My Husband And I Thought Education Was A Way Out Of Poverty. Now We’re $718,000 In Debt.

Huffington post still allows reader comments? I thought they dropped that when they merged with Yahoo in 2017, cutting 2,000 jobs (including moderators) in the process.

So he finally got into dental school? At least that's a guarantee of a nice stable salary. But with the amount of debt they need to pay off, yikes. It was those extraneous masters degees that really did them in.

I wonder if he will finish, r2, given his difficulty getting in.

And the worst part is they owe all of that money to the fucking federal government. The most usurious moneychanger our there.

That's a good point r3, if he doesn't successfully finish dental school and whatever certifications, man, it's over for them.

r5 I really know nothing about dental school; I am, however, familiar with law school, and students who struggle to get a decent score on the LSAT struggle to finish their JD and pass the bar.

When I read the headline, my first thought was, "One of them went to a fourth-tier law school and now can't find work as a lawyer."

In addition to the husband's dental ambitions, I have doubts about the wife's future as a writer if she doesn't know the difference between "peddling" and pedaling (or paddling?) "back towards (destitution)".

All in all, maybe this couple would have been better served by each learning a trade...?

Wow, they sure made some terrible choices.

And English degree? Can’t pass the dental exam?

Totally agree with R7. I got my undergraduate degree in PolySci, then had to go back to school for something practical, like accounting, which I didn't really like but it more than paid the bills.

Now retired, I only wish someone had steered me towards a vocational/tech school, where I could have learned to be an electrician, carpenter, plumber or auto mechanic. These trades pay especially well and won't be replaced by robots anytime in the near future. Not everyone should go to college.

Agree, R9 and the trades are desperate for workers, many have retired. I actually know downsized lawyers considering studing/apprenticing to become an electrician or plumber.

I don't feel that sorry for them. They should research this stuff thoroughly first. I have student loan debt but I am aware that it was my choice and don't blame anyone but myself.

[quote]I read this story and it reaffirms my belief that I have no desire to vote for any candidate whose plan it is to pay these debts.

[quote]"I spent 60k to fill an emotional void, then we bought a house, then we borrowed more money..." These are the people who want their debts wiped clean by those who became plumbers and welders and didn't believe that an English degree would make them financially prosperous.

[quote]. . . but how is financial education really going to help someone who takes out a 65k loan to compete with facebook friends.

[quote] I don't think having children when you had no job or career helped no matter how much you loved the thought of family sometimes having a family is not affordable and when it is an accident usually one doesn't decide to go further in debt for a degree especially if they already have one and are working but just want to be dentist.

The surprisingly polite comments are overwhelmingly critical of this couple's choices. Their story appears to be having the unintended consequence of galvanizing readers against Bernie's proposed student loan forgiveness.

This man will never be allowed to work on my teeth.

R11 I'm in the same boat as you but here is my issue.

Context: I'm a 30-something college grad (working in my field, excellent credit, making progress on my loans, never missed a payment, should have it done by 40 if I'm lucky)

For anyone roughly between 40-25 years in old in 2019, they were told from kindergarten on that college was the goal. People are a bit more open now, discussing taking time off or trade school, etc as options, but I remember nothing but "college college college" as what was expected after high school. We were basically brainwashed.

At 18, I signed a contract for loans to cover my education. I'd never managed a budget before, ran a household. My concept of money was basically negligible, as I think is the same for 90% of 18 year olds. I learned to manage money in my 20s, long after I'd signed that dotted line.

I'm only able to deduct $2,500 of interest payments on my taxes each year. No matter how much extra I throw at my loans, I only get to write off this tiny negligible amount.

I like that you think it was unintended, r12.

Every story in a major outlet about people "abusing" student loans, food stamps, health insurance or anything of the sort is published specifically to get arguments going about "entitlements" and "entitled people the taxpayer is expected to bail out."

It was a scam, R14. A previous generation could discharge student debt in a bankruptcy.

Know so many companies who prefer to hire those with solid military experience rather than college for very professional jobs. Too many media stories of super entitled college students partying and having completely unrealistic expectations of life and especially of the world of work.

R17 Most ex-military people I know are blue collar workers.

Who raised this horrible entitled generation? Hmm...I wonder.

R18, Should have explained that I was speaking of ex-military who were promoted to officers before retiring to civilian life.

Whenever I'm looking to get out of poverty, I always run up an almost million dollar bill and shit out a couple of kids.

r17 doesn't seem to realize you get tax benefits for hiring veterans. Like everything else in the corporate world, it is all about the bottom line.

Money talks, R21. And bullshit walks.

Students shouldn’t make decisions about their education on their own especially students who’s parents haven’t attended college. The student doesn’t know what to study, their job prospects after graduation or how much student loan debt they can repay. This is the reason why student loan debt is over a trillion dollars.

It's one of many reasons, r23

Society preaches at people to that you must go to university, that's the ticket to a nice life, if you don't you are a failure. Lots of people believe that, why wouldn't they, that's what they are sold their whole life. And then they end up in debt working a low wage job.

[quote]Students shouldn’t make decisions about their education on their own especially students who’s parents haven’t attended college.

I disagree. Student loans were the only thing that kept my head above water during the great recession. A lot of gay youth with unsupportive parents have no other way to help finance their educations so they can build their own life.

But yes, you have to be smart about student debt. Most students in the US today who don't come from wealthy families will have some student debt. That doesn't mean you have to have an astronomical amount. I worked, had some grants, in addition to student loans.

[quote]Too many media stories of super entitled college students partying and having completely unrealistic expectations of life and especially of the world of work.

And also universities spending millions on lavish campus amenities and sports facilities. All of this will come to a head when the higher education bubble finally bursts. All that bad debt isn't gonna get repaid. I read in another thread that the price of college education has the highest amount of inflation in the last couple of decades, even higher than healthcare costs and housing.

I hope it bursts soon r26

In the ten years since I graduated, tuition at my alma mater has gone from 30K to 48, before dorms, books, etc.

Yes, I feel sorry for him. Also, I feel sorry for all who are in student loan debt, or health care debt. We need mass Student Loan debt. Here is how:

College wouldn't cost so much if they didn't pay a fortune for celebrity speakers (like the $135,000 they paid Matthew McConaughey or the $110,000 they paid Katie Couric).

Not gonna bother reading this because I’ve already had my fill today of people trying to gain public sympathy for their bad choices after listening to Reveal on NPR today about some woman who lost her life savings playing some games online. They portrayed her as a victim even though most sane people know not to do that. When exactly did this happen in society? What happened to sayings like buyer beware or a fool and his money are soon parted? Accountability is dead, I guess.

I also notice that drowning in debt didn’t stop them from bringing a kid into the situation.

r32 I didn't hear the story, but some magazine ran a story a couple of years ago about video slots in casinos: by manipulating human psychology, manufactures have made them almost irresistible to players. People will play continuously for many hours ... they will piss themselves because they can't stop playing.

I know we all make our choices, but it's not always quite so black and white.

Oh dear myself ...

*manufacturers

"birth control errors"

Doesn't the morning after pill only cost about $20?

Let's be completely honest about this situation. The odds that these people will pay back their student loans is exactly 0%. That's why things need to change. People are getting themselves into debt that they will never be able to pay back and the taxpayers are on the hook for it. We need to do what every developed country does with higher education - subsidize the tuition for those that pass qualifying exams. Don't subsidize at all for those who don't.

And we could cut down on amenities and administrative bloat , r37

[quote]We need to do what every developed country does with higher education - subsidize the tuition for those that pass qualifying exams.

Yeah, Americans don't even want to pay more taxes for the crumbling bridges we drive over so we sure as hell aren't going to pick up this tab. But higher ed will have to correct itself eventually.

If you failed many times to get into dental school, then it's just not for you - it's no longer a 'dream' but an obsession. See a therapist.

Both of them seem to live in fantasies. What does she do for a living? She's a writer and went to get an MBA? I don't have any sympathy.

Colleges have become for profit,

Student loan and interest rates have skyrocketed (there should not be interest on student loans, you're paying more in interest than you're paying on the actual loan)

The job market in general is crap. There aren't any good alternatives. Retail used to be a good last resort/fall back if you couldn't make it in your desired field, but it's two steps away from a sweatshop nowadays. Same with the hotel/service industry. Good pay, steady schedule, commission? All gone.

Wages in general suck. In some professions, you're making less than you would have made twenty years ago.

As for trade/vocational schools, it depends upon where you are. The idea that you automatically start making 50,000 a year the second you become a plumber is laughable. It can take years of building a name for yourself before you can reach a decent income.

Honestly, society needs to let go of this idea that you have to know exactly what you're going to do the second you graduate high school. It's just not feasible anymore.

[quote] I graduated in 2012 with $23,025.88 in student loans. With my English degree in hand, I was ready to face the world and chase down a dream job in magazine publishing

Well right here we know she's a fucking idiot. Did she miss the part where the internet killed almost all journalism/writing jobs? I used to work with people getting ready to apply to college. I always asked them what their major was, 99% of the time it was something fucking stupid. I used to ask them where they planned to get a job after they graduated. They had no clue. I told them, before you pick your major, you need to act like you already have your degree and search for jobs. That's how you see if it's a major worth selecting

R 23, so.... if they cannot make decisions about their educations, what should they do?

Are you saying that if your parents did not go to colleges, then you should not either?

[quote] Life did not go as planned. Otis and I could not secure high-paying jobs. Otis accumulated $80,000 in undergraduate debt, grappled studying for the Dental Admission Test and couldn’t get the test score needed for acceptance

He's a friggin moron. He pissed away $80,000 on a biology degree. And I say that as someone with a Biology degree. I went to pharmacy school. I worked and took out $40,000 worth of loans back in 1990. I wouldn't have taken out a fucking penny in loans if I didn't know that my future career would allow me to pay it back. And if I would have failed, I'd have gotten out and not pissed away any more money. I felt like quitting all the time, but I knew I'd never be able to pay back my student debt.

I don't who is more stupid. The husband or the wife? They shouldn't be allowed to raise kids

And R14, we didn't get to deduct a single penny in interest. So be happy with what you are getting

I went to a 4th tier law school and graduated in the top 1/3 and passed the bar on the first try. Very very lucky to land a govt job with loan forgiveness. I graduated 15 years ago.

Would I do it all again? no way. There is absolutely no chance in hell for someone in my shoes to land the job I have today. Where I work now only hires from top tier schools, so I would not even get an interview today. The world economy is disabling many good people who have degrees but can't find employment.

[quote] Externally, we did everything right. We graduated from college, were married, purchased a house and had children. Our career paths just didn’t follow along, and worse yet, we were drowning in $268,621.32 in student loans. Looking back, I understand that we couldn’t have it all when we wanted it.

No, externally, they did everything WRONG. They purchased a house they had no business buying, they had kids that they had no business having. Quite honestly, they seem retarded. They deserve everything that's happened to them. They fuck up and then instead of learning from it, they go out and basically say to themselves, "how can we fuck up even more"?, "we have a house we can't afford, kids we can't afford, student loans we can't afford, so how can we fuck up more"? I know , let's have another kid we can't afford, buy more stuff we can't afford and take out more student loan debt, WE CAN'T AFFORD, all while our previous student loans GROW BIGGER AND BIGGER"

[quote]I graduated in 2012 with $23,025.88 in student loans.

She should've stopped there. 23k is a reasonable amount of student loan debt these days. But she decided to fill the void with a 64k master's degree! If she would've just found a good day job, she probably could've paid off most of her BA degree debt by now. And then she fucked up the birth control. Poor child.

R44 compare tuition at your alma mater today with what you paid, not to mention the job market, and then tell me that my middling tax break is better.

Regardless of what this specific couple did, an entire generation was royally fucked.

Has anyone set up a GoFundMe for them yet? It'll be a matter of time...

