10 ms·

I'm not pro-student debt, but all of the stories in this article are super irresponsible to me. All of my friends and I graduated at the worst time possible, sh

by kin 10y ago

I'm not pro-student debt, but all of the stories in this article are super irresponsible to me. All of my friends and I graduated at the worst time possible, shortly after the 2008 crash. It was a terrible time to enter the job market (unless you were a developer, but still, salaries were low and I worked hard to earn what I do now which apparently is now just considered market-rate). Anyway, all the english majors and political science majors etc struggled to find jobs, but they found shitty jobs nonetheless. They chipped away at their loans, changed it to lower payments, or just paid interest for a while. Where are they now 5 years later? Their loans are mostly paid off and they're in better jobs. My point is, yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. The stories where their parents have to deal with phone calls are especially bad.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
> My point is, yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. The ol' puritanical work ethic. No, you need to make the best business choice. If a corporation defaults, no one cares. But your degree is worthless or provides you no benefit? You never get away from it. When you can walk away, walk away. Its okay for the Fed to QE till the cows come home to prop up asset bubbles, but not okay for the US DOE to forgive loans on educations that have little value? Please. I guess it just comes down to the type of slavery you want for the next generation. At least you have the option of not buying a home or equities in inflated markets, but garnishing your wages or your tax returns forever? We should be shocked about those who don't emigrate to countries that treat them better. I'm very surprised first world countries with declining populations haven't made an active advertising/outreach effort to appeal to young US graduates with large amounts of debt.
- pkaye 10y ago
  Do you think it would be best to start denying loans for education for worthless degrees?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I think the government should fund education directly, with tuition being free to students. Right now, we have this joke where schools can raise rates as much as they want, because you must have a degree to be competitive (inelastic demand). Combined with cheap, government-backed lending, its a disaster. Its a long-term payday loan, no more, no less. At least when the money flowed without discretion for housing, you could walk away from your house.
    - pkaye 10y ago
      How does switching from cheap loans to free tuition change anything? The costs will still be out of control. With housing it is secured against the value of the house but with education there is nothing.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        If you pay for it directly, you control the costs. No different then single payer healthcare. Also, credit card and personal loan debt is unsecured; we don't prohibit that from being discharged in bankruptcy. Student loan debt is the only debt that can't be discharged.
        pkaye 10y ago
        Then why don't student use a credit or personal loan to pay for their education?
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Because they don't have enough credit history to do so. You can get a credit card for a few thousand dollars with no credit history. Not tens of thousands of dollars. The problem isn't the debt type. The problem is the government needs to use its regulatory authority to enable cost controls on education.
        pkaye 10y ago
- throwanem 10y ago
  You have the option of not taking on student debt, too.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Just like you have the option of not taking on medical debt by getting out of the ambulance while you're having a heart attack? No. You don't have the option to not take on student debt unless a) employers stop requiring it for an entry level job or b) the US government sees enough social progress to remove the need to take out loans for education.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Casting a college education as a matter of life and death is an excellent example of the kind of rhetoric which produces results like those under discussion.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rates-by-educational-attainment-in-april-2015.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rates-by-educa... Employment situation directly leads to living situations. Unemployed? You're going to be in poverty or homeless. Its hard enough to get a job today with a bachelors degree. Without one? Much harder, if at all. Getting a degree is truly a life or death situation. With proper social safety nets, single payer healthcare, and so forth, it would not be. But the way things are today, it is.
        throwanem 10y ago
        Oh. Well, that explains why I've been dead these past fifteen years, instead of making a good living as a software developer with a high-school education. But totally unrepresentative, the plural of anecdote, et cetera, of course. I must simply be one of the privileged 95%.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Not to mention the rule changes Obama put in: income based repayment and loan forgiveness after 20 years. I can't think of any other loan that is this generous with its terms.
hodgesrm 10y ago
Based on the articles it does not seem that most of the kids in the article really thought through what it means to take out large amounts of debt. (Including roping in parents as co-signers.) To be fair the US Congress didn't think this through either since most programs to improve access appear to be loan-based.
unclesaamm 10y ago
> "Their loans are mostly paid off" I'm not sure what bubble you're living in, but some of my tech colleagues (making six figures) have enough student debt that they'll be paying it back for the rest of their working lives. For less well-off people, a single misstep (or illness) can throw them into insolvency. This is an insane price for individuals to shoulder just to get on a level playing field (aka getting an education).
