<p>I am a big supporter and believer of liberal arts degree. My daughter has done well in getting an internship with her BA degree, which probably will lead to a full time position after graduation. Her pay this summer will probably be higher than most of engineering students.</p>
<p>I am a CIO with a BA degree and no technical training. I credit my “success” in liberal arts education.</p>
<p>Re post #279: I think the interviewer was thinking that you should have some skin in the game before asking for free money. But I am sure that the interviewer also was referring to federally subsidized student loans (Stafford, Perkins) – and not expecting you to take private loans.</p>
<p>I think subsidized Stafford loans are fine. I fully expected both my kids to take the full amount of available subsidized loans before I was going to pay or borrow – why should I withdraw $5500 out of my bank account if my daughter can get that amount advanced to her with no interest charged while she is in school? </p>
<p>My d. has roughly $18K in subsidized loans and at her exit interview they told her to expect a monthly loan payment of a little over $200. She’s got a job to go to, so she will have roughly 4-5 months of pay checks before the first payments on her loans come due. If she’s smart, she’ll get a jump on it and set up an automated withdrawal from her checking account – and she should be able to keep up.</p>
<p>Here’s where I think the logic fails when people look at perceived value of their degree in terms of post-graduate education to determine how much they will borrow: When I bought my house, I did so with the assumption that real estate values in California would go up. I was young (~30 years old) so I could also reasonably assume that my earning capacity would go up as well. But I did not decide how much to borrow – and the bank did not decide how much to lend – based on what I though the house might be worth 10 or 20 or 30 years down the line. Nor did the bank want to know how much I might be earning at age 40 – that loan was written based on what I earned at the time I entered it. </p>
<p>Even if you go into a lender seeking a home improvement loan, they look at existing equity, not what the house will be worth after you complete the improvements.</p>
<p>Mom2collegekids: I was referring to “where I live” (Florida). Obviously, in other states it’s nearly impossible to attend a state school for free. Even here, the Bright Futures scholarship fund that is supplied by the Florida Lottery is being cut back. Future applicants may face different choices than those of the class of 2014; however, if you applied to UF, FSU, UCF, USF, etc. this year with a 3.5 and a 1270, you would wind up paying very little. Sorry for the confusion. </p>
<p>Calmom: Haha, you didn’t interview me, did you? “Skin in the game” was exactly the words the interviewer used. However, they did outline that they expected scholarship recipients to take the full amount of federal loans as well as a certain amount of private loans (not much, about $5000 max I think). It really wasn’t an applicable scholarship to my circumstances. </p>
<p>I think subsidized federal loans are fine, and most people I know took them out this year. However, there is still a “loans” culture and despite the good in-state options in Florida, I have one friend from quite a poor family attending UC Berkeley without any financial aid whatsoever (majoring in international studies) and one friend in his sophomore year at Penn State with $80,000 in loans already (geology major).</p>
<p>I agree that your friends are foolish to take on that type of debt. Unfortunately, they may run into a problem if private lenders are unwilling to lend more before they finish – I mean… let’s say that your friend at Penn State can’t get the funding for senior year – what will he (she?) do? </p>
<p>It is a shame given the many excellent public options in Florida. I know from experience that your UC Berkeley friends will find employment options limited in his (her?) field without a master’s degree. I’d surmise that an advanced degree would be pretty important to a geology major as well.</p>
<p>P.S. “skin in the game” is just the way we old folks talk. It’s one of those things hard wired into our brains.</p>
<p>Cortney’s made it to lead story on the yahoo home page. Hopefully with the publicity, she’ll land something to ease her situation.</p>
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<p>It’s also kind of a catchphrase in the higher education industry, sort of like “fit”, “reach”, “safety”, “Ivies” and “podunk”. Hang around here or any counselor’s office for most than a few moments and you’ll hear it at least 70 times. Basically, it means that you can’t be trusted to work hard in school unless you have taken out some sort of loan or part of your income to pay for it. Sort of like in high school, I guess.</p>
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<p>You can even see that same attitude here on this forum. A lot of people think that you do political science you have to become a political scientist (whatever that is); if you study English you have to become a writer; if you major in women’s studies you have to spend all your time lurking around in public parks taking photos of specimens (speciwomens?) to study. It also leads to assumption that, because the job named after your major is not highly in demand (philosophy, for instance), you have to work at Starbucks for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Yes, but who does write those inspiring little messages on the sides of the Starbucks cups? ;)</p>
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Not good publicity to have. </p>
<p>Some employers run credit checks as a way to screen out people. It’s not a good thing to present with too much or unmanageable debt, for a number of reasons.</p>
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<p>Slave labor in Azerbaijani sweatshops.</p>
<p>You asked! </p>
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<p>She might get a reality show on VH1. Can she pretend to be madly in love with Bret Michaels or Ray J? Maybe, but can she type?</p>
<p>@mythmom: The question is not whether a liberal arts degree is worth the paper it is printed on. Rather, we are debating whether it is worth large undergrad debt. I just don’t think so. Certainly, there are some high-salary jobs available with just a humanities BA. However, they are the exception and not the rule. On average, students in some disciplines earn more than others. They consequently are capable of taking on higher debt. These are facts.</p>
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<p>No, those are “hopes”. I’ve seen a lot of unemployed engineers and computer programmers in my life time, as well as quite a few unemployed stock brokers and bankers. IF the person gets employment post-college AND keeps that employment, then over time the salary prospects in a technical field CAN BE much higher. </p>