Do parents not teach their kids that life doesn’t owe them anything anymore? I mean, people seem to think just because they want something that they deserve it then are seemingly bewildered as to why they can’t.

People who want to read and know things should be Flogged.

-Marquis de Sade

They are both complete dumbasses.

What alarms me the most are plans like Bernie's that will "cancel" student loan debt but presumably won't tackle what got students in so much debt in the first place.

No federally subsidized loans should go to diploma mills, period. There should be serious civil sanctions for any private lender that gives out loans that go to diploma mills, or maybe the alternative should be that those loans can be discharged in bankruptcy, increasing the risk to those lenders. Public colleges, at a minimum, need to be required to roll back all the extra, unnecessary, expensive perks that have escalated tuition beyond all reason.

Unless loan forgiveness plans include measures like this, we'll be back in the same hole within a decade.

They should give Mr. Smith a call.

As idiotic as their story is, I fear it's not all that uncommon.

This story shows I'm growing more conservative in my old age (I'm 35).

A few years ago, I would have been all about forgiving debts like these.

Now, not so much.

That said, I think a lot of changes should be made at a systemic level.

I’d say these two got themselves an education.

Are these two idiots out there campaigning for Bernie? He's their only hope.

Jesus christ, these two are living in a bubble of idiocy. They are 268K in debt with four degrees between them that they can't making a good living from and now husband is going back for degree #5 which will kick up their debt to 700K. Are they talking nonsense to each other? Do they have anyone in their lives who has any commonsense?

I was a financial idiot as a young adult as well. I just lucked out that I went to public school in CA with lots of help from Pell grants. It wasn't by brilliant design, I was just very fortunate. It helped that I graduated with little debt and I was able to save about 30K from teaching English overseas after graduating with a BA. Because I then went to a prestigious private school for a masters. 70K in loans and I'm still paying it off. Financially, it's not a burden but guess what, I'm not going to get another graduate degree and put myself into more debt.

Seriously, sit down and think these things through. I wouldn't even jump at an offer of a free graduate degree just because you have to factor in the loss of income when you leave a job and go back to school full-time.

I feel bad for the kids.

Has a GoFundMe surfaced yet?

Sadly they seem to be credentialed average folks with middling IQs. Such as who racks up 700K, especially blacks who could win scholarships.

they just went to school, university. University should be free or slide scale.

These two sound like losers who are not at all street smart. Did they ever take IQ tests or aptitude tests before throwing out their money? Everyone should have a basic skill to enable them to gain work quickly. I always had good computer skills so could temp while between management level jobs. Most guys today have computer and IT skills that allow them to temp. Just basic skills. And don't ever get a liberal arts degree in Renaissance architecture or some other unusable degree. Be practical.

I think people should at least get a bachelor's degree even if they also go to a trade school. Go the cheaper route and do the first two years at community college and the rest at an affordable state school. Then, if you want, go to the trade school of your choice. Bachelors degrees are still the bare minimum to any job outside your chosen trade in case you end up hating that in the future. It will also be required to move into management or the business end of any of the trades. Should all be able to be done for $20,000 if you work and pay some of your tuition while you're in school so you don't bury yourself in loans.

Also, I don't want all of these people to be 100% forgiven when it comes to their loan debt. There should be some way to help the really dumb fuckers like these people but they should have to work twenty hours for free for the government for a decade or something. They can help wipe the asses of all the old people in Maine or something.

*twenty hours a week

I graduated high school at 16, only took a few community colleges (years later), and I've managed to stay employed and own my own house. I have great credit. When I met my ex, he was working three part-time jobs to try to keep himself afloat. He was also enrolled in the local university. He would take a semester of classes, then stop for a bit to keep up with the tuition. He had a Pell Grant, but that's it. He finally got his degree, but it took him a really long time, just plugging away like that. He now owns his own business. Neither of our parents went to college. I'm having trouble feeling much sympathy.

I'm a first generation immigrant and knew I didn't want to graduate with debt. So in 1998 I worked hard at an affordable community college in Detroit, and earned scholarships. I then transferred to a small, public technological University with $3500/year tuition, and an outstanding education. I graduated with honors and scholarships.

Teach kids to do community college first and not get themselves in debt. I choose education based on a decent quality/cost ratio. Btw, birth control error? As an impoverished female, one has access to a free IUD at Planned Parenthood or OB/Gyn clinic, in most states.

R67, what years did all of that take place? It's almost getting to the point where even local state schools are becoming unaffordable to do in a pay as you go way.

Here in Florida, where state university funding metrics include a 4 year graduation rates and lack of excess credits (credits over those needed for a specific degree), has really hurt students ability to make smart choices.

A change of major (even to one that is more marketable) is difficult to get if it means an extra semester to get in one required class.

Some degrees are effectively off-limits to transfers from 2 year colleges, because it will make them have excess credits.

Recommending students go to 2-year colleges now does them a disservice since they get treated as second-class students, between the degrees they are ineligible for and the first=time-in-college benefits they cannot access.

Oh, and now if a student looks like they may take 4 and a half or five years to graduate, the university can make up a bullshit degree and gives them that just to get them out the door.

The people in the article are idiots, but the system is designed by idiots.

R69, I graduated in 1978, but met my ex in the early 80s. LIke I said, though, he worked 3 jobs when I met him, and I was working 2 jobs. I recently had lunch with a friend of mine from work, who was telling me about how her two kids were doing in school. They're both getting great grades, but her daughter is attending a university (one of the more expensive local ones), and she just sighed, "she keeps complaining about the student loans, but I can't get her to get a job". Her son, on the other hand, did so well academically that he was offered a chance to earn college credits (he's still in high school) as an intern, so he'll be making money while he works towards a degree. I was just raised to believe you don't spend more than you make, or not more than you can conceive of paying off within a reasonable time. Over the years, I incurred too much debt (credit cards), and it was agonizing to get it paid down, but I did it, and now I don't carry any debt. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing I owed that much.

[quote] I think people should at least get a bachelor's degree even if they also go to a trade school. Go the cheaper route and do the first two years at community college and the rest at an affordable state school. Then, if you want, go to the trade school of your choice.

If you are interested in a particular trade, you should go straight to trade school. Unless you want to get a business degree and run your own business (in that particular trade). Aside from college tuition, there's a four-year opportunity cost for getting a bachelor's degree.

That four year opportunity cost doesn't apply to those who eventually go into a trade. They'll start off at good pay and will be in a union. The opportunity cost you're referring to applies to careers where you have to spend years working your way up to a decent position. That's just not how the trades work. It's also why everyone should unionize everywhere.

Kamala will lend a hand to these Babes in the Wood.

College is fucking nuts. My middling alma mater that I graduated from in 1997 now costs more than Harvard did in 1997. That's insane.

R65, how about society stops holding a bachelor degree as some minimum for gainful employment? You used to be able to get by with just a high school diploma decades ago. The value of a BA has been diluted. Not only that, these days, having a BA isn’t really an indicator of better critical thinking skills, the way grading standards have been lowered. Today, it is easier to get an A at Yale than it was back in the ‘60s.

Society shouldn’t be set up so that you need a bachelor’s in order to have a lower middle class life. So I’m not for free college because all that will do is perpetuate that requirement. The government needs to stop subsidizing college because all that does is inflate the price of tuition. And there needs to be some regulation when it comes to student loans. A student should not be allowed to borrow money for a degree unless that degree will statistically give him an income that allows him to pay that loan off in 5-10 years in payments that are 10% of his income.

Frankly, I think we need to roll back some child labor laws so that teenagers are able to enter the work force sooner. I think this would be effective in inner city minority communities. If you’re old enough to join a gang, you’re old enough to work a basic job. REAL learning happens on the job.

Learn to drive a backhoe. Soon all the infrastructure will be literally falling away and we will be desperate for some one to rebuild. Any specific skill in the building trade is a smart move. Also nursing. Hospitals will pay for your degree.

[quote]Learn to drive a backhoe.

Or just learn to be a ho.

Well cry me a river. He doesn't sound very intelligent and she seems entitled. It slipped up she got preggers with the first child. Quits he job to raise a family they can't afford. This couple can't be like millions of others, trade off who is taking or picking up the children at the nursery. Put dinner in the crock pot before they head off to work. No sir ree, not this couple. ITA with others that posted he won't make it through dental school and if he did I wouldn't want him working on me. This poor entitled couple....lol

R77, that's not true for nursing anymore.

R76, free college could just be an extension of free high school since it has replaced high school as the basic level of education in society. (And, I don't see that going away.) I'm all for as educated a population as we can get. It also keeps people out of the workforce a little longer since we actually do not have enough good jobs for everyone anymore. We should work more like the countries where there are different tracks. Some kids are obviously academically inclined and headed to college. Others should be on trade tracks. The trade tracks could lead straight to apprenticeships in different unions, thereby growing the ranks of the unions again.

While I understand where R76 is coming from, that post shows the lack of real thought that makes this sort of discussion so frustrating.

On the surface, it sounds like a good idea that "A student should not be allowed to borrow money for a degree unless that degree will statistically give him an income that allows him to pay that loan off in 5-10 years in payments that are 10% of his income.

But when you work out the numbers, it merely insures that only the wealthy will get a college education. Average costs for attending school is about 34K a year. So if a student gets scholarships , he might be able to get by on 25k in loans every year. Which means that he ends up with 100K of debt. If you want them to pay it off in 5 to 10 years using only 10% of his income, that means that he needs a degree which leads to an entry level job that pays $100,000 to $200,000 per year--for the average graduate with this degree and no graduate degree.

I am sorry, but that really will not happen. There is no undergraduate degree, I can think of that fits the profile.

What sounds like common sense is just not workable when you do the math.

So this definitely helps keep power concentrated among the rich and could also escalate the decline of state schools as the competing demands of funding metrics and greater enrollment duke it out.

Universities should be required to publicly and repeatedly report the average loan debt per year, and per degree awarded. Plus average 1st job offer salaries.

The ugly truth is that students are NOT going into extreme debt if they are attending the very richest private schools with "need blind", nor for attending the state schools. They are going into extreme debt for RIP OFF schools who do not publicise what little value their high priced product returns.

Students and their parents who co sign are very poor consumers if they are going into very high debt for relatively shitty schools.

Depends, r82. Have you seen the price of some state schools for out of state students. Pennsylvania is the worst.

Obviously do NOT attend a state college out of state. Duh. If you are not from California, get into a need blind private school, and get the financial aid you need, or don't go to school in California. Why would someone from Maine or Maryland need to attend a Penn state college and pay through then nose. Stupidity.

You'd be surprised, r84. I work in Pittsburgh and a lot of PITT students are from out-of-state.

But if they are going into BIG hock to pay for PITT they are idiots. Go to CMU on a scholarship. DUH. I have no problem with middle class and rich kids going where they want if mommy and daddy or grandmothers trust is paying the outrageous tuition. Otherwise, be smart enough to get into a NEED BLIND or go to the cheapest best school in your state. If you are dumb twat, recognise it, and do not borrow 100K to go to some "respectable" school that is ripping you off to serve your own ego.

[quote]So this definitely helps keep power concentrated among the rich and could also escalate the decline of state schools as the competing demands of funding metrics and greater enrollment duke it out.

People continually ignore the simple argument that if you have two candidates who both did well in school and you have a choice between hiring a grad of Pitt law for that high powered job or a grad from Yale people will likely go with the one from the more prestigious school that could afford to go there.

Furthermore you have these arguments that kids should just learn a trade instead of going to an expensive school so they can ... repair the products of the rich people who could afford to go to school at a good school?

However (back to the article) this couple made a lot of mistakes after they finished their undergrad degrees. It's my belief that getting an undergrad degree shouldn't be as expensive as it is when it's required for many jobs these days. Your grad degree of course should be on you.

