A Pittsburgh paper profiles a 26-year-old woman, presumably a single mom (the husband isn't mentioned), with $120K of student loans and only qualified for a $7.25/hr job. That's all a degree in "business administration" from Robert Morris University in Moon PA will get you.
This woman is screwed for life because she can't even make enough money to make her interest payments so her wages will be garnished and the debt will keep growing bigger and bigger, and as you know they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Her only way out is if her grandmother's house is worth more than her loans. Let's hope, for her sake, that grandma has a nice house.
Some people will chime in "servers her right," but come on, give this girl a break. She's barely smart enough to maintain a C average at a bogus university, how was she supposed to realize that signing those papers at the financial aid office, given to her by an authority figure, would mean she'd be screwed for life?
I blame four year colleges for having, basically, monopoly power over credentialing for the best jobs.
Because the vast majority of high paying jobs require at least a college degree, we have not developed cheaper, quicker, forms of vocational education such as Northern European style apprenticeships for our middle class.
Instead, we put people, who would truly be better off with on the job training , into four year colleges where they rarely learn anything useful.
If this woman had instead gotten a vocational education to be, say, a secretary, she might not be wealthy, but at least she would not be $120,000 in debt.
Posted by: The Undiscovered Jew | July 31, 2009 at 05:17 PM
I'll further add that this country needs cheaper, faster, ways to get a college degree for those who truly are talented enough to go to college.
We could start by allowing undergraduates to bypass the core curriculum completely, or let undergraduates skip most of it by granting college credit for regular high school classes, and not just AP courses.
Also, automate classes with video lectures and save the bulk of the in class lectures for the most advanced courses.
Posted by: The Undiscovered Jew | July 31, 2009 at 05:25 PM
After reading the story of this woman I have only one suggestion: buy a life insurance policy to cover the loan, wait 2 years (the contestability period) and then suicide. That would make her grandmother whole. The child would be adopted and the problem solved. Sad case.
Posted by: seeitnow | July 31, 2009 at 05:48 PM
Actually, she should talk to a military recruiter tomorrow. I doubt she could be an officer with those grades, but she might be able to get some of the loans deferred, get on her feet financially, develop some life skills, and get the vocational training she should have gone after in the first place. Scary.
Posted by: J1 | July 31, 2009 at 06:05 PM
Well, I feel bad about her situation. However, if you are in such a tight spot, shouldn't you cut costs as much as posible? The article mentions 120 bucks for internet, 150 for the cell phone, credit cards, ...
College in the US seems like a big scam, from an european perspective. At least non first-rate institutions.
Posted by: ENB | July 31, 2009 at 06:22 PM
The woman is guilty only of stupidity. She is the poster child for the failure of hyper-idealistic social engineering.
In a sane society, this girl would have kept her panties on, married a decent working stiff, and the two could have pooled their resources working blue-collar jobs and eked out a happy-go-lucky, but not opulent existence.
Now, she's done everything she's been told to do (sleep around, "get an education") and has completely destroyed her social value (single mom) and her economic value (impossible debt).
Of course, the article makes no mention of this. They seem to think this is all the fault of some greedy blue-eyed banker who gets a kick out of lending massive sums of money to people who cannot possibly pay it back.
[HS: "The woman is guilty only of stupidity." Yes, of course she's stupid, she could barely get C grades at a bogus school. The problem is that the system ENABLED her stupidity. She was not smart enough to understand why college would be a bad deal, or smart enough to turn down easy take-now-payback-later loan money.]
Posted by: mike | July 31, 2009 at 06:22 PM
The Undiscovered Jew:
You truly have a great fix on the problem. I agree with your ideas, but the general consensus misleads the youth of this country.
Posted by: seeitnow | July 31, 2009 at 06:29 PM
I feel bad for her student loan situation but I don't feel bad over the fact that she's a 26 yr old, single mom (aka party girl who had one too many after school loving sessions with some low class loser who she thought was "badass").
I don't really get out much but I have to ask this question to those who know what's going in latest trends. Are single moms regarded as heroes or as misfits in our culture? I often wonder why people put themselves in these types of situations by having a kid or kids with a dead end job and a loser for a husband/BF. Do these people like struggling? Seriously, what is so damn wrong with sitting around and doing nothing with your life while in your 20s?