- gamegoblin 10y ago
  I don't know how it's possible for someone making six figures to have so much student debt they'll spend the rest of their career paying it off. Say you take home 6K/mo after taxes and 401K contributions. This is reasonable for a dev making 100-150K. 2K to rent. 1K to bills, groceries. 1K to entertainment. You can now contribute 2K/mo to your loans. Even with a massive loan of 200K you could pay it off in 10 years.
  - shiftpgdn 10y ago
    10% interest that doesn't go away. At 10% interest it would take 18 years to repay a 200k loan at $2,000/month if you never missed a payment or had any penalties.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      200k loan? What in the everloving f... If you were to move to my country, Uruguay, and pay for rent, normal expenses and private education for 7 years (Comp. Sci. being 4-5yrs) you still would barely be above half that amount of money. Why do you guys pay that much for a degree? Just haven't considered moving (and I don't mean here, I'm pretty sure there are many other countries in a similar or better situation) or is it something else?
      - gamegoblin 10y ago
        Most public universities will be 20K on the low end and 60K on the high end for a degree. It's when you get to private universities that you see 200K+ degrees.
Aloha 10y ago
I think this quote from the first segment sums it up "I think at this point I owe about $40,000. I really, truly, honestly don't want to pay it back. Sure, I realize the responsibility I took on when I signed the papers and agreed to take out the loans, but I should have never had to do it in the first place. I feel some sort of civic duty not to pay them back, as if my small protest will make any kind of difference." Emphasis added. I am sympathetic however - people under 35 were sold a bill of goods - we were told "go to college, get a degree, and they will be a good job waiting for you" which turned out to be a load of malarkey - the problem isn't that you need to take loans out, its that student loans are not dischargeable - if normal lending standard applied, you'd see a whole lot less student debt, and the cost of education would likely drop precipitously. But most of these examples in this piece have small amount of debt, something along the size of a car loan, with generous and long repayment terms - its much harder for me to accept someone crying hardship when they owe less than 40k. Even if the amounts were larger, once you take on the debt, it's yours, you own it, no matter if you want to pay it back or not.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mywittyname 10y ago
  I posted this up elsewhere, but $40k can be paid off in five years if you toss $800/mo at it. That's hardly an insurmountable debt burden. Sure, it sucks, but it's gone before well before most people would turn 30. But yes, bankruptcy should absolutely apply to student loan debt if the individual can't pay.
  - qopp 10y ago
    I think the reason bankruptcy doesn't apply is so that lenders are more willing to give out student loans (which is good, more educated society, more opportunities) and also so they lend them out at a lower rate. Without this, banks might require very good credit to give out loans (hard for young students to acquire).
    - 10y ago
appleflaxen 10y ago
I had exactly the same reaction: higher education is overpriced and has perverse incentives, but these individuals hardly seem like the most deserving of compassion for their circumstances. > I think at this point I owe about $40,000. I really, truly, honestly don't want to pay it back. No shit > Sure, I realize the responsibility I took on when I signed the papers and agreed to take out the loans, but I should have never had to do it in the first place. I feel some sort of civic duty not to pay them back, as if my small protest will make any kind of difference. He didn't have to; it was a choice. Let's change the system of higher education, but lets also get some better standard-bearers.
- arcticfox 10y ago
  I love your assessment. These are the type of people that are hard to side with even when you fully agree with some of their ideas.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    I find myself seriously wondering whether the Vice author intended readers to sympathize with his subjects, or despise them. Partly I think this might be just my bias, inasmuch as I opted against taking on a six-figure debt load as my first adult act, and have discovered that not going to college is hardly the kiss of career death it's made out to be. But I really don't think you have to be me to find someone who got his parents to co-sign that six-figure debt load, then skipped the country and left them holding the bag, almost beneath contempt.
rwmurrayVT 10y ago
You get what out of your university what you put into it. If you attend your top state school, go into an employable field, and put in a lot of effort you won't need to emigrate. Did I miss out on some fabulous career path because I chose my state school over Drexel, Urbana, etc.? That's not entirely fair comparison for every student because Virginia Tech is a phenomenal engineering school. The point still stands though, are there any states in the USA that don't have a high quality state school?
iskander 10y ago
>Where are they now 5 years later? Their loans are mostly paid off and they're in better jobs. This is missing the magical step 2 just before "Profit!". How did your "English major" friends manage to pay off their their student loans from shitty jobs in 5 years? Even state school tuitions are now starting to reach several tens of thousands of dollars per year. For private universities, the annual tuition is often significantly higher than the median annual salary of their graduates.
- kin 10y ago
  Mostly paid off != paid off. After a few years you get raises, you get better jobs, you save money by living at home. Etc. My story may be anecdotal but my point still stands. People in the article are irresponsible.
loeg 10y ago