Non resident tuition at Pitt Law is $45,434. Yale is $63,878. What exactly is your point. If someone gets into both schools they are going to attend Yale as Pitt is hardly "cheap".

R1. Huffpost allows comments.

[quote]These two sound like losers who are not at all street smart. Did they ever take IQ tests or aptitude tests before throwing out their money?

LOL, throwing out THEIR money. They haven't spent one thin dime on their delusions. That's why they are in such heavy debt. They want you to throw out YOUR money to finance their fantasy life.

Don't you know it's YOUR responsibility to pay off the debts of morons like these?

I wouldn’t want him to be my dentist.

[quote]Non resident tuition at Pitt Law is $45,434. Yale is $63,878. What exactly is your point. If someone gets into both schools they are going to attend Yale as Pitt is hardly "cheap".

Actually you might want to look at your figures again. There's an $89,591 difference between both schools after attending three years which you [italic]strangely[/italic] didn't account for. So implying there's not a price difference worth mentioning is BS. Furthermore, if you're a resident in PA (in this example) it's an even BIGGER difference which you also [italic]strangely[/italic] didn't account for heading straight for non-resident where there would be less of a difference.

It's about name recognition. Saying, "go to a school in your state!" when there's a better school out of state that might net you a better job after graduation is a factor for many people.

It's too late to undo a horrible life decision like borrowing that much money to get a degree. They need to pay it back and there's not much anyone else can do.

This isn't adding up. How did she end up with $23,000 in debt if her entire undergraduate tuition was covered through scholarship money? Also, no one should pay for a master's degree. If you're a graduate assistant, tuition is covered, plus you earn a stipend. The husband seems like he's way over his head academically. He'll never make it as a dentist. I don't feel one ounce of sympathy or empathy for these idiots.

I assume the 23,000 includes room and board and textbooks. The books (including mandatory online homework) are far from cheap these days.

I don't want this foolish man putting his hands in my mouth!

Honey if one is in state penn and gets into Yale Law and Pitt Law, yes there is a big price difference. Thats up to the person if they believe the Yale law is going to pay off with a higher salaried career AND the students commitment that he will work the corporate route after yale and with the yale diploma, to make that higher salary. I still don't get your point. 70% of Yale Law students are getting financial aid anyway. For a graduate law degree. My point is that the top most competitive private universities in the USA are not a big factor in this shitty debt situation, globally. For undergrad they have need blind and even in their professional grad schools (as opposed to academic) they have billions behind them for financial aid and anyway the graduate, if in debt, can and should be a corporate drone to pay off the debt. That's the whole point of say a Harvard MBA. Some say it trains bright people to be capitalist sociopath managers. Successfully so.

The morale of the story in front of us is these 2 are dimwits who made shitty calculations and decisions and paid too much for too little pay off.

Why drag the Ivy League into this debate, at all? The Ivy League is certainly NOT closed off to the poor and middle class. Expensive schools with shitty endowments, and for which average IQ dumb twats borrow too much for - that's the issue.

If all you qualify for is PITT Law diploma and you can't afford it and don't want the risks of a the high debt - make that decision and don't fucking go to Law school. Or go get a job that will PAY for your graduate school. There are still jobs like that.

(Quote]Also, no one should pay for a master's degree. If you're a graduate assistant, tuition is covered, plus you earn a stipend

You are confusing a masters degree with a PhD. PhDs you should never pay for, programs will give you a stipend.

A master degree means debt.

R98, I didn't pay a dime for my master's degree. My nephew just finished his MA in English, and he fortunately also didn't pay a dime (except for books). I worked in universities for years. There ARE graduate assistantships on the master's level.

R99 I worked throughout my undergrad and my grad studies. Almost every one of my friends in my MFA program was a teaching assistant. I didn’t understand how they got those positions. I applied, as they did. And they were offered TAships. Eventually I called and asked on what grounds people were selected for interviews. They called me back and told me that my application was found behind a filing cabinet and was overlooked. (I am not fucking kidding.) All the teaching assistantships had been handed out, and they were not accepting applications until next year, and they only accept applications during students’ first years, and so I had missed my opportunity by not calling to check on the status of my application sooner.

Too bad theres not an article to read for this thread. I clicked about 27 times on the link and it just took me to a blank page.

I did part-time work all through my college years.

Working at jobs picking up drinks, stacking shelves, sweeping floors, and picking up garbage.

Some were late nights and some were early mornings (like getting up at 4am to ride a motor bike in the rain for a 4.30 start)

“If you have to take out loans, you shouldn’t go to grad school” = “if you have to work two jobs to pay the bills, you have a you problem,” courtesy of a Hollywood private school brat who has never had a real job in his life.

^. Yes, Mr Shapiro is right. It is MY problem.

My parents spent a million supporting me from age 1 to 18. They then said they would for my tuition fees OR my bed and board.

I decided I would take responsibility for myself, take part-time jobs, share a scungey house, catch buses, eat at home and pay for my own way.

I borrowed a million dollars and majored in myself (African studies). Now I’m in debt. It’s the system’s fault! Bernie make it right!

I think its OK to borrow some money for grad school but not so much and you have to figure if the gamble is going to lead to salaries and furthermore work that you are willing to do.

I do agree that some people are going to be able to make better calculations and decisions than others.

Remember Gentle Giant "Big Mike Brown", slain between H.S. and college? There was a part of the fable that he was "heading to college" to "make something of his life", to "live the American dream". Cut down on the the typical American Dream Path.

But the missing information was that he was extremely poorly educated in a shitty school, Normandy High School, a public one that had lost accreditation (! how is that possible). And his American Dream college was going to be a crappy, unaccredited for-profit "tech college" named Vatterott College, brought to you by investors such as Mitt Romney. Where he was to get an expensive "college degree" in "air conditioning tech".

America is a shit hole country and the Republicans quite specifically are rigging the system to siphon wealth off the ignorant and gullible.

Where are the guidance counselors for this kind of shit?? There could be nothing easier than being a high school guidance counselor.

The woman in the article started off on the right course. Had full tuition at Miami University of Ohio and graduated with reasonable debt. The husband has been a loser from the get go. Poor decisions about borrowing for shitty diplomas. I agree with her reflection that neither of them were trained in their family and culture for making good decisions. It's a pity she ended up with that guy because she probably should have married a guy who got a good job straight out of college and together they would have made it to the middle class. Eventually she could have found a job with her B.A. in English. Or gone to grad school on some company's dime, or her well-employed husbands. Instead she started making bad decisions with this dude.

I work with a young woman who complains frequently about her grad school debt (close to $100k from DC’s closest Ivy analogue)—but she recently revealed to me that she somehow has at least the same amount of money in a portfolio of non-retirement investments courtesy of her parents. I am a little baffled about that. It seems she gets to claim the right to be burdened with student loan debt while also being some sort of trust fund creature.

[Quote]DC’s closest Ivy analogue

Isn't it easier to just say Georgetown...?

"Ivy analogues" = bullshit. If it's good school it's a good school. No need for such nonsense.

Agree R108. She hitched her wagon to a loser. Hope he has a big dick, at least.

I'm baffled by all the entitlement. My siblings and I were the first in our family to go to college. I went to public colleges for my bachelor's and between scholarships and part-time jobs racked up zero debt. I have two graduate degrees, one paid for by an employer.

My grad school professors at private but non-profit schools were, on average, poorer teachers than the profs at the community College and state university I attended.

Why should my taxes go to fund other people's impractical, expensive educations?

BTW, I'm on mobile and HuffPost comments donyt show up for me at all. I tried 3 different browsers, no link for comments on any of them.

Free college education does not address the problem of too many unqualified students who are attending college or who are getting useless degrees. This couple sound both dumb and entitled, no consequences whatsoever should come to them for not one but a series of bad choices in life. I say choices not decisions for a reason. Decision implies either/ or while choices mean more free will or leeway. These two idiots made poor choices one after another. Are we surprised that the husband couldn’t pass the entrance exam to become dentist? I’m not sure he’ll be able to hack it in dental school.

Our university entrance system is a joke, criteria can be manipulated to allow entrance to students who have no business attending college. Points for being the correct sort of racial or ethnic minority, points for expensive extracurricular activities, points for unusual life experiences, etc....Intelligence and emotional intelligence should be weighed more than all that other stuff.

We should have an education system like the merit-based criteria they have in Switzerland and Japan for instance. After high school all students who wish to attend university then take entrance exams, in Switzerland this is known as matura. But the matura score is only part of the equation, it’s combined with grades from the last year of high school along with a lengthy dissertation of around 20 or so pages. During high school the students are guided along different tracks for education or training after high school.

In Spain they have a similar system though I’m not as familiar with it as I am with Switzerland and Japan. But one of my good friends is Spanish and he told me it took him 3 tries to pass his university entrance exam that sounded very much like the comprehensive exams they have in Switzerland and Japan. Anyways my friend was able to start university at age 20 after his third try.

[Quote]My siblings and I were the first in our family to go to college. I went to public colleges for my bachelor's and between scholarships and part-time jobs racked up zero debt.

And what year was this....? College has gotten a ton more expensive than it used to be.

R114 that system puts poor kids at a disadvantage. Someone attending a school in a poor area will tell you that they aren't getting the same standard of education as someone from a better neighborhood. There's a reason why things like home life and income are factored in now,

Switzerland isn't exactly as you explain. The Matura is the academic obligatory school diploma. If you graduate such a track, you MUST be allowed into university. Universities sort from freshman year on. There is no aim to retain students. Students fail and have a certain number of chances to pass the first year, second year and so on. Multiple failures allow you to switch majors, or schools, but eventually you are booted out. In fact, it takes a bit too long. Very extended adolescence and all on the tax payer dime. If student fails out of EPFL or EPFZ, even after 3 years of expensively tech education, they can then try for the haute eccles - the technical schools that now also award B.A. and M.A.s due to the Bologna process.

Overall the best that can be said it that the students are not burdened by debt, the taxpayer is, but its a rich country. Also Switzerland like German has other tracks besides university that lead to financially sound lives, for the moment at least, that is still holding but who knows. The haute ecoles expanded enormously and the "bachelor" is becoming a necessity I think.

All over the post-industrial rich world, there are too many average youths without the spark and IQ to be traditional professionals, artists, intelligentsia. SOME of these people can be serviceable tech workers and be in the educated trades, such as nursing, etc - so the Bachelors in those are valuable. And some are late starters. But overall, there aren't enough fo the traditional jobs - blue collar but reasonably paid and secure - for this layer of people.

There is no excuse of the USA situation of saddling such ne'er-do-wells with enormous debt. At least a twat with low skills and a Bachelor in Switzerland can bumble through his 30s without debt until enough employment shows him that he needs to step up his game or find a joe blow job and adjust his expectations.

R115, I checked and the state university I attended is still less than $60,000 for 4 years of tuition. I didn't live on campus, I worked part-time, and I received student aid. I don't know if the same student aid is still available. However, $60k is not a crushing amount of debt, assuming the degree gets you a decent job.

I know people who took full-time clerical jobs at colleges because that got them free tuition. It took them longer to graduate because they couldn't attend full-time, but they graduated with zero debt.

I have trouble understanding why anyone pays for mediocre private colleges. I get that an Ivy League degree may let you earn more, but there are a ton of mediocre schools that are ridiculously expensive.

Bunch of subhumans in this thread who seem proud of their lack of empathy.

I feel bad for them because guidance counselors should've seen them in HS and explained all this to them. When I was in HS the guidance counselor saw me just before graduation and flipped out because I hadn't applied for college -- and I was in private school. My parents had no intention of spending money on me for college. My mother wasted money sending me to Catholic HS. As far as she was concerned, that was all I needed. She kept me out of public school where those godless atheists taught and black kids attended. Her job was done.

These kids probably went to a black public school that was underfunded. A guidance counselor probably never even contacted them.

