7 ms·

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 thin

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Was it worth it? You could have went to a cheaper school?
  - m_ke 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      Okay. So the system worked as designed.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- iguy 8y ago
  That sounds like a nasty surprise. Could have bought your dad a few weeks' unpaid leave (in Monaco!) if you'd known. I didn't know (but am not that surprised, sadly) that they re-calculated every year.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  That seems crazy to me. If your dad made 5K more that year, then shouldn't your loan have only gone up 5K? I'd be interested in the math behind whatever bullshit justification the grant issuer(s) used to warrant that sort of cut.
saagarjha 8y ago
> Try a $3000/semester school instead of a $25000/semester school. I challenge you to find a $3000/semester grad school. UC Berkeley is $9000 a semester, and that's in-state. Aside from this, I think you've identified that student loans work differently than regular ones; hence, the usual rule of "don't take a loan you aren't able to pay off right now" doesn't apply. A college student making minimum wages is unlikely to be able to pay off their tuition, but they may have a good chance of being able to do so in the future. That's how the entire industry is structured, and whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate but that is the current situation.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Why go to grad school if the school isn't paying you to be there?
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > Why go to grad school if the school isn't paying you to be there? Because you need to in order to be a doctor / psychologist / counselor / MBA.
    - pnw_hazor 8y ago
      Besides MD's that have separate loan programs and a whole stack of post-grad financing options, the others are poor choices. One of my kids newly minted 7th grade English teachers was salty because before going into teaching she had just earned her PhD in a social science and had significant student loan debt. ($200K+ I can't remember how much exactly but it was breathtaking). She made a poor choice. Her colleague, a math teacher, went to college at the US Military Academy and served time in the Army before following her dream of teaching. She made a better choice. edit: typos
      - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        I don't understand the army argument - is that assumption that the entire college going class needs to be enlisted in order to have success? To have an education you need to gamble with your life? That's ridiculous and barbaric. I'd argue that we need psychologists, counselors, and MBA's. If everyone was as painfully pragmatic as a lot of these comments suggest there'd be no art in this world, no one taking care of our sick or our poor, and no one remembering our past.
landryraccoon 8y ago
As a personal, psychological solution, sure. Blame whomever you want. Society doesn’t have that luxury. If student debt cripples 50 people, we could collectively decide to ignore them. If 50 million people are crippled then there’s probably a legitimate systemic issue somewhere. Blame doesn’t change the fact that those people exist, are economically crippled and our society can’t just wish them away. I’d also argue that if enough people do something then just telling them they’re bad is useless. I’d put it in the same category as abstinence education to prevent teen pregnancy - sure maybe it makes you feel good but it’s utterly useless for actually preventing teen pregnancy. I’d support blame if there was any evidence it changes behavior. In this case there isn’t. We as a society want an outcome where most college students aren’t crippled in debt so it’ll have to be something else. Also this covers up the fact that there are probably real policy failures that drive up the cost of education for everyone. Retribution conveniently lets politicians ignore the fact that college could be way cheaper. What schools are you referring to that cost only $3000 per semester? That kind of dates your info...
- haneefmubarak 8y ago
  I'm currently attending Portland State University and it's about $3k-$4k / term (tuition + materials), paid out of pocket. I also know lots of folks who went all over the country from my high school - a significant number of them will end up in high paying jobs and/or have decently large scholarships so perhaps that's worthwhile for them. I also know of a decent number of them who are going to fairly expensive places (especially with private schools) without scholarships and who aren't targeting fields with a low E(x) in terms of pay. I do wonder how they will fare in the coming years.
- thrill 8y ago
  Student debt didn't cripple 50 million people. Fifty million people crippled themselves with student debt.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
I joined the Army to get college money. (Same as my Mom and Dad did.) I told my kids that I would help pay their college costs if they went after a STEM degree at a local school. Daughter No. 1 didn't want STEM so she went to a service academy where she majored in social sciences. Daughter No. 2 is getting a CS degree at a local state school. I am paying for it but she will pay me back. It's not that hard. We all want things that we can't afford. Some people find alternatives or do without. Others just YOLO. The bad actors here are the colleges that sell $50K vanity degrees to people that cannot nor will ever be able pay for them.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  Thanks for your service. I paid for my college via the USAF. I'm helping my kids with similar deals that you describe. With hard work, part-time jobs, good ACT preparation and well-chosen schools, college is definitely in reach.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Thank you for the kind words. I believe that children learn from observing their parents. It sounds like you are off to a great start. If any of your kids are close to fitting the cadet/midshipman profile, make sure to encourage them to consider service academies. They are not impossible to get into. I think all of the academies have week long summer experience programs for HS Juniors. My daughter went to two of them and confirmed that it was a good fit for her. My oldest graduates and commissions this Spring and has had a wonderful experience, including spending a semester studying abroad, a couple of shorter overseas trips, internships in DC, and so on.
scott_s 8y ago
