- Premed ~ particularly for an OOS public- even if it's a UC (edit: fixed it for me...especially if it's a UC OOS).
- Prelaw
- NYU
- All or nearly all engineering programs, including biomedE
- Education degrees
- Nursing degrees
- MOST degrees....but especially: theater, film, psych, biology, sports mgmt, and marketing.
Generally agree on ALL degrees, but I have made a pretty good pile of money with a marketing degree.
- A degree at a school that has an enormous endowment, but gives little financial aid.
@intparent 
Not saying that it’s not a useful degree. It’s not worth going into big debt. With your brains and talents, you probably would have still made piles of cash even if you had gone someplace w/o big loans.
Haha! I find there is often disdain out here for general business or marketing degrees. But most jobs are in business one way or another. I think the job prospects of someone with business knowledge is much higher than someone without it. I just don’t lump it with the most low paying majors. Here is the Payscale list – marketing comes in at a respectable 46.
http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/majors-that-pay-you-back
In the same vein of premed also any pre-professional program like pre-pharmacy, pre-dental, pre-PA, etc where you will have to borrow substantial amount for professional program even if it’s not as much as med school.
@STEM2017 8 = NYU
@mom2collegekids: You should publish an annual top 100 list, like USNWR!
Would it help to define “large amounts” of money? Sometimes I wonder if these kids have any perspective at all on what’s considered a large debt. Are we talking about anything greater than the maximum Stafford loan amounts?
Accounting (as distinguished from general business) is another one like engineering where pedigree doesn’t matter much.
Prestige does matter for the “more useless” degrees (I was a psych major, and that’s about as useless as it gets!), in that a useless degree from Big Name School will have better prospects than a useless degree from Podunk Directional. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/02/if-you-major-in-stem-it-doesnt-matter-where-you-go-to-college/
“Large Amounts of Money” Well, for illustrative purposes, if you borrow a total of $50k at 7% interest and pay it back over 120 months:
Monthly Loan Payment: $580.54
Cumulative Payments: $69,665.22
Total Interest Paid: $19,665.22
It is estimated that you will need an annual salary of at least $69,664.80 to be able to afford to repay this loan. This estimate assumes that 10% of your gross monthly income will be devoted to repaying your student loans. This corresponds to a debt-to-income ratio of 0.7. If you use 15% of your gross monthly income to repay the loan, you will need an annual salary of only $46,443.20, but you may experience some financial difficulty. This corresponds to a debt-to-income ratio of 1.1.
Source: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml
Funny aside, I didn’t mean to, but in this example the total cumulative payments is almost exactly what the calculator says you need for an annual income. Is your favorite school worth a year’s salary? Actually, I think it could be yes or no; it’s too subjective for the CC Greek chorus to determine for all.
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You should publish an annual top 100 list, like USNWR!
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Ha!
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Would it help to define “large amounts” of money? Sometimes I wonder if these kids have any perspective at all on what’s considered a large debt. Are we talking about anything greater than the maximum Stafford loan amounts?
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As for defining what a large amount of debt is…
Well, it depends. Some think the rule of thumb should be 'no more than the annual salary of your first job," but the problem with that is:
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many young folks assume that they’ll be earning a lot more than they actually will.
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many 17/18 years, who are making these loan decisions, are assuming that they’re going to be engineers, programmers, or some other highish paying career, and think it’s ok to proceed with bigger debt, only to get weeded out quickly, changing majors, and beginning a career that pays far less. The high school senior (or cosigning parent) who thinks it’s safe to borrow $10k-20k per year because they believe the future grad will be walking into a $75k+ per year job, may be in a for a painful surprise when the student ends up on a different path and the first job pays $40k…or less!
So, the total federal Direct Loan amount ($27k total), is probably the best threshold, unless the student should borrow even less because s/he knows s/he’s heading for a lowish paying entry salary (theater, film-making, preschool teacher, etc).