The woman didn't seem to know she could attend a state Uni for a lot less money. If you're not going to an Ivy League school, or something like Williams or Pomona college for a liberal arts degree, you're wasting money. Just go to community college then transfer to state U and get your degree.

I have a relative whose kids went to private universities for bullshit degrees who are now attending community college to get skills for a job. They could have saved their parents a shit ton of money bypassing the private university altogether. They wanted the experience of attending college away from home. Their parents could have rented them an apartment and sent them to state school for less money.

I understand that some states have very few universities. I know attending a state u when your residency is in another state is very expensive, so try to establish residency in another state that has a larger university system. If you want to go to grad school, you'll be fine with a bachelors degree from a state u as long as your grades were good.

I had to hire a, handyman recently and in my rural area they charge between $40 and $60 an hour (and the $40/hour was a friend's and family rate) . These are people with carpentry and home repair skills, but they don't do electrical or plumbing, and have no formal training or certification. And they're in high demand.

Formal education is not the only path to a good job.

This woman's mistakes came AFTER her BA. She got full tuition scholarship to a good enough private school and graduated with 23K in debt, presumably part of her expenses over 4 years. The is very reasonable! Her big mistakes then started. The husband over borrowed from the get go.

People keep defending their massive student debt and inability to know they wouldn't be able to ever pay it off by saying, "Hey, I was only 18! I can't be held responsible!"

Ok. For freshman year. Maybe you never heard or read about how hard it was to actually get a job. Keep a job. Pay bills. 👍

But, sophomore, junior, senior years of undergrad? These people never got a clue and never heard about how finances worked or checked into the job market for their field of study to see if they ought to adjust, while they had time?

Or, those who go one to add even MORE debt to their tally, for a second degree or grad school, often in their preferred field of study as opposed to a discipline that would give them a better chance for financial stability?

So, it's society or their parents or a guidance counselor's fault, at this point, really?

Let me just add that anyone who graduated with an English degree to pursue a magazine publishing career in 2012 was either willfully ignorant or living under a rock. Did she not pay attention to how the recession kicked the knees out from under the already-shaky publishing industry?

They both came from uneducated poor families. I still say 23k after for years at Miami University of Ohio isn't scandalous. And she could have taken an English degree and worked in ANY job but the mistakes started there.

R123, Miami University of Ohio is a public school. It's easy to mistake it for a ritzy private school, though, because tons of rich kids go there, it has a snobby, exclusive Greek scene, and the campus is gorgeous.

23k in loans is not much for 4 years of residence at a state school either, a good one. I mean its not catastrophic. That came later.

Also, if she wanted a job in publishing she should have moved to a city where a major publisher is headquartered (it’s not just New York). Surely Miami University has career counselors who could have told her this. Her fiance could have tried to get into dental school reasonably close by, assuming he had passed the test, or they could have sucked it up and postponed marrying until he was done.

My husband comes from a culture where knowing how to handle money is important. He couldn't believe mow much money I "wasted." I grew up poor. I didn't know how to handle money. I paid cash for things. I hadn't established credit. I didn't know I needed credit cards to establish credit for when I needed a mortgage or any other loan. I thought I was doing the right thing by paying cash. I wasn't. I didn't know the difference between smartly balancing debt and being in debt.

I often paid too much for things because I thought "you get what you pay for." I grew up in a time when my parents trusted most companies. I didn't realize things had changed and reliance on an established brand name wasn't a factor anymore. Customer service no longer exists. Brands dropped guarantees & warranties or wrote guarantees & warranties in small print, excluding virtually all of the problems that products have. I grew up thinking if there was fraud, the law would take care of it. "They can't say that if it wasn't true. They'd get sued."

Poor people are gullible because they've never had money to spare, so they think spending a lot for something means it has to be worthwhile.

Nobody tells poor people the truth, otherwise they wouldn't be able to rip them off.

I know why this couple did what they did. "Rich people pay a lot for college degrees. I'll pay a lot for a college degree and it will give me the same job opportunities rich people have."

It's why republicans get voted into office. "Republicans are rich. They're billionaires. They must know how to handle money. I'll vote for the rich person, because he knows what he's doing. That's why he's rich." So we wind up with clueless heirs and con men (and con women) in politics, pouring more money into their pockets. Hard work doesn't make you rich. I know. because I've worked hard since I was 14 years old and I'm not rich. I did manage to make it into the middle class, but that was luck on my part and who knows if it can be sustained? We have foreign oligarchs fucking with our electoral system to put a lunatic in office to crash our economy and we have enough poor people who think they're going to be rich someday to vote for the rich lunatics.

This couple is a lot younger than I am and circumstances are different nowadays, but I understand how they could mistake an expensive education for something that would make them better off. They didn't know heat rose to do because they didn't really see lots of opportunities they could choose from.

[quote]They didn't know heat rose to do because they didn't really see lots of opportunities they could choose from.

But again, they were at colleges with career counseling departments. Why wouldn’t they have availed themselves of that free advice?

At my state school in the 90s with tens of thousands of students, the "career counseling department" was a frau nearing retirement who worked 3 days a week and murmured that you should "build your network while you're still in college" (without telling you how - she might as well have been telling 19-year-old me to move to Mars) and agreeing with whatever you told her you wanted to do. Oh, she also had two "assistants," which were work study students and teenagers themselves. Helpful!

R118 Nursing is not a trade. Today’s healthcare environment is more advanced and the patients are more acute as a consequence of advanced therapies or treatments. Nurses also vary widely in educational levels. Only baccalaureate prepared nurses are hired by teaching hospitals and most large health systems require BSN. Also, many people go into Nursing as a second career, after having been in another profession. Nurses in hospitals especially ones who work in ICUs need to be critical thinkers because like I say, patients now are more acutely ill than before due to medical advancements.

Case in point, when I was a nurse working at the pediatric ICU (PICU), I took care of a 19 year-old man with complex congenital heart defect who just got back from cardiac cath procedure. He was fine all his vital signs were great and he’s just sleepy from the general anesthesia. He didn’t wake up an hour later even as I tried to wake him, I checked his pupils frequently just to make sure. His family was mad at me for not letting him rest and wondered why I was poking him and doing “crazy stuff”. They also said when he’s sleeping at home it’s impossible to wake him up if he’s in a deep sleep. He just didn’t seem right to me despite vital signs being stable. Anyways I check his pupils again, holy shit one of his pupils wasn’t responsive at all and was dilated. I quickly alerted the surgery team and long story short they took him in for emergency surgery for a brain hemorrhage. I later got a thank you card from the family weeks later, the patient fully recovered and suffered no cognitive side effects from the bleed because we caught it and fixed it in time.

I got my degree in microbiology at UC Berkeley, at first I was planning to attend medical school. But I took a year off to travel abroad and then reexamined whether I wanted to devote next 10 years or so of my life not traveling and experiencing life the way I wanted to in my 20s. It was a choice that I’d made to do that. I still wanted to be in healthcare. Found out that being a nurse practitioner fit more in with my lifestyle. I was able to complete Nursing doctorate and now I’m a DNP. I was able to stretch out my studies e.g. some semesters I was only part-time status and was then able to work and even snuck in some trips in between. Though the final two years I hauled ass and knew nothing except study/ school. I was able to graduate without humongous loans which I would’ve had if I had gone to medical school. That is the situation my boyfriend is in right now. I make high 100k range salary and I love my work.

I know several RNs and NPs who have another bachelor besides Nursing. Psychology is a common one. I also know NPs in my classes who have degrees in physics, biology, snd biochemistry. So no, nurses are not the same as tradespeople, not that being in trades is a bad thing. But it’s not the same.

[quote]Bunch of subhumans in this thread who seem proud of their lack of empathy

Why would anyone have empathy for these idiots?

Most DLers are older and don't have a good grasp of the current cost of college.

[quote] I later enrolled in school for my master’s degree to fill an emotional void. A decision that cost me $64,595.44.

I wouldn't blame everything on the husband. The woman / wife sounds like she made some bad decisions as well, i.e., getting into more debt with her master's degree.

[quote] We were married in 2014 and due to some birth control errors had a surprise baby in 2015. Although we were not planning to have children yet, starting a family was a big deal. The two things that we wanted in life were children and financial happiness. I stopped working to stay home and raise our son with plans to expand our family.

Here, she says she "stopped working" with "plans to expand our family." She sounds plain stupid and / or willfully ignorant.

That's because we know people like you look down on the cheaper options, r135.

If this was a DL post instead of on HuffPost, people here would be posting things like:

EST -1000000/10

That's how crazy everything she wrote comes across.

[quote]These are people with carpentry and home repair skills, but they don't do electrical or plumbing, and have no formal training or certification. And they're in high demand.

They are but not everyone has the aptitude for or wants to do that. It's another, well you can't afford to do this thing that you like so you should do this other thing, make money and come to my house and fix my things.

[quote]But again, they were at colleges with career counseling departments. Why wouldn’t they have availed themselves of that free advice?

My college at my university had 4 counselors. I went to my assigned counselor a couple of times freshman year. She did nothing for me and gave me no real information. Then one day I was talking about it to a senior in my college at some college function and she said that I need to switch to another counselor and she told me which one.

He filed some form that let me switch to him & it was a completely different experience. He set me up with internships every single year. He got me extra financial aid within the college at the University and finally he set me up with two alumni when I graduated. One of those alumni got me my first job in television.

My point is: not all counselors are good and unless you know coming in who the good ones (since you're assigned one) you are screwed.

After I graduated from a local college (I commuted and worked part time) in the mid1990s, I worked in an office with several parents with of college-bound teenagers. I was amazed at how they approached the college planning process. Most of them acted as if their kids were too good for the state university (which of course made me feel like crap, as I spent my first two years of college at the state school). They’d bring their kids on cross country college tours to find a place where the kid would fit in, where the campus was attractive and had fun stuff to do, etc. I’ll never forget one of my coworkers telling me her kid had turned down a four year scholarship to a good mid-sized university because her daughter wanted to attend some really expensive private college that was “more artsy.” Uh, really? But mom’s attitude was “I want her to go where she’ll thrive!” The parents and kids seemed more interested in superfluous stuff than practical majors and job prospects.

If what I observed was the norm, then at least some of the blame for today’s ridiculous tuition costs rests with that generation of parents who encouraged their kids to choose colleges based on costly amenities and the “do what you love, the money will follow!” fantasy. And now that the shit has hit the fan, college tuitions have become out of reach for all but the wealthiest people.

Education can be a way out of poverty. Debt certainly isn't.

My parents never had a college education at a young age, either (dad got his HS diploma as an adult; he was a drop out; mom was an RN from a catholic school but not a university bachelor's holder until 2000). I was the first, and - yes - people in education are predatory and no one, anywhere, exercises caution. I got a liberal arts' degree. It was "good debt" and would make you versatile. #gullible

Thankfully I started working in college (in a field unrelated to my degree) and am almost done paying off my 80k in debt! I wanted to be an attorney, but instead of adding to that debt with 100k+ in law school, I sat where I was, got up to making six figures (barely) over time and am almost debt free. I saw too many attorneys out of school making 40-60k. Not for me. Maybe if I sold my soul.

There is too much information out there now for people to make these stupid fucking decisions. But it's all about money and the big business of education has no soul. My alma mater was 19,000/year when I enrolled in the early 2000s. It's 40,000/year now in 2019.

The fact is these two losers wouldnt have even GOTTEN the loans if they werent black. A friend was dating a black guy who had an english degree from Morehouse. Talking to the man,you'd have thought he was functionally retarded . I also read some letters he wrote to my friend and I was absolutely astonished. It was like reading a 4th graders scribblings. Yet he wondered why he couldnt get a job as an english teacher,anywhere . And the poor sucker was working 3 jobs to pay off a huge student loan debt. I bet dentist wannabe isnt even doing that.