Anecdote, but I graduated in 2011 and almost none of my friends have their student loans paid off.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  Probably because they all stuck to the default 10-year payment plan.
  - kin 10y ago
    Exactly. Besides, mostly paid off != paid off. I went to a UC so by the time you graduated loans were about $20k-$50k depending on how much you take out. Live at home, work hard, chip away at your loans, they'll be mostly gone after 5 years.
fzzzy 10y ago
This seems implausible. The standard loan repayment term is 10 years.
- kin 10y ago
  My story is anecdotal but it's true. Who says you have to repay a loan on the standard terms? I also said mostly gone. If standard is 10 years than after 5 years half is gone. Pair that w/ an accelerated payoff and you're looking at loans that are "mostly" paid off. IMO a lot more responsible than the stories in the article.
codemac 10y ago
> My point is, yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. There is no reason to praise hardship. Saying that they shouldn't inflict extra hardship on others (their parents) is fine, but the ridiculousness of the situation is not something we should pride ourselves on getting through. No one's parents worked hard so their kids would have as hard of a life. It's so they have an easier one, and that's something we should aspire to.
matwood 10y ago
Hard work is part of it, but it is really about responsibility. I know when I was an 18 year old I was not the most responsible person, but my parents had taught me enough about money matters to not doing anything too stupid. Since I mostly f'd off in HS, I had few scholarship options (and the state lottery had not come into effect yet), so I went to a decent nearby college and lived at home while working 20ish hours/week. Even then, some of my peers who went away to big schools with big price tags were saying I was missing the 'real' college experience because I had a job and lived at home. To me the real experience was not worth that kind of money. Also, having his parents co-sign and then bolt is just a selfish jerk thing to do. My parents had to cosign for the initial loan I received, but from there on I either paid or took loans out on my own. Given how little money my parents already had, seeing them willing and excited to co-sign made me sad. My parents only had 3 years of college between them, but they taught me a lot of life lessons that formal education seems to miss.
therobot24 10y ago
> Where are they now 5 years later? Their loans are mostly paid off and they're in better jobs. not so sure about all of that
Kinnard 10y ago
The student loan industry is rapacious and unethical. Would you feel comfortable selling someone an English or Communications degree for a $200K which will accrue compounding interest? Institutions that feel comfortable doing this are profiting from factories of debt-peonage. This includes both for-profit and non-profit institutions. They must be stopped. Educational institutions are ostensibly founded on the magnanimous goal of educating people. If they must lend to be sustainable they should do so without charging interest. And student loans should be disclosable in bankruptcy. If you're bankrupt, you're bankrupt!
dikdik 10y ago
No. If we continue to make educational debt non-dischargeable through bankruptcy, then millennials should be doing more to avoid paying back their loans (in an attempt to break the system) if they cannot secure a good job. Baby boomers get to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on their homes and walk away scott-free, but heaven forbid we forgive 40K in student debt for someone making 13$/hour. We love to express the sentiment that business owners do not owe the working class anything. And that's true. But somehow we gloss over the fact that the working class does not owe their masters anything either. Owners are not entitled to cheap wages. We're all in this together...and if not, then many people say 'fuck it I'm doing what's best for me!' Expecting people to act in the best interests of society is a wholly stupid notion. If you want people to do what's best for their neighbors, then you must make it semi-convenient to do so.
gaur 10y ago
> yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. Hmm, I wonder if we can come up with similarly nasty and unhelpful instructions for other generations, based on stereotypes and anecdotes. E.g.: baby boomers with failing health should just accept that they're going to die, and stop overburdening Medicare with expensive treatments that only give a few more years of life.
- kin 10y ago
  Well I'm actually a millennial and your example was far more dark than mine. I got lucky in that I'm a developer, so finding a job wasn't so bad. But people who graduate college with a "useless" degree aren't so useless. Everyone has to start from somewhere and I think people lack the humility and confidence to deal with tough situations like a shitty commute, shitty pay, or having to live at home for a while. Honestly, none of these solutions are as bad as running away from it and leaving your parents to deal with your problems.
wushupork 10y ago
I couldn't totally agree more. Private school at $30,000 / year, private university at $53,000 - who does that? When my sister and I went to college, we had no delusions that we were going to go to in-state public universities where we qualified for in-state rates. Some of our friends even went to community colleges the first few years, then transferred to save even more money. Many of us had part time jobs and/or internships the whole time. Also at the time, we knew we were going to need to be sponsored by companies if we wanted to stay in the US so we both chose practical degrees which would most likely lead to sponsorships for our H1B visas (ie engineering degrees). I don't understand these people who willingly choose to go to EXPENSIVE private schools they COULD NOT afford, take HUGE loans they COULD NOT HOPE to repay on degrees that will barely pay for those loans. Then they have the audacity to feel entitled NOT to pay back those loans. "the name Sallie Mae sounds so friendly; she's just your cute aunt making soup" - seriously?

