no experience on the job market and just regurgitate what they are told. They mislead students, have trouble spotting floundering students and are just dead weight in school bureaucracy.
• cmurf 11y ago
  Well it's a bit more nuanced isn't it? - Oh of course you're going to college, only losers don't go to college. + But I have to take out loans. - Yep, par for the course. So you're getting peer and parental pressure to get higher education, and in effect make a pretty questionable business decision: it's effectively a modern version of indentured servitude.
  • netsharc 11y ago
    Tell them to go to a European university. It's almost free, a lot of countries offer courses in English, they get to see Europe, and even if the living costs are higher, it's not going to be 6 digits expensive/they'd get an education plus a few years adventure for that money.
    • ZenoArrow 11y ago
      I agree with your general advice, but I'd add on that university education in the UK is expensive (though not as expensive as the US), so they should be prepared to learn another language (for life outside the University course).
      • cr1895 11y ago
        >so they should be prepared to learn another language (for life outside the University course). Maybe, maybe not. University itself is not uncommonly taught in English and English competency in northern Europe is generally high. If you're just planning to stay for the education then learning the language might not be necessary.
• zeta0134 11y ago
  This could not be more true. I'm of that very generation, went to an expensive technical school with no clue what I was getting myself into, and managed to flunk out in the first year. Never even considered that possibility, because high school had been such a breeze, and now I'm stuck with a huge loan and nothing I can really do about it other than make payments. Minimum wage is difficult enough to deal with when you don't have an extra $200 coming out every month that you can't make go away. Of course I know about all of this now; in hindsight I would never have made those decisions. So, that's a huge lesson learned. It's something I think society will come around on eventually, but a huge number of students bought into the trap blindly, and are now stuck without a good escape plan. I've managed to get my life back together and I have things under control, but I'll be paying that loan off for the next 20 years if I'm quick about it. The only thing I've really gained is a strong distaste for the college system. I've had to learn to build my portfolio and sell myself to potential employers based on what I can do for them with my current skills, rather than what I have paid to put on my wall.
• mc32 11y ago
  A compounding issue is that not all kids are made for higher ed. Some just don't have the aptitude, but the conduit towards vocational schools isn't there as it probably was long ago (we don't have the hauptschule/gymnasium system). Unfortunately, such a system in the US would quickly run into trouble as schools would quickly get accused of funneling 'good' students one way and 'bad' students the other way and there would be accusations of unconscious bias of one type or another. So we only have the "go to college/university" recommendation, for everyone, even students who clearly don't have the aptitude and would do better in a vocational school.
• mgleason_3 11y ago
  Guidance counselors, teachers, and parents should have to take a course and pass a test on: http://www.payscale.com/college-roi. There's also another site (that I can't recall right now) which lists ROI by Major and School. It should be on the mandatory list also.
• makomk 11y ago
  I believe some US high schools were even holding mandatory-to-attend collage finance classes that were actually paid-for hard sell marketing events by commercial banks for their student loans.