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My Dad was a janitor, my mom was a secretary, my sister dropped out of high school and had a baby at 14. Meanwhile I attended college (first person in the famil

My Dad was a janitor, my mom was a secretary, my sister dropped out of high school and had a baby at 14. Meanwhile I attended college (first person in the family), double majored in CS and physics, and graduated this past April. I got a job immediately out of school that paid very well (entry level programmer salary, which is rich as a sultan to a working class girl), and so I'm on course to pay back my 30k in student loans in 3 years (barring promotions / job hopping for more money). I say all this to make the point that, even as someone who is a poster child for "college-enabled upward mobility", the article's dread warnings still ring true to me. I don't feel like I am any smarter or harder working than my classmates, I just got very, very lucky. I know far too many physics majors working in retail, many of whom consistently outscored me on tests, to believe I've somehow "earned" more than they had. The system right now is far too random, far too viscous. Kids need to understand that "I have a degree" is not a guarantee of employment, it just increases their chances by X%. It's still entirely possible they spend their life making <50k a year just by having bad luck. This is all made worse by the student loan albatross around their necks, not only can they not find jobs that pay a comfortable wage - they're getting hundreds of dollars taken off every paycheck to pay off debt. This line from the author: >I just turned 40, and I finally just paid my last student loan payment. Ouch. I'm sorry. I'm just really sorry.

krinchan 7y ago
Kinda the same story for me, right down to the debt level. I only credit myself for taking what was offered even when my advisor told me I should hold out for a better job more in line with my CS degree. I took a guaranteed job that started one week after graduation over starting out higher up on pay scale and with relevant work experience. Had my job search the following year not gone well, I could very well be trapped in underpaid, overworked sysadmin hell. :-/
zackmorris 7y ago
Made my last student loan payment at 40 as well. Got my computer engineering degree in 99 from UIUC and since my parents paid a substantial portion of my costs, I "only" had about $25,000 in student loans (equivalent to about $50,000 in today's dollars) with about $350/mo payment ($700/mo today). Starting salary for an engineer was $60k, so there have been effectively no raises for the middle class for my generation or younger. Which means whoever reads this is going to be paying 2-4 times as much as I was, even with a degree from an affordable state school like I went to. I also dorked around a lot and basically wasted my 20s on trying to win the internet lottery. All that said, I strongly disagree with most assessments of why college is so expensive. I feel that the real reason is that it coincides with the decline of the US middle class, starting around 1980 and Reaganomics. We don't make anything useful anymore. We don't automate the real burdens in people's lives, things like necessity or health. We just chase get rich schemes to do as little work as possible. So the rest of the world is eating our lunch now. You want to fix the cost of college? Go back to pre-1980. Make it government funded, build more darn campuses so everyone can go (or at the very least get trained in a trade), and do a jubilee on all student loan debt effective immediately. It's how they do it on Star Trek. That's the future. Anything short of that is a bunch of unamerican hogwash to privatize everything we used to hold dear and make someone rich on your backs. Disclaimer: this is one humble opinion from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine mentality pushing the US to the brink of corporate fascism. I don't want anyone else to squander their potential making rent like I did.
- Balgair 7y ago
  > ... from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine mentality pushing the US to the brink... I'm in agreement. My family, via a lot of hard work and sacrifice, was able to pay for college for my sibling's and myself. We all had no debt upon graduation. It was hard, but we managed to do it despite a lot of set-backs. Though that sacrifice would be 'useless' with a jubilee on loans, I'm all for it. I've seen too many of my friends suffer under $800/mo debt loads for 12 years now. I'd much rather drink a beer with them on weekends than have them work their second jobs and drink a beer by myself.

krinchan 7y ago

Kinda the same story for me, right down to the debt level. I only credit myself for taking what was offered even when my advisor told me I should hold out for a better job more in line with my CS degree. I took a guaranteed job that started one week after graduation over starting out higher up on pay scale and with relevant work experience. Had my job search the following year not gone well, I could very well be trapped in underpaid, overworked sysadmin hell. :-/

zackmorris 7y ago

Made my last student loan payment at 40 as well. Got my computer engineering degree in 99 from UIUC and since my parents paid a substantial portion of my costs, I "only" had about $25,000 in student loans (equivalent to about $50,000 in today's dollars) with about $350/mo payment ($700/mo today). Starting salary for an engineer was $60k, so there have been effectively no raises for the middle class for my generation or younger. Which means whoever reads this is going to be paying 2-4 times as much as I was, even with a degree from an affordable state school like I went to. I also dorked around a lot and basically wasted my 20s on trying to win the internet lottery. All that said, I strongly disagree with most assessments of why college is so expensive. I feel that the real reason is that it coincides with the decline of the US middle class, starting around 1980 and Reaganomics. We don't make anything useful anymore. We don't automate the real burdens in people's lives, things like necessity or health. We just chase get rich schemes to do as little work as possible. So the rest of the world is eating our lunch now. You want to fix the cost of college? Go back to pre-1980. Make it government funded, build more darn campuses so everyone can go (or at the very least get trained in a trade), and do a jubilee on all student loan debt effective immediately. It's how they do it on Star Trek. That's the future. Anything short of that is a bunch of unamerican hogwash to privatize everything we used to hold dear and make someone rich on your backs. Disclaimer: this is one humble opinion from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine mentality pushing the US to the brink of corporate fascism. I don't want anyone else to squander their potential making rent like I did.

Balgair 7y ago
> ... from someone who paid his dues and is sick of the I've got mine mentality pushing the US to the brink... I'm in agreement. My family, via a lot of hard work and sacrifice, was able to pay for college for my sibling's and myself. We all had no debt upon graduation. It was hard, but we managed to do it despite a lot of set-backs. Though that sacrifice would be 'useless' with a jubilee on loans, I'm all for it. I've seen too many of my friends suffer under $800/mo debt loads for 12 years now. I'd much rather drink a beer with them on weekends than have them work their second jobs and drink a beer by myself.