I’m slightly baffled by his statement that going to UW-Madison wouldn’t have saved him a lot of debt because UW was only about $11k per year in 2003. Given the amount of debt he had, the cost difference between Connecticut College minus grants and UW must have been quite substantial. Even if he took 5 years to graduate at UW, he would have saved a ton of money compared to four at CC.
Parents with poor financial planning skills raised a kid with the same poor financial planning skills?
^
And apparently took out huge private loans in his name without telling him. How would that even work?
Well, apparently he did not read what he was signing.
Yes. It just baffles me that someone would do that without talking to their kid about it first.
“I’m slightly baffled by his statement that going to UW-Madison wouldn’t have saved him a lot of debt because UW was only about $11k per year in 2003.”
And, of course, UW-Madison was by far the most expensive in-state option. I’m not saying it’s an intellectual adventure to stay at home and go to UW-Stevens Point or whatever, but it’s a choice.
I think Penn should be embarrassed to have admitted someone who thinks paying $70k for one year and thus getting into a join in a field that pays $40k-50k per year would be smarter than going to school for free for 2 years (and earning money working for Penn at the same time).
I also don’t think all those loans ‘at’ Conn. College were a surprised to him. His grandmother co-signed. Did she go up to the college? I think not. I think they were private loans signed at a private bank.
This dude is crying a river because he bought a big screen TV he couldn’t afford…
Trying to place the blame for his and his parents’ poor planning and unwillingness to make hard choices on “the system” is pretty pathetic. For instance, he rails at the fact that because his $100,000 private loans were co-signed by his grandmother they’ll go into default when she dies, then complains that the system strongly encouraged his and his parents’ poor financial choices. Umm, the fact that they needed Grandma to co-sign the loans was a clear signal the family could not afford them. Mom and Dad didn’t qualify. The fact that the author and his family did all they could to borrow as much as possible so he could attend pricey private undergrad and graduate schools is not anyone’s fault but their own. The author was even given a college exit interview in which the school reviewed his federal loans with him, yet a few months later he was taking out $70,000 in loans and ignoring an offer of a free part-time graduate degree.
Boo hoo. I’m grateful my mother taught me when I was about 12 not to sign anything I don’t understand.
How would he be required to pay back any loans he signed for at age 17 though? And I became a bit angry that he had his elderly grandmother co sign his graduate loans. Why? Did his parents finally refuse to cosign?
I just heard a radio story about a woman who racked up over $100K in loans at a for-profit college with the intention of becoming a probation officer, only to end up more or less jobless.
These stories are simply horrible.
At last he did not go to law school.
http://www.lstscorereports.com/national/ shows staggeringly high expected debt levels, but long-term-bar-passage-required employment rates disappointingly low in general (even the 14th highest law school’s long-term-bar-passage-required employment rate is only 81.1%, meaning 18.9% did not find such a job).
“Trying to place the blame for his and his parents’ poor planning and unwillingness to make hard choices on “the system” is pretty pathetic.”
Yes and no.
Do I have a lot of pity to spare for folks like this, especially middle-class ones? No, I have bigger pity fish to fry.
But do I think the system should allow this to happen? No way. It’s a reality that some portion of the population – let’s say 20% – will borrow every nickel they can under every circumstance they can. This guy, and all the people like him, hurt the economy that the careful people live in. He won’t be buying a house. He won’t be buying a new car. He probably won’t start a family until very late (if at all), so he won’t be buying baby needs or raising new workers.
He didn’t just make bad choices for himself; he’s hurting all of us. It would be much better if he’d been denied those private loans, had to go to UW-Milwaukee and work his way through Penn. Then he’d be a great contributor to the economy right now. We all lost out.
Whatever else the story might be, it is a useful cautionary tale. Given the high stakes involved, and some of the foolish questions I’ve read here on CC, I think it’s important to keep getting the word out.
Many such MA programs are designed to be cash cows for the Uni…
I suspect that there were more shenanigans. Wouldn’t the grandma’s cosigned signature have been “next to” or “above” or “below” where the student’s signature goes? Wouldn’t he have noticed Granny’s signature and wondered?
I wonder if the parents somehow forged his name on those private loan docs. I wonder if he’s ever gone back and looked at what he supposedly signed.
I know it’s possible, but it seems unlikely that the FA officer would have just said “sign her” w/o some sort of: Sign here for your $5500 student loan. Sign here for your $25k Sallie Mae loan.
I find it strange that he’s not more angry at his parents. They seem to have convinced him that they were all victims in some way.
@OspreyCV22 <<< And I became a bit angry that he had his elderly grandmother co sign his graduate loans. Why? Did his parents finally refuse to cosign? >>>>
You misread. His granny was the unknown co-signer of most of his ConnC undergrad loans. His grad loans were fed loans.
