<p>There are far too many second-, third- and fourth-rate colleges gapping students who really can’t afford to go there. MANY of those students end up racking up debt and never graduating. (CCs are guilty of this, too, as we have seen in the past.) We need a major shakeout in the business of higher education. If lower-tier private colleges without the financial resources to adequately finance enough students disappear, so be it. As a society, we should put resources into public education from the ground up, including excellent vocational education and apprenticeships.</p>
<p>I think that the circumstances are VERY rare in which a student and family should take out this kind of debt–possibly in circumstances when an influx of cash at a certain time is certain, through trusts, for example. It is difficult to imagine that any lender would lend this kind of money to them. I can only assume that the student’s parents put up their home equity as collateral. I hope it is enough to cover it. The idea of not only students becoming virtual indentured servants to their loans, and/or the impoverishment of the entire family, is simply not acceptable.</p>
<p>And yes, this student–if he really exists, and was not made up to serve the political uses of the article–AND his parents are idiots. I feel very sorry for them.</p>
<p>From the Goucher website:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Note that they don’t say how much of that is loans.</p>
<p>If this young person graduated in 2012, then it is most likely that he was looking at colleges in 2006 and 2007, and applied in the fall of 2007 or spring of 2008. I fully remember the “Oh, heck you can take out a loan or get a HELOC for that expensive college your kid wants to attend, after all only the best for our kids, right?” attitude of many, many posters here in the Parents Forum in the spring of 2008. Encouraging moderation led to accusations of being a bad or unloving parent or outright flaming. All that changed in the summer and fall of 2008 as the financial crisis became felt.</p>
<p>To blame a young person, and his family, for following advice that they were given when he was applying to college is wrong. Yes, they weren’t very smart about the money. So were a lot of others. And, a great deal of encouragement for that kind of not smartness came from adults just like those who were posting here in the spring of 2008. A more valuable contribution would simply to be to help that kid find a job so that he can pay down his loans and so that he can help his parents pay down the share of those loans that certainly must be theirs.</p>
<p>I repeat, this student chose to attend Goucher.</p>
<p>The total annual costs of attending the undergraduate program at Goucher College for 2012-2013:
Tuition and Fees: $37,640
Room and Board (on campus): $10,864
Books and Supplies: $800</p>
<p>Total: $49,304</p>
<p>University of Maryland, Maryland Residents (In-state):
Total Academic Year Cost
Tuition $ 7,175
Mandatory Fees (includes Tech fee), maximum charged to all students registered for 9 or more credits 1,733
Board (Resident Dining Plan) 3,975
Room (Includes Telecom fee) 5,918</p>
<p>We all know that there have been recent political efforts to make colleges and universities more responsible for producing employable graduates. In NC the governor spoke about changing funding criteria for universities from “butts in seats” to “employed graduates” and in Florida a bill is proposed to require the release of stats showing salaries by major. Just be aware that newspaper articles are sometimes designed to reinforce political agendas. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated. </p>
<p>OK, disclaimer aside, I have always been highly critical and wary of student loan debt, and it is easy to call a young person “stupid” for taking it on, but if you start out with a $10,000 loan your freshman year, and costs increase every year, and perhaps grants are cut back, and it becomes a $15,000 loan the next year, and $25k your junior year, do you expect a student to drop out when it becomes to expensive to continue? This is a very common human failing. Once you have that much invested in obtaining your degree, you feel you have to continue, even if that means borrowing $30,000 for you senior year. It is similar to waiting in line for 3 hours. If you told me I would have to wait 3 hours I would say no way and leave. But after investing in a 2 hour wait I feel obligated to stick around… for another 1, then 2, then 3 hours… What? You waited for FIVE hours? You must be crazy!</p>
<p>happymom, if he entered Goucher in 2008 with unrealistic financial expectations, it is safe to assume that he did not borrow the entire $100K the first year. He could have exited to a state alternative at any point and avoided most of the debt. And since Goucher was instate for him, and not an elite school, he would not have experienced such a huge difference in setting and education.</p>
<p>I think the Wall Street Journal ought to be compelled to give this young man a job, after portraying him this way. He will probably have an even tougher time finding a job now that his lack of good judgment has been brought to light.</p>
<p>Good point, consolation. My D entered a private U in 2008, and one of her room mates withdrew after a year and a half to go to a less expensive alternative. </p>
<p>I don’t agree that the family would be blameless if they followed bad advice on an internet forum.</p>
<p>There is so much about this situation that I don’t understand.</p>
<p>-- how did an 18 yo get a loan of this size. Did the parents put up their house as collateral?
