Quote:
Originally Posted by Love2Swim
You are welcome to your opinion. But you don't seem to grasp that things are different now than when we were in the position to attend college and borrow money. Many posters have indicated what those differences are. One of the biggest is predatory lenders. "Back in the Day" we borrowed money via government loans. Many of those loans have dried up and kids are saddled with ridiculous loan interest rates from banks, who benefit from fleecing the kids, and the students pay double or triple what they would have when we were borrowers years ago. When society tells you you "have" to go to college to get a good job, you take the bait and you sign up for the loans as it is the only means of attending college. Then you graduate, and maybe things don't go as planned. The economy dries up - you can't get a job in your field, or the salary is much lower than the College advisor told you it would be - many of today's colleges are money making propositions and they really exaggerate to the potential students how good the various fields of study and job opportunities will be, just to get them to enroll. Couple that with financial naiveté, and it can be a recipe for disaster for some kids. No one is suggesting that people should get a free ride or skirt their responsibilities . But the system needs some changes.
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Thank you. You wrote what I think, too.
Unfortunately, the preaching of platitudes from a narrow, dated perspective is the name of the game for those who refuse to acknowledge that this is not a simple issue.
This mess will strangle segments of the economy — the housing market and retirement savings for starters. And it will eventually contribute to the erosion of the middle class.
The percentage of an average family’s income that even one year of college tuition represents is an obscenity. This is not how it was “back in the day.”
The beginning of this century saw banks getting way into getting a piece of the student loan action, along with the rise of those for-profit “colleges” that sprung up all over the place, with empty promises.
Established universities need to be held accountable for rising costs. Many must be swimming in money. I was shocked to learn that installing lazy rivers is the latest trend. That is plain insane.
A lot of young people are like lambs to the slaughter.
This mess is a horrible stew with many ingredients, some of them pure poison.
The solution is in finding a compromise through forward economic thinking and planning — not in waving an imaginary magic wand.