They need to go to Maine and wipe the asses of all those seniors who need nursing care. Seriously, there needs to be a way for these losers to work to pay back what they owe. Here are some other ideas:

--military service

--road building

--street cleaning (start with all the shit on the streets of San Fran)

--child care

--elder care

--care of the disabled

Has anyone pointed out that, even if their first child was a “birth control accident,” they apparently made the choice to have a second while they were eyeballs deep in debt?

I believe every single of their mistakes in life have been pointed out to them in the last two weeks.

If Bernie, et al, want to do something to help idiots like this, the most they should do is forgive $20,000 of the debt. That's the amount they should have spent. That $20,000 would clear the debt of a lot of people without rewarding those who did what these two did. The people who did what these morons did should then be required to work for free for the government for a certain number of hours a week for the next 20 years and work their loans off to the tune of $15/hr.

From this point forward, every student in America who meets the minimum academic requirements gets $20,000 to go to a state school. All student loans will be unable to charge interest over 1% and you get a five year window after you graduate to start paying it back. Loans are capped at $10,000 a year undergrad and $15,000 a year graduate.

but but but but R146 but but but but but

I'm with R146. Realistic plan.

R119, with today's metrics anyone who takes more than four years to graduate faces the possibility of being autograduated with a "General Studies" degree.

A lot of the old strategies like starting at a two year college and going to school part time are no longer possible--or at the very least compromise your opportunities.

R130 speaks a lot of truth.

I also thought I was smart not to use credit. There is a lot of knowledge that people pick up from parents, family, and neighbors about money, education and opportunities. If you grow up poor or even working class, you just do not know.

I turned down a full ride to an Ivy because I was scared of the degree requirements. I did not think I could handle the math and science, and so would flunk out. I went to a lesser school with easier requirements thinking that was the smarter choice. My parents never weighed in because they did not know anything about college.

Ouch R150

I like Obama a lot, so please do not accuse me of being a secret agent for the GOP—but you can like someone and not like or agree with or understand every policy and every campaign. One of my criticisms of Obama was his higher ed philosophy.

The Obama administration set a goal of returning the country to the status of ranking number one in college degrees awarded among all countries in the world by 2020. Aside from bragging rights, there was no stated practical purpose. Do we need people to be educated to fill jobs? Yes, but that’s not what this was about. And so, urged to sign up, colleges began to just crank out credentials. Community colleges started doing “reverse transfer,” which meant tracking down former students who had gone on to universities before completing an associate degree and offering them the degree, just to up the overall graduation number and their colleges’ graduation numbers.

I knew people who worked in the administration and I would ask “why?” Why not focus on the quality of the education so that we can brag we have the best-educated and smartest people in the world? Or the most technologically savvy, or most environmentally visionary? Because degrees are quantifiable, and we want to be number one.

I think that sort of competitive drive—all about ranking high with a degree, even if that degree means nothing—is what is wrong with us. It takes me back to the Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow wanted brains, and the smoke-and-mirrors wizard gave him a degree instead because he’ll never have a brain.

[quote]There is a lot of knowledge that people pick up from parents, family, and neighbors about money, education and opportunities.

So true. Even navigating the application process can be pretty daunting if you don't have a parent to "help"

I knew nothing about how to navigate college. Nothing at all. I thought you go to class, try to get good grades, and then get a diploma and move on with life. I wasn’t aware enough to be aware I should have been trying to learn best how to navigate the system. I didn’t think about scholarship opportunities at all—I was an honor student, but I was working and busy and focused on grades and it wasn’t until my final semester a professor said she was surprised I wasn’t on a scholarship. Many years later, I got a job at a higher-ed association and immediately I began to realize what opportunities I bypassed by having no idea they were even there. It’s kind of crazy and it frustrates me, but you cannot know what you don’t know unless someone makes it known to you. Parents who’ve gone through college do that. Working-class parents who also don’t know these things cannot—they send their kids to school naively. I had zero meaningful college counseling in high school. When I took out my first student loan, I requested the amount of tuition and fees and the loan officer (another student) told me I was eligible for something like $10k more than I requested and encouraged me to take it and I didn’t, but I took an extra thousand because I didn’t really know what I should do—and when I got the check, knowing I’d waste extra money, I wrote a check back to the issuer for $1k. I was really lost. I do accept responsibility for not having asked if there were guidance resources on campus, but I was working full time and taking 12 to 15 credits per semester and never took time for “extra” things. Sigh.

Gotta love the irony when people go $100,000+ Into debt to get an MBA, which gives you the education to calculate the ROI of said degree (hint: it's negative).

R155 But do they, really?

One thing I have learned as a byproduct of Trump: most super-successful businesspeople are lawbreaking frauds and con artists. Their returns on investment are partially based on false promises and partially false claims of assets that are not real in any way. I think very good MBA programs probably educate students to understand that the world of finance is little more than a performance of illusions that most people believe in and that the students can exploit as businesspeople as long as they put on a good magic show and never give away the tricks.

That may sound hyperbolic, but many businesses and I would honestly bet most successful big businesses (including government agencies) are in great part scams that do not really deliver the products and services they sell.

Where the fuck is my free $20,000 for being financially responsible?!

Shhhhh, R157. You should know by now, being fiscally responsible and successful makes you the Enemy and hated by many here. You didn't make 'smart' choices, man, you 'stole' every bit of what you have! You're a flat out thief! Guillotine time for you, Bro!

However, please continue to do whatever it is you're doing and make sure to work extra hours too, because someone needs to be paying into our national social services, creating jobs, traveling and paying back their debts. Many of us live off SSI or will in the future!

Also, please post often (and in detail) on all of the threads started, on how you managed to pay your school loan off. We'll shit all over you but read every word. Please and thx!

What R158 does not understand is that it is those of us who are fiscally responsible and have paid off (or are paying off) our students loans who want to expand forgiveness programs and reform the system.

We are the ones who know how onerous the burden is. I did fine, but if I had to care for a sick parent, had a child, or was laid off, it most likely would have meant going into default.

After getting a good education, your future welfare should not depend on good luck.

R158 is either a asshole Repug or an asshole Libertarian. Hope his financial life collapses.

When third parties are willing to loan extraordinary amounts of money to people based on the fact that the government will always pay them back, you have what is called moral hazard.

It works the same way and insurance companies and hospitals. Since most healthcare is paid by third parties, patients and doctors have little incentive to reduce costs.

Basic economics.

R159

Underwater basket weaving with a minor in grievance studies isn’t worth the time wasted and debt incurred.

You made a bad decision and now you want to taxpayers to bail you out. Fuck you.

R162, what was my bad decision? Are you saying paying off my student loans was a bad decision?

How would taxpayers bail me out? Give me back the tuition and loan money? I do not want it. I am doing fine and would rather see the money go to support current students in need.

Oooop! I realize now that R162 had reading comprehension problems with my post.

Maybe he needs a loan to pay for remedial reading classes.

Speak for yourself R159! I want so many strings attached to any debt forgiveness that they’re turned into walking, talking marionettes.

[quote] One thing I have learned as a byproduct of Trump: most super-successful businesspeople are lawbreaking frauds and con artists. Their returns on investment are partially based on false promises and partially false claims of assets that are not real in any way. I think very good MBA programs probably educate students to understand that the world of finance is little more than a performance of illusions that most people believe in and that the students can exploit as businesspeople as long as they put on a good magic show and never give away the tricks.

This is one of the great shames that Trump has inflicted on us.

There are thousands of businesses that are built on real value. Some of them were just lucky in that the market was there for them and wanted what they were selling at that particular point in time--real estate, for instance. Every day people with all sorts of ideas (ie obsessions) of how to solve a problem come to the market with what they've been working on for years. Con artists, living at the margins, exist, but are not usual.

[quote]I think very good MBA programs probably educate students to understand that the world of finance is little more than a performance of illusions that most people believe in and that the students can exploit as businesspeople as long as they put on a good magic show and never give away the tricks.

I learned that as an undergraduate in Accounting 101. I couldn't deal with double-entry accounting because of the underlying fantasy.

I love that so many people feel that a MBA teaches anything. I thought it was common knowledge that it is an empty calorie degree.

Masters degrees are crocks of shit for the most part. I know so many people with a masters and it didn’t do shit for their career in most cases.

I have a masters in Whoreology.

R169, I agree about the educational value of most master's programs, but in many occupations, having a master's degree is a requirement for moving up. In education and health care, for example, you'll never rise above lower management without a master's in something.

It's the same with bachelor's degrees in many areas, including business. The requirement serves as a gatekeeper to weed out those who lack the skill, persistence and ambition to complete a degree. There are many jobs that require a degree to get that don't really require a degree to perform. It's a crude form of screening, but it's easy and legal.

*waiting for the government to pay off my mortgage and/or cancel my credit card debt because adulting is hard.*

[quote]HuffPost comments donyt show up for me at all. I tried 3 different browsers, no link for comments on any of them.

Look at the little icons for Twitter, etc., above the photo. The one that looks like a cartoon talk bubble takes you to the comments.

Unless you are majoring in technology, engineering, mathematics, biology, chemistry or physics then you are wasting your time and money.

This entitled young couple should have paid attention to Ecclesiastes.

"He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow"

R174 is right. There are no other majors that teach usable skills and no other fields that can bring job satisfaction. Thank goodness everyone has the same desires and potentials. It makes things so much easier.

Any major can teach useful skills but the risk is better if its from a meritocracy funnel school such as the Ivy League. One could study Political Economy, Arabic or Mandarin, and French, and have a lot of skills with one's Harvard degree to enter diplomatic service or intelligence. Studying post-colonial non-gender navel gazing at Yale isn't going to produce skills, and studying the same at podunk state university would be a mistake.

[quote] Studying post-colonial non-gender navel gazing at Yale isn't going to produce skills, and studying the same at podunk state university would be a mistake.

This is mostly true, but I am going to add a small caveat.

In my state, many of the wealthy political families go to state universities so they can present themselves as the hometown sweetheart when they run for office.

But they probably study useful subjects, not gender studies. And if they are rich and politically correct, I'm sure it works out fine to graduate in History, maybe get a law degree. Paul Ryan studied Poly Science at Miami University in Oxford and didn't even pursue a Masters. Miami and he himself were stupid enough to allow him to find deep inspiration in Ayn Rand. His 93 IQ points carried him into the family business, then national government where he became the spineless Speaker of the House. Success on just a B.A! MAGA This black couple, equally modest brain power, but coming out of welfare families with no leg up and no blueprint, probably needed to take useful subjects and find well paying jobs AND STICK TO THEM, until they learned how to play the game for further advancement in the meritocracy. I don't think the dentistry pipe dream is going to deliver.

rich and politically CONNECTED i meant, not politically correct.

When you are dealing with critical thinking skills, the actual topic matters less than the methodology. So studying marketing, Shakespeare or post-colonial non-gender navel gazing all can produce people with roughly the same skills. The information they have will differ, but in the real world it is skills that move you ahead.

Too bad the couple mentioned in the OP didn't use their combined "critical thinking skills" garnered by their time in college, to look into the job market, finance, or how not to be a dumbass, R181

Clearly they did not. Perhaps if they had taken some hard post-colonial theory courses or linguistics--anything tough and rigorous--they might have been better able to read what was going on.

Or maybe they are just too dumb for anything to have helped.

People like the author are bombarded all,their lives with "Education is the Key!" slogans. Especially black kids. Most of them come from families who didn't go to college. Their families don't understand the process, but they're always hearing that you have to get an education -- as if getting an education is a magic carpet ride to success.