> 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. But that describes the majority of students who take out loans to go to school full time. The entire point of the arrangement is that the thing you are taking out a loan for should improve your ability to actually pay off the loan. Our society and culture has encouraged students to go into debt with the promise that it will improve their future. But that is not panning out for many people. When so many people have the same kind of problem, we need to look at systemic causes.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  Right. It's pretty convenient for the creditor that we do not teach finance in American high school. It's pretty convenient for the creditor that student loans are unique in that you CANNOT default on them. It's pretty convenient to the creditor that these loans are being offered to children, optimistic at the whole life they have ahead of them, eager to sign whatever terms to make their dreams a reality. It's pretty convenient to the creditor that although he has ZERO risk of the debtor defaulting, we don't enforce any regulation on the amount of money that can be loaned out for certain fields of study or to certain schools (for-profit private colleges). But, sure, blame it on the stupid millennials, 'cause they dreamed of being a success and listened to what society told them to do and went to college. Don't blame it on the debtor for lending money to people that shouldn't have ever been loaned money. If only they didn't go to that Art school and eat avocado toast for breakfast... Look: if a bank gave me a loan to build a six-thousand foot marble statue of my asshole, and I defaulted and couldn't pay it back, pretty sure no one would feel sorry for the bank. They'd say, what a dumb fucking bank! But oh how the tables turn when it comes to millenials. Give them some money for school, even when we know it's a bad investment, and we blame it on the kid for taking it! Next up, we'll be giving loans to drug addicts and blame them for spending the money on drugs...
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Schools that offer financial aid have professional financial aid counselors, academic advisors, and career advisors. I am pretty sure where the blame should go. edit: why is this comment down voted? Every time I took an aid package I has a meeting with a financial aid officer. Surely, their role and responsibility should be more than just pointing out where the student should sign on the promissory note for multi-thousand dollar loans.
bradenb 8y ago
> 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. Student loans are all about future earnings potential, right? This argument seems to fall apart when you realize you aren't shopping for a mortgage or car that you can _currently_ pay for.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Exactly. Schools have been pushing the idea that college graduates make more money for decades (and that graduates from elite colleges make even more money), and somehow it's the students' fault for falling victim to the constant brainwashing.
rland 8y ago
If college is simply a jobs training program, we ought to simply say so and do away with the bullshit about enlightened citizens and just get down to career skills and workplace training. Right now, we have the worst of both worlds. The requirement that you must go to college to acquire "job skills," and the insane cost of an "enlightened education." The reality is that we get neither. The two desperately need to be pried apart.
jb3689 8y ago
Pretty much this My wife and I are complete opposites. I went to state school, commuted from home, studied engineering, did well enough, got my M.S. paid for by the school (which is fairly easy to do if you are open to schools), now making 300k My wife went to a private college (40k per year), lived on campus, went into sciences, went to a private M.S. program (40k per year yet again) with no funding, now making 75k Our timelines are staggered by a few years (she worked before going for her master's) and she works for a non-profit while I work in tech, but I still think it's a worthwhile comparison as we've both arguably "put in" the same amount of time It's no wonder to me why people feel entrenched by student debt. Granted, my wife has super close college friends which I don't have. I'm not sure I'd trade for that though. Going to state school and keeping costs low in college was the best decision I ever made
magicaldick 8y ago
"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." I used to feel the same way, and it's easy to vilify students who get to experience a more expensive education and place the onus on these students to pay back the debts. However, I realized that there's much more to this. Students typically apply for such loans while they are still in high school, in October of the year prior to starting college. It's uncommon for students to have the financial foundation needed to understand the significance of taking out such huge loans. I mean how could they possibly know what they'll "cash flow" four years when they graduate (or if they even do graduate)? In contrast, an adult who takes out a mortgage for a home after earning steady income has his/her assets, liabilities, and income meticulously scrutinized by the loan officer of some major bank. The adult is much more equipped with the information and experience to understand the commitment of this debt, and it's reasonable to place blame the adult if he is unable to make his mortgage payments. Things get tricky when determining if a teenager is qualified to make a decision about taking out a student loan. We have regulation in place to disallow teenagers from smoking, gambling, and drinking, and yet a teenager can sign off on decades of indebtedness and financial insecurity without the proper regulation or warning labels. The phenomenon of teenage students misinformed-ly taking out loans is almost identical to how banks had issued subprime mortgage debt to debtors during the 2008 financial crisis by speculating and overestimating to these debtors their ability to pay back these loans. So under the premise that students are not fully qualified to make such financial decisions and entitlement aside, solving this problem of insurmountable student debt across the country starts with better financial education for young kids and stricter regulation on banks for issuing unreasonable student loan debt. This is necessary because a bank cannot "repossess" an education, yet there is no recourse for students who are faced with snowballing debt.
- freeopinion 8y ago
  You seem to have misunderstood me. I don't suggest that the student take out a loan based on future earnings. I agree that this is difficult to impossible to predict. I suggest that the student doesn't take out a loan at all, or if they do, base it on CURRENT earnings. That is, if they can currently afford $100/month, only take out a $100/month loan at most. That could be a $15000 loan at 5% for 20 years. Or a $5000 loan at 5% for 5 years. If you cannot pay for school with this loan, don't take out the loan. It's not a crime to work for a year and save up before going to college. But you have to save--not buy a car or a house or a party every weekend. 2000 hours * $8/hour = $12000 after taxes. If you're supporting yourself, you can't save for college and you could never repay a student loan. Go find a $10/hour job and save $4000 in a year. Then you can pay your way through school. Then, if you're lucky you can pull in 6 figures 5 years out of high school. If you're not lucky, you can double your income. If you're unlucky, you got a college education debt free. That took three paragraphs to explain. I don't think it is beyond the grasp of a high school senior. If it is beyond their grasp they should definitely not take out any loan whatsoever. Perhaps this should be a story problem on every single SAT or ACT test. Getting it wrong should divide your score in half.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Dead on. Caveat emptor.