<p>I still think its a financial mistake to borrow against anticipate future assets, as opposed to present assets. It’s doubling the risk, kind of like investing on margin on the stock market. </p>
<p>In other words – in a tight job market, my d. with her BA and $18K worth of student debt is going to be able to weather hard times better than the BSE with $60K of debt. I’m not looking at the maximum earnings – I’m looking at the minimum. And an unemployed BSE doesn’t make any more money than an unemployed BA. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that in today’s world, there is a huge amount of competition in technical fields from overseas-- so it isn’t at all unusual for people with tech degrees to find that the companies they worked for, or wanted to work for, are outsourcing their jobs. You can’t premise educational goals in a vacuum that ignores potential market changes down the line.</p>
<p>Calmom,</p>
<p>As stated in my post, if I went back to school as an undergrad, then I would be eligible for an internship. At least part of my thinking is that going back to college would allow me to get that experience you say I am lacking.</p>
<p>I am simply suggesting that you try thinking outside the box, Tim.</p>
<p>Any person with unknown potential earnings who borrows $100,000 is thinking on some level they will not pay the money back. No matter how honest and responsible they claim to be, they are thinking internally that they will find a way to get out of repaying the loans. </p>
<p>Plenty of blame to go around. But no sympathy from me for the student who plans on someday finding a way to get out of her responsibilities.</p>
<p>I don’t think they are deliberately thinking that. I just think that they have a very unrealistic idea as to what post-graduated earning capacity is - and they haven’t taken the time to really do the math in terms of looking at what the loan payments will mean to their lives – plus they haven’t considered the impact of compounding interest in the private market. </p>
<p>Some people really simply function on on the rationale of don’t try to solve a problem today that can be put off until tomorrow. </p>
<p>I mean … its not as if college students are the only people in society who manage to get themselves overburdened with debt. The problem (for the students) is that the debts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.</p>
<p>I don’t think you give people enough credit. This lady was relatively intelligent and had to know her major was not going to lead to a paying job. She may not have known the details of compounding interest, but she surely knew she would never be able to pay back even the principle. </p>
<p>It’s good these loans are not dischargeable. Otherwise most students with a large debt would simply declare bankruptcy.</p>
<p>Debt slavery is slavery.</p>
<p>One reason we rebelled against England was debtor’s prisons.</p>
<p>Protecting the interests of corporations who make stupid decisions should not be a function of government.</p>
<p>Post #5: What is she waiting for? The bailout? </p>
<p>Yes. I have no doubt that’s on the horizon (my personal opinion).</p>
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<p>Please read post #286 above. Liberal arts majors do in fact expect to get jobs when they get out of college. They just are not so narrow-minded as to equate their education with a vocational program – they assume that there will be a wide range of opportunities open to them, in a variety of endeavors. </p>
<p>A $60K debt, in theory, is something that could be paid back on a mid-level salary, especially if the person opts to stretch out payments over 20 years. I make under $50K annually and am very comfortable with paying down a $200K debt over 15 years. Of course, that $200K debt happens to be my mortgage, so I don’t have to pay rent – but people who go to college do in fact expect to get jobs when they graduate. </p>
<p>I just think that youngsters have an unrealistic picture as to what the debt means. They may truly believe that it will be easy to pay out $750 a month for a loan on a $2500/month take home pay.</p>
<p>The mistake I made, thankfully to a lesser extent than the woman in this article, was not that I didn’t look at what the loan payments would be or what my salary might be, but that I didn’t look up what phone bill, car insurance, groceries, etc would be. Without that additional step, knowing you’ll have $800/mo loan payments doesn’t do you any good. I was really only thinking about rent and groceries, the rest I figured was not that much, and it isn’t, but all those little bills add up and at 18 I didn’t even know how many of those little bills there were. I didn’t realize exactly how much all those little things add up to until I did the math after I already took out the loans. I make no excuses. I was just young and stupid. At 18 I knew how to balance a checkbook, I knew how to set and follow a budget, i knew how to calculate compound interest and all that, and I had thought to look up how much housing would cost me, but for whatever reason it didn’t occur to me that six different “small” bills a month add up and then that 800/mo is a bigger problem. It just wasn’t on my radar. And I want to say that it never occurred to me that I would somehow get out of paying the loans. I knew I couldn’t declare bankruptcy. When I took out the first loan nobody I knew had even thought the idea of a student loan bailout. I was prepared to do whatever it took to make the payments because my parents cosigned and if I didn’t pay I was afraid they’d lose their house. That doesn’t make my decisions any less stupid, but I did have good intentions when I did this. I just didn’t have the knowledge or the maturity at the time to handle this appropriately. I thought I could afford it, even having looked at the loan terms thoroughly and calculated the interest, and I misjudged. I did not think, even in my wildest imagination, that I would somehow get out of paying this and therefore it was okay to take out so much. I thought I would have more money per month than was realistic.</p>
<p>On the other hand, though, once I realized my mistake I went way too far in the other direction and thought I would be living in squalor the next 20 years. My fiance and I have been doing some major number crunching and it looks like we can actually live the lifestyle I wanted anyway, making my loan payments every month and even having money to put into savings. We’ll have to live frugally, but we’re not extravagant people and now we HAVE done the math and it looks like with some discipline we’ll be okay. Some of my posts regarding my debt have been pretty dismal so I figured I’d throw that in!</p>