by kin 10y ago

toomuchtodo 10y ago

> My point is, yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. The ol' puritanical work ethic. No, you need to make the best business choice. If a corporation defaults, no one cares. But your degree is worthless or provides you no benefit? You never get away from it. When you can walk away, walk away. Its okay for the Fed to QE till the cows come home to prop up asset bubbles, but not okay for the US DOE to forgive loans on educations that have little value? Please. I guess it just comes down to the type of slavery you want for the next generation. At least you have the option of not buying a home or equities in inflated markets, but garnishing your wages or your tax returns forever? We should be shocked about those who don't emigrate to countries that treat them better. I'm very surprised first world countries with declining populations haven't made an active advertising/outreach effort to appeal to young US graduates with large amounts of debt.

pkaye 10y ago
Do you think it would be best to start denying loans for education for worthless degrees?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  I think the government should fund education directly, with tuition being free to students. Right now, we have this joke where schools can raise rates as much as they want, because you must have a degree to be competitive (inelastic demand). Combined with cheap, government-backed lending, its a disaster. Its a long-term payday loan, no more, no less. At least when the money flowed without discretion for housing, you could walk away from your house.
  - pkaye 10y ago
    How does switching from cheap loans to free tuition change anything? The costs will still be out of control. With housing it is secured against the value of the house but with education there is nothing.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      If you pay for it directly, you control the costs. No different then single payer healthcare. Also, credit card and personal loan debt is unsecured; we don't prohibit that from being discharged in bankruptcy. Student loan debt is the only debt that can't be discharged.
      - pkaye 10y ago
        Then why don't student use a credit or personal loan to pay for their education?
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Because they don't have enough credit history to do so. You can get a credit card for a few thousand dollars with no credit history. Not tens of thousands of dollars. The problem isn't the debt type. The problem is the government needs to use its regulatory authority to enable cost controls on education.
      - pkaye 10y ago
throwanem 10y ago
You have the option of not taking on student debt, too.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Just like you have the option of not taking on medical debt by getting out of the ambulance while you're having a heart attack? No. You don't have the option to not take on student debt unless a) employers stop requiring it for an entry level job or b) the US government sees enough social progress to remove the need to take out loans for education.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Casting a college education as a matter of life and death is an excellent example of the kind of rhetoric which produces results like those under discussion.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rates-by-educational-attainment-in-april-2015.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/unemployment-rates-by-educa... Employment situation directly leads to living situations. Unemployed? You're going to be in poverty or homeless. Its hard enough to get a job today with a bachelors degree. Without one? Much harder, if at all. Getting a degree is truly a life or death situation. With proper social safety nets, single payer healthcare, and so forth, it would not be. But the way things are today, it is.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Oh. Well, that explains why I've been dead these past fifteen years, instead of making a good living as a software developer with a high-school education. But totally unrepresentative, the plural of anecdote, et cetera, of course. I must simply be one of the privileged 95%.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Not to mention the rule changes Obama put in: income based repayment and loan forgiveness after 20 years. I can't think of any other loan that is this generous with its terms.

