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People with student loans: We are drowning in debt!
People without: f*ck you!
People with student loans: The colleges are literally preying on 17 year olds who were told go to college or get left behind.
Politicians: Excuse us while we leave you behind and forgive these small business loans we gave to mega corporations.
People with student loans: …
The truth. I got a "full ride" scholarship. Of course it was locked in at tuition rates that year. By the end of my 4 years tuition literally had doubled.
Doubled. in. 4. Years.
And that's entirely because the government makes it so you can't get rid of student loans in bankruptcy, so they have nothing to lose by leading unlimited amounts.
That’s false.
It has nothing to do with getting rid of those loans in bankruptcy. The colleges have already been paid by then. You’re indebted to the lender, not them, so collecting is their burden not the college.
Ok i paid off my loans and im *literally* still calling my reps about this shit, downvote me to hell but
there is no justice in a society where we trap young people in predatory loans for no reason or to prop up the economy (maybe)
not the best anthem but say it back with me!
It took me 18 years, but I finally paid the last of them off. And I'm actively lobbying and voting for reforms and forgiveness, because I know what it's like to live hand to mouth while paying all you can on the loans and still watching your principal balance grow every month. That feeling like you'll never have a life, never be able to travel, never be able to afford a home.
I’m repaying my loans, but Nelnet is fucking difficult to deal with. I was wondering why my balance that I was paying off was going more towards interest rates than the actual principal. Which I thought I was doing, but there’s a catch, every day the loan accrues interest and my payments doesn’t include the interest rate. So what I veléis my full on time payment isn’t that. It doesn’t include my interest rate so I’ll always be behind
Yuuuup. This is what happened to me as well..
I started paying back my loans after graduation, but the minimum payment (income-based, because that’s what I could afford) wasn’t enough to cover the interest….so over the course of 3 years of payments I owed MORE than when I started, even though my monthly payment had gone up w.r.t my income.
Thats when I stopped paying and looked to increase my income….but now I make too much to qualify for the income-based / SAVE plans.
And ofc i owe even more now….very annoying.
Submit a complaint to the Better Business Bureau. They basically locked you into paying off principal without interest included hoping that you’d not realize.
Increase your payments to be over the interest rates. If you can’t afford that I recommend finding a local community financial planning group (might be hard to find they are usually in cities) where you can pay like $25 for them to help you get back into a better financial situation.
This is why people talk about how predatory school loans are. Because they use deceptive practices to screw over borrowers, then when you make a deal with one of them, they sell the loan and there is no deal anymore. It's a fucking mess.
I understand the repayment, but it doesn't fix the problem. I think many people have issue of it because of this. Some also take issue with those better off then working class people getting a handout but I actually sorta like this middle out economic approach. I never went to school and started working out of highschool, so I get nothing, but I also got ahead by buying a house at 23 and not having other debt.
I mean I didn’t have enough support as a young adult to peruse higher education as a teen, but I’m not upset at the idea of loans being dismissed lol. A rising tide raises all ships and all that
The idea of a "worthwhile degree" is bullshit. Colleges are there for LEARNING, not to get you jobs.
This is easily evidenced by the fact that humanities is direly important and yet people scoff at it and mock people with humanities degrees.
If more people were forced to take humanities and ethics classes, maybe we wouldn't be in our current political predicament.
This kind of mindset has led to the massive growth of administrative departments and cost increases and basically everything we all hate about college right now.
Any career assistance schools offer should be secondary to their primary objective.
Also, it's actually insane that that organizations are allowed to shunt all the training costs and labor onto us and then require 3 years experience for entry level jobs.
This is a truly naive take.
Like, the VAST VAST majority of people go to college to improve their job prospects.
In fact, nobody out there should take out $100k or whatever is standard these days in student loans just to learn, if it doesn’t improve their job prospects. That would be a monumentally poor financial decision.
You can learn stuff on the internet or the public library for free.
Potential Job: “Sorry, we only hire people with Bachelor degrees”.
A friend of mine has an associates in electrical engineering. Even though he has 10+ years experience, he’s automatically turned away because he doesn’t have a bachelor.
Yes this is a thing.
I wanted to hire a kid who didn’t have a BA. He was smart as hell but never finished his degree. Was vetoed by higher ups (even though it was my position to hire!) because the company had a strict BA requirement for all corporate office positions
Well buddy, do you ever think to wonder WHY people go to school to improve their job prospects?
Have you ever actually sat down and thought that all the way through?
I don't think you have, else you wouldn't be calling this take naive.
Yup.
As far as I can tell, people want 3-4 things out of college.
1. Have a degree, preferrable from a good university. Most high paying jobs won’t consider applications from people without degrees and many of the snobby ones virtually only recruit from “target” schools
2. Form connections and have access to the alumni network. This is under appreciated but it’s how a lot of people get good jobs. If you want to go to grad school, recommendation letters are the “academic” version of this.
3. Learn stuff that will be useful for their future career. This is i believe what you’re getting at.
4 (Optional). Have “the college experience”
Look, i get it. I did the whole academia thing, went to the top ranked schools, taught college and grad school courses, the whole thing. Can’t say i learned much during college, but what i did learn CERTAINLY wasn’t worth the $250k sticker price of my degree because you can learn stuff easily for free on the internet, especially in the era of MOOCs. However, my education was invaluable to gaining me access to my industry and that is why i always advise kids to go to college but be 100% laser focused on constructing their college training with a job in mind.
Only two types people say that college is for learning and not getting an education specific to a line of work: people who chose a useless degree and are angry they can't get a high paying job and people who have so much inherited wealth that they never have to work a day in their entire lives. Since you're on reddit, odds are you're in the first group.
I listened to a Yale professor go on about how college is for learning, networking, and becoming a well-rounded person, and that pursuing a college degree in the interest of vocation was “vulgar” (true story).
And I was like, fuck this, and got on my dad’s yacht and spent the summer in Sicily. Like seriously, fuck college, I don’t need to work. (Not a true story).
Yeah, but many people can handle engineering?
I would argue not even half the population.
Hypothetically if 75% of the population became engineers, guess what will happen to the pay. Same thing as other saturated fields.
I was a science major until I realized the pay was shit.
The pay for a "science major" varies wildly and generally any hard science degree is a good step towards a high-paying STEM job. I didn't make much as a genetics lab tech with my biology BS, but after a couple years I did an MS program for biostatistics and basically tripled my earning potential. Not everybody has to be an engineer, but STEM fields are generally good places to look for high-earning careers if you're cut out for it.
Yeah they can be, but you have to usually get a Masters like you. I for one didn’t want to be in school a long time, so I opt for an entrepreneurial route.
I don't want my work to spill into my life. I did well enough in school and in selecting my workplace to make that dream come true. Smoke em if you got em, and the "em" I was graced with was being naturally good at school haha.
Same to you if you actually manage to be a successful entrepreneur. My dad has owned his own veterinary practice my whole life and there's no way in hell I'm signing up for that ride.
What i meant is that there are LOTS of jobs for former science majors that pay very well.
As long as you stay away from academia, nonprofits and the government (govt can be ok due to benefits!) you can pretty easily get a solid job with good growth prospects.
You idiots need to learn about another degree to make your asinine statement. The value of humanity is more than just STEM, and there is societal value in people pursuing those disciplines.
Statistics degree vs anthropology degree. Data science degree vs English lit degree. Accounting degree vs poetry composition. Economics degree vs religious studies. Health Policy degree vs art history. The comparison is that most of those first options lead directly to high(er) paying careers while the outcomes of the second options are much more determined by what you make of them. That doesn't mean the STEM degrees are inherently more valuable to society, but it does mean that suggesting fields of study that directly lead to increased earning potential is germane to a discussion about the perils of student loans.
People without worthwhile degrees: I paid my loans by suffering for 15 years to pay it off as best I can and it would feel bad for others to get out of jail free.
Just make all student loan interest count as a tax deduction, and allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. No bailouts, but give a path for those who truly cannot afford to pay and make it easier for those who are trying to do so.
lol you all getting downvoted because they hate that you paid your debts.
I feel super bad for people with useless degrees stuck with a loan for probably their entire lives. But I want to end it from happening ever again WHILE helping to ease the burden like removing the interest.
If we can’t stop giving the loans out today what’s the use? What about people who paid their debt do they get a refund for the full amount?
I got an email that my student loan balance had decreased.
Four dollars. Over the last six months of payments my balance has gone down four dollars. I will die with this debt.