I’ve known about this story for a few days now. Each time I read it, I’m more suspicious that this student never saw/signed those private loan papers.
Anyone here take out Sallie Mae loans during that time period? Were the loans signed in the school’s FA office? Where and when did the co-signer sign?
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I already knew that I had about $70,000 in federal loans from Penn and some federal loans from Conn—but I had no idea I also owed $100,000 in Sallie Mae–serviced private loans.
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I was shocked. It turned out that my parents and Conn had had me ink them during my semesterly flurry of document-signing without discussing them with me. Now I was making $50,000 a year in an expensive region with close to $200,000 in loans. I was completely unfamiliar with the—at the time very limited—repayment options. It was a nightmare.
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My husband borrowed some private loans from Sallie Mae that his grandmother co-signed during this time period (2005-2008ish) They are indeed done in the financial aid office, not at a private bank. I don’t know the exact organization of the forms, but I do know that his grandmother did not have to be physically present - I think she must have signed the documents and sent them by mail to the office or something. Back in the mid-2000s they did look very much like regular financial aid documents and they were also a lot easier to get.
The author probably did actually sign them. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios: His parents told him not to worry, they’d help him pay it down. Or they discussed it and thought it was more important for him to fulfill his dreams of attending this private school than pulling him out to go to a public. Or - as he says in the article - he simply signed it without thinking about the amounts and how much they were piling up over time, or taking careful consideration of whether he’d be able to repay them. Then he just put them out of his mind. He wouldn’t be the first - I have quite a few friends who graduated around the same time as me (2008 +/- 3-4 years) who have astronomical debt relative to their salaries for this exact reason. They borrowed and borrowed and then when they graduated they started getting the letters in the mail with their totals, and that’s the first time they ever saw them altogether.
It seems so silly. My mom made very poor financial decisions when she was younger…and it’s for that reason that she told me to read everything I signed and to not trust anyone’s verbal explanations of what was going on. The idea of accidentally signing up for $200,000 worth of loans is baffling to me. Even the friends I cited above had a vague idea that they were going in really deep even if they didn’t know how much for, and some of them deliberately avoided knowing the full amounts - not so smart, but at least a deliberate choice.
And man, that friend…I have some close friends that I love. I would give them my blood, donate a kidney or bone marrow if they needed it…heck, I’m on the bone marrow registry, I’d give it to a stranger. But I certainly wouldn’t co-sign $100,000 in student loan debt for any friend, especially if they’ve already shown themselves to be barely able to keep up with the payments AND not the best at making great financial aid decisions. And potentially contemplating returning to do a PhD and defer the loans. Nope, nope, nope.
I’m also having a hard time believing he didn’t realize he was taking out private loans. I clearly remember being informed by the FA office that I was going to have to take out a GSL from a bank to help pay for my senior year at Penn when the Reagan administration eliminated the NDSL program. I was horrified that that one year’s loan was going to cost me the same amount as my previous three years’ combined because of the difference in interest rates between an NDSL and a GSL. I decided to go ahead with it because I was only a year away from graduation, but believe me, it gave me great pause. If I’d been a year younger and needed to fund two years at those rates, I would have had to drop out and complete my degree somewhere cheaper.
Fast forward 30+ years: My cousin’s daughter, born in Philadelphia but raised in FL, graduated from UCF with a BA in social work a few years ago. She came up to Philly to interview for Penn’s MSW program and was over the moon to be accepted into the program. (Her grandmother had gone to Penn, and the school is kind of revered in the family.) They referred her to the financial aid office who talked her through the financing process, which was going to require her taking on sizable debt. When she explained to the folks in the master’s program that she was torn between Penn and a fully-funded program at UCF, they pretty much told her that, as much as they’d love to have her, she’d be crazy to take on that kind of debt for an MSW. They encouraged her to accept UCF’s offer. So she did the prudent thing and passed on Dear Old Penn.
But, in contrast with the Slate writer, this is a young woman who had been raised not to live beyond her means. She and her brother both went to UCF instead of pricey privates because their parents leveled with them while they were still in HS that a FL public was what they could afford to pay for (thanks to Bright Futures).
She completed her master’s with flying colors, was offered a job right away in the field she was passionate about, and got married last year. I’m quite sure she is grateful not to be drowning in debt right now and that she wasn’t tempted to go into hock for the more prestigious degree.
“Ultimately, like many other enlightened countries that recognize education as a critical public good—foundational to the economy and a just society—we need to move toward free public education, including graduate school. Where will this money come from? Given the billions we spend on federal student loan programs and the disgusting amounts of money many college presidents and administrators make, I’m sure there’s plenty of money that could put us in the right direction. To start, we need more substantial efforts to refinance and forgive student debt. There are millions of people like me who would like to get on with their lives.”
I am embarrassed I live in a country that raises and nurtures this kind of person routinely now and gives them a voice to speak this kind of nonsense.