hodgesrm 10y ago

Based on the articles it does not seem that most of the kids in the article really thought through what it means to take out large amounts of debt. (Including roping in parents as co-signers.) To be fair the US Congress didn't think this through either since most programs to improve access appear to be loan-based.

unclesaamm 10y ago

> "Their loans are mostly paid off" I'm not sure what bubble you're living in, but some of my tech colleagues (making six figures) have enough student debt that they'll be paying it back for the rest of their working lives. For less well-off people, a single misstep (or illness) can throw them into insolvency. This is an insane price for individuals to shoulder just to get on a level playing field (aka getting an education).

gamegoblin 10y ago
I don't know how it's possible for someone making six figures to have so much student debt they'll spend the rest of their career paying it off. Say you take home 6K/mo after taxes and 401K contributions. This is reasonable for a dev making 100-150K. 2K to rent. 1K to bills, groceries. 1K to entertainment. You can now contribute 2K/mo to your loans. Even with a massive loan of 200K you could pay it off in 10 years.
- shiftpgdn 10y ago
  10% interest that doesn't go away. At 10% interest it would take 18 years to repay a 200k loan at $2,000/month if you never missed a payment or had any penalties.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    200k loan? What in the everloving f... If you were to move to my country, Uruguay, and pay for rent, normal expenses and private education for 7 years (Comp. Sci. being 4-5yrs) you still would barely be above half that amount of money. Why do you guys pay that much for a degree? Just haven't considered moving (and I don't mean here, I'm pretty sure there are many other countries in a similar or better situation) or is it something else?
    - gamegoblin 10y ago
      Most public universities will be 20K on the low end and 60K on the high end for a degree. It's when you get to private universities that you see 200K+ degrees.

Aloha 10y ago

I think this quote from the first segment sums it up "I think at this point I owe about $40,000. I really, truly, honestly don't want to pay it back. Sure, I realize the responsibility I took on when I signed the papers and agreed to take out the loans, but I should have never had to do it in the first place. I feel some sort of civic duty not to pay them back, as if my small protest will make any kind of difference." Emphasis added. I am sympathetic however - people under 35 were sold a bill of goods - we were told "go to college, get a degree, and they will be a good job waiting for you" which turned out to be a load of malarkey - the problem isn't that you need to take loans out, its that student loans are not dischargeable - if normal lending standard applied, you'd see a whole lot less student debt, and the cost of education would likely drop precipitously. But most of these examples in this piece have small amount of debt, something along the size of a car loan, with generous and long repayment terms - its much harder for me to accept someone crying hardship when they owe less than 40k. Even if the amounts were larger, once you take on the debt, it's yours, you own it, no matter if you want to pay it back or not.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mywittyname 10y ago
I posted this up elsewhere, but $40k can be paid off in five years if you toss $800/mo at it. That's hardly an insurmountable debt burden. Sure, it sucks, but it's gone before well before most people would turn 30. But yes, bankruptcy should absolutely apply to student loan debt if the individual can't pay.
- qopp 10y ago
  I think the reason bankruptcy doesn't apply is so that lenders are more willing to give out student loans (which is good, more educated society, more opportunities) and also so they lend them out at a lower rate. Without this, banks might require very good credit to give out loans (hard for young students to acquire).
  - 10y ago

