I have been searching everywhere I can for an answer but I have been yet to find a satisfactory answer and I was hoping someone here might be able to shed some light on this for me. I should probably start with a background before everyone piles on me for being so ignorant. I always did well through school and was constantly bored in school so I sent letters out to a number of universities and colleges that I was interested in during the beginning of my junior year in college asking about early admission… Long story short I ended up dropping out halfway through junior year getting a GED and going to work for the summer (for some extra money) before heading off to quite a prestigious university without even taking my SAT’s or ACT’s (I was excepted to a number of college’s including 2 Ivy league schools on my PSAT’s, grades, and recommendations alone) I was able to attend without taking out a single loan, between Scholarships, Grants, FAFSA and working over the summer. However despite taking almost all sophomore classes my first semester I was still extremely bored and decided that the next ~3 years of boredom and about ~$20,000 of loans I would have to take out later was not worth access to the lab, library and Mess hall. So I contacted the job I had been working with over the summer and was able to get hired on to replace someone who was retiring as the Caretaker/Manager of a NYS DEC Campground a job that pays about the same as the mid level as the major I was looking at once Provided housing and cost of living in the Adirondacks vs Silicon Valley was factored in. And so Dropped out at the end of my first semester of college and ending up with a well paying steady job after dropping out of High School and College Before I was even 18 (the rest of my High-school class has not even graduated yet).
Anyways, that is a lot of preamble for my question.
I keep reading everywhere in the news about how bad the student loan “Crisis” is, and how people are graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt at outrageous interest rates. I have looked far and wide and I have yet to find a reason why these people, who where smart enough for college, were stupid enough to take these loans. Why would ANYONE sign up for a loan with more than a 25% (or even 15%) interest rate? Or get a loan that they should know they won’t be able to pay off? I know my case of not having any loans for a private university is rare (Having my parents being unemployed helped) But I know for a fact that even if you are a straight “C” student as long as your family makes less than $75k a year in NYS between FAFSA and other programs you can attend a SUNY (Public) University essentially free. (Another thing, why do people want free collage when we already have it) Basically how do people get themselves into such horrible situations? I don’t see how, assuming you’ve passed 8th grade math, its even possible to leave college with that much debt.
Again please excuse if I seem arrogant or ignorant, I would just really appreciate if someone could actually explain to me how this even happens?
SuperDropout