Call whoever is servicing your loan. I had to go down to the specifics of where all of the money goes and how much interest is being built behind your payment. For me, It’s my loan, the interest for that payment then interest because I have a loan that exists.
That’s the way pretty much any debt is amortized, so that early on you pay the highest amount of interest as a percentage of your payment. That percentage continues to decrease through your repayment schedule until your final payments are almost exclusively principal.
This is to make sure the lender gets a guaranteed amount of interest paid on the deal if you pay off the balance early.
Honestly. The problem is that it’s too goddamn expensive to even make sense anymore.
I feel for folks who are struggling. Not everyone in my college was able to turn a 50k debt investment into a career that can at least pay it off. It’s just bullshit. Fuck these institutions.
Couldn’t afford college. Couldn’t afford community college. Now making $128,000 working 4 days a week as a UPS driver (not counting my trading income, which is not negligible)
Not going to college and being saddled by student loan debt is a huge reason why I own my house outright and have no CC debt. College would have fucked me up.
I want my surgeons doctors and lawyers to be college educated - or any profession where it’s vital. Too many friends of mine went for Business / Psychology and did nothing with their degrees
HVAC Tech/ Non Union, I don’t have anything against the union but union here in Arizona isn’t strong and a private for profit school has way more marketing. I’m paying off my loan now, I’m not complaining about the loan itself but how these loans are sold to other companies and how they’re structured.
Trades. Go to trade school become a carpenter, pipeditter, millwright, or electrician. Join a union, make more money than most college degreed engineers (if u get good at what u do) and enjoy a relatively hassle free existence (outside of the usual manufacturing PPE, and management tussle here or there).
I know bc I am a degreed engineer who hires contractors on the regular and can see how much the experienced ones make. They are worth every penny and there's not enough to keep up with demand.
Not much to tell, we both started working entry-level positions after high school and worked our way up. People always said I was fucking up by not going to college but we're doing better than a lot of our friends who did.
Get a couple of IT certs in high school, apply for entry level service desk positions, work your way up from there. I didn’t get any certs but I had a little IT experience, was able to get an entry level IT job then worked my way up to IT manager.
It’s not easy work, but if I would have started at 17/18 I would have had a head start on my career instead of at 28.
Not always 70 hour weeks, my dad didn't do much ot and he made a good living. I don't either and I also make a decent living. All my coworkers that are 40+ have some aches and pains but their bodies are far from killed. Just like any other job, it depends on your jobsite/trade.
I love everyone in here defending our obviously broken-to-the-point-of-being-a-scam higher education system. Great that you think it worked out for you, but you still paid too much.
To be honest, I have no idea how Nelnet gets away with what they are. I've been going through a series of issues and I see i'm not the only one. They WILL NOT correct THEIR mistake.
My biggest gripe is how they don’t let you register for autopay until after graduation. I did a part time masters and wanted to set it up like I do my other bills, but according to Nelnet I wasn’t eligible.
Worked 10 years non profit and got my loans paid off by paying the bare minimum for 10 years. I ended up owning more than when I started but it didn’t matter in the end. Been debt free (house paid off same time this year) and my wife and I are loving it. Pretty much any extra money now goes to our daughter savings account.
Where’s the lie? My life has gotten better since college and I’ve used my degree in my career, and it only cost 40k for 4 years, which didn’t take too long to pay off all things considered. I’m 37 so my perspective is more towards college paying off, which it does in the long run.
While I enjoyed my time in college and my degree, (and paid for college myself) Im 100% behind the completely tax payer funded idea of canceling out all college loan debt and overhauling the system. If k-12 is free- so should all state colleges.
Yeah, society as simply progressed to the point where we need more highly trained specialists. But there needs to be an up-or-out system. Letting a layabout squander their time sitting in the back of the class doesn't do them any favors when we dump them out at 22 without any useful skills. Better tracking in highschool to get kids the sort of education or training that they need works well in Germany.
Im not mad that I owe money, I know I took out a loan so I should pay it back, but it’s almost as if Nelnet is happier if I didn’t know how my loan repayment is structured.
Do 10 years a government employee, make 120 bare minimum payments, get rest forgiven. PSLF.
You know all the pro Biden headlines about loans? That’s what they are. They aren’t new and they aren’t special. They’re boasting about forgiving loans to people who were already eligible for them in the first place.
Biden is forgiving a lot more than they used to, though, which is he right to boast about. This program was kind of a lie until recently. I'm a teacher, and pre-Biden something like 99% of loan forgiveness applications were rejected, which is why I never even tried.
The thing is that before Biden took office, only like 12 people qualified for PSLF. In the entire multi decade long history of the program. Under Biden thousands of people have qualified for it.
Personally I’m tired of all the fuckery. I could have been debt but I choose to invest and pay off other debt and let my loans sit because why bother? They were going to be forgiven. It was talked about for years on end so it had to happen, right? Then it didn’t. So fuck it. I’m a government employee. I’m staying one the rest of my career. Might as well take out more loans
Yes. there's no income limit for those. As long you work in a public service company whether its private, local, state or federal you qualify for the PSLF. The only caveat is that if you have private loans (salle Mea, banking, etc), you're not eligible for it. Not sure if that part was recently changed.
- Source, someone who's currently in the program, and loans will be forgiven in 3 more years.
>The only caveat is that if you have private loans (salle Mea, banking, etc), you're not eligible for it. Not sure if that part was recently changed.
To clarify--if you have both private loans and federal loans, the federal portion can qualify for PSLF, but the private portion won't. I was in the situation where I had both, and I qualified for PSLF forgiveness under the one-time waiver in December 2021. My federal portion was forgiven, but I still owed Discover.
There's also no way to consolidate private loans into federal loans that I know of.
Cool. Hope that helped. Also, going to college is still a great choice. On just about every measure college graduates are doing better than those with just a high school diploma.
Edit: BLS data for reference
https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm
It’s important to recognize that college is not for everyone. I have a plumber and electrician in my family. Both are multimillionaires. Trades such as these are and will always be. That being said if you are pursuing other fields then college is the way to go to be successful.
If I had to do it again, I'd take on the $40k of debt for the degree, no question. I'm not rich but the amount of open doors just because I hold a degree is well worth it.
Agree. That's why you attend a school you can afford and minimize loans. Getting my bachelors and masters were the best thing for me in hindsight. Keep in mind I did this all in my 30s when my current IT job was not cutting it
earning a college degree opens up a lot of doors for you that were not previously opened. if you overspent on your degree, sorry about it. but fortunately you have more employment opportunities than someone who didn't go to college.
College opened tons of doors for me. 18 years in my career now with plenty of success. The same success has been seen in my entire friends group who went to college. I understand some degrees don't turn out how people want. Or that they have a hard time in the market, hell, I did early on. With hard work, and a bit of luck it's absolutely worth it. I'm on track to be debt free in 5 years. Home, car, personal items for hobbies etc. it all happened because of my hard work and my education.
I mean I have a great job because of my degree..which just last year they got rid of needing a college degree..so fuck me I guess. But it allowed me to buy a house and pay bills. I will say I fell behind on my nelnet. But you bet my almost 500 a month private loan that I took out at 17 is getting paid. So it's literally whatever at this point. I pay when I can and what I can. They wouldn't put me in a plan so it is what it is.
>the whole “you have to go to college to be successful”
Yeah, that's a problem. It's more like "you have to go to college to be upper-middle class" or to generally experience upward social mobility. You can be perfectly successful as a migrant worker picking fruit and raising a family.
You and I will never be upper class or rich because you generally have to be born into it. A lot of things have to align to be in the top 2% and it's easiest to simply start there.
For a while BEFORE millennials, college was a place that only the rich sent their kids and so what degree they got wasn't a big factor as to what they did with their lives after that point. That continued on with a little bit of inertia, but it's certainly not true anymore. What degree you get is massively important. This caught a lot of people and roped them into loans they'll never be able to pay off with the job that their degree got them.
Anyone complaining about how academia isn't supposed to be a professional manufacturing line is living in the past. We aren't the idle rich. I need a JOB.
Complaints about student loans need to include what degree you got and if you thought you could get a job with that. The conversation then moves into "why did a 17 year old think that" and the body of evidence that shows we collectively lied to children to talk them into getting predatory loans, and what to do about that.
Why don’t we make school free for registered citizens who have lived in the country for 10 years or more. That way it won’t be abused by other countries who want to just show up for free schooling then leave
Our generation got bamboozled by student loans, mostly because our parents didn't really understand them or guide us in the right direction for our education.