I'm white and came from a poor background and my parents had no intention of sending me to college. It was too expensive and it was for the children of the rich, not people like us. Both my parents had "poor" mentalities - they were poor, their parents & grandparents were poor. They'd always be poor and their children would be poor (a lot of this had to do with the country my mother's family emigrated from where just staying alive was the priority)

The maxim was "get a job," not "get a career." My mother told me that even if I won a scholarship I couldn't go to college because college didn't pay for room, board, food, textbooks, transportation to school, transportation home when the school was closed during holidays, transportation back again. This was a long time ago, of course I'm an elder, but something my mother told me was untrue and I didn't know until I was in my 30s - that my parents had to co-sign for a student loan.. Since I didn't have a bank account with money in it, my mother told me when I was 16, the bank would only give me a loan if my parents co-signed and my father would never come-sign a loan. If a guidance counselor talked to me about college I was to say no, my parents aren't sending me to school, thank you. I didn't know I could've gotten student loans on my own without my parents.

So I can understand how people who never dealt with guidance counselors and colleges could wind up down a rabbit hole. I put myself through school and it took me 20 years to get my degrees because I had to work full time and fit classes into my schedule. It adversely affected my career. I watched young people with masters degrees at age 24 sail past me on the job while I was haggard from writing papers alone til 3 am and having to get up for work at 6. Clinical placements and internships were a mystery to me. Where could I get one? I worked. I had to find places that could take me on weekends and at night.

It's not easy making it in a world where your parents don't have the ability to help you make connections or to see the world as somewhere you are the equal of people in authority. When you live in a poor area you don't have connections and your schools don't have the greatest teachers or counselors. There's such a thing as a "cultural desert" and there's an educational desert, too. Don't be so quick to judge people who didn't have the same upbringing and resources you take for granted.

And colleges are allowing people to study for bullshit degrees when they really need to tell exactly how many students got a job in their field of study after graduation, how many are still in the field 5 years later and are they employed full time in that field.

America is a capitalist society and colleges are geared towards profit.

R184 a thoughtful contribution, thanks.

[quote][R184] a thoughtful contribution, thanks

Could you summarize it for those who don't have time to read the novel?

R186 . . . the novel

R184, I wonder if there should be a post-HS program for people from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to go to college. This could be a one- or two-year program that would focus on (a) remedial skills instruction to bring language and math skills up to those of a high-school graduate from a prosperous suburb and (b) real-life education - a hard-headed look at what careers are in demand, a realistic assessment of one's own talents and abilities, and instruction on how college admissions, students loans, internships and the like actually work. Brutal honesty from the guidance counselors would be encouraged.

In other words, it would be a program to teach poor and working-class teenagers the things that middle-class kids learn from their families and the schools they attended in better neighborhoods.

The program would be open only to its target audience; otherwise, middle-class families would overwhelm the system in an effort to give their offspring a leg up. It would be free and local (no room and board). This is the only way even to start to level the playing field, because anyone who thinks America is a meritocracy is kidding himself. Where you start out - having nothing to do with your personal merit - has an incalculable impact on where you end up.

R188 We are already set up to deliver all that. The system is called High School. States could mandate even budgets but property tax payers would revolt. But thats where it should happen. Public HS.

The weird thing is that it is not surprising that someone from a disadvantaged background might not know the score when they enter college.

But surely they talked to other students, professors, academic advisors, etc. and would know more how things work by the time they graduate. These two seem to be untouched by their undergraduate experience.

"someone from a disadvantaged background might not know the score " Im pretty sure even the dumbest person on the planet knows if you borrow a huge amount of money that you have to pay back, eventually it will catch up with you. Im not really sure what to think of this couple,but even they had to know after attending YEARS of college that one day we all have to pay the piper.

R191, undergraduates have no real concept of how much money people make. Coming from a poor background myself, I could not tell if some adult made 50k/year or 750k/year. They have no scale to understand how much money they will make and how the debt load will impact that.

When you are told that going to college insures you getting a good job, you assume that it will not be hard to pay off the debt you take on--after all, every other student seems to be taking on debt.

By the end of four years, you should have met some people in your field and have some idea of how much money people make. That is why an undergraduate over borrowing is understandable. But not someone going to graduate school. (Although the trend of people going to grad school right after undergraduate does not help. A few years work in the field helps a lot.)

R191, undergraduates have no real concept of how much money people make. Coming from a poor background myself, I could not tell if some adult made 50k/year or 750k/year. They have no scale to understand how much money they will make and how the debt load will impact that.

When you are told that going to college insures you getting a good job, you assume that it will not be hard to pay off the debt you take on--after all, every other student seems to be taking on debt.

By the end of four years, you should have met some people in your field and have some idea of how much money people make. That is why an undergraduate over borrowing is understandable. But not someone going to graduate school. (Although the trend of people going to grad school right after undergraduate does not help. A few years work in the field helps a lot.)

R189, but it doesn't happen in many high schools, and not because of budgets. Take a look at the per-pupil spending in big cities and compare it to suburban school districts. The background of the students in a school has much more influence on the quality of the education than how much money the school system spends.

Public school has to take all students. In the areas where poor people live, that means most students are not academically inclined and many are disruptive or bad influences. Also, public school can't realistically provide the focused training on college and career skills because it has to serve all students.

The additional year or two of college prep work would provide not only remedial education but life education to give a hand to those who did not receive such education in their homes.

I went to college in the mid-90s and already Pell grants weren't enough to pay tuition at community college and state universities.

Also, although I was smart enough to do my own homework, I will say that the overbearing message told by professors, student advisors, and random people was that there were jobs in your major (whatever it was), that college grads had a giant leg up on everybody else.

Meanwhile, at this time, esp. pre-Desert Storm, the military was a terrible option for most, providing little educational assistance or meaningful job training. The trades were full of boomers and they weren't interested in training a new generation of competitors.

I cannot emphasize enough how the boomers' jealousy and greed made it impossible for anybody else to get a toehold in the workworld from the 80s until very recently. This was a time when the boomers, who were mid-career, deliberately made many fields nearly impossible to get into with continually escalating credential creep and gatekeeping, which of course they were always grandfathered out of.

Meanwhile, in a clueless, spoiled manner lacking in empathy, these same boomers were teaching their children - today's new workforce - that the same circumstances and behaviors that made them successful would work for their children. That plan was basically, "show up, go to college, get a job." Boomers, many of whom were always surrounded by easy prosperity, had no notion of current exigencies, or how enormously expensive they are.

Hold in mind that for the previous generation, it was common to drop out of university, or to get what is today considered a junk degree, but still be considered qualified for many excellent jobs. It is commonplace for current workplaces to have minimally educated people at the top, and multiple-degreed people in the lower ranks.

Universities had a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of easy prosperity for college grads. For instance, my grad school never said a word about how difficult and expensive licensing for my field had become, because most of the people teaching and counseling me didn't pay a dime for theirs.

These DL comments, similar to the comments in the OP's linked article, show a clear class divide. The people reading and commenting on Huffington Post are Boomers doing it from the comfort of their offices with internet access that is not monitored by overbearing bosses. These people always had enough money to pay their bills, including their student loans, and see other's lack of money as being a moral failing rather than an economic problem out of the victims' control.

They don't fully recognize that for most working people, the cost of the typical American life has finally outstripped people's ability to pay for it. They don't respect that poor people who are up to their eyeballs in debt working at some shitty call center, or maybe a shitty job for one of Google's or Facebook's contractors, will never be able to pay off these loans - it's simple math.

Nobody talks about how the new GI bill after Desert Storm, with its insanely generous benefits, helped create the modern galloping monster of tuition increases. Easier bank loans is another reason. Boomer vanity led to the resortification of college campuses which led to yet more tuition inflation.

Although the HP story is a bit extra, the authors were doing what all professional people were told to do all along: Go to college, borrow money, then get a good job and pay it back. They were raised in an environment where financial success was a given if you followed this formula. And based on the comments here and in HP, there are still people in denial that the goalposts have been moved a great deal in a generation.

I didn't know about the GI bill for Desert Storm vets.

In the EU a bachelor’s degree from a university is considered worthless, if it’s not completed by a master’s degree.

[quote]The background of the students in a school has much more influence on the quality of the education than how much money the school system spends.

Bullshit. If you take a poor kid from a shitty neighborhood with shitty schools and move him into a rich school district, he begins to excel. They have things like computers and current books. They have better teachers. They have a better atmosphere. This has been proven over and over.

And, if you want final proof, go to one of those rich school districts and tell them you are going to equalize the amount of money all the school districts in a state get. Watch the apoplectic reactions as they turn into vile racist pieces of shit who say things like "It's just those people...".

[quote]She should've stopped there. 23k is a reasonable amount of student loan debt these days. But she decided to fill the void with a 64k master's degree! If she would've just found a good day job, she probably could've paid off most of her BA degree debt by now. And then she fucked up the birth control. Poor child.

I thought the same thing. 23k isn't a huge amount of debt for a bachelor's degree. I noticed she mentioned that she was focused on working in magazine publishing. She could have considered working as a copy or technical writer. She might have been able to find a work from home job in one of those fields.

[quote]And, if you want final proof, go to one of those rich school districts and tell them you are going to equalize the amount of money all the school districts in a state get. Watch the apoplectic reactions as they turn into vile racist pieces of shit who say things like "It's just those people...".

No, dear. They get apoplectic because they're paying $15k per year in taxes for the privilege of having access to great public schools. In addition to working their asses off to afford expensive housing in those areas.

I pay close to $15k now and I have a modest house in a middle class NY neighborhood.

Fuck off, R201, you elitist piece of crap. Too bad none of the poor people in this world work hard, huh? We should definitely punish their children for their crime of not being rich.

^Give them all YOUR money R203.

[quote] Society shouldn’t be set up so that you need a bachelor’s in order to have a lower middle class life. So I’m not for free college because all that will do is perpetuate that requirement. The government needs to stop subsidizing college because all that does is inflate the price of tuition.

We used to have jobs that paid adequately to support a family. Many of those jobs have been eliminated by technology. Using a Bank as an example, in the 60s and 70s people used to do 70% of the functions now done exclusively by a computer. It did not require a college degree. Today, jobs like that, which pay a reasonable wage do not exist. It is not society it is technology. Now jobs require a heightened skill set for written and verbal communication -- and the quality of public education has decreased.

No unions. Also the LAW that corporations serve the shareholder first. Corporations must have dividends and pay the executives enormous salaries. The benevolent corporation is a very endangered species. A tech company such as Google or Apple may offer very high salaries of the white collar engineers they actually employ, their lawyers and number crunchers, but they also have a layer, even in the rich countries, of underpaid associated staff who are not "employees". And the apple, with the offshore production. There is not reason an Amazon warehouse job can't be lower middle class, or solid working class, like a car plant 50 years ago. Except the find it difficult to unionize and many are not working for "Amazon" but a subcontractor. All of this is because the law says the shareholder's interest must be served. And then middle class folks and especially upper middle class folks can't really speak up because they like the convenience and prices of WalMart, Target, Amazon, the cheap important products, and they like the dividends and wealth grown in their own stock invested 401Ks, which are essential because they, themselves, no longer work for a "benevolent" corporations, either. The ones benefitting in the USA are upper middle class and mostly the very rich.

In Europe, average folks are still not very invested in stocks, because there are still strong pensions. Average folks investing in stocks was already a part of the America financial structure in the bull years leading up to the 29 crash and the great depression. And then, during the depression, banks themselves failed. Rockefeller lost 90% of his wealth during the sock market crash but had enough to say and recover. The siphoning of wealth from the workers to the 1%o or 5% can be corrected by professive taxation, and the willingness to let unskilled and semi-skilled workers fight for living wages and benefits. It would help if there Obama care was truly extended to everyone who doesn't have another option. 15 an hour is an OK wage for a teenager or college part time worker - but 15 an hour, shitty health care, no job security, no savings, no pension, this is not the future of a content working class.

If a mid eastern migrant now settled in Germany, grows up with any sense in Germany, he will have had solid health care, solid schools, and if clever, a free to very cheap training in a skill or going to tech university or academic university. Not saying they are all going to make it to German middle class or the German meritocracy but its a humane deal, which "richest countries in them world" should be offering everyone who grows up and works.