Posted by: murphy | July 31, 2009 at 06:35 PM
Well, yuck. Sucks to be her. Best, find a Mexican "visitor" and get a new SNN. Buy a fake degree in Thailand and join the world-wide ESL industry, which is full of similar people in similar situations. In Korea she'll get a free apartment, flights and 1800/month.
I'm in a 10k masters in accounting now. We're all getting good jobs, even in this economy.
Posted by: MaccMan | July 31, 2009 at 06:47 PM
"In a sane society, this girl would have kept her panties on, married a decent working stiff, and the two could have pooled their resources working blue-collar jobs and eked out a happy-go-lucky, but not opulent existence."
I agree 100%. Not only would it be better for them, it would be better for society too.
Posted by: sabril | July 31, 2009 at 07:00 PM
@The Undiscovered Jew: There is an extensive cheap vocational school system in America. They're called community colleges.
Posted by: Zeenon | July 31, 2009 at 07:01 PM
Here's an idea for her: find a husband with money. Seriously. Pittsburgh may not be Silicon Valley, but it has a decent-sized high tech sector. It's the home of Carnegie-Mellon University, for example. If she's willing to be aggressive and actively pursue men - waiting for them to approach her will be pointless - she might find some introverted Beta IT nerd who'll support her.
Posted by: Peter | July 31, 2009 at 07:10 PM
This stuff will end when some lawyer finds a way to build and win a class action case against a college for selling degrees which are effectively worthless.
If I had $120k in debt I couldn't discharge I would literally leave the country.
Posted by: Daniel L. Taylor | July 31, 2009 at 07:33 PM
Peter:
Why would an educated, IT professional associate himself with a member of the lower class? Especially one with a kid and who probably would talk non-stop about how much she hates the kid's father? I'm sure the IT guy is smart enough to realize what a big mistake it would be to get involved with someone like the girl profiled in this story.
I was really turned on by some of the lower class girls that went to my high school, but I knew deep down, what a mistake it would be to get involved that type of crowd.
[HS: The idea that a nerd who's not getting any would be sexually overwhelmed, and not realize his mistake until it was too late (already married).]
Posted by: nothing | July 31, 2009 at 07:57 PM
All of the players in this situation are at fault here. Certainly this girl made a poor choice and was not diligent about applying for federal grant money when she should have and borrowed way more than the should have to get through school. This woman is an idiot. She did not maintain a proper GPA and managed to get pregnant during the time she was in school. Given her sorry financial situation, isn't this what Plan B is supposed to be about?
However, this story shows the racket that higher education has become in this country. Why tuition and fees at a "no-name" university should be $22k per year is completely incomprehensible to me. Sallie Mae is an atrocious company that should be sued out of business. I borrowed from them to get through grad school in 1990 (around $5K) and paid them off first. I was warned about how they are abusive sleazeballs. They do everything possible, delay in crediting your payment, etc, to extract whatever fees they can from you. They deliberately delayed crediting my last payment (I paid the loan off early to get rid of these bastards) to my account so that they could charge me an extra finance charge. Sallie Mae is a sleazebag company. I'm not surprised at all that this situation involves loans from Sallie Mae.
With regards to the educational racket, I agree 100% with "undiscovered Jew's" comments.
Posted by: kurt9 | July 31, 2009 at 08:18 PM
Nah, that wouldn't work. She's not that attractive and she sounds dumbish to boot. Her best bet is probably an ugly, but hard working guy in the trades, who would find her attractive and not be put off by the fact that she wants to spend her evenings watching American Idol and drinking cheap beer.
But please, Marjorie, get an IUD or something that will keep you from getting pregnant again. It will better for you. It will be better for us.
Posted by: KingM | July 31, 2009 at 08:25 PM
she's not unattractive. she should consider stripping or even working in porn. i'm serious, btw.
Posted by: anonymous | July 31, 2009 at 08:26 PM
"HS: "The woman is guilty only of stupidity." Yes, of course she's stupid, she could barely get C grades at a bogus school. The problem is that the system ENABLED her stupidity. She was not smart enough to understand why college would be a bad deal, or smart enough to turn down easy take-now-payback-later loan money."