m_ke 8y ago

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 8y ago
Was it worth it? You could have went to a cheaper school?
- m_ke 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Okay. So the system worked as designed.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
iguy 8y ago
That sounds like a nasty surprise. Could have bought your dad a few weeks' unpaid leave (in Monaco!) if you'd known. I didn't know (but am not that surprised, sadly) that they re-calculated every year.
yellowapple 8y ago
That seems crazy to me. If your dad made 5K more that year, then shouldn't your loan have only gone up 5K? I'd be interested in the math behind whatever bullshit justification the grant issuer(s) used to warrant that sort of cut.

saagarjha 8y ago

> Try a $3000/semester school instead of a $25000/semester school. I challenge you to find a $3000/semester grad school. UC Berkeley is $9000 a semester, and that's in-state. Aside from this, I think you've identified that student loans work differently than regular ones; hence, the usual rule of "don't take a loan you aren't able to pay off right now" doesn't apply. A college student making minimum wages is unlikely to be able to pay off their tuition, but they may have a good chance of being able to do so in the future. That's how the entire industry is structured, and whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate but that is the current situation.

pnw_hazor 8y ago
Why go to grad school if the school isn't paying you to be there?
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > Why go to grad school if the school isn't paying you to be there? Because you need to in order to be a doctor / psychologist / counselor / MBA.
  - pnw_hazor 8y ago
    Besides MD's that have separate loan programs and a whole stack of post-grad financing options, the others are poor choices. One of my kids newly minted 7th grade English teachers was salty because before going into teaching she had just earned her PhD in a social science and had significant student loan debt. ($200K+ I can't remember how much exactly but it was breathtaking). She made a poor choice. Her colleague, a math teacher, went to college at the US Military Academy and served time in the Army before following her dream of teaching. She made a better choice. edit: typos
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      I don't understand the army argument - is that assumption that the entire college going class needs to be enlisted in order to have success? To have an education you need to gamble with your life? That's ridiculous and barbaric. I'd argue that we need psychologists, counselors, and MBA's. If everyone was as painfully pragmatic as a lot of these comments suggest there'd be no art in this world, no one taking care of our sick or our poor, and no one remembering our past.

