<p>Newsday article -- raises issue of whether schools should be counseling students on the issue of debt --</p>
<p>It is very frightening that 17 year olds may be making financial decisions that affect them for so many years. The counseling needs to come into play before they make a decision about what school to attend, though; once they arrive at $50,000 Ivy school it is hard to back out and go to community college for two years to save money.</p>
<p>Muffy has hit the nail on the head. There is little reason for the financial counseling offices that are featured in the linked article to be set up, since the students they are "counseling" are already there. The only good advice they could give is to go to a different school.</p>
<p>The journalism student at the University of Mo is clearly an OOS student, who must be getting very little money from her parents or her own earnings and is ineligible for financial aid, since she is borrowing over 20K a year from private banks, and the total COA of OOS at U of MO is 29K. She should have gone to an instate school or a school that gave her a break on the tuition. She made the decision while in high school that MU Journalism was the only option that made her happy. </p>
<p>Why is U of MO paying this guy to point out mistakes to students who are already there?</p>