They didn't just enable her, they actively sabotaged her. I seriously doubt this girl ever had real ambitions of her own beyond being a mom and serving beer in a bowling alley, but she got her head pumped full of Education Uber Alles and do-what-you-feel indoctrination from a young age. She followed the script and now her life is a complete disaster.
[HS: Actually, her ambition was an office job (doing what she had no real idea) where she would make enough money to have a car, her own place to live, a cell phone, and cable TV and internet. A simple ambition, but one unattained.]
Posted by: mike | July 31, 2009 at 08:32 PM
The big question is why do people pay 20K a year for a private school when there are community colleges that cost 3K a year.
The answer as HS alluded to is that the private schools heavily advertise, pretend they give out lots of financial aid, publish fake "average salary of graduates" statistics and then stick people with high interest private loans whose terms they can't understand.
A few private schools have good financial aid or a solid brand name worth big bucks, but that is at most 5% of them
Posted by: Ted | July 31, 2009 at 09:12 PM
She doesn't have the discipline to make it. The article mentions her $329 car payment and $120 per month for phone and internet. Those things are optional - Pittsburgh has public transportation, and I know people including my own mother who dropped internet service in much less trying financial circumstances. Even if you need to keep in contact by internet there are plenty of ways to do it free (places with free wifi including public libraries).
Of course borrowing the money was the first and biggest mistake. The sad thing is it sounds like she's taking down about four other people with her (her dad, grandma, kid, and to some extent her sister).
I do think that the weird special status that student loans have has to go, though. I understand the reasoning, but the amounts are such that you're talking about lifetime debt slavery.
Posted by: bbartlog | July 31, 2009 at 09:42 PM
"The answer as HS alluded to is that the private schools heavily advertise, pretend they give out lots of financial aid, publish fake "average salary of graduates" statistics and then stick people with high interest private loans whose terms they can't understand."
Agreed. Also, it's pretty easy to sign those loan documents if repayment won't be starting for 4 or 5 or 6 years.
Posted by: sabril | July 31, 2009 at 10:01 PM
HS,
In one of your other posts you mentioned how getting a good job will be much harder in the future due to the percentage of people with college degrees increasing. Well, part of that reason that the percentage of people with college degrees is increasing is because of bogus schools like these and community colleges that make getting a college degree a piece of cake if you can get the loan or have the money. These bogus schools are only after profiting from people who may not have the intelligence to complete a rigorous 4-year curriculum at a real school/university, and so offer these people who would be better off at trade programs "false hope."
These cheap and bogus schools saturate the job market and playing field by making it too easy for everyone (even dumb people) to get college degrees, and thus making it harder for decently intelligent people who graduated from decent schools in getting noticed in the job market due to this "saturation" and "dumbing down" of intelligence. Thus, it makes it harder for us decently intelligent people to get noticed in the job market if you completely flood it and saturate it with college degrees (half of which are bogus). These people hurt the image of what it's like to have a 4-year degree due to bogus institutions making it too easy for dumb people to obtain one. Thus, a negative externality upon us indeed. Now I am thinking of getting a law degree, since back then (30 years ago) getting a high school diploma was the norm but now getting a bachelor's is the norm. So now I have to up the ante and ultimately get a grad. degree.
[HS: Don't go to law school unless you get into a Top 14.]
Posted by: Lee | July 31, 2009 at 10:41 PM
Furthermore may I add, you can also call it "intelligence inflation" if there ever is such a thing in which proles are overvalued on paper because they can attain a college degree but their real value stays constant. Same thing with I think our dollar being overvalued and its related inflation. I guess the same idea can be applied to both of these cases.
Posted by: Lee | July 31, 2009 at 10:45 PM
On a related note, seems 'Ivy' priced-tag law degrees are in jeopardy too.
On Big Law compensation:
"The declines were particularly steep at some of the most pedigreed shops such as Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where average partner compensation dropped almost 24%, and Davis Polk & Wardwell, where it declined more than 17%, according to The American Lawyer magazine’s annual financial survey. And 2009 is shaping up to be even worse."