This American black couple looked around and saw how shitty it was to be an unskilled undiplomaed black person so they certainly didn't want that. But they totally blew the transition to middle class, skilled. And all that debt!!! They needed to work jobs with their Bachelors and patiently figure out how to become truly middle class workers able to earn middle class salaries.

The dentistry is a pipe dream alas.

progessive taxation. America does not have the stomach for limits on executive compensation. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. And I don't think you can do much about the law that shareholders are the prime beneficiaries of corporations. Therefore, the workers need structures that give them rights to better salaries and the US government must stop spending to much revenue on the military, increase taxation on the rich, and spend on improving the quality of life for ALL people, especially the majority who are certainly willing to work.

I myself wouldn't take on so much debt for dental school if I have such a hard time passing the entrance exam. I would take on less debt and become a plumber or electrician.

You have the gift of common sense, r209. And that's why you're not in the position the couple in OP's story are in.

I found the author's LinkedIn page. She has a couple of past jobs listed and her current job is listed as a freelance blogger for an online magazine.

She got her Master's Degree from a for-profit online university. She was the perfect target for an online university.

She got her degree from Walden?

Her research skills were lacking if she thought that an online for-profit school would in any way help her.

R209, good-paying apprenticeship/union jobs, like being an electrician or a plumber, were traditionally closed to blacks. It wouldn’t surprise me if black people now still don’t think of them as a realistic option.

R212 My take is that she is someone who is both naive and gullible. For years, there have been plenty or articles, TV news stories, and a few short documentaries about the predatory nature of for-profit online universities. The people who have been sucked into them have admitted that the idea of getting a degree completely through online classes appealed to them because they working full time and/or had kids. Some non-profit private and public universities do offer online degree programs, but I've heard from a couple of people that admissions to those programs can be difficult and highly competitive. If she actually did look into an online program from a good brick and mortar school, she might have been rejected for different reasons. Walden probably takes anyone with a pulse and is willing to go into debt for a degree.

Online degrees from major universities should be cheaper than their online counterparts. They are much cheaper for the university to run and can enroll way more students. The fact that that isn't the case is a scam in and of itself.

And, I'll just reiterate that R201 can still fuck right off.

For profit organised criminal theft. Of bad consumers with low information. I refer you back up above to the details on Big Mike Brown's "American Dream" cut short. How does one graduate with a BA in English from an OK school, then decide an expensive for-profit online masters worth ZERO is a good idea? Sheesh.

[quote] Now jobs require a heightened skill set for written and verbal communication -- and the quality of public education has decreased.

I don't agree with this--and I have a really weird anecdote for y'all.

I collect old business correspondence (and also I'm starting a little collection of typewriters). Anyway, I really enjoy researching them on ebay--the kinds of paper used, the old engraved logos at the top, the old addresses (when major streets had names instead of numbers), and especially the old-timey way secretaries WROTE business correspondence. Older generations read more and were better writers, even if they didn't have formal educations.

R217, they did have formal educations. They just had higher standards from grammar school through high school. The quality of public education has gone in the shitter, especially in poorer districts.

R218, yes, you're right. That was my typing-too-quickly error: I meant to write that they didn't have secondary educations.

Oh, dear...Per her LinkedIn page, the HuffPost piece above is her first published article.

In the article, it sounds like she was frustrated that she didn't land a magazine editing position right after getting that BA in English. Well, it takes time and patience to get that dream job. And by the time you reach it, it may no longer be your dream. I also got a degree in English. I worked in retail until I was able to get a job editing patents for a government contractor. (Not copyediting, but checking that papers were signed, that pages were in correct order). That enabled me to became a technical writer at a non-profit, and later I edited training materials. There are lots of things you can do with an English degree. They aren't dream jobs, but they're not horrible, either, and they'll pay the rent.

It's amazing to me that any couple of idiots has 718k of unsecured debt.

The loan companies that got the laws on the books to make student loan debt un-dischargeable in bankruptcy must have laughed their asses off.

I think until student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy they should disallow companies from writing off business losses as well. Why should you be punished for trying to get ahead through education but rewarded for opening a stupid candle and incense store and going bankrupt? Makes no sense.

Wasn't student loan debt dis-chargeable years ago in bankruptcy until law changes?

R221 I agree, she definitely had other job options for her English degree.

I remember reading about a novelist who worked as technical writer before hitting big. I can't remember who it was.

R206, if you're an eldergay, you'll remember these ads.

People used to mock them, or at least parody them.

Now, they're heartbreaking.

[quote]her current job is listed as a freelance blogger for an online magazine.

This is the new "unemployed"

They should have studied VCR repair.

[quote]In the article, it sounds like she was frustrated that she didn't land a magazine editing position right after getting that BA in English.

Yes. And her frustration that she couldn’t get a high-paying job? Magazine jobs aren’t remotely high-paying until you reach a senior level, which typically takes years. You have to start at the bottom just like in any other field.

These idiots are now to the point that they've fucked their kid over, too. With that type of debt, they can't afford to help him as he's growing up, won't be able to set up a 529 for him for college or trade school or a retirement for themselves, so Junior will be taking care of them in their elder years as well as struggling through his own. They definitely can't pass down any common sense or financial savvy.

How long until she's preggo with #2? You know it's coming.

They already have #2, R230. Look at the picture.

They already have #2, R230. Look at the picture.

Sorry, R231. I only see a preview of them and it didn't show sprog #2.

Thanks for the correction.

The husband has a LinkedIn page and he also attended Walden for his master's degree.

His work history looks pretty unimpressive.

Everything about them is pretty average except their aspirations. Sometimes people need to accept that they're not geniuses built for difficult careers. I have a friend who just turned 40, makes $12K a year at her minimum wage job, is saddled in debt from her anthropology master's degree that took her years to complete because it was so hard for her, and is now looking to "level up" with a PhD in archaeological studies. She's positive a brilliant career in academia awaits her around the corner. Instead, she will likely be seven figures in debt by the time she retires.

Maybe they thought they were attending Wharton?

r236 I know someone like this. BPD, early 40s, took out $100,000 doing various undergrad/grad degrees (including a worthless creative writing MFA).

I feel bad for her.

R236 do we know the same person? My friend is bipolar too. I think there's a comfort in being a student forever. Some people really love the structure and predictability it gives their lives. There's also a sort of true-grit social prestige from saying you're an adult who is pursuing a diploma; the implication is that you've overcome some early struggles but are now working to get ahead.

Its because student life can be cushy, even if being lived on loans. Also if one is unemployable, getting diplomas is easier than figuring out how to perform in the world of work. Sadly, some of these people end up as teachers.

[quote] There are lots of things you can do with an English degree

I’d switch over to ESL. I’m sure many credits from an English degree would be transferable to an ESL degree.

Teaching ESL is a bachelor degree program? Where?

Education has long been considered an investment for future earnings and secondarily, a tool for personal development in the United States. The long-held rationale has been if you have to get into debt, investing in your education and/or your own business is a worthwhile investment. But nothing is guaranteed, right? As ethnic minorities have moved up in this society, the goalpost for personal achievement in the United States has been deliberately shifted more than once. When I was growing up, I was told no one owes you a living, GET A JOB. Then you were told: NO ONE OWES YOU A JOB, GET A EDUCATION. Now the post has moved to" WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID GOING INTO DEBT FOR A BULLSHIT DEGREE"?! A good education, even acquiring a bunch of letters that goes after your name in no way guarantees a rewarding, well-paying career. All of this was demonstrated in a spectacular way during the 2008 recession. Many people, educated or not were out of work, took significant hits in their earnings or were forced to cobble together a few jobs just to keep the rent or mortgage paid while others were never out of work and never took a hit on their earnings.

As an outsider without an in, it looks as if you can't get ahead. This con runs deep. The minor celebs who got caught out bribing colleges to get their brats into school exposed a small part of the charade. The charade, the long con, the grift goes further than getting into a good school or academic achievement, see MAGAT for an example. Undereducated, barely coherent, BANKRUPT many times over, and having never worked a day in his life prior to his installations POTUS, MAGAT was born wealthy and attended the finest schools. He didn't have to work, he didn't have to perform or apply himself in school MAGAT had a nice career waiting for him with Daddy.

It turns out the elite have always paid or their children to have access to the finest schools and paid for their degrees. If their offspring want or choose to work, well-paying positions are waiting for them after they leave school, no application or interview required. The elite have access to positions, degrees and educational access that you will never have, educated or not.

The hell are you going on about. The most prestigious state and private colleges make a point of recruiting a rainbow of classes and ethnicities, and the education is not garbage. Furthermore, the Need Blind elite college pay the way of the poors clever enough to get in. Sure they are mixed in with some VIP spawn but less than you would think. Also, the elite state and private universities are what create the "meritocracy" and produce people like the Castro Brothers. The couple in question made STUPID choices based on ignorance and yes, a belief in a myth that did not apply to them. It does not apply to DEPLORABLE white trash, either. And they were especially dumb ever giving 1 penny to a FOR PROFIT "college/university". I have empathy that the poors and the average IQ are being duped by a myth but I think the "grifting" you mention is color blind. There is still meritocracy, but in this case, the husband was never going to be a part of it, and the wife blew her chance after her bachelor and popping out a baby with this plebe.

[quote] There is still meritocracy, but in this case, the husband was never going to be a part of it, and the wife blew her chance

Great summation.

I don't think the wife ever did any media or journalism internships in college. When you do internships you see that people have to work their way from the bottom up and the fields are hard to break into. She mentioned having zero leads after graduation.

Did she even write for a campus newspaper? Sheesh.

It's odd because she attended one of the better universities in Ohio

Surprised no one there sat her down and had a talk with her

Surprised some smart friend or auntie didn't tell her not to marry the loser.

[quote] Surprised no one there sat her down and had a talk with her

There are some people that can't be talked to. They have to learn their lessons the hard way.

She most likely could have had a bright future, with considerably less debt, if she hadn't married the loser she did. Tragic.

R247 I don't think she did. Her LinkedIn is sparse and she doesn't have any endorsements. I have a couple of acquaintances who work/worked as newspaper reporters. Their LinkedIn pages have at least 5-10 endorsements for numerous skills from past or current colleagues, college professors, college classmates, and other professional connections. Both acquaintances wrote for their college newspapers and both listed their college newspaper work along with internships in their job histories.

The HuffPo writer probably didn't do much during college to build up a network of professional connections who could have helped her in the job market. If she didn't have any kind of writing portfolio or samples that probably screwed her over as well.

[quote]If she didn't have any kind of writing portfolio or samples that probably screwed her over as well.

100% correct. I work in publishing and we’d rarely or never hire someone with zero clips or internship experience, at least not for an editor position. The English degree would not be a strike against her if she could prove she had the chops.

She should have freelanced as a side hustle to build her portfolio while Otis finished up his 5-year degree.

Internships are a way to keep the riff-raff out.

If you do not have family money to support you, it is very hard to do an internship. They are a very effective way to keep poor people from ever getting out of poverty.

You can do them quite easily while you’re in school, R254. I did, and I don’t come from family money.

[quote] Sure they are mixed in with some VIP spawn but less than you would think.

Bish....no

Yes, Harvard, Yale and Polytech have drastically lowered their academic standards to accommodate "those people". Even so, there is a nice big bill waiting for "them" upon matriculation.

R254. True with financial services careers as well. You don't make any money the first year or two. Someone has to foot the bill. It's like an unpaid internship, in a way. But once you build your book, you're golden.

R255, so you were able to hold down a job, and an internship, and keep up with classwork?

Even if you could, I would hardly call that doing something "easily."

I didn’t have a job during the school year, R259, and there’s no indication the writer did either. Yes, I did an internship — and also edited my college newspaper — while taking a full course load. Why is that such a stretch for you?