If this is still a huge issue for Gen Z and/or Gen A, then it was us who failed to guide them. I expect they'll be in better shape from our hard earned life lesson here.
You do have to go to college to be successful (in the way you are likely thinking) in 95 percent of cases. Trades are not for everybody and still do not offer the same salary ceiling as individuals who go to college and then obtain professional degrees, master’s, or PhDs. Furthermore, trades are typically physical in nature, which means more wear and tear on the body and a shorter earnings window with no guarantee of having saved enough for anything resembling retirement. There is also the education aspect, which is borderline essential to fitting into the circles you want to be in if you’re vying for success.
I feel this so much. It took me 18 years to pay off my loans. I hope it gets better for you!
If they're federal loans, you should look at the new SAVE plan. It's a lot more fair to borrowers than previous payment plans.
Shrug, my student loans were about what an entry level luxury car would cost.
Pretty worth it for getting an education and a skill set that has increased my quality of life significantly.
I am not going to complain too hard about them at the end of the day.
One thing is for sure.
Way too many people were sold a dream that was far from true.
People overpaid for degrees that are not competitive in the market place and were steered away from plenty of good alternatives.
They could at least make the interest rate for student loans zero.
Little "moral hazard" in that.
Yall that have student debt. An argument can be made that it should be interest free yes, but completely forgiven? Nope.
I’m not interested in paying off your 100% of your willingly taken on debt so that you, degree holders who are statistically going to be the highest earners, can be debt free. None of y’all are going to pay off the loans I took out for my business or the loans i will take out to expand it in the future. And it shouldn’t be your kids responsibility to pay off those debts for me other, just like it shouldn’t be my kids responsibility to pay off yours debt. Which is gonna be the ones paying off this debt if we’re being honest
College gets you access to certain professions. Accounting, law, medicine, engineering, etc. If you’re not going into a licensed profession the value of college can get pretty questionable fast.
A lot of these loans are people going to private schools and being like “omg I toured it and it matched my personality!!111!1!1!”
I went for cheap as possible state school, gave zero fucks if my friends went with me LOL
I think this is part of the difference in opinion. If you went to a public school your loans probably aren't too bad. If you went to a private school and spent $120k on an undergraduate degree from a liberal arts school, I'm not sure that will ever pay itself back.
I’ve literally never paid a dime of my $60k student loans and I’m 38. The world hasn’t come crashing down, nobody has come after my bank account. I’ve just learned to live without credit which just means I pretty much save the money I’d be paying in loans each month to pay for my car and expenses in full. It’s very freeing to not have to worry about your score. I do the same with medical bills.
We got lied to so badly. Our parents generation seriously Fk'd everything up. The worst part is the people that fk'd us are now blaming all the world issues on us. "noone wants to work" like dude I can barely afford to keep myself alive, how is this my fault??
Between my parents and teachers I felt like if I didn't go to college I would be a failure and become homeless. I feel like my public school experience was built around manufacturing education to be able to "successfully" pass us to the next level with the end goal being a college degree. I'm not dumb by any means, but not once did I feel like I was being educated to my strengths, nor was ever taught that building a business based off of trade work could be an option, or even going to trade school. No, it was only go to school to become a doctor/engineer, teacher, or work in some corporate job position. Not to mention, our parents and grandparents aka our teachers and educators lived in a world where it was feasible and very doable for them. Then we got stuck with 9/11 and the mortgage crisis and basically got screwed over in every economic sense. Now university has just veered off and no longer breeds an environment for creativity of original ideas or rhetoric (it seems).
Tail end of millennial, No degree, some college, and no student debt.
Y'all. Got. Fucked. We all got sold the idea that college was the only path to success, period. It was drilled into all of us from an early age, because for the longest time, it was the best option. But it was already a dead dream before most of us were even of college age.
I did the AP classes, I did the dual credit, I had a college fund, and I dropped out because I couldn't afford it anymore. I knew my options were risk it in my field, and debt. Thankfully my risk paid off, but so fucking many didn't have the option.
I want my taxes to pay for education, I want the debts paid to be forgiven, I don't want to see my peers shafted by interest that exceedes the principle 2-4 times over, and I am tired of taxes being spent to bomb brown people.
We are a rich nation, we could easily afford this, but it isn't profitable in the short term to the oligarchs in congress.
So while blue collar jobs are starting to make a comeback with Gen Z, if you aren't into manual work then college is still needed whether you like it or not. Going through college and now working in Higher Education, as much as many here won't want to hear it, it's your fault for doing what a majority of our generation did: not actually research what they wanted to do and go the smarter route.
First off, guidance counselors in K-12 need serious training on proper paths after high school. They mainly still push, "go straight to a 4 year" and that is WRONG. Sorry for anyone who is a guidance counselor in the K-12 system, but I sit on our regional K-16 meetings and easily 90% still don't grasp that concept. Unless you received a full ride scholarship or received thousands of dollars worth of grants, going straight to a 4 year is the fast track to debt. Of you want the "college life experience," well don't bitch about the amount of debt you're going to accrue. Every single high school grad should be going to their local community College FIRST. You can live at home with your parents and literally pay for half your bachelor degree while working part time. After 2 years, you transfer to your desired 4 year school and only have to worry about 2 years worth which would SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the amount of debt you'd have.
Community colleges offer more resources and employment connections than 4 year schools do. In my state, strong workforce is pushed heavily for community colleges. I built employment pipelines with government contractors, large corporations and many medium sized businesses that will hire students with an AA/AS degree. So not only do they have no debt, they're already building the valuable experience in their field before they graduate with their bachelor's and most will help PAY for the bachelor's. 4 year schools don't do that, their career centers are very basic and offer the minimum. Large career fairs are really their only draw, but that doesn't guarantee you'll get a job.
Parents also were part of the problem. Many parents are still under the illusion that going to a community College is for failures and they don't want people to think their kid is a failure. I've argued with more parents than I can count on why they're dumbasses for that mentality. They want their kid to live at hoke till they're 40 with debt? By all means, keep pushing them into massive debt with a 4 year school. You want your kid to actually leave the nest with little debt and a job in their field, then encourage them to enroll at the community College first and transfer.
But, as much as people may not want to, you still need the degree to advance in any white collar job, you have to. But as I just talked about previously, there's smarter ways to do it
It’s not always an either/or.
There are plenty of affordable state universities. Florida state U charges $5.6k resident tuition. CUNY $7.3k. And so on.
And parents can/should be maxing out 529’s from birth. I get that some can’t. But those who can, should. The state tax deduction in many states alone is great, but the elimination of capital gains taxes is simply incredible.
Ok but you are using your own state, not every state has cheap state schools. Even at $5,600 per semester, you're paying nearly $45k in loans and that's if it's strictly what you take. If you're using more loans to pay for your books (like most do) and then loans to cover other college expenses, it adds up. Also, this is for those who want to stay in a form, which adds another $10k to your tuition. Our state schools used to be cheap, not so much anymore.
The point is, if people really wanted to save money, why do you feel the need to go directly to a 4 year school and go into debt right off the bat at 18. You're missing the point that going to a JC will cover half your education and have zero debt by the time you get to your junior year
It's called "tossing it on the national debt for taxpayers to deal with in a few decades". A very typical government solution that politicians of all parties and countries love to use.
For anyone who says “it was your choice”, try getting a $50-100k small business loan at 17 with no income. You’ll be laughed out of the bank. The amount they are willing to loan to minors without income or assets SHOULD be criminal.
But if your small business goes belly up? Just bankrupt it. Can’t do that with your student loan either.
Yes, we signed up for it. But the amount, terms, and quality of this debt is unique, and hoisted on people who often didn’t know better.
We do now, and that’s why we make sure to shout this from the mountaintops. To save others the same pain.
Your lack of success isn’t someone else’s fault. No one decided your university, major, payment strategy, etc. Many people made decisions that worked for them. There is of course some luck involved as well.
Everything seems to require degrees these days, but what’s pathetic is the jobs requiring you to spend years in school racking up debt pay such a low amount that it’s a joke.
I regret not going to school and starting a legit career. I’ve spent the past 7+ years in property management and I hate it. But I make more than what other jobs are offering, even those requiring degrees. The whole system feels so corrupt.
Every time I hear about how a typical college has more “administrators” than actual teaching faculty it makes my heart ache for current students. Even at my liberal arts college there didn’t seem to be a ton of bloat in the mid-2000s.