– can the student “refinance” the loan and get a lower interest rate?
– where is Goucher in all of this? Why isn’t the school helping this young man find a job.</p>
<p>I’d like to see these schools drop all the aid and give us the real rate/cost of attending. I think that would change the minds of many prospective students.</p>
<p>I would not call his parents “idiots”. Who knows who they are, what challenges they have had, what the circumstances were. </p>
<p>I know a wonderful, wonderful woman who is no idiot who had some very tough breaks, did not go through this system herself, whose daughter got into a competitive and pricey program that would have resulted in a great job at good pay, had she stuck with it. They felt it was an investment in her future. And, you know, had she been accepted at a school with a name that had some lustre to them, even without such a program, they would have done the same. That it was and still is positioned in a way that it is giving your child an opportunity, to borrow to go to some school or program is always going to attract people. </p>
<p>I do agree that they made foolish financial decisions. They took risks and they did not pan out just as one does with any number of risks. Families bought homes with low interest rates and easy credit, and yes, it did not pan out too many times and there was loss. But without a tangible asset to take, as in a home, what does one do? Take ones’ first born? I agree that the this whole student loan thing is heading no where good and will be causing of anguish, not to mention cutting down true opportunities to future low income students when the time comes that the well runs dry with too many defaults. So what to do? I’m looking for solutions here. Those persons involved are often miserable enough. My friend is in dire, dire straits. If it’s punishment one wants, she and her family are being terribly punished. It isn’t getting the loan repaid and the interest is still accruing.</p>
<p>" If it’s punishment one wants, she and her family are being terribly punished."</p>
<p>I love the above. I just had the conversation with a friend of mine. He said he wants people to be punished for failure so they work harder, won’t quit, will just keep at it.</p>
<p>People do fail. Successful people have failed too. I don’t get the punishment aspect.</p>
<p>^^ No, Goucher is a small, private college in the Baltimore area. It was once a women’s college but is co-ed (still has more women than men, I believe). It is ranked 110 in US News for liberal arts, admits about 3/4 of its students, is SAT optional I believe but tends to have decent students (most kids I know who were accepted had SATs in the mid to high 500s). It is listed in the book Colleges That Change Lives and is known for its internship program.</p>
<p>If anything, this is where the student was failed. A college within commutable distance to DC should have given plenty of internship opportunities for a poli. sci. major which should normally convert to a job.</p>
<p>Agentninetynine, what happened with my friend’s daughter is that the family was undergoing a divorce and the assets, income and credit were up in the air when she was accepted to a good school in a great program. It was one of the very few good things to have hit the family in years, that she graduated from high school and got into some great colleges. I blame her independent school, an elite one where she and her sister were on scholarship to a large degree, and do not hesitate to call them idiots as those counselors did not do their jobs, and is a reason that I do not hold most schools’ college counseling staff in much esteem. I’ve seen too much of this sort of thing. But.yes, it is the parents, and the students who were 18 and fully adults (except for college financial aid and drinking alcohol and a few other details) who are ultimately fully responsible for these decisions and consequences.</p>