appleflaxen 10y ago

I had exactly the same reaction: higher education is overpriced and has perverse incentives, but these individuals hardly seem like the most deserving of compassion for their circumstances. > I think at this point I owe about $40,000. I really, truly, honestly don't want to pay it back. No shit > Sure, I realize the responsibility I took on when I signed the papers and agreed to take out the loans, but I should have never had to do it in the first place. I feel some sort of civic duty not to pay them back, as if my small protest will make any kind of difference. He didn't have to; it was a choice. Let's change the system of higher education, but lets also get some better standard-bearers.

arcticfox 10y ago
I love your assessment. These are the type of people that are hard to side with even when you fully agree with some of their ideas.
- throwanem 10y ago
  I find myself seriously wondering whether the Vice author intended readers to sympathize with his subjects, or despise them. Partly I think this might be just my bias, inasmuch as I opted against taking on a six-figure debt load as my first adult act, and have discovered that not going to college is hardly the kiss of career death it's made out to be. But I really don't think you have to be me to find someone who got his parents to co-sign that six-figure debt load, then skipped the country and left them holding the bag, almost beneath contempt.

rwmurrayVT 10y ago

You get what out of your university what you put into it. If you attend your top state school, go into an employable field, and put in a lot of effort you won't need to emigrate. Did I miss out on some fabulous career path because I chose my state school over Drexel, Urbana, etc.? That's not entirely fair comparison for every student because Virginia Tech is a phenomenal engineering school. The point still stands though, are there any states in the USA that don't have a high quality state school?

iskander 10y ago

>Where are they now 5 years later? Their loans are mostly paid off and they're in better jobs. This is missing the magical step 2 just before "Profit!". How did your "English major" friends manage to pay off their their student loans from shitty jobs in 5 years? Even state school tuitions are now starting to reach several tens of thousands of dollars per year. For private universities, the annual tuition is often significantly higher than the median annual salary of their graduates.

kin 10y ago
Mostly paid off != paid off. After a few years you get raises, you get better jobs, you save money by living at home. Etc. My story may be anecdotal but my point still stands. People in the article are irresponsible.

loeg 10y ago

Anecdote, but I graduated in 2011 and almost none of my friends have their student loans paid off.

mywittyname 10y ago
Probably because they all stuck to the default 10-year payment plan.
- kin 10y ago
  Exactly. Besides, mostly paid off != paid off. I went to a UC so by the time you graduated loans were about $20k-$50k depending on how much you take out. Live at home, work hard, chip away at your loans, they'll be mostly gone after 5 years.

fzzzy 10y ago

This seems implausible. The standard loan repayment term is 10 years.

kin 10y ago
My story is anecdotal but it's true. Who says you have to repay a loan on the standard terms? I also said mostly gone. If standard is 10 years than after 5 years half is gone. Pair that w/ an accelerated payoff and you're looking at loans that are "mostly" paid off. IMO a lot more responsible than the stories in the article.

codemac 10y ago

> My point is, yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. There is no reason to praise hardship. Saying that they shouldn't inflict extra hardship on others (their parents) is fine, but the ridiculousness of the situation is not something we should pride ourselves on getting through. No one's parents worked hard so their kids would have as hard of a life. It's so they have an easier one, and that's something we should aspire to.