landryraccoon 8y ago

As a personal, psychological solution, sure. Blame whomever you want. Society doesn’t have that luxury. If student debt cripples 50 people, we could collectively decide to ignore them. If 50 million people are crippled then there’s probably a legitimate systemic issue somewhere. Blame doesn’t change the fact that those people exist, are economically crippled and our society can’t just wish them away. I’d also argue that if enough people do something then just telling them they’re bad is useless. I’d put it in the same category as abstinence education to prevent teen pregnancy - sure maybe it makes you feel good but it’s utterly useless for actually preventing teen pregnancy. I’d support blame if there was any evidence it changes behavior. In this case there isn’t. We as a society want an outcome where most college students aren’t crippled in debt so it’ll have to be something else. Also this covers up the fact that there are probably real policy failures that drive up the cost of education for everyone. Retribution conveniently lets politicians ignore the fact that college could be way cheaper. What schools are you referring to that cost only $3000 per semester? That kind of dates your info...

haneefmubarak 8y ago
I'm currently attending Portland State University and it's about $3k-$4k / term (tuition + materials), paid out of pocket. I also know lots of folks who went all over the country from my high school - a significant number of them will end up in high paying jobs and/or have decently large scholarships so perhaps that's worthwhile for them. I also know of a decent number of them who are going to fairly expensive places (especially with private schools) without scholarships and who aren't targeting fields with a low E(x) in terms of pay. I do wonder how they will fare in the coming years.
thrill 8y ago
Student debt didn't cripple 50 million people. Fifty million people crippled themselves with student debt.

pnw_hazor 8y ago

I joined the Army to get college money. (Same as my Mom and Dad did.) I told my kids that I would help pay their college costs if they went after a STEM degree at a local school. Daughter No. 1 didn't want STEM so she went to a service academy where she majored in social sciences. Daughter No. 2 is getting a CS degree at a local state school. I am paying for it but she will pay me back. It's not that hard. We all want things that we can't afford. Some people find alternatives or do without. Others just YOLO. The bad actors here are the colleges that sell $50K vanity degrees to people that cannot nor will ever be able pay for them.

RickJWagner 8y ago
Thanks for your service. I paid for my college via the USAF. I'm helping my kids with similar deals that you describe. With hard work, part-time jobs, good ACT preparation and well-chosen schools, college is definitely in reach.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Thank you for the kind words. I believe that children learn from observing their parents. It sounds like you are off to a great start. If any of your kids are close to fitting the cadet/midshipman profile, make sure to encourage them to consider service academies. They are not impossible to get into. I think all of the academies have week long summer experience programs for HS Juniors. My daughter went to two of them and confirmed that it was a good fit for her. My oldest graduates and commissions this Spring and has had a wonderful experience, including spending a semester studying abroad, a couple of shorter overseas trips, internships in DC, and so on.

scott_s 8y ago

> 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. But that describes the majority of students who take out loans to go to school full time. The entire point of the arrangement is that the thing you are taking out a loan for should improve your ability to actually pay off the loan. Our society and culture has encouraged students to go into debt with the promise that it will improve their future. But that is not panning out for many people. When so many people have the same kind of problem, we need to look at systemic causes.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
Right. It's pretty convenient for the creditor that we do not teach finance in American high school. It's pretty convenient for the creditor that student loans are unique in that you CANNOT default on them. It's pretty convenient to the creditor that these loans are being offered to children, optimistic at the whole life they have ahead of them, eager to sign whatever terms to make their dreams a reality. It's pretty convenient to the creditor that although he has ZERO risk of the debtor defaulting, we don't enforce any regulation on the amount of money that can be loaned out for certain fields of study or to certain schools (for-profit private colleges). But, sure, blame it on the stupid millennials, 'cause they dreamed of being a success and listened to what society told them to do and went to college. Don't blame it on the debtor for lending money to people that shouldn't have ever been loaned money. If only they didn't go to that Art school and eat avocado toast for breakfast... Look: if a bank gave me a loan to build a six-thousand foot marble statue of my asshole, and I defaulted and couldn't pay it back, pretty sure no one would feel sorry for the bank. They'd say, what a dumb fucking bank! But oh how the tables turn when it comes to millenials. Give them some money for school, even when we know it's a bad investment, and we blame it on the kid for taking it! Next up, we'll be giving loans to drug addicts and blame them for spending the money on drugs...
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  Schools that offer financial aid have professional financial aid counselors, academic advisors, and career advisors. I am pretty sure where the blame should go. edit: why is this comment down voted? Every time I took an aid package I has a meeting with a financial aid officer. Surely, their role and responsibility should be more than just pointing out where the student should sign on the promissory note for multi-thousand dollar loans.