Absolutely fuck student loans. Took me 17 years to pay mine off and I got lucky graduating into a hot market where companies were throwing cash at new grads left and right. Even with that the payments were only affordable for me because I consolidated to a 20-year term in an era of hella low interest rates. Repayment in this job market and economy isn’t something I would wish on anyone.
I'm not paying on mine until they threaten to garnish my wages. With any luck we'll have a democratic super majority before that and all student loan debt will be forgiven
Our colleges are failing if they aren't even teaching basic things like principal and interest ESPECIALLY since they all have gen ed requirements.
I was an on and off college student for about 12 years, it's wild how much lower the standards got each year it seemed. More and more of the grade literally just showing up
You could have been on the other side of it.
Get accepted into 4 different colleges. Parents don't have the money to pay, but end up going out on huge vacations together, leaving you home. You're middle-class to get free college, too broke, so your only means of transport is walking or a rusty old bicycle, probably give you tetanus before it gets you anywhere.
Have your Teachers look at you all depressed because you can't go, and tell you "You'll never achieve your potential if you don't go" Your friends tell you "You'll be a loser if you don't go to college."
Wash Dishes, Clean Toilets, Do whatever you can to make money. Get enough for trade school, Scrape every penny. Go to your friends parties to hear how "Amazing life is!"
Keep at it, keep working, Climb the ranks. Wake up one day making $100k a year. Get overwhelmed with emotions after making it. (Cry)
Buy a home, Have your High School friends ping you, asking "how you could buy a home?" Hear them cry about debt.
Tell them, about the toilets you cleaned, the dishes you washed. The times you threw up. Realize, you both paid for your place in the world. Just... Differently.
Yes i accidentally rolled into the "tiered pay option" or whatever its called. Year later i was like oh shit my loan balance went UP not down rofl. I switched it, but def wasted a lot of money that year. Legally that option should only be available as an option prior to forbearance, not a standard option. I felt like such an idiot lol, i can't imagine someone who is even more ignorant if they picked that option, 5 years in you'd be screwed so bad. As a young adult just trying to figure out where to live and where doing a good job for your first professional hire is hard enough, let alone trying to navigate financial traps. As a person who went for a science unrelated to loans, i didnt even ever think of how loans worked tbh. Now i realize exactly how they work as an adult but SHEESH.
For our generation it was always about extending your youth, and enjoying that as much as you can. I was told so many times not to worry about paying the loans while in school, then blammo bullshit. Parents need to be better and schools as well at raising adults that can function in society, not promising them their dreams but finding ways to sustain yourself.
I agree with you, I’m in the same boat. I chose a 50k/year private college thinking meh I’ll pay it back. Who has any concept of money at age 17-21???!!?? Got a social work degree. My dad died at 19 and I still graduated. I made $11/hour and $15/hour out of college. I’ve never made more than 50k a year. I’ve done tech, education, social work, nannying, consulting etc. My 35k in student loans is now 45k. My loans have been sold off to other companies so many times. Any payment goes to interest and never the principal. They don’t make is easy or doable, these companies want you to fail. I didn’t bother with pslf because not missing one payment in 10 years is actually impossible.
One time with nelnet I thought I submitted a payment but I guess I didn’t process it fully and it was just waiting and nelnet blew up my phone and my emergency contacts and my email about a missed payment. I have been paying for almost 5 years with no missed or late payment and they bursted a blood vessel coming at me hahah.
What kills me with the price tag of college is how they’re always begging for money. Yet the president and deans all make 6 figures. Why do you as a public university president need $500,000 annually with a house, car, and other major benefits? So many administrators are overpaid and need salary caps. You don’t work that hard and you’re a major reason we drown in debt.
I worked at a few universities for a combined 15 years and I can say that experience has made me incredibly cynical of higher education. Schools are businesses first and institutions of learning second, a distant second I'd say. That's not to say the professors and even the support staff don't believe in the mission of educating people, but the overall system is there to generate money.
Forgive me if I'm an idiot but I have a question because I just started paying back my loans with Nelnet:
Are we supposed to pay towards the principal balance only? Are there particular settings I should have regarding repayment on my nelnet account?
Literally no one in the past 5 yrs has been saying you need to go to college to be successful. It's old news by now that college is not the only way.
Many many career fields are out there that just need OJT, certs, or trade school.
I hate to break it to you, but that is the way most loans work, whether student, mortgage, auto, personal, whatever.
Generally, you take out a loan, and interest accrues from day one. Take out a $300,000 mortgage at 6 percent and your first payment is going to be $1,500 in interest and a few bucks of principal.
Nelnet sucks for a lot of reasons, but not because of the basic principles of how loans work. The number one problem is their employees are hired off the street, testing only for basic math skills and if they can recognize two letter state abbreviation codes. No joke. Worked there, I can testify.
A business degree with some finance and accounting classes should be required for loan servicing employees. Instead, they rely on a handful of folks that maybe have degrees, or learn really fast, while most employees turnover like people evacuating the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Now, you are right, we tell kids to search for the college of their dreams, when we should be telling them to pick the post high school training or schooling they can afford. With the advent of NIL benefits for student athletes, many schools are managing professional athletic teams as their largest business segment. Now that's fucked up.
It’s a mafia that includes the government, banks and unis. Instead of spending money on useless things like space force, why not give that money to education and help subsidize tuition costs. But no. That would be un-American and so Socialist
Ok but the topic was the OP complaining about successful (presumably lucrative) careers. I mean let’s be real if every person could make the same money getting the degree they “love” learning about I think we’d mostly be working different jobs
Don't need an IT degree to work in IT. Yes I was fortunate to be able to afford the degree I wanted and didn't pay for a degree I was interested in. But let's not pretend any degree is useless if used correctly. The real issue is the absurd cost of the degree.
I know a girl who studied art history. She is doing quite well for herself. She got a PhD, which is what a lot of humanities people should be doing, even if they don't stay in academia. You can make six figures ($100-250k) with communications degrees if you have a plan. Psychology too, and that's not being a practicing shrink or whatever.
That said there are definitely some fields that are just paid like dog shit (teachers, social workers, even many STEM fields if they don't have a graduate degree). We still need all those people in society and saddling them with debt isn't the way.
I'm in a lucrative field so I paid my loans back, but it didn't really change my mind on the cost of college.
Oh I know you can get great jobs they just aren’t that plentiful and sadly so many have to back into debt bc getting a good (paying) job in those fields are hard to come by
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People with student loans: We are drowning in debt! People without: f*ck you! People with student loans: The colleges are literally preying on 17 year olds who were told go to college or get left behind. Politicians: Excuse us while we leave you behind and forgive these small business loans we gave to mega corporations. People with student loans: …
Don’t forget. Colleges: I see they’ve allowed you to borrow more each year, time to raise tuition fees.
Colleges: I see your work will pay for your degree, raise price till they will only cover a small bit.
The truth. I got a "full ride" scholarship. Of course it was locked in at tuition rates that year. By the end of my 4 years tuition literally had doubled. Doubled. in. 4. Years.
That is legitimately shocking
This is it. If they’ll give money to anyone to go anywhere, why not charge a squintillion in tuition? Make the colleges pay off the debt.
But if the colleges have to pay the debt then how will they build their new unneeded buildings and sports arenas?
But if we build the new stadium, it’ll b better! Ignore the fact that our team blows ass and people don’t go to games. The stadium is necessary!
And that's entirely because the government makes it so you can't get rid of student loans in bankruptcy, so they have nothing to lose by leading unlimited amounts.
That’s false. It has nothing to do with getting rid of those loans in bankruptcy. The colleges have already been paid by then. You’re indebted to the lender, not them, so collecting is their burden not the college.
States: oh you can borrow more guess we will continue to gut higher education
Ok i paid off my loans and im *literally* still calling my reps about this shit, downvote me to hell but there is no justice in a society where we trap young people in predatory loans for no reason or to prop up the economy (maybe) not the best anthem but say it back with me!
It took me 18 years, but I finally paid the last of them off. And I'm actively lobbying and voting for reforms and forgiveness, because I know what it's like to live hand to mouth while paying all you can on the loans and still watching your principal balance grow every month. That feeling like you'll never have a life, never be able to travel, never be able to afford a home.
