<p>
</p>
<p>There is more to NYC than Manhattan.</p>
<p>There are perfectly safe, affordable neighborhoods all over the five boroughs, some with convenient subway access.</p>
<p>Agreed. When my D shared an apartment in Brooklyn, it was 2700 shared three ways. She lived on less than half 45k, and seemed to enjoy life pretty well.</p>
<p>(for the first few years after H finished med/school and residency, we were paying off 1000 or more a month for loans, on less than 60K, for a family of four.)</p>
<p>Editâwhich is where my kids learned frugality.</p>
<p>Having perused rentals online in Hoboken recently for S1 as he contemplates where he will work, even 1 BR apts there are in the ~2500/mo range if one wants to be car-free (and the all the attendant hassles/expense) and within walking distance of the PATH train.</p>
<p>Yes, one can live in NYC on $45k/yr, but it will take roommates and serious economizing.</p>
<p>Strange as it may seem, 45k/year is the starting salary for a lot of new humanities Ph.Ds. I donât think her salary sounds all that uncompetitive for her academic background.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank you for saying that! </p>
<p>And what did this person expect with that masters degree?</p>
<p>Trapped? I think not. More like âmade a choice, now living with logical consequence.â</p>
<p>This thread confuses me. I have about 58k in student loan debt and make 31k a year⊠Iâm not quite entirely financially self-sufficient yet unfortunately, as you might have guessed, but I feel like I am close enough to making it work now that I could very easily make it work on 45k⊠thatâs low paying? I can see how it would be more difficult to live on that in New York than Detroit, but personally I have always been of the mindset that living in such high cost areas is a privilege and not a right⊠you can only âfollow the jobsâ where you can afford to liveâŠ</p>
<p>DD was remarking there was a whole industry of grad school programs for premeds whose undergrad GPA is low, so in exchange for 60K for a couple of years, they give the prospective med student a grad degree with a good GPA to make their application competitive.</p>
<p>My D has quite a few acquaintances who are in grad school to put off finding a job. That is fine for those whose parents are footing the bill (obviously the parents are fine with it), but some are racking up big bills. D chose to throw her hat in the job market ring, rather than take on debt. She is working at Starbucks at this point ⊠but living on her own without our financial assistance. She isnât saving money, but she doesnât owe money. Sooner or later, she will get a professional position. She can live on less & save for grad school ⊠or get an employer-paid grad degree ⊠or chose not to go to grad school. No matter what, she will have flexibility because she is not jumping into a big pile of debt.</p>
<p>This business of going back to school in the face of a very disappointing labor market is nothing new - </p>
<p>A few decades ago, lots of my classmates who could not make their undergraduate degrees work in the job market, or who were not happy in the dead-end jobs they found, returned to school for an additional degree or certification, and have been gainfully employed for decades since then. </p>
<p>Law school and teacher certification seemed to be the most popular options among people I knew. Some got an additional undergrad degree in a very different field. Many went back to school after spending a year or two floating around, unable to find work on a career track. Others settled for work that did not require a college degree.</p>
<p>One huge difference was that any debt they took on was more in line with the salary they could expect upon graduation, and tuition was more in line with middle-class income in the first place, so that fewer needed to borrow.</p>
<p>Of course, this also affects older workers re-entering the labor force after a period of unemployment. It used to be much less expensive to re-tool for a new job, and there seemed to be many, many more situations in which employers would pay for continuing education as a benefit.</p>
<p>As a grad school professor, Iâve also noticed another pattern that seems disturbing to me. Sometimes the students who are having trouble finding a job with a BA are the students who perhaps didnât do that well as undergrads and did not acquire the crucial skills which would make them employable (i.e. critical thinking, writing well, presentation skills). </p>
<p>These same students frequently go on and donât do well in a Masterâs degree program for the same reason that they didnât do well in undergrad, and still end up unemployed after the Masterâs degree. (And yes, there are graduate institutions that will take your money even if you didnât do well in undergrad and even if you donât have these skills.) These are the students who balk if you tell them to rewrite a paper because it doesnât have a thesis statement, and instead go out and find an easier course with an easier prof who requires less. As a grad professor, I can usually tell who shopped for easy courses as an undergrad â because it shows in grad school. They also tend to âshopâ on the grad level, and as a result end up not all that employable when they graduate.
These tend to be the students who want the piece of paper, not the education â and they may eventually end up with lots of pieces of paper and lots of debt, but no real skills. And there will always be people willing to take their money and sell them pieces of paper, so I have no idea how to stop this trainwreck.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Real easy - eliminate the easy money. If education loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, the diploma mills would dry up overnight. Even good schools like NYU would stop making unsecured loans immediately.</p>
<p>"Just remember that the cost of living in NYC is astronomical. "</p>
<p>-I am aware of that. My own S. has been living in NYC for around 15+ years. And again, it requires research/correct expectations/proper set of mind. It requires to be smart about your expances. If you cannot afford buying cheese, do not buy it - this type of âproper set of mindâ I have been there and we were living happily without cheese. However, if people want to still maintain certain level of living standards, then even 1mln/year income might not be enough to repay a student loan of $50k, while others do it first, then start eating their cheese.</p>
<p>Just as many high school athletes bank on a career in Division 1 sports (or even the NFL or NBA), the students who sign up for these loans ignore the statistics and assume they will be among the small minority who score amazing, high-paying jobs. Itâs a huge shock when they end up as baristas (or assistants to the folks who actually do have those jobs).</p>
<p>Few schools, unfortunately, will actively discourage a student from taking out big loans. Indeed, loans are critical to meeting enrollment goals. (To put a more positive spin on it, if a student REALLY wants to attend a school, the college is helping them achieve that life goal. Iâm sure most schools, too, can point to grads with the same degree who are highly successful, and canât determine winners and losers in advance.)</p>
<p>
Great typo!!</p>
<p>^I cannot type/spell at all, sorry for that!</p>
<p>It was funny!!</p>
<p>I did not say that you have to be smart aout your âtipyngâ</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I had a discussion with my brother as to how is it that heâs able to remember âstuffâ that he learned as an undergrad, 20 years earlier. It didnât matter if it was art history or differential equationsâŠthe âguyâ knew his stuff.</p>
<p>His answer was simply that he didnât learn for the sake of taking tests. He learned because he felt it was important to know. So while he was learning the subject matter, he put it within the context of the real worldâŠnot just as stuff he needed to know for a midterm/final.</p>
<p>My point is that many students who acquire skills in school, tend to forget them after a short period of time because they never learned the material the right way. If they acquired the knowledge/skills simply to do well on tests, they will forget them after the test is over.</p>
<p>^Not all are forgotten after the test is over. Some have to remember for the rest of thier lives. Do you want to go to MD who forgot his test material? There are many who did, it is sad, but we are looking for the ones who did not and continue to educate themselvesâŠ</p>
<p>Ppl on this board make it seem like it is easy to graduate without a lot of debt. this is simply not true for the majority of students. NO matter what, college is a gamble and you are rolling the dice. You either play or you donât but weâre told all our lives that it will pay off to play. </p>
<p>I researched a grad program and went straight into a masters degree after my undergrad. It paid off and i have a good job lined up after graduation. However, it AS WELL AS college as a whole doesnt for everyone. AND schools let people take out this much loans because that is often what it takesâŠif they stopped giving out loans to students under the assumption that many would not get a good paying job after graduation (which, sadly is often the case; especially in todays job market) then they would not give out enough loans to attend and nobody, nobody who doesnt have rich parents or huge scholarship packages anyways, would be able to go to college.</p>