<p>'A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College' -NYTimes</p>
<p>Is it still worth it with all the money it costs?</p>
<p>Dr Shaq thinks so.
[Shaquille</a> O’Neal receives doctoral degree in education - ESPN](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7895681/shaquille-oneal-receives-doctoral-degree-education]Shaquille”>Shaquille O'Neal receives doctoral degree in education - ESPN)</p>
<p>Here is how the article starts,
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<p>College is worth it, however, no college is worth 120K in debt for undergrad, let alone Ohio Northern University. </p>
<p>Our rule of thumb was that if our son could not graduate with less than 20K in debt, it was not the right college for him. </p>
<p>I vote that college is worth it but you have to be smart about debt.</p>
<p>Well… I guess it depends on what kind of person you are and your particular situation. </p>
<p>Some people believe in high-class education, and they’re willing to pay the hefty pricetag. And if it gets them an edge in their chosen career field or if they’re submerged in a highly-competitive job market, maybe it IS worth it. After 10 years of making 100+k a year, that 120k debt will have just been a minor investment.</p>
<p>However, there are some that view the quality and price of education as interconnecting factors. This is true for all types of people, but some use it to their advantage. Why spend 25k a year at the top school that offers you no scholarships when you can go to school #11 in the state that offers you a full ride? Does it even matter how you get to where you want to go? Isn’t medicine the same everywhere? </p>
<p>There are quite a few different successful ways to think about college, and it’s all circumstantial on what the graduate amounts to and how they choose to get there. For some people who get that 120k a year job, it is worth it. For those who have little debt and make a comfortable 50k a year, it’s also worth it. But for those who are neck-high in debt with no promise of a job, perhaps it’s not. If they’re debt-free yet jobless, perhaps it evened out and doesn’t even matter. </p>
<p>It’s a very complex and diverse question and answer. :)</p>
<p>It is worth it as long as you don’t go into great debt. I think no debt over 50k for Ivy to top 30 college. No debt over 30k for top 100 and above. All the rest for should be no debt or debt under 20k. If you can live at home and pay nothing for 3 to 4 years after graduation, then you might be able to go higher. I don’t know anyone that has come out of college making over 100k the first year. I am sure anyone making over 100k their first year out of college with a BS/BA doesn’t even have a loan. Usuaully anyone like that has connections or money already.</p>
<p>The answer: YES.</p>
<p>Especially if the hard-working student received substantial grants, making the entire cost of college less than the cost of mid-priced automobile.</p>
<p>College is worth it; these articles always show the extremes. Even the NYT itself stated that the average indebtedness is about $24,000 and 90% of students owe less than $54,000 a year. Yet every personal story they spotlighted in this article was about someone who owed over $60K in loans. Truth is, most students borrow manageable amounts of student loan debt and pay it off within 10 years of graduating.</p>
<p>Debt is a POSITIVE, making the student value the education more.
Simple human nature.</p>
<p>I would say it depends on the student the field they want to study and the ability of the family to provide for their costs. For the kid who wants to party for four years while eeking out a 2.0 studying sociology and having to borrow nearly every penny to attend probably not. The child who succeeded in high school, gets good merit aide, studies engineering and get good grades in demanding classes and borrows a minimum amount of money the answer is a resounding yes. I think there are a lot of high school kids who would be better served by going into the trades, the military or putting off college for a few years to mature.</p>
<p>Who in the world would go $120k in debt to go somewhere like Ohio Northern University??? I think they would have almost no debt at all and just of a good education if they went somewhere like Ohio State instead. Ridiculous. It isn’t even costing that much money for my family to send me somewhere traditionally considered expensive like Vanderbilt. Someone and their parents should’ve made a better decision.</p>
<p>He wanted to play football.</p>
<p>Really, really badly.</p>
<p>His financial aid counselor suggested that he not attend there.</p>
<p>But he wanted to play football.</p>
<p>Really, really badly.</p>
<p>He showed up to camp with his gear.</p>
<p>And he didn’t get a football scholarship.</p>
<p>Love this quote:</p>
<p>Ms. Griffith, a marketing major. “I knew a private school would cost a lot of money. But when I graduate, I’m going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that.” </p>
<p>No one told me that? </p>
<p>Dear, you majored in a field that has a required business curriculum core. You should have been able to figure out what it would cost to service your deferred debt. Honestly, the real problem here, it sounds to me, is that she didn’t learn to think critically at any point along the way including but not limited to racking up all that debt to get a 4-year degree.</p>