bradenb 8y ago

> 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. Student loans are all about future earnings potential, right? This argument seems to fall apart when you realize you aren't shopping for a mortgage or car that you can _currently_ pay for.

yellowapple 8y ago
Exactly. Schools have been pushing the idea that college graduates make more money for decades (and that graduates from elite colleges make even more money), and somehow it's the students' fault for falling victim to the constant brainwashing.

rland 8y ago

If college is simply a jobs training program, we ought to simply say so and do away with the bullshit about enlightened citizens and just get down to career skills and workplace training. Right now, we have the worst of both worlds. The requirement that you must go to college to acquire "job skills," and the insane cost of an "enlightened education." The reality is that we get neither. The two desperately need to be pried apart.

jb3689 8y ago

Pretty much this My wife and I are complete opposites. I went to state school, commuted from home, studied engineering, did well enough, got my M.S. paid for by the school (which is fairly easy to do if you are open to schools), now making 300k My wife went to a private college (40k per year), lived on campus, went into sciences, went to a private M.S. program (40k per year yet again) with no funding, now making 75k Our timelines are staggered by a few years (she worked before going for her master's) and she works for a non-profit while I work in tech, but I still think it's a worthwhile comparison as we've both arguably "put in" the same amount of time It's no wonder to me why people feel entrenched by student debt. Granted, my wife has super close college friends which I don't have. I'm not sure I'd trade for that though. Going to state school and keeping costs low in college was the best decision I ever made

magicaldick 8y ago

"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." I used to feel the same way, and it's easy to vilify students who get to experience a more expensive education and place the onus on these students to pay back the debts. However, I realized that there's much more to this. Students typically apply for such loans while they are still in high school, in October of the year prior to starting college. It's uncommon for students to have the financial foundation needed to understand the significance of taking out such huge loans. I mean how could they possibly know what they'll "cash flow" four years when they graduate (or if they even do graduate)? In contrast, an adult who takes out a mortgage for a home after earning steady income has his/her assets, liabilities, and income meticulously scrutinized by the loan officer of some major bank. The adult is much more equipped with the information and experience to understand the commitment of this debt, and it's reasonable to place blame the adult if he is unable to make his mortgage payments. Things get tricky when determining if a teenager is qualified to make a decision about taking out a student loan. We have regulation in place to disallow teenagers from smoking, gambling, and drinking, and yet a teenager can sign off on decades of indebtedness and financial insecurity without the proper regulation or warning labels. The phenomenon of teenage students misinformed-ly taking out loans is almost identical to how banks had issued subprime mortgage debt to debtors during the 2008 financial crisis by speculating and overestimating to these debtors their ability to pay back these loans. So under the premise that students are not fully qualified to make such financial decisions and entitlement aside, solving this problem of insurmountable student debt across the country starts with better financial education for young kids and stricter regulation on banks for issuing unreasonable student loan debt. This is necessary because a bank cannot "repossess" an education, yet there is no recourse for students who are faced with snowballing debt.

freeopinion 8y ago
You seem to have misunderstood me. I don't suggest that the student take out a loan based on future earnings. I agree that this is difficult to impossible to predict. I suggest that the student doesn't take out a loan at all, or if they do, base it on CURRENT earnings. That is, if they can currently afford $100/month, only take out a $100/month loan at most. That could be a $15000 loan at 5% for 20 years. Or a $5000 loan at 5% for 5 years. If you cannot pay for school with this loan, don't take out the loan. It's not a crime to work for a year and save up before going to college. But you have to save--not buy a car or a house or a party every weekend. 2000 hours * $8/hour = $12000 after taxes. If you're supporting yourself, you can't save for college and you could never repay a student loan. Go find a $10/hour job and save $4000 in a year. Then you can pay your way through school. Then, if you're lucky you can pull in 6 figures 5 years out of high school. If you're not lucky, you can double your income. If you're unlucky, you got a college education debt free. That took three paragraphs to explain. I don't think it is beyond the grasp of a high school senior. If it is beyond their grasp they should definitely not take out any loan whatsoever. Perhaps this should be a story problem on every single SAT or ACT test. Getting it wrong should divide your score in half.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Dead on. Caveat emptor.