I have $0 in student loan debt. I’ve never taken a student loan. I’ll be graduating with a master’s degree in November.
I recently read an article from a man who had just turned 40 years old and who had just recently paid off $88K in student loan debt. He was whining about how long it took for him to pay it off with his mediocre jobs and how his degree didn't help him with his income. He basically never moved from where he was when he got his degree and got a degree in a field that didn't matter, or so you could read between the lines. He and other commenters were saying that college should be free...Here was my reply:
I have sympathy for people who take on too many student loans to get degrees that don’t typically pay much. While I do sympathize, I also find it pathetic that someone can’t foresee issues with the debt they’re taking on as they’re coming. I have attended 8 different colleges to get my degrees. Each one was accredited and notoriously cheap per credit hour. I finished 60 credit hours in 12 months while working full time, rehabbing a house, and carrying for a stay home mom and 5 kids. I’ll be 40 in a week. I graduated cum laude, so maybe I just get it a little better… congratulations on paying off your loans!
College should not be free. Free means someone is either acting as a slave or everyone is taxed so that someone can make poor education choices. When you make it “free,” people will invariably go after valueless degree fields. You value things you have to earn. If your degree doesn’t earn you the living you want, perhaps you need a different job, place to live, degree, or all three.
I got 1 scholarship I was able to use and one I turned down. My scholarship was for $500. My parents gave me $500. Everything else, I worked for. Community College was super cheap. It went from $11/ hour to $37/credit hour. All total, all my undergrad costs were about $8k. My master’s program is a pay-for-time and go-at-your-own-pace program that’s under $6k/ year and I’m finishing it in 1 year. All total, I’ll have spent less than 15k on my college education. My degrees are business management with a focus on entrepreneurial management and organizational leadership. Bootstraps… mine have been laced for a long time! (he complained that people always say to just bootstrap your way through the loans as if they don't understand what he's gone through)
I’m happy you got your loans paid off, but you have no one but yourself to blame for how long it took you to pay them off. That part, you’ll get no sympathy from me. I also lived during 2008… you and I are within 1 year of each other. We just made different choices. Now go make your degree count…
That was the end of my comment to this fella. There have been others who commented in his favor that he was mislead into signing for thousands of dollars for a degree that they sustain as legitimate. He had claimed in the article that it is too much for someone who is 18 to decide on whether they should take on that debt or not...choices...it all comes down to choices. Do I feel for people starting out with rose colored glasses thinking they can take on all the student loan debt they can without any consequences? Only a little...because they're dumb-not stupid-just dumb. Their parents or adult figures only pushed that any education would make them rich and didn't take time to explain the problems of taking on enormous amounts of debt so that you could just party your 8 years through a 4 year degree that there's no demand for...
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