<p>Parent denied PLUS, so the kid got extra Stafford which means about $11K a year in loans, which comes to $45K, really more with accrued interest right there. Some Perkins in the mix. ,maybe or some state program, and we are talking $50K right there. Still didn’t make the mark so, mom cosigns some private loan at astronomical interest rates and lousy terms since the credit is not good. That puts mom and kid both on the hook. Those loans have interest accruing from the get go and at higher rates than the PLUS which are no bargains either. Get a load of the PLUS interest rates, and you can see that taking $10K of those out each year can bring up the amount owed very quicly. So, she had over $90K upon graduation with interest and that was some years ago. I think she may ahave taken an extra semester, gone on some trip on her loan money that was offered by the school. And now no one is working and making anything over poverty level. Living for free in a friends house on food stamps and very little money. Coffee shop and part time whatever one can find work for both mom and DD, and there are minor kids involved. So how the heck are they going to start paying on those loans? Plenty of faulty and stupidity and bad judgement here, and we can berate as much as we want, but the bottom line is how we get the money repaid, the credit straightened out so that this family does not stay the welfare statistic that is has become. These are not criminals or drug addicts or anyone with issues that would hurt being gainfully employed and contributing a lot to society and community (which, by the way, they are doing despite their circumstances). They are in financial trouble and can’t come up with a way out, and no one seems to have any ideas. So what to do? Beat them? Jail them? They’ve already been ham strung in terms of a number of job opportunities simply because of their credit record. So what to do?</p>
<p>The question is how to solve the problem. There have been no solid answers at the time. Goucher is an excellent school. It was once an elite all women college, that has now gone coed. It’s has one of the most beautiful campuses I have seen, and is right around the corner to downtown Towson which offers quite a bit too. The curriculum is fantastic. It enjoys a good reputation in Baltimore, I know, and has great affiliation with Johns Hopkins and programs there. It’s a wonderful school. </p>
<p>But it is very expensive, does not meet full need, and yes, is one of those schools that were on shaky ground financially, and may still be in trouble especially if loans and other federal aid to it should be cut. And I am a firm advocate of cutting such aid to private schools. If a private school is not strong enough to survive without government financial aid, for undergraduate attendees that it cannot come up with the awards itself or lend the money itself from its own coffers, ti deserves to fail. Let that money, enough to get kids in trouble financially, go to state programs so that those are far more attractive and give more kids the opportunity to go to college with less debt. Let schools like Goucher have the debt if they want kids to “invest” in them. They should “invest” in the kid too. And I say this as an admirer of the school and the program. I love Goucher. But it does not deserve government aid, any more that Johns Hopkins does. Let them each come up with the money for their accepted kids to attend, and if the school can’t make it work then it’s time to close the doors. Maybe that will stimulate the alumni, and Goucher has some esteemed alums to cough up enough to make it work. Or let Hopkins buy the school as it has been interested in doing so for years–the cost of running those danged shuttles round the clock between those campuses over all of these years alone could have made a nice dent in the expenses, and make it into the law school they’ve been talking about and a secondary campus.</p>
<p>No, it’s not like Phoenix. It’s a former women’s college in the suburbs of Baltimore. Not one of the “Seven Sisters”, but the same basic idea, and formerly an academic peer of those colleges. I grew up thinking that it was the women’s college of Johns Hopkins, like Barnard to Columbia, Radcliffe to Harvard, Pembroke to Brown, but it was never part of Johns Hopkins University. (Until the 1950s, it was physically adjacent to Hopkins.)</p>
<p>It remained a women’s college through the first wave of co-education, but started admitting men in the mid-80s (and has struggled since to admit enough men to make it a truly co-educational college). It has probably suffered a more precipitous decline in prestige over the past 40 years than any similar college (which of course doesn’t mean the decline is justified, or that the college has nothing to offer today). It has gotten a reputation for extreme artsiness, but not perhaps with the same success or intellectual energy that one finds at peers like Bard, Skidmore, or Sarah Lawrence.</p>
<p>cpt, I think the problem is solved family by family. In your friend’s case, it seems like the student could do public service, perhaps look into Americorps or Vista, to repay or forgive some of the student loans. I do not think there’s an easy solution to the parent’s loans.</p>