Source from the WSK
The End of Big Law
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970203946904574300610126062746.html#mod%3Dtodays_us_opinion%26articleTabs%3Darticle
Posted by: rightwingnut | July 31, 2009 at 11:00 PM
"HS: The idea that a nerd who's not getting any would be sexually overwhelmed, and not realize his mistake until it was too late (already married)."
I was about to give a similar answer, but you got there first.
The throw-herself-at-a-nerd strategy might work, but of course there's something morally wrong about taking advantage of a desperate loser man. Also, it might not be easy for her to find the sort of pathologically introverted Beta loser nerds who'd be the most likely to fall for the plan. She can't target them in bars and nightclubs because they wouldn't be there. Perhaps hanging around comic book stores and science fiction conventions, but the opportunities may be limited. Her best chance might be trying to find a temp job at a high-tech company.
[HS: At one tech job I had, the computer programmers went bowling. Maybe she can meet them at the bowling alley.]
Posted by: Peter | July 31, 2009 at 11:18 PM
The bubble will blow, people.
Housing, education and healthcare can´t rise indefinitely beyond income.
One day, the schools will get empty due to price and they will be the country club for the elite.
Posted by: Useless | July 31, 2009 at 11:22 PM
How is she going to pay this debt off?
My guess is she will default. I expect more stories like this to come since there are a lot of college grads who are going to find that there aren't many jobs for them due to the recession.
The student loan racket needs end. In fact, it will eventually end due to defaults.
Posted by: king obama | August 01, 2009 at 01:17 AM
"Actually, her ambition was an office job (doing what she had no real idea) where she would make enough money to have a car, her own place to live, a cell phone, and cable TV and internet. A simple ambition, but one unattained."
It says pretty clearly in the article that she has a car, a cell phone, cable TV, the internet, and a place of her own. It's not exactly clear that she could afford those things even without the crippling loan payments, but she could probably have this approximate lifestyle if she made a few concessions - giving up the kid would be a good start.
My point is that this "office job" fantasy is probably not something that she came up with on her own. Coming from a presumably blue-collar family, she shouldn't have gotten the idea that serving beer at a bowling alley is a job Americans (at least American women) won't do. But I'm sure some girl-power schoolmarm hammered it into her head that every girl needs to go to college. Maybe she always had inflated expectations, but I'd be hard pressed to believe that our culture's glorification of paper-pushing desk jockeys didn't have something to do with it.
Also note that her little bastard was conceived while she was away at college. I'm sure she indulged in her fair share of the party culture that pervades the American college campus. Robert Morris has fraternities and sports teams. I checked.
Anyway, we both seem to agree that she walked into a minefield. But I think that the cultural revolutionaries laid that minefield, pushed her into it, and are now looking to blame anyone but themselves.
Posted by: mike | August 01, 2009 at 01:40 AM
This is my favorite quote from the story:
"Ms. Dillon said she has learned a lot about how credit and interest works while looking for solutions to her dilemma."
Wasn't she supposed to learn that while studying for a degree in business administration.
I seriously think she should sue the college for fraud. If they had failed her early on like they should have she wouldn't have a case.
Posted by: amir | August 01, 2009 at 02:39 AM
This lady might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm sure that no one told her that she wouldn't be getting a good job out of college. In fact, I can imagine the college publishing bogus salary statistics to convince people that going into 100k of debt was worth it.
I looked up Robert Morris on College Search, and the middle 50th percentiles for their Critical Reading SATs is 450-540. That puts them pretty close to the national average SATs, which means that they are a mediocre school, not a "bogus" school unless you consider the average US college to be bogus.
Posted by: Alex | August 01, 2009 at 02:44 AM
"Actually, she should talk to a military recruiter tomorrow."
Bwahahaha! Why not, she listened to a uni recruiter didn't she? Could collages/universities get sued for false advertised if they say "get a degree and you'll have greater earning capacity"? Others have suggested that military recruiters comes awfully close to false advertising ("it's not a job, it's an adventure").