This is the issue, R260. You could take an internship because someone was supporting you---or you borrowed for money to live on.

People who do not have financial support--or do not want to go into debt-- cannot do internships.

I teach in a university and I see this happen all the time. Brilliant students who cannot get a job because they cannot work for free.

No, R261, no one was supporting me. I chose an in-state public university and had a full scholarship that covered my tuition, room and board. I borrowed exactly $0 and graduated debt-free.

Fitting in an internship around classes or working for campus publications should have been a viable option for the writer, between her scholarship money and the loans she’d already chosen to take out.

Trump University (also known as the Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC) was an American for-profit education company that ran a real estate training program from 2005 until 2010. It was owned and operated by the Trump Organization. (A separate organization, Trump Institute, was licensed by Trump University but not owned by the Trump Organization.) After multiple lawsuits, it is now defunct. It was founded by Donald Trump and his associates, Michael Sexton and Jonathan Spitalny, in 2004. The company offered courses in real estate, asset management, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation.[2]

College loan lending is predatory. It is some of the only debt you cannot get rid of, it will follow you for life and sometimes even your family members if they co-sign.

R262, I teach at a state school. I guess all I need to tell my students who want to get scholarships is to get born in a state where they have full scholarships that covered my tuition, room and board.

It is a common fallacy to decide that the special circumstances in your life are common and apply to everyone. Students who live at home and contribute to their family's income, who are in systems with bad financial aid, etc. are somehow failed because they did not do things the way you did.

Of course there are exceptions. But for most students who do not have resources to draw on, internships are out of reach. In my community, intern recruitment focuses on private schools because it is known that few state school students can accept them. There are always one or two from poorer backgrounds that they can point to as proof that anyone can succeed. But that ignores that there are dozens of less qualified students who are accepted because they can afford to work for no money.

Exceptional poor people and average rich people get the same opportunities.

[quote]It is a common fallacy to decide that the special circumstances in your life are common and apply to everyone. Students who live at home and contribute to their family's income, who are in systems with bad financial aid, etc. are somehow failed because they did not do things the way you did.

Except that I am not talking about “everyone,” R265. I am talking about ONE PERSON. The writer of the HuffPo piece, who had some scholarship money and elected to take out loans for the rest. I’m talking about the fact that she appears to have graduated with no journalism experience, had a hard time breaking into the magazine field and seems surprised by this.

If she worked while in school, contributed to the family’s income, was in a system with bad financial aid, that’s certainly nowhere in her article. Absent those hindrances, it’s not that hard to, let’s say, join the campus newspaper staff and build a portfolio of news articles. Plenty of students balance it quite adeptly.

But by all means, carry on being a pompous, obtuse ass.

Nice try at a walk back, R266.

But you were responding to R254, which was a general statement about the whole system of internship.

[quote]Exceptional poor people and average rich people get the same opportunities.

Very true. Or you an 'average' poor person has to find a way to game the system.

I was refuting your generalization, R267. Since you apparently know everything and won’t hear otherwise, let’s just agree to disagree and move on.

I have a ton of nieces and nephews who all are getting to college age. I make a very good living in IT and have told all of them to skip the 4 year and get into a cybersecurity program at the local CC- 36 months - a degree and a guaranteed job making at least 80K.

Wow, that's awesome, R270.

That misses the point of a four-year college IMO, r270. A good college education is not vocational training; it's your last chance to broaden your mind and your horizons before starting on a professional path that will progressively specialize you and narrow your mental horizons. You can do a liberal arts course of study and still do "practical" things like econ classes and internships or work-study programs.

I realize that that's an idealistic (and privileged) view, but it really is the point of college for me. I had the good fortune to attend a top liberal-arts college, and will treasure my experiences there for the rest of my life, even though I've forgotten half of what I learned and now have a 9 to 5 job in banking.

Well, if they can really get 80K jobs with a 2 year diploma, and do well on the job, BSs and MSs will surely be easy and not filled with debt. Of course, you have to be interested in the work, and be clever, and then be a good worker. I think the problem with our original couple is they don't know how to work, either.

I didn't come from money and I signed up for loans without ever having managed a budget or paid bills. I have a decent job in my field, excellent credit, able to reasonably enjoy life, and am making steady progress on killing my loans. The interest rates are killer and the various loopholes that are a massive middle finger (no bankruptcy, the miniscule cap on a tax credit for interest payments) always make me angry. Barring a serious change in my circumstances (and the universe can be a bitch when she wants) I could have my loans gone within the next 10 years.

I've worked hard to build a life for myself and it wouldn't bother me at all to see other people helped out of this predatory system. Tax the rich.

r273 - there are 5 million IT jobs that go unfilled every day. HIgh paying jobs. Finding people with cybersecurity experience is hard. If you train for two or three years you can make really good money. If it is not your passion, fuck it - most companies will pay for graduate school if you want an MBA. Get your MBA and go do what you want, or do the millenial thing and put all your money into your 401K, leave a minimal life and retire at 30. Even if your passion is to be a Doctor you can work for 5 years save every penny and pay for med school and have enough money so you don't have to work....going 100s of thousands of dollars into debt thinking you can repay it after is just stupid.

The fact they didnt come to a screeching halt at 100,000 speaks volumes about their decision making abilities. It was insane to do that to yourselves.

R275, you do realize that probably 75% of people do not have the ability to learn the ins and outs of IT and cybersecurity, right? I mean, have you met people?

I'm grateful for a pleasant, well-informed person in a service occupation. Living wage would improve America a lot. Why must all wealth be siphoned to the very rich? I got my ivy degrees and middle class life but let's face it, there isn't room for all that many of us. The working class needs more dignity, money, and work/life balance. My dad was an engineer but he stayed in his starter home and my neighbours were a mix of working and middle classes. Working class people had normal nice lives back then just like the middle class. They got into good unions and things were OK. Maybe one or two of their kids or grand kids made it into the knowledge economy, if it suited them.

Also, what do some of you think will happen to wages and benefits when a field like cybersecurity becomes oversaturated? They plummet. Supply and demand. It happened to nursing. It happened to paralegals and lawyers.

So the top solutions offered are:

1. Go into cypersecurity

2. Get a full scholarship that covers both tuition and living expenses

The out of touch nature of so many people is rather shocking, isn't it, R280? Some of these people must literally have never known anything but upper middle class or higher. Good thing it's not a thread about cancer. I'm sure their answers would consist of "Well, duh, why don't you just not get cancer in the first place? I mean, look at me, I don't have cancer and I'm fine!"

R274 Out of curiosity, how long have you been out of school? And do you have a bachelors or masters?

[quote]So the top solutions offered are: 1. Go into cypersecurity 2. Get a full scholarship that covers both tuition and living expenses

If you’re referring to my post at R262, kindly point me to where I said getting a full scholarship was the answer for everyone. I merely responded to R261’s broad assumption that I was only able to do a college internship because I had someone supporting me or took out loans.

R282 I graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor's. No way was I going for a Master's unless someone else paid for it. And it was only around 2015 when I was really able to start regularly paying more than the minimum required on my loans.

3. Attend a public community college and then transfer to an in-state 4 year school.

4. Work at a college or at another job where the employer covers your college.

I find it funny that people think practical advice is the same as a "let them eat cake". I went to a state school and had excellent professors. I made a lot of stupid choices in my youth but signing up for a shitload of debt wasn't one of them. OTOH, low tuition at public colleges seems like a reasonable use of my taxes.

Government forgiveness for the debt of people who were foolish seems like a punishment for those who were practical and made reasonable decisions.

R278

Your post illustrates why I'm getting fed up with the left's obsession with education. K-12 education is meaningless if students don't have a supportive and stable home environment, and the American left is doing nothing to try to support families so they can provide that to their kids. Instead, they bleat about "education", education that will be wasted if kids lack medical care and have food insecurity and unstable home lives. Emphasizing education over poverty reduction means we'll be spinning in circles forever.

And then there's the obsession with higher education, which doesn't, and shouldn't apply, to the majority of Americans. Many high school graduates can't get in to a good college, so what's the plan for them? It certainly won't be trying to lift them out of poverty without a college degree; the American left has completely abandoned that concept.

Excellent post @ R286. I've been saying the same thing for years. Liberals think all you have to do is throw more money at schools in distressed communities and that will solve deep and complicated social, family and community problems. Schools can't do it all. They can't and shouldn't have to raise people's children for them.

The reason rich communities have great schools isn't all about money. It's actually more about strong families investing a lot of time and care in providing a stable, enriching home life for their children. Look to poor Asians as an example of this. Their kids tend to excel, not because they go to multi-million dollar super schools, but because the parents emphasize hard work and education from birth. They are strivers.

R285, those ideas sound good, but going to a two-year college and transferring could mean that you lose out on a number of scholarship and employment programs--especially in some majors. It also could cut you off from being able to enter some majors. In state schools at least, the changes in metrics and the emphasis on FTC (First Time in College) students has really screwed transfer students will AA degrees.

And in universities, you can (under certain restrictions) get tuition reduction if you are an employee, but it very hard. Employers might be emotionally supportive, but ultimately want people present 9 to 5, so it is very hard to get through school while working there. Most staff I have known have done much better to work at one university and study at another.

Also, in my institution the 4-year graduation rate is such a powerful metric, most majors will no longer accept part time students.

I am not trying to be snarky, but now that I work for a university, I am learning that the conventional wisdom I have believed all my life (like the suggestions you made), are not exactly true anymore.

To quote a favorite college professor: "Someone who is educated beyond their intellect". I love that phrase.

IT is not that hard to learn. There are established guidelines and rules. Computers are logical. Kids are picking up coding with no training.

[quote]Liberals think all you have to do is throw more money at schools in distressed communities and that will solve deep and complicated social, family and community problems.

When people talk about increasing education funding to fix problems with schools, everyone should understand that means for the most part just increasing teacher salaries with no other changes and few dollars for new programs. My mother was a teacher, so that was great for us, but of course it didn't do anything to help students. My mother's students didn't learn any better just because she got paid more.

^They pay inner city teachers a shit ton so they won't flee to the suburbs. It's like being a prison guard. It's hazard pay.

Communities can’t afford to have lots of technical high schools like NYC does. In NYC there are technical high schools, math and science high schools, high schools that emphasize teaching as a profession, performing art schools and schools for kids with learning disabilities. The public transport system makes it easier for kids to attend these schools in other boroughs (that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes take a long time to get to school via transfers, etc).

America is all sprawl. Cowboy capitalism allowed housing developments to be built without rhyme or reason and without transport. I remember going to my husband’s cousin’s house in NJ in a housing development where all the streets were named after towns in the Hamptons and the housing was somewhat modern, asymmetrical buildings with landscaping of beach grass, pebbled front yards and weird, twisted miniature trees in an area that was nowhere near the water. Next to it was a development of Tudor style houses, then we drove through a development of 70s split levels, then 60s ranches with decorative wishing wells and wheelbarrows in front yards. It was a real “WTF?” area, built without any thought of community, transportation, continuity....there were no sidewalks to walk on. Just rows of houses and a mall along a highway across from a shopping center with the usual Home Depot, Target, Michaels, Best Buy.

How can we educate kids according to their aptitude and future career when we throw them into one gigantic high school with thousands of kids from scores of housing developments? I like the method in England in the 50s and 60s where they tested kids st various points and if you couldn’t cut it academically at age 15 you were given an apprenticeship to an electrician or to a graphics business or a tailor.

I wish we could pull off a similar educational system here. My father graduated high school in the early 1940s but he studied shorthand in the basement if the school because it was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to college and needed a skill. Luckily, post WW2 prosperity led to full employment (for whites, that is). Even lots of African Americans could get factory jobs in Detroit and Chicago in the postwar years.

We need to prepare for lean times.

He wants to be... a DENTIST!