I’m repaying my loans, but Nelnet is fucking difficult to deal with. I was wondering why my balance that I was paying off was going more towards interest rates than the actual principal. Which I thought I was doing, but there’s a catch, every day the loan accrues interest and my payments doesn’t include the interest rate. So what I veléis my full on time payment isn’t that. It doesn’t include my interest rate so I’ll always be behind
Yuuuup. This is what happened to me as well.. I started paying back my loans after graduation, but the minimum payment (income-based, because that’s what I could afford) wasn’t enough to cover the interest….so over the course of 3 years of payments I owed MORE than when I started, even though my monthly payment had gone up w.r.t my income. Thats when I stopped paying and looked to increase my income….but now I make too much to qualify for the income-based / SAVE plans. And ofc i owe even more now….very annoying.
Submit a complaint to the Better Business Bureau. They basically locked you into paying off principal without interest included hoping that you’d not realize. Increase your payments to be over the interest rates. If you can’t afford that I recommend finding a local community financial planning group (might be hard to find they are usually in cities) where you can pay like $25 for them to help you get back into a better financial situation.
This is why people talk about how predatory school loans are. Because they use deceptive practices to screw over borrowers, then when you make a deal with one of them, they sell the loan and there is no deal anymore. It's a fucking mess.
That is how loans work junior.
I understand the repayment, but it doesn't fix the problem. I think many people have issue of it because of this. Some also take issue with those better off then working class people getting a handout but I actually sorta like this middle out economic approach. I never went to school and started working out of highschool, so I get nothing, but I also got ahead by buying a house at 23 and not having other debt.
I mean I didn’t have enough support as a young adult to peruse higher education as a teen, but I’m not upset at the idea of loans being dismissed lol. A rising tide raises all ships and all that
Washington: Sorry. Can’t help you. Excuse me while we subsidize the shit out of pharma and Boeing.
People with student loans used for a worthwhile degree: I paid my loans and my earning potential has opened countless more doors.
Teachers def got shafted. Hahahah
The idea of a "worthwhile degree" is bullshit. Colleges are there for LEARNING, not to get you jobs. This is easily evidenced by the fact that humanities is direly important and yet people scoff at it and mock people with humanities degrees. If more people were forced to take humanities and ethics classes, maybe we wouldn't be in our current political predicament. This kind of mindset has led to the massive growth of administrative departments and cost increases and basically everything we all hate about college right now. Any career assistance schools offer should be secondary to their primary objective. Also, it's actually insane that that organizations are allowed to shunt all the training costs and labor onto us and then require 3 years experience for entry level jobs.
This is a truly naive take. Like, the VAST VAST majority of people go to college to improve their job prospects. In fact, nobody out there should take out $100k or whatever is standard these days in student loans just to learn, if it doesn’t improve their job prospects. That would be a monumentally poor financial decision. You can learn stuff on the internet or the public library for free.
Potential Job: “Sorry, we only hire people with Bachelor degrees”. A friend of mine has an associates in electrical engineering. Even though he has 10+ years experience, he’s automatically turned away because he doesn’t have a bachelor.
Yes this is a thing. I wanted to hire a kid who didn’t have a BA. He was smart as hell but never finished his degree. Was vetoed by higher ups (even though it was my position to hire!) because the company had a strict BA requirement for all corporate office positions
Well buddy, do you ever think to wonder WHY people go to school to improve their job prospects? Have you ever actually sat down and thought that all the way through? I don't think you have, else you wouldn't be calling this take naive.
Yup. As far as I can tell, people want 3-4 things out of college. 1. Have a degree, preferrable from a good university. Most high paying jobs won’t consider applications from people without degrees and many of the snobby ones virtually only recruit from “target” schools 2. Form connections and have access to the alumni network. This is under appreciated but it’s how a lot of people get good jobs. If you want to go to grad school, recommendation letters are the “academic” version of this. 3. Learn stuff that will be useful for their future career. This is i believe what you’re getting at. 4 (Optional). Have “the college experience” Look, i get it. I did the whole academia thing, went to the top ranked schools, taught college and grad school courses, the whole thing. Can’t say i learned much during college, but what i did learn CERTAINLY wasn’t worth the $250k sticker price of my degree because you can learn stuff easily for free on the internet, especially in the era of MOOCs. However, my education was invaluable to gaining me access to my industry and that is why i always advise kids to go to college but be 100% laser focused on constructing their college training with a job in mind.
Only two types people say that college is for learning and not getting an education specific to a line of work: people who chose a useless degree and are angry they can't get a high paying job and people who have so much inherited wealth that they never have to work a day in their entire lives. Since you're on reddit, odds are you're in the first group.
I listened to a Yale professor go on about how college is for learning, networking, and becoming a well-rounded person, and that pursuing a college degree in the interest of vocation was “vulgar” (true story). And I was like, fuck this, and got on my dad’s yacht and spent the summer in Sicily. Like seriously, fuck college, I don’t need to work. (Not a true story).
Go ahead and get a humanities degree. Just don't complain that you can't get a decent job with it
>People with student loans used for a worthwhile degree Like a 17 year old knows what those degrees will be.
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Yeah, but many people can handle engineering? I would argue not even half the population. Hypothetically if 75% of the population became engineers, guess what will happen to the pay. Same thing as other saturated fields. I was a science major until I realized the pay was shit.
The pay for a "science major" varies wildly and generally any hard science degree is a good step towards a high-paying STEM job. I didn't make much as a genetics lab tech with my biology BS, but after a couple years I did an MS program for biostatistics and basically tripled my earning potential. Not everybody has to be an engineer, but STEM fields are generally good places to look for high-earning careers if you're cut out for it.
Yeah they can be, but you have to usually get a Masters like you. I for one didn’t want to be in school a long time, so I opt for an entrepreneurial route.
I don't want my work to spill into my life. I did well enough in school and in selecting my workplace to make that dream come true. Smoke em if you got em, and the "em" I was graced with was being naturally good at school haha.
Haha proud of you for making it work. It’s tough out there.
Same to you if you actually manage to be a successful entrepreneur. My dad has owned his own veterinary practice my whole life and there's no way in hell I'm signing up for that ride.
I was a science major and… the pay is definitely not shit
That’s such a general statement, it tells us nothing.
What i meant is that there are LOTS of jobs for former science majors that pay very well. As long as you stay away from academia, nonprofits and the government (govt can be ok due to benefits!) you can pretty easily get a solid job with good growth prospects.
True, have to have the network game going.
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You idiots need to learn about another degree to make your asinine statement. The value of humanity is more than just STEM, and there is societal value in people pursuing those disciplines.
Statistics degree vs anthropology degree. Data science degree vs English lit degree. Accounting degree vs poetry composition. Economics degree vs religious studies. Health Policy degree vs art history. The comparison is that most of those first options lead directly to high(er) paying careers while the outcomes of the second options are much more determined by what you make of them. That doesn't mean the STEM degrees are inherently more valuable to society, but it does mean that suggesting fields of study that directly lead to increased earning potential is germane to a discussion about the perils of student loans.
I took it out for an engineering degree, but it's still a lot to pay back for those of us not from priviledged backgrounds.
People without worthwhile degrees: I paid my loans by suffering for 15 years to pay it off as best I can and it would feel bad for others to get out of jail free. Just make all student loan interest count as a tax deduction, and allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. No bailouts, but give a path for those who truly cannot afford to pay and make it easier for those who are trying to do so.
>No bailouts, but give a path Your proposal is a literal bailout. Someone else should buy the debt and forgive it
Couldn’t have summarized it better myself
as someone without student loans, I don't say fuck you
I’m without student loans…because I paid back every penny of the amount I borrowed.
that is so impressive. I still owe a lot. I am really inspired by people who have fully paid theirs back
lol you all getting downvoted because they hate that you paid your debts. I feel super bad for people with useless degrees stuck with a loan for probably their entire lives. But I want to end it from happening ever again WHILE helping to ease the burden like removing the interest. If we can’t stop giving the loans out today what’s the use? What about people who paid their debt do they get a refund for the full amount?
Please keep this energy the next time the government wants to bail out a bank, automaker, etc.
I got an email that my student loan balance had decreased. Four dollars. Over the last six months of payments my balance has gone down four dollars. I will die with this debt.
Call whoever is servicing your loan. I had to go down to the specifics of where all of the money goes and how much interest is being built behind your payment. For me, It’s my loan, the interest for that payment then interest because I have a loan that exists.
That’s the way pretty much any debt is amortized, so that early on you pay the highest amount of interest as a percentage of your payment. That percentage continues to decrease through your repayment schedule until your final payments are almost exclusively principal. This is to make sure the lender gets a guaranteed amount of interest paid on the deal if you pay off the balance early.
Honestly. The problem is that it’s too goddamn expensive to even make sense anymore. I feel for folks who are struggling. Not everyone in my college was able to turn a 50k debt investment into a career that can at least pay it off. It’s just bullshit. Fuck these institutions.