Truth is that degrees don't command much money because most people have them nowadays. It's the same as if the Earth passed through a gold-rich dust cloud and rained so much gold that it became worthless (and goldbugs hang themselves).
Posted by: Gil | August 01, 2009 at 03:02 AM
"HS: Don't go to law school unless you get into a Top 14.]"
I agree . . . unless (1) you plan to hang out a shingle; and (2) you will be graduating with a managable amount of debt.
Anyway, in my opinion law schools are participating heavily in this whole inflationary educational scam. i.e. they are cranking out lots of degrees for folks whose earning power is unlikely to increase by the cost of the degree.
Posted by: sabril | August 01, 2009 at 05:26 AM
First of all, her situation isn't as bad as it sounds. The worst thing they can do to her is ruin her credit and garnish 15% of her wages:
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DCS/awg.html
Since she works for tips, this would really probably not be more than 10% of her actual income. That would suck, but it hardly means her life is ruined.
Second, stuff like this would never happen if:
1) You could get out of student loans if you obviously can't pay them, or
2) Instead of making a flat monthly payment, you paid a proportion of your income, the way a stock pays dividends.
Either way, there would be no upside to expensively educating people who will never make enough money to justify that education. Lenders would stop loaning to people like this woman, and she could have spent four more years doing something useful, like serving beer at a bowling alley.
[HS: "The worst thing they can do to her is ruin her credit." No one's going to lend her money anyway given her salary and outstanding debt, so her credit can't get any worse. But actually, her grandmother cosigned the loans so what is going to happen is that she's going to get first dibs on grandma's inheritance, bypassing all of her other relatives.]
Posted by: coldequation | August 01, 2009 at 06:47 AM
"Every student takes out extra for living expenses. We don't work."
What the hell? Since when aren't bottom-tier undergrad students able to hold down part-time jobs? Especially while getting a scrape-by GPA in business administration.
I might have some sympathy if she hadn't had the baby on top of everything. Her daughter, for whom she receives WIC benefits (a program to feed the infants of poor mothers, which means dad must be a loser too), is nine months old. That means she was conceived and born while this mother was attending her four-year college, supposedly trying to build a better life. And why is the mom 26, and not 22, if it's a four-year school?
No, she clearly was not college material. She is a dumb, flaky, selfish, lower-class person. And her crap college made $80k off of her idiocy. She is probably very typical of the population that attends those private pseudo-colleges that offer degrees in secretary studies. Paralegal "colleges" are another big scam I see a lot. We need to rein in these sham institutions that prey on unsophisticated lower-class people.
Posted by: Sheila Tone | August 01, 2009 at 08:29 AM
The problem is, as others have pointed out, that "old-fashioned" paths such as blue collar labor for men and marriage+motherhood for women no longer seem to be an option in "enlightened" society.
Everyone has to get a college degree, but it doesn't take a genius (just a mind who dares go there in these times) to figure out that if that is the case, college degrees will be next to worthless except for the most prestigious ones.
So yeah, she pretty much got duped into wrecking her life (with single motherhood as well as someone else pointed out) and now the liberal utopia for her has turned into the level of hell which Dante forgot to mention.
By the way, I attend the most prestigious university in my country and pay a whopping $500 annually in tuition fees.
Posted by: Anon | August 01, 2009 at 09:34 AM
"Ms. Dillon also borrowed more than the amount needed to take classes.
Mr. Frantz said she borrowed $43,290 in excess of the cost of tuition and fees to attend Robert Morris. Full-time undergraduate tuition for the 2009-10 academic year costs $19,950. That does not include room and board for resident students. Ms. Dillon was not a resident student."
This may be the most depressing part of the college financial aid system. Students get far more in loans than they need to attend school. What the hell did she do with the extra $43,290?
Posted by: The White Detroiter | August 01, 2009 at 10:22 AM
It's unfair to say that the school is "bogus" because it is accredited. To say it is not prestigious would far more accurate, in my opinion.
Too bad she didn't choose accounting but instead choose business administration. If she had chosen accounting, should would have found a job right away and would have started at $44,000 a year.