matwood 10y ago

Hard work is part of it, but it is really about responsibility. I know when I was an 18 year old I was not the most responsible person, but my parents had taught me enough about money matters to not doing anything too stupid. Since I mostly f'd off in HS, I had few scholarship options (and the state lottery had not come into effect yet), so I went to a decent nearby college and lived at home while working 20ish hours/week. Even then, some of my peers who went away to big schools with big price tags were saying I was missing the 'real' college experience because I had a job and lived at home. To me the real experience was not worth that kind of money. Also, having his parents co-sign and then bolt is just a selfish jerk thing to do. My parents had to cosign for the initial loan I received, but from there on I either paid or took loans out on my own. Given how little money my parents already had, seeing them willing and excited to co-sign made me sad. My parents only had 3 years of college between them, but they taught me a lot of life lessons that formal education seems to miss.

therobot24 10y ago

> Where are they now 5 years later? Their loans are mostly paid off and they're in better jobs. not so sure about all of that

Kinnard 10y ago

The student loan industry is rapacious and unethical. Would you feel comfortable selling someone an English or Communications degree for a $200K which will accrue compounding interest? Institutions that feel comfortable doing this are profiting from factories of debt-peonage. This includes both for-profit and non-profit institutions. They must be stopped. Educational institutions are ostensibly founded on the magnanimous goal of educating people. If they must lend to be sustainable they should do so without charging interest. And student loans should be disclosable in bankruptcy. If you're bankrupt, you're bankrupt!

dikdik 10y ago

No. If we continue to make educational debt non-dischargeable through bankruptcy, then millennials should be doing more to avoid paying back their loans (in an attempt to break the system) if they cannot secure a good job. Baby boomers get to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on their homes and walk away scott-free, but heaven forbid we forgive 40K in student debt for someone making 13$/hour. We love to express the sentiment that business owners do not owe the working class anything. And that's true. But somehow we gloss over the fact that the working class does not owe their masters anything either. Owners are not entitled to cheap wages. We're all in this together...and if not, then many people say 'fuck it I'm doing what's best for me!' Expecting people to act in the best interests of society is a wholly stupid notion. If you want people to do what's best for their neighbors, then you must make it semi-convenient to do so.

gaur 10y ago

> yes our education system is backwards, but millennials need to learn some form of hardship or hard work. Hmm, I wonder if we can come up with similarly nasty and unhelpful instructions for other generations, based on stereotypes and anecdotes. E.g.: baby boomers with failing health should just accept that they're going to die, and stop overburdening Medicare with expensive treatments that only give a few more years of life.

kin 10y ago
Well I'm actually a millennial and your example was far more dark than mine. I got lucky in that I'm a developer, so finding a job wasn't so bad. But people who graduate college with a "useless" degree aren't so useless. Everyone has to start from somewhere and I think people lack the humility and confidence to deal with tough situations like a shitty commute, shitty pay, or having to live at home for a while. Honestly, none of these solutions are as bad as running away from it and leaving your parents to deal with your problems.

wushupork 10y ago

I couldn't totally agree more. Private school at $30,000 / year, private university at $53,000 - who does that? When my sister and I went to college, we had no delusions that we were going to go to in-state public universities where we qualified for in-state rates. Some of our friends even went to community colleges the first few years, then transferred to save even more money. Many of us had part time jobs and/or internships the whole time. Also at the time, we knew we were going to need to be sponsored by companies if we wanted to stay in the US so we both chose practical degrees which would most likely lead to sponsorships for our H1B visas (ie engineering degrees). I don't understand these people who willingly choose to go to EXPENSIVE private schools they COULD NOT afford, take HUGE loans they COULD NOT HOPE to repay on degrees that will barely pay for those loans. Then they have the audacity to feel entitled NOT to pay back those loans. "the name Sallie Mae sounds so friendly; she's just your cute aunt making soup" - seriously?