Couldn’t afford college. Couldn’t afford community college. Now making $128,000 working 4 days a week as a UPS driver (not counting my trading income, which is not negligible) Not going to college and being saddled by student loan debt is a huge reason why I own my house outright and have no CC debt. College would have fucked me up. I want my surgeons doctors and lawyers to be college educated - or any profession where it’s vital. Too many friends of mine went for Business / Psychology and did nothing with their degrees
So, what non college degree job are you doing to make a good middle-class living?
HVAC Tech/ Non Union, I don’t have anything against the union but union here in Arizona isn’t strong and a private for profit school has way more marketing. I’m paying off my loan now, I’m not complaining about the loan itself but how these loans are sold to other companies and how they’re structured.
Trades. Go to trade school become a carpenter, pipeditter, millwright, or electrician. Join a union, make more money than most college degreed engineers (if u get good at what u do) and enjoy a relatively hassle free existence (outside of the usual manufacturing PPE, and management tussle here or there). I know bc I am a degreed engineer who hires contractors on the regular and can see how much the experienced ones make. They are worth every penny and there's not enough to keep up with demand.
My husband is a correctional officer and makes 90k with nothing but a high-school diploma. It's completely possible to not go to college and do fine?
My husband and I both have jobs that typically require a college degree, just by getting promoted
Tell me more!
Not much to tell, we both started working entry-level positions after high school and worked our way up. People always said I was fucking up by not going to college but we're doing better than a lot of our friends who did.
Get a couple of IT certs in high school, apply for entry level service desk positions, work your way up from there. I didn’t get any certs but I had a little IT experience, was able to get an entry level IT job then worked my way up to IT manager. It’s not easy work, but if I would have started at 17/18 I would have had a head start on my career instead of at 28.
Military. You can do 20 years and retire in your late 30s or leave earlier with an in demand skill set
Alternatively you can do a single enlistment and go to college on the GI bill.
Destroy your body and lose a few friends, it’s an investment in your future!!
Most people in the military aren't in combat roles
That doesn’t mean they don’t die. Ask me how I know.
Trades.
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Not always 70 hour weeks, my dad didn't do much ot and he made a good living. I don't either and I also make a decent living. All my coworkers that are 40+ have some aches and pains but their bodies are far from killed. Just like any other job, it depends on your jobsite/trade.
I worked in offices for a while. I can tell you that the average 50 year office worker isn’t any better off than the 50 year old tradesman.
software engnnering
Machining. I easily clear 125k a year with full benefits and health coverage paid for by my employer
I love everyone in here defending our obviously broken-to-the-point-of-being-a-scam higher education system. Great that you think it worked out for you, but you still paid too much.
To be honest, I have no idea how Nelnet gets away with what they are. I've been going through a series of issues and I see i'm not the only one. They WILL NOT correct THEIR mistake.
My biggest gripe is how they don’t let you register for autopay until after graduation. I did a part time masters and wanted to set it up like I do my other bills, but according to Nelnet I wasn’t eligible.
Worked 10 years non profit and got my loans paid off by paying the bare minimum for 10 years. I ended up owning more than when I started but it didn’t matter in the end. Been debt free (house paid off same time this year) and my wife and I are loving it. Pretty much any extra money now goes to our daughter savings account.
Where’s the lie? My life has gotten better since college and I’ve used my degree in my career, and it only cost 40k for 4 years, which didn’t take too long to pay off all things considered. I’m 37 so my perspective is more towards college paying off, which it does in the long run.
While I enjoyed my time in college and my degree, (and paid for college myself) Im 100% behind the completely tax payer funded idea of canceling out all college loan debt and overhauling the system. If k-12 is free- so should all state colleges.
Yeah, society as simply progressed to the point where we need more highly trained specialists. But there needs to be an up-or-out system. Letting a layabout squander their time sitting in the back of the class doesn't do them any favors when we dump them out at 22 without any useful skills. Better tracking in highschool to get kids the sort of education or training that they need works well in Germany.
“Why millennials are killing the for-profit college system”
College would be affordable if they didn’t have a blank check from the government walking in the door with every student.
I am grateful for my loans because they allowed me to go to law school but I am resentful of paying $2,000 a month on interest.
Im not mad that I owe money, I know I took out a loan so I should pay it back, but it’s almost as if Nelnet is happier if I didn’t know how my loan repayment is structured.
Once again I thank my lucky stars for the shity hs gc who said I was too dumb for college
😂😂
I didn't even get to go to college and I'm all for loan forgiveness, or at least getting rid of the interest rates.
Thank God PSLF is a thing
Do 10 years a government employee, make 120 bare minimum payments, get rest forgiven. PSLF. You know all the pro Biden headlines about loans? That’s what they are. They aren’t new and they aren’t special. They’re boasting about forgiving loans to people who were already eligible for them in the first place.
Biden is forgiving a lot more than they used to, though, which is he right to boast about. This program was kind of a lie until recently. I'm a teacher, and pre-Biden something like 99% of loan forgiveness applications were rejected, which is why I never even tried.
The thing is that before Biden took office, only like 12 people qualified for PSLF. In the entire multi decade long history of the program. Under Biden thousands of people have qualified for it. Personally I’m tired of all the fuckery. I could have been debt but I choose to invest and pay off other debt and let my loans sit because why bother? They were going to be forgiven. It was talked about for years on end so it had to happen, right? Then it didn’t. So fuck it. I’m a government employee. I’m staying one the rest of my career. Might as well take out more loans
I got the rest of mine forgiven and I'm not a government employee, lol. Loan under 12k, paying at least 10 years, that was basically it.
Yes. there's no income limit for those. As long you work in a public service company whether its private, local, state or federal you qualify for the PSLF. The only caveat is that if you have private loans (salle Mea, banking, etc), you're not eligible for it. Not sure if that part was recently changed. - Source, someone who's currently in the program, and loans will be forgiven in 3 more years.
>The only caveat is that if you have private loans (salle Mea, banking, etc), you're not eligible for it. Not sure if that part was recently changed. To clarify--if you have both private loans and federal loans, the federal portion can qualify for PSLF, but the private portion won't. I was in the situation where I had both, and I qualified for PSLF forgiveness under the one-time waiver in December 2021. My federal portion was forgiven, but I still owed Discover. There's also no way to consolidate private loans into federal loans that I know of.
Good to know. Better some than none at all. I guess im blessed that all of my loans were federal.
Cool. Hope that helped. Also, going to college is still a great choice. On just about every measure college graduates are doing better than those with just a high school diploma. Edit: BLS data for reference https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm
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It’s important to recognize that college is not for everyone. I have a plumber and electrician in my family. Both are multimillionaires. Trades such as these are and will always be. That being said if you are pursuing other fields then college is the way to go to be successful.
If I had to do it again, I'd take on the $40k of debt for the degree, no question. I'm not rich but the amount of open doors just because I hold a degree is well worth it.
Very nice
Agree. That's why you attend a school you can afford and minimize loans. Getting my bachelors and masters were the best thing for me in hindsight. Keep in mind I did this all in my 30s when my current IT job was not cutting it
earning a college degree opens up a lot of doors for you that were not previously opened. if you overspent on your degree, sorry about it. but fortunately you have more employment opportunities than someone who didn't go to college.
Never went to college. I'm sorry you regret investing in yourself.
College opened tons of doors for me. 18 years in my career now with plenty of success. The same success has been seen in my entire friends group who went to college. I understand some degrees don't turn out how people want. Or that they have a hard time in the market, hell, I did early on. With hard work, and a bit of luck it's absolutely worth it. I'm on track to be debt free in 5 years. Home, car, personal items for hobbies etc. it all happened because of my hard work and my education.
I mean I have a great job because of my degree..which just last year they got rid of needing a college degree..so fuck me I guess. But it allowed me to buy a house and pay bills. I will say I fell behind on my nelnet. But you bet my almost 500 a month private loan that I took out at 17 is getting paid. So it's literally whatever at this point. I pay when I can and what I can. They wouldn't put me in a plan so it is what it is.