Posted by: Shawn | August 01, 2009 at 11:27 AM
There's always the Korean method of paying for college. While colleges in South Korea aren't expensive by American standards, there are no student loans or other forms of financial aid available. It is not uncommon that when a family has a child about to enter college, or already in college, Mom will come over to the United States for a year or two and work in one of the Asian massage parlors found in most areas. If she lives frugally, a year of rubbing and tugging will net her enough money to return to Korea and pay for her child's college.
Posted by: Peter | August 01, 2009 at 11:42 AM
Her situation is not as bad as it looks. I agree with the financial advisers that she could move in with the grandma and save the $600 in rent, drop the Internet and cellphone bills, and devote all the money saved to monthly debt retirement. She is fortunate to have a sister who will babysit for free. She should get a job as a secretary, preferably with a largeish company that has training programs in things like IT administration or project management. You can still work yourself up from being a secretary, and being a single mom doesn't end your "social value" either.
I was once a single mom and a secretary and I got a mid-level corporate job, got married, and moved myself into the upper middle-class. It's hard but it can be done.
Posted by: MaryJ | August 01, 2009 at 11:51 AM
"The bubble will blow, people.
Housing, education and healthcare can´t rise indefinitely beyond income.
One day, the schools will get empty due to price and they will be the country club for the elite."
Close to 15 years ago I worked with a man who had a couple of school-age children and who often mentioned his concerns about the cost of college. He predicted that sooner rather than later, colleges would run into a massive wave of "buyer" resistance, with more and more people flatly refusing to pay the ever-increasing tuition. This would lead to a major shakeout, with many - even perhaps hundreds - of colleges going out of business. The survivors would have to radically restructure themselves and reduce their costs dramatically, in order to be able to get by while charging the much lower tuitions that would prevail.
It looks as if these predictions never came true. Very few colleges have gone out of business as far as I know, and colleges certainly haven't cut their prices.
Posted by: Peter | August 01, 2009 at 11:55 AM
I won't say "serves her right," because clearly she believed a college degree was an automatic ticket to a cushy office job. But check out the price of her laziness and procrastination:
"'In this case, the student frequently came into the financial aid office after school had begun and in some cases on the date bills were due and asked what her financing options were,' said Mike Frantz, vice president of enrollment at Robert Morris.
"University records show she failed to complete the Free Application For Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on time for the first three years she attended Robert Morris, starting in fall 2005. That meant she didn't qualify for federal student aid and state grant money through the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency.
"After the spring 2006 semester, Mr. Frantz said Ms. Dillon lost her eligibility for government aid because her grade point average fell below a 2.0. To make matters worse, she failed to pass at least two thirds of the academic credits she signed up for, another requirement for eligibility."
She got a really, really bad deal on loans and then she borrowed far more than she needed at the time. If these were federal loans, she could at least keep them in forebearance indefinitely, and they wouldn't have a variable interest rate like the signature loans she has now.
Also, if her performance was really that bad, why wasn't she kicked out of school? I suspect faculty on the academic suspension hearing committee thought they were doing her a favor by letting her stay enrolled.
For all you guys are saying, her degree isn't totally worthless. She'll get a crappy office job in a few years, and that degree will help get her in the door. But she'll never have upward mobility of any kind.
Posted by: Steve Miller | August 01, 2009 at 12:14 PM
re:"$120K of student loans, $7.25/hr job
[snip]
This woman is screwed for life.... Her only way out is if her grandmother's house is worth more than her loans."HS
Not true. Given the liberals in the Federal Government ( all branches are controlled by liberals currently ) and the liberal main stream media offers only encouragement for liberal policies (OKA spending) the USA is facing Hyper-Inflation in the not too distant future. The woman will pay off that $120K with ease, no?
If my hypothesis is correct, we are all screwed, no?
Dan Kurt
Posted by: Dan Kurt | August 01, 2009 at 12:27 PM
Dan, Very good point about inflation. Historically, debtors tend to lefty and favor inflation. I think Sailer even even thinks debt is a big part of why the professional-managerial class isn't more conservative.
If a big fraction of the middle class gets "underwater" on their educational debt, there will be big pressure to inflate.
But what's left of the US economy depends pretty heavily on the dollar being the international reserve currency.
Hello Argentina! They used to be a first world country too.
