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As a current college student just finishing up my third year at a public state school in my home town (5k per semester), I feel sympathy for her. When I was fir

As a current college student just finishing up my third year at a public state school in my home town (5k per semester), I feel sympathy for her. When I was first choosing schools it was between the easy-to-pay-for public schools or the somewhat-prestigious private schools. The sales pitches for these private schools seeps deep into the minds of high school parents. It’s hard to avoid choosing the private school when you think it will give you better connections, better education, better experience, etc. Really you’re making this decision when you’re in junior year of high school applying to universities. I had friends who went the private school route and honestly I felt jealous that first year or so. As time went on of course I felt better as all my fears of public school being worse than private were simply over exaggerated. And now I am so relieved I was pushed in this direction by my parents. I can’t imagine the financial position I would be in if they weren’t as frank as they were back when I was deciding schools. If there’s one big takeaway from this piece it’s that even though we are told we’re adults when we’re 18, there is definitely a wide range of maturity levels you can fall into at that age, and if you haven’t matured or gained financial experience by that age, you could easily screw yourself for the next 40 years or so just by being naive.

arenaninja 8y ago
> if you haven’t matured or gained financial experience by that age, you could easily screw yourself for the next 40 years or so just by being naive. I agree. Fun fact: you can say the same about the prison system, but people's reactions to that same comment will be vastly different due to demographics. But there's no hint of a solution in this article. Should we raise the age to be an adult? Regulate private university marketing? Improve marketing of public universities? Allowing people to abdicate responsibility is a non-starter.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Well, I think abdicating responsibility is the solution proposed in this article. The staggering amount of horrific decisions made by the author (e.g. choosing expensive private school, willfully ignoring the word 'variable', choosing super-cool foreign graduate school, choosing to just not pay her debts for a year, choosing to live and work in ultra-expensive NYC, upgrading her apartment the minute she got a raise, etc) make it a bit challenging to sympathize with her situation. While there are clearly issues with student loan practices and the cost of higher education, predatory lendors did not conspire to force all of these truely terrible decisions onto this poor woman. If she put the same amount of effort into a budget/financial plan as she did into this creative blog post, she'd already be on her way to a student debt-free existence. I'd much rather have read a post describing all of the terrible financial decisions the author has made over the last decade and how they've put together a painful, realistic plan to get their financial life back on track. Perhaps with some lessons learned for people facing some of the same decisions. Instead, the author justs rails against the unfairness of it all without actually taking any responsibility for figuring out a solution.

arenaninja 8y ago

> if you haven’t matured or gained financial experience by that age, you could easily screw yourself for the next 40 years or so just by being naive. I agree. Fun fact: you can say the same about the prison system, but people's reactions to that same comment will be vastly different due to demographics. But there's no hint of a solution in this article. Should we raise the age to be an adult? Regulate private university marketing? Improve marketing of public universities? Allowing people to abdicate responsibility is a non-starter.

joejerryronnie 8y ago
Well, I think abdicating responsibility is the solution proposed in this article. The staggering amount of horrific decisions made by the author (e.g. choosing expensive private school, willfully ignoring the word 'variable', choosing super-cool foreign graduate school, choosing to just not pay her debts for a year, choosing to live and work in ultra-expensive NYC, upgrading her apartment the minute she got a raise, etc) make it a bit challenging to sympathize with her situation. While there are clearly issues with student loan practices and the cost of higher education, predatory lendors did not conspire to force all of these truely terrible decisions onto this poor woman. If she put the same amount of effort into a budget/financial plan as she did into this creative blog post, she'd already be on her way to a student debt-free existence. I'd much rather have read a post describing all of the terrible financial decisions the author has made over the last decade and how they've put together a painful, realistic plan to get their financial life back on track. Perhaps with some lessons learned for people facing some of the same decisions. Instead, the author justs rails against the unfairness of it all without actually taking any responsibility for figuring out a solution.