Student Loans and Career Occupational Choices

Parents Forum
1

<p>National Bureau of Economic Research findings in the wake of highly selective university "no-loans" policies suggest students do not follow the standard life-cycle model and are averse to borrowing against future earnings: </p>

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the presence of debt... causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose low-paid "public interest" jobs. We also find some evidence that debt affects students' academic decisions during college. ... We find suggestive evidence that debt reduces students' donations to the institution in the years after they graduate and increases the likelihood that a graduate will default on a pledge made during her senior year; ...

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<p><a href="http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13117%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13117&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>Forgot to include the full title of the study: "Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early Career Occupational Choices"</p>

3

<p>Attention grabbing title that one is not. More yawn inducing reading material: two other studies out on the state of education. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education's random survey of parents "Squeeze Play: How Parents and the Public Look at Higher Education Today" concludes that while "college is perceived as more necessary than ever before, it is also perceived as less available" because of rising costs and heavy loan burdens and that "most Americans reject many of academia’s conventional ideas about quality and the relationship of cost and quality."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.highereducation.org/reports/squeeze_play/index.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.highereducation.org/reports/squeeze_play/index.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The National Center for Education Statistics' Report on The Condition of Education and update of </p>

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indicators focus on participation and persistence in education, student performance and other measures of achievement, the environment for learning, and resources for education. In addition, this year's volume contains a special analysis that examines changes in student coursetaking in high school using national transcript data from 1982 to 2005.

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<p><a href="http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/index.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/index.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

4

<p>In our case, the issue seems to be stated a little backwards. It's not that My S chose his future career based on the need to earn enought to repay student loans, it's that he wouldn't have considered going to a school where he had to get a loan in the first place if he didn't think his chosen career would allow him to earn enough repay the loan.</p>

<p>It's a pretty basic, simple economic decision after all. Under what conditions is it ratinal to borrow $120,000 to get a BA in English (picking on English only because of the "Avenue Q" song on the subject, of course.)?</p>

5

<p>Strick11--your son's way is the way one SHOULD approach the problem.</p>

6

<p>Of course, many kids really don't know what career they will end up with when they are in high school. Heck, I have a rising senior in college who doesn't know what her future will bring.</p>