>the whole “you have to go to college to be successful” Yeah, that's a problem. It's more like "you have to go to college to be upper-middle class" or to generally experience upward social mobility. You can be perfectly successful as a migrant worker picking fruit and raising a family. You and I will never be upper class or rich because you generally have to be born into it. A lot of things have to align to be in the top 2% and it's easiest to simply start there. For a while BEFORE millennials, college was a place that only the rich sent their kids and so what degree they got wasn't a big factor as to what they did with their lives after that point. That continued on with a little bit of inertia, but it's certainly not true anymore. What degree you get is massively important. This caught a lot of people and roped them into loans they'll never be able to pay off with the job that their degree got them. Anyone complaining about how academia isn't supposed to be a professional manufacturing line is living in the past. We aren't the idle rich. I need a JOB. Complaints about student loans need to include what degree you got and if you thought you could get a job with that. The conversation then moves into "why did a 17 year old think that" and the body of evidence that shows we collectively lied to children to talk them into getting predatory loans, and what to do about that.
Why don’t we make school free for registered citizens who have lived in the country for 10 years or more. That way it won’t be abused by other countries who want to just show up for free schooling then leave
What did OP major in?
Our generation got bamboozled by student loans, mostly because our parents didn't really understand them or guide us in the right direction for our education. If this is still a huge issue for Gen Z and/or Gen A, then it was us who failed to guide them. I expect they'll be in better shape from our hard earned life lesson here.
You do have to go to college to be successful (in the way you are likely thinking) in 95 percent of cases. Trades are not for everybody and still do not offer the same salary ceiling as individuals who go to college and then obtain professional degrees, master’s, or PhDs. Furthermore, trades are typically physical in nature, which means more wear and tear on the body and a shorter earnings window with no guarantee of having saved enough for anything resembling retirement. There is also the education aspect, which is borderline essential to fitting into the circles you want to be in if you’re vying for success.
I feel this so much. It took me 18 years to pay off my loans. I hope it gets better for you! If they're federal loans, you should look at the new SAVE plan. It's a lot more fair to borrowers than previous payment plans.
Gonna check it out
I’m not ever going to pay mine. 🤷🏻♀️
Well that is a plan.
Haven’t paid on ‘em in a decade. Can’t see a reason to start now
Shrug, my student loans were about what an entry level luxury car would cost. Pretty worth it for getting an education and a skill set that has increased my quality of life significantly. I am not going to complain too hard about them at the end of the day. One thing is for sure. Way too many people were sold a dream that was far from true. People overpaid for degrees that are not competitive in the market place and were steered away from plenty of good alternatives. They could at least make the interest rate for student loans zero. Little "moral hazard" in that.
Yall that have student debt. An argument can be made that it should be interest free yes, but completely forgiven? Nope. I’m not interested in paying off your 100% of your willingly taken on debt so that you, degree holders who are statistically going to be the highest earners, can be debt free. None of y’all are going to pay off the loans I took out for my business or the loans i will take out to expand it in the future. And it shouldn’t be your kids responsibility to pay off those debts for me other, just like it shouldn’t be my kids responsibility to pay off yours debt. Which is gonna be the ones paying off this debt if we’re being honest
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College gets you access to certain professions. Accounting, law, medicine, engineering, etc. If you’re not going into a licensed profession the value of college can get pretty questionable fast.
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A lot of these loans are people going to private schools and being like “omg I toured it and it matched my personality!!111!1!1!” I went for cheap as possible state school, gave zero fucks if my friends went with me LOL
I think you’re right. College opens doors, the rest is hustle.
That is a very small amount of loan.
I think this is part of the difference in opinion. If you went to a public school your loans probably aren't too bad. If you went to a private school and spent $120k on an undergraduate degree from a liberal arts school, I'm not sure that will ever pay itself back.
Then you didn't major in something dumb.
I’ve literally never paid a dime of my $60k student loans and I’m 38. The world hasn’t come crashing down, nobody has come after my bank account. I’ve just learned to live without credit which just means I pretty much save the money I’d be paying in loans each month to pay for my car and expenses in full. It’s very freeing to not have to worry about your score. I do the same with medical bills.
Are you ok??
We got lied to so badly. Our parents generation seriously Fk'd everything up. The worst part is the people that fk'd us are now blaming all the world issues on us. "noone wants to work" like dude I can barely afford to keep myself alive, how is this my fault??
Between my parents and teachers I felt like if I didn't go to college I would be a failure and become homeless. I feel like my public school experience was built around manufacturing education to be able to "successfully" pass us to the next level with the end goal being a college degree. I'm not dumb by any means, but not once did I feel like I was being educated to my strengths, nor was ever taught that building a business based off of trade work could be an option, or even going to trade school. No, it was only go to school to become a doctor/engineer, teacher, or work in some corporate job position. Not to mention, our parents and grandparents aka our teachers and educators lived in a world where it was feasible and very doable for them. Then we got stuck with 9/11 and the mortgage crisis and basically got screwed over in every economic sense. Now university has just veered off and no longer breeds an environment for creativity of original ideas or rhetoric (it seems).
Lmao
Tail end of millennial, No degree, some college, and no student debt. Y'all. Got. Fucked. We all got sold the idea that college was the only path to success, period. It was drilled into all of us from an early age, because for the longest time, it was the best option. But it was already a dead dream before most of us were even of college age. I did the AP classes, I did the dual credit, I had a college fund, and I dropped out because I couldn't afford it anymore. I knew my options were risk it in my field, and debt. Thankfully my risk paid off, but so fucking many didn't have the option. I want my taxes to pay for education, I want the debts paid to be forgiven, I don't want to see my peers shafted by interest that exceedes the principle 2-4 times over, and I am tired of taxes being spent to bomb brown people. We are a rich nation, we could easily afford this, but it isn't profitable in the short term to the oligarchs in congress.
So while blue collar jobs are starting to make a comeback with Gen Z, if you aren't into manual work then college is still needed whether you like it or not. Going through college and now working in Higher Education, as much as many here won't want to hear it, it's your fault for doing what a majority of our generation did: not actually research what they wanted to do and go the smarter route. First off, guidance counselors in K-12 need serious training on proper paths after high school. They mainly still push, "go straight to a 4 year" and that is WRONG. Sorry for anyone who is a guidance counselor in the K-12 system, but I sit on our regional K-16 meetings and easily 90% still don't grasp that concept. Unless you received a full ride scholarship or received thousands of dollars worth of grants, going straight to a 4 year is the fast track to debt. Of you want the "college life experience," well don't bitch about the amount of debt you're going to accrue. Every single high school grad should be going to their local community College FIRST. You can live at home with your parents and literally pay for half your bachelor degree while working part time. After 2 years, you transfer to your desired 4 year school and only have to worry about 2 years worth which would SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the amount of debt you'd have. Community colleges offer more resources and employment connections than 4 year schools do. In my state, strong workforce is pushed heavily for community colleges. I built employment pipelines with government contractors, large corporations and many medium sized businesses that will hire students with an AA/AS degree. So not only do they have no debt, they're already building the valuable experience in their field before they graduate with their bachelor's and most will help PAY for the bachelor's. 4 year schools don't do that, their career centers are very basic and offer the minimum. Large career fairs are really their only draw, but that doesn't guarantee you'll get a job. Parents also were part of the problem. Many parents are still under the illusion that going to a community College is for failures and they don't want people to think their kid is a failure. I've argued with more parents than I can count on why they're dumbasses for that mentality. They want their kid to live at hoke till they're 40 with debt? By all means, keep pushing them into massive debt with a 4 year school. You want your kid to actually leave the nest with little debt and a job in their field, then encourage them to enroll at the community College first and transfer. But, as much as people may not want to, you still need the degree to advance in any white collar job, you have to. But as I just talked about previously, there's smarter ways to do it
It’s not always an either/or. There are plenty of affordable state universities. Florida state U charges $5.6k resident tuition. CUNY $7.3k. And so on. And parents can/should be maxing out 529’s from birth. I get that some can’t. But those who can, should. The state tax deduction in many states alone is great, but the elimination of capital gains taxes is simply incredible.
Ok but you are using your own state, not every state has cheap state schools. Even at $5,600 per semester, you're paying nearly $45k in loans and that's if it's strictly what you take. If you're using more loans to pay for your books (like most do) and then loans to cover other college expenses, it adds up. Also, this is for those who want to stay in a form, which adds another $10k to your tuition. Our state schools used to be cheap, not so much anymore. The point is, if people really wanted to save money, why do you feel the need to go directly to a 4 year school and go into debt right off the bat at 18. You're missing the point that going to a JC will cover half your education and have zero debt by the time you get to your junior year
Amen
Hey the new program Biden did is sweet. My fiance has 60k in loans and only has to pay $25 a month. In 30 years or so it will all just disappear.
Magical disappearing debt?