I don’t even like the Perkins loan amounts being pkg’d in because those students are graduating with (often) more than $30k of debt. … and, those who have parents who are Plus-declined, are graduating with an additional $18k…so that means some could be graduating with about $50k in federal loans. :eek: 
(I know a 28 year old grad in child development with such debt. She hasn’t been able to pay one cent back on her $50k of federal loans)
Another problem is that young people don’t usually have a good grasp in regards to “living expenses,” since others have usually been paying for their food, insurance, cell phones, shelter, utilities, and so forth. And, they usually haven’t been paying much in taxes. They hear the words, “$50k salary,” and they think they will actually be taking home that much. It’s easy for them to think, “If I have to pay $12k in loan payments each year, I’ll still have $38k to live on.”
But really, the motivation for this thread has come from seeing many new threads from underfunded students asking if it’s ok to borrow large amounts for X school and for Y major. That said, the ones who are expecting their parents to live on peanut butter sandwiches or raid their 401ks are no better.
This this this.
It’s not their fault; they’ve been living at home and so much of their expenses have been covered that they don’t even know about. We parents can try to explain, but it just doesn’t sink in until you’re there. Ever tried to get kids to turn off lights or take shorter hot showers?
Gratifying parental moment- kid sees first paycheck at a real job and sees how much “free” benefits cost.
Gratifying parental moment- kid has first doctor’s appointment off of Mom’s health insurance.
Gratifying parental moment- kid fills prescription after that doctor’s appointment.
It was ok after that… but the sticker shock did more than 22 years of living in my home and us trying to instill fiscal responsibility. Kid- “mom, have you really been paying for disability insurance all these years?” Mom- “what the hell do you think would have happened to you kids if I got hit by a bus and couldn’t work anymore AND needed full time nursing care?”
I’ve seen prudent use of educational debt (I tripled my salary when I finished graduate school… so my grad loans were definitely “worth it” and had a very high ROI) and I’ve seen moronic use of educational debt (kids with lackluster interest in getting an education, no particular intellectual interests, parents taking out a second mortgage and kid borrowing to the max in the hopes that he’ll get “inspired” once at pricey college). Reality for most people is likely in the middle- SOME debt is likely worth it for SOME kids.
Apocryphal story - upon seeing their first paycheck a new adult asks “Who is FICA and what is he doing with my money??”
Erin’s Dad- agree 100%. Especially since kid’s first job was “managerial” and not eligible for overtime. So the first paycheck- his take home pay, divided by the number of hours (a lot) meant he’d made more money doing odd jobs at age 14 than in a professional role!
Mom smiles.
But NYU is my dream school…
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No, they do not. My new grad has a really small amount of debt (took the direct loan her last year) and she’s STILL less than thrilled that the under $100 a month she has to pay isn’t available for (fill in the blank).
A couple was just on Dave Ramsey’s show - she did a MBA and then did a PA school - so they had $180,000 in school debt with $1800/mo minimum debt payments - and they were disgusted by those payments, so very motivated to get out of debt. They lived in a parents’ basement for two years, she found a weekend work assignment (so worked 6 or 7 days a week, including a 20 day stretch of working every day) and paid it off in two years - no nail appts or getting hair done extra, removing all temptation with on-line shopping (she was too busy working). They ate cheap - home made vegetarian chili every night…
Another couple moved down from apt to renting a trailer, H worked all the overtime he could (he could work unlimited OT) - they had about $70,000 in school loans. Very motivated.
Students do not realize the stress owing money is going to have when they graduate and have to continue to live very frugally due to the debt. Plus maybe needing to take on extra jobs and delaying many things due to no money.
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No, they do not. My new grad has a really small amount of debt (took the direct loan her last year) and she’s STILL less than thrilled that the under $100 a month she has to pay isn’t available for (fill in the blank)
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I’m not surprised. Can you imagine if the payments were $700+ a month…for 10 LONG years. Each month, the person is going to be thinking, "that’s $700+ that could be going towards (savings, a car, a home, a vacation, etc). "
No way is the person thinking, “it’s ok. I don’t mind paying $700+ per month…year after year…because I got to go to my dream school.”