<p>I tell peopel all the time, including my kids, you will find out how much you learned in college the minute you step off campus with the degree. Some people learn how to solve problems and think in college and others don’t.</p>
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<p>I agree. College is worth it, but it’s not worth super high amounts of debt. One has to choose carefully. If one can only go with high amounts of debt, then either taking some time off to work/improve applications or starting at cc is a better, less-costly option.</p>
<p>I include trade schools (mentally) with college. I suppose I’m thinking post high school education. Find your niche and be sure the numbers work out in real life with a real budget.</p>
<p>It is worth it if you’re willing to study hard and get good grades and major in a field where you can actually get a job that requires a college degree. Graduating in journalism, history, english, liberal studies, art history, or some other obscure area of study where there are few, if any jobs is a very poor decision. Especially if you have to borrow any money, and don’t have a job waiting when you graduate (relative’s firm, your own business, etc.) </p>
<p>Now, if you plan to go onto grad school, law school, then your undergrad field is not as important. If grad school is not in your future, then you still need to graduate with top grades, because companies have a lot of people to choose from and many have more experience than recent college grads, and many also have graduate degrees along with this experience. </p>
<p>But to go to college and graduate with more than $10,000 in student debt, and an avg. GPA of less than 3.0 and no plans to go to grad school – then more than likely you’ll be making coffee at starbucks, peddling insurance, real estate, or some other job where you do not need a college degree. And college loans cannot be eliminated in bankruptcy. The fees and delinquency charges are ridiculously exorbitant! </p>
<p>So choose wisely, and if you aren’t really good in math and science, and have no plans to go to grad school, then I hope you have lots of grants and scholarships so you can graduate with no student loan debt.</p>
<p>Counterpoint: Carl Icahn, a philosophy major.</p>
<p>Probability of being next Icahn–1 in 100,000,000. Likelihood of getting decent job with accting or engineering degree and going from there–4.5 out of 5.</p>
<p>It’s worthwhile to go to college if you can graduate with little or no student debt. If you need to take on more than $10K in student debt, I believe you are being financially irresponsible. This is especially true if you decide to major in art, english, philosophy (you get the picture). I’m one of those people who believes that college should prepare you for a solid career.</p>
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<p>There isn’t a perfect correspondence between what you do in college and what you do after. A major doesn’t restrict you from certain career paths nor guarantee a particular career. </p>
<p>There are plenty of out of work engineers, too. The minute you get your diploma in a technical subject, it becomes worthless unless you constantly update your knowledge base. Computer codes change constantly, new discoveries are made in chemistry and biology, etc. Try getting a job today with your “practical” technical degree where you learned about computers with punch card. Remember when the dot-com bubble burst and a plethora of out of work techies?</p>
<p>Major in what you want. If you like engineering, go for it. Same with English, philosophy, or anything else. Unless you’re going into engineering or medicine, you’ll learn what you need on the job, since most jobs don’t require specific knowledge before you start. If you need more education, your employer will pay for you job (well, would pay, now that there’s a crisis and all…). A liberal arts education that teaches you to think critically, communicate clearly, understand presented material quickly, learn effectively, think creatively, solve problems, and be interesting will always be valuable. There are plenty of business and engineering majors who are the smartest people in the world, but who can’t string two words of English together even though it’s their native language.</p>
<p>I think people should major in whatever they want, but they have to adjust their expectations in line with their capabilities. For instance, I don’t think an English major should ever go $50k into debt, especially at a not very well school. If English or whatever is really your passion but you don’t have very many financial resources available, you might want to go to community college first and then transfer. Unfortunately, there are lot of people like in the NYT article who get into a ton of debt for schooling that might be a little better compared to a much cheaper state school. I think one of the worst cases I’ve read about is that one woman decided to go to Parsons for her MFA at a cost of $40k per year instead of SUNY Stony Brook for $10k. I too would prefer to go to Parsons over Stony Brook if I could, but I also know that Parsons graduates don’t earn four times as much as Stony Brook students do.</p>
<p>smorgasbord, reading your post reminded me of all the hot-shot COBOL programmers who I helped put out of work in the middle 90s with my Visual Basic skills; and how all the hot-shot Java programmers did the same thing to me a half dozen years later. I agree completely with you - skills don’t age well; the ability to think critically and deal with ambiguity that a good liberal arts education provides will last a lifetime.</p>