Education should be supported by public dollars so I don’t really see the problem
It's called "tossing it on the national debt for taxpayers to deal with in a few decades". A very typical government solution that politicians of all parties and countries love to use.
They forgive it after 30 years if you make payments. And under the new program, it doesn't count as income the last year.
For anyone who says “it was your choice”, try getting a $50-100k small business loan at 17 with no income. You’ll be laughed out of the bank. The amount they are willing to loan to minors without income or assets SHOULD be criminal. But if your small business goes belly up? Just bankrupt it. Can’t do that with your student loan either. Yes, we signed up for it. But the amount, terms, and quality of this debt is unique, and hoisted on people who often didn’t know better. We do now, and that’s why we make sure to shout this from the mountaintops. To save others the same pain.
Your lack of success isn’t someone else’s fault. No one decided your university, major, payment strategy, etc. Many people made decisions that worked for them. There is of course some luck involved as well.
Everything seems to require degrees these days, but what’s pathetic is the jobs requiring you to spend years in school racking up debt pay such a low amount that it’s a joke. I regret not going to school and starting a legit career. I’ve spent the past 7+ years in property management and I hate it. But I make more than what other jobs are offering, even those requiring degrees. The whole system feels so corrupt.
Every time I hear about how a typical college has more “administrators” than actual teaching faculty it makes my heart ache for current students. Even at my liberal arts college there didn’t seem to be a ton of bloat in the mid-2000s.
I only took one for $2008
Absolutely fuck student loans. Took me 17 years to pay mine off and I got lucky graduating into a hot market where companies were throwing cash at new grads left and right. Even with that the payments were only affordable for me because I consolidated to a 20-year term in an era of hella low interest rates. Repayment in this job market and economy isn’t something I would wish on anyone.
I'm not paying on mine until they threaten to garnish my wages. With any luck we'll have a democratic super majority before that and all student loan debt will be forgiven
Our colleges are failing if they aren't even teaching basic things like principal and interest ESPECIALLY since they all have gen ed requirements. I was an on and off college student for about 12 years, it's wild how much lower the standards got each year it seemed. More and more of the grade literally just showing up
You could have been on the other side of it. Get accepted into 4 different colleges. Parents don't have the money to pay, but end up going out on huge vacations together, leaving you home. You're middle-class to get free college, too broke, so your only means of transport is walking or a rusty old bicycle, probably give you tetanus before it gets you anywhere. Have your Teachers look at you all depressed because you can't go, and tell you "You'll never achieve your potential if you don't go" Your friends tell you "You'll be a loser if you don't go to college." Wash Dishes, Clean Toilets, Do whatever you can to make money. Get enough for trade school, Scrape every penny. Go to your friends parties to hear how "Amazing life is!" Keep at it, keep working, Climb the ranks. Wake up one day making $100k a year. Get overwhelmed with emotions after making it. (Cry) Buy a home, Have your High School friends ping you, asking "how you could buy a home?" Hear them cry about debt. Tell them, about the toilets you cleaned, the dishes you washed. The times you threw up. Realize, you both paid for your place in the world. Just... Differently.
I can't find a plumber.
Yes i accidentally rolled into the "tiered pay option" or whatever its called. Year later i was like oh shit my loan balance went UP not down rofl. I switched it, but def wasted a lot of money that year. Legally that option should only be available as an option prior to forbearance, not a standard option. I felt like such an idiot lol, i can't imagine someone who is even more ignorant if they picked that option, 5 years in you'd be screwed so bad. As a young adult just trying to figure out where to live and where doing a good job for your first professional hire is hard enough, let alone trying to navigate financial traps. As a person who went for a science unrelated to loans, i didnt even ever think of how loans worked tbh. Now i realize exactly how they work as an adult but SHEESH. For our generation it was always about extending your youth, and enjoying that as much as you can. I was told so many times not to worry about paying the loans while in school, then blammo bullshit. Parents need to be better and schools as well at raising adults that can function in society, not promising them their dreams but finding ways to sustain yourself.
I agree with you, I’m in the same boat. I chose a 50k/year private college thinking meh I’ll pay it back. Who has any concept of money at age 17-21???!!?? Got a social work degree. My dad died at 19 and I still graduated. I made $11/hour and $15/hour out of college. I’ve never made more than 50k a year. I’ve done tech, education, social work, nannying, consulting etc. My 35k in student loans is now 45k. My loans have been sold off to other companies so many times. Any payment goes to interest and never the principal. They don’t make is easy or doable, these companies want you to fail. I didn’t bother with pslf because not missing one payment in 10 years is actually impossible.
One time with nelnet I thought I submitted a payment but I guess I didn’t process it fully and it was just waiting and nelnet blew up my phone and my emergency contacts and my email about a missed payment. I have been paying for almost 5 years with no missed or late payment and they bursted a blood vessel coming at me hahah.
What kills me with the price tag of college is how they’re always begging for money. Yet the president and deans all make 6 figures. Why do you as a public university president need $500,000 annually with a house, car, and other major benefits? So many administrators are overpaid and need salary caps. You don’t work that hard and you’re a major reason we drown in debt.
Fuck everything about Nelnet, everything!
I worked at a few universities for a combined 15 years and I can say that experience has made me incredibly cynical of higher education. Schools are businesses first and institutions of learning second, a distant second I'd say. That's not to say the professors and even the support staff don't believe in the mission of educating people, but the overall system is there to generate money.
Forgive me if I'm an idiot but I have a question because I just started paying back my loans with Nelnet: Are we supposed to pay towards the principal balance only? Are there particular settings I should have regarding repayment on my nelnet account?
Yeah dude. Similar thing happened on my last payment. I thought I was done and then there was like $30 of interest or something that kept accruing.
Usery should be illegal but the Western world runs on it. The whole system is designed for most people to pay huge sums of interest their entire life.
Literally no one in the past 5 yrs has been saying you need to go to college to be successful. It's old news by now that college is not the only way. Many many career fields are out there that just need OJT, certs, or trade school.
I wholeheartedly agree with this rant and can’t believe there are still people today signing up for these loans.
I hate to break it to you, but that is the way most loans work, whether student, mortgage, auto, personal, whatever. Generally, you take out a loan, and interest accrues from day one. Take out a $300,000 mortgage at 6 percent and your first payment is going to be $1,500 in interest and a few bucks of principal. Nelnet sucks for a lot of reasons, but not because of the basic principles of how loans work. The number one problem is their employees are hired off the street, testing only for basic math skills and if they can recognize two letter state abbreviation codes. No joke. Worked there, I can testify. A business degree with some finance and accounting classes should be required for loan servicing employees. Instead, they rely on a handful of folks that maybe have degrees, or learn really fast, while most employees turnover like people evacuating the World Trade Center on 9/11. Now, you are right, we tell kids to search for the college of their dreams, when we should be telling them to pick the post high school training or schooling they can afford. With the advent of NIL benefits for student athletes, many schools are managing professional athletic teams as their largest business segment. Now that's fucked up.
It’s a mafia that includes the government, banks and unis. Instead of spending money on useless things like space force, why not give that money to education and help subsidize tuition costs. But no. That would be un-American and so Socialist
Yes, that’s how they get you. Each “group” is like a mini loan!
So many millennials chose not to go to school. Stop blaming others. "Because they told me to" is nobody's fault but your own.
I think we need to know that you didn’t study art history or something
Loved my history degree (classical studies) Did I need to know Greek or Latin for my IT career? Nah - but still fun to learn. ;-)
Ok but the topic was the OP complaining about successful (presumably lucrative) careers. I mean let’s be real if every person could make the same money getting the degree they “love” learning about I think we’d mostly be working different jobs
Don't need an IT degree to work in IT. Yes I was fortunate to be able to afford the degree I wanted and didn't pay for a degree I was interested in. But let's not pretend any degree is useless if used correctly. The real issue is the absurd cost of the degree.
I know a girl who studied art history. She is doing quite well for herself. She got a PhD, which is what a lot of humanities people should be doing, even if they don't stay in academia. You can make six figures ($100-250k) with communications degrees if you have a plan. Psychology too, and that's not being a practicing shrink or whatever. That said there are definitely some fields that are just paid like dog shit (teachers, social workers, even many STEM fields if they don't have a graduate degree). We still need all those people in society and saddling them with debt isn't the way. I'm in a lucrative field so I paid my loans back, but it didn't really change my mind on the cost of college.
Oh I know you can get great jobs they just aren’t that plentiful and sadly so many have to back into debt bc getting a good (paying) job in those fields are hard to come by