The traditional reason student loans couldn't be discharged was that for eg. med school graduates would declare bankruptcy while they had no income or assets. Part of a reasonable compromise might be having the degree and any subsequent creditionals or licenses rescinded.
I agree that the woman in the article made very bad decisions, but she's dumb. Dumb people make bad decisions. Even worse, smart people encouraged her to do it. Since, for whatever reason, girls and young women seem to be more obidient in general and more willing to continue education in particular, the current situation has a disparate impact on women.
[HS: The rule used to be that student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy after seven years, but Congress abolished that exception in the late 1990s because of lobbying from banks.]
Posted by: rob | August 01, 2009 at 01:59 PM
"For all you guys are saying, her degree isn't totally worthless. She'll get a crappy office job in a few years, and that degree will help get her in the door. But she'll never have upward mobility of any kind."
True. She MIGHT be able to get an office job next year if the economy improves, but that is a big if.
With no relevant job experience, she is going to have a hard time getting even a low-level office job.
Hell,I know a girl who graduated from a no-name university with an MBA with an emphasis in marketing. She is currently working as a server in a bar because she can't find a good job where she can utilize her degree. At least she is pretty, so she makes a good amount of money in tips and can service her loans.
Posted by: king obama | August 01, 2009 at 02:13 PM
This woman should sue the school she went to for not flunking her out in the first semester. I feel sorta sorry for her, but she is stupid.
Posted by: Lloyd G. | August 01, 2009 at 05:18 PM
"Close to 15 years ago I worked with a man who had a couple of school-age children and who often mentioned his concerns about the cost of college. He predicted that sooner rather than later, colleges would run into a massive wave of "buyer" resistance, with more and more people flatly refusing to pay the ever-increasing tuition. This would lead to a major shakeout, with many - even perhaps hundreds - of colleges going out of business. The survivors would have to radically restructure themselves and reduce their costs dramatically, in order to be able to get by while charging the much lower tuitions that would prevail."
He only failed in timing. The price can´t go up indefinitely. Can you imagine an Econ B.A. costing 1 million? 5 million? Earlier or later, the american higher education can either change or be destroyed.
Siggy, can´t this woman fight in court?
In countries based on civil law, they have a category named lesion. If you can prove a judge that you have an obligation you obviouly can´t pay and prove that you were dumb when you signed the papers (vice of consent: you wanted to do the deal, in this case the loan, but you weren´t aware of the effects because of lack of knowledge, low education, inexperience etc.), you can make the judge change the debt to a civilized rate.
Posted by: BrunoBrazil | August 01, 2009 at 10:24 PM
If a big fraction of the middle class gets "underwater" on their educational debt, there will be big pressure to inflate.
Ah, come on people. The USA are in a verge of a defltionary depression and you talk about concerns of inflation?
In a depression, if you carry out a stabilization policy, the economy goes straight to the chaos and disorganization. Look at Germany between 1930 and 1932 and the effect was the Adolf Hitler´s rise to power.
Posted by: BrunoBrazil | August 01, 2009 at 10:36 PM
@BrunoBrazil
No, Weimar republic itself did away with inflation.
+ Godwin Law.
Posted by: Mr. K. | August 02, 2009 at 07:04 AM
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/College-Grad-Cant-Find-Job-Wants--Back-52304162.html
Posted by: Lee | August 02, 2009 at 04:21 PM
Some elements in Congress have proposed a plan where the government would let people swap their private student loans for federally-guaranteed Stafford loans in the same amount. That would be huge for the woman, because she would be eligible to enter Income Based Repayment and pay no more than 15% of her income in excess of the poverty line. If she hasn't finished paying after 25 years of that, the remainder is forgiven. More responsible people pick up the tab.
Posted by: To the place where I belong | August 03, 2009 at 01:12 AM
why do student loans have compounded interest?
would the actual loan plus say 10% be more reasonable? And that's it. If the usa is going to force someone to be in debt forever, should it grow ever larger and more onerous?
if people can't afford to pay, is charging them even more money helpful, useful or just?
at colleges today they are presenting student loans as financial aid?!
Posted by: d | August 24, 2009 at 06:32 PM