Real Recovery: Is college worth the high cost?

Don't you people listen to Clark Howard?? Private/public universities are irrelevant!! Businesses don't care where you went to school. So instead of getting in debt because you wanted to go Ivy, take online courses at the community college, for like, 200 a semester- no hassle, no application, no retarded teens. A degree is a degree. Employers don't care about the prestige, especially when so many people are going- college has lost all value.

Sort of like public vs. Private school? It used to be a big thing, but do employers care whether you graduated from fancy pants high, rather than ghetto HS? Nope. Not one fucking bit.

This is the corny answer, but I don't regret the student loans and the 14 years it took to pay the grad ones off, because I spent 2 years on the opposite coast and met the people who are now the majority of my inner circle. However, when I had the chance to go to law school 2 years ago, the thought of all the debt it would require was too much. I had felt so much relief when I made that final student loan payment to Citi that I never wanted another student loan, ever.

I always thought I had to go to college. I don't believe that now. Some of the smartest people I've met do not have degrees and some have little formal education. They read. They listened. They did the work. Learning is not just academic. Apprenticeships and other avenues are valuable. Society needs workers at all levels.

This shows the average of debt based on state, but as we all know that is a combination of high and low numbers. Mine is on the high side because I was out of state - first lesson learned is become a resident. The other lesson I learned is to have children young and out of marriage – had I done that I would have been given grants to help supplement my loans. Unfortunately being what I considered to be responsible was in fact that wrong decision. I graduated with honors and distinction from college. I now report to people who have high school diplomas, and don't even know how to work spell check - and this was after 3 months of looking for work. Meanwhile I am constantly stressed out about not being able to pay my bills, and Sallie Mae keeps telling me they will not lower payments within a range that is more feasible with our current economic status. I continue to seek gainful employment, but with my lack of real world experience, and the current unemployment rate where I live, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Bitter much? Absolutely, and I think most people who would find themselves in my position would be as well.

Given the choice again - I don't think I would have gone to college. In my opinion, the only thing good to come out of it was the friendships I made, and the fact that an unfortunate chain of events resulted in meeting my significant other.

SOCIALIZE IT!

Education should be FREE

Get a degree in the sciences, and then go to grad school, you may get tuition waived and a stipend (i.e. the university pays you to get an advanced degree), that's what I have

College is only the physical measure of education, by means of documentation.
The real wealth in education comes from life and self-discovery.

While college can be a place of self-discovery, so can your home. A college education does not equate intelligence; some people leave college with relatively the same level of intelligence they came in with only now with a degree. Look at George W. Bush for example... He went to one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, graduated with a C-average, and was a barely coherent speaker.

I, on the other hand, am going to an online school, have yet to even obtain an Associate-level degree, and my vocabulary is far superior to that of the former president.

If you want a 6-figure income, go to college and get a Bachelor's or Master's degree. If you want intelligence, read a book.

I go to one of those five school listed and I'm going to be honest, I don't think it is worth the obscene cost. I don't.

Ok i get it, we pay alota money cuz once we have an education we will in turn get that money back and plus some because of our "good paying job." that's what my rich aunt told me because she went to college and is now a lawyer married to a hot shot energy trader at BP who also went to college.

I'm sorry but from what i can tell there aren't many jobs available because of our bad economy. now to get a job in general, most of the time the job wants you to have gone and graduated from college. that's why so many parents (moms) are going to college so they can get more money at their existing job or they get a new job because they have their degree. sweet? my mom did it. she got a raise and a new job. great!

But some people have no drive to go to college and may wanna work at 7/11 the rest of their life. great good for you! its just when a worker gets fired from a job because they have no degree, they have no where else to work but 7/11 thus convenient stores are overloaded with applying people without degrees. that is what could happen to my dad. not so great. more like WTF man?

So it's either

A-go to college, get your degree, compete with other people for the same job and get rejected and/or denied because of the economy.

OR

B- don't go to college and compete for a job with a bunch of other people who don't have their degree as well.

hmmm.... can i pick option C, D, E, F,or G or does the new generation have to make these choices cuz honestly its just ridiculous and am i allowed to say that i wanna move to Switzerland cuz i can just be chill and EVERYONE is ok with it?

Yes? No? Me either? I DON'T KNOW!!!

plus i really don't like paying a shit-load of money for school if i won't get a job and i'll be paying off my loans with money i don't have cuz i don't have a job...

Nope, college so far has not been worth the time. Perhaps its the deflated grades of Berkeley. Academic competition only serves to limit the mind and make one focus on education solely for a grade and a degree. Plus most of the things you learn are on the job, not from school. They just want to see the degree.

I'm a junior in college and already have a lot in student loan debt, but I still think that college is worthwhile, because the priceless education and the better job you get will outweigh the outstanding debt. I think something needs to be done about the increasing tuition costs.

In the interests of transparency, I'd love to reveal the dialogue between tommic and me that followed the above post. For some reason, he chose to send a private message instead of commenting here. I wonder why...

Well, here it is:

[conversation]

tommic:

do not insult me

I am not shortsighted I understand what is free on the net and those who choose to make it available. But you do not understand that the money made online is nothing compared to the published works and the effort it takes to write books for higher learning. I have been published in the New York Times, the boston globe and the washington post and those folks don't take bullshit and neither do I from people like you. When you get published and don't make money from it you are either stupid or naive. Please don't assume you know me from a short and brief post I write. you are typical of the idiots on current who have not yet lived in the real world.

calm_incense:

re: do not insult me

Wow. You call me a "moron", and when I subsequently call you "short-sighted", you complain that I've "insulted" you. Then you proceed to refer to "people like me" as "idiots". My, we're feeling pretentious and entitled, aren't we?

Hypocrisy and obnoxiously egotistical tendencies aside, you miss my entire point. You lament that I "do not understand that the money made online is nothing compared to the published works." Well, NO SHIT. When you do a service free of charge, of COURSE you're not going to be making as much money as someone who treats the service as a profit-motivated business. But believe it or not, NOT everyone does everything solely for money. It may be hard for you to imagine, but the world is full of empirical examples.

Oh, and I ain't impressed by the fact that you've been "published". Indeed, it only tarnishes my opinion of the three newspapers that chose to publish someone as immature and narcissistic as you. We've all read editorial columns in which we've thought the author was totally clueless or a total douchebag, so don't think you're exempt from this universal standard.

Lastly, I love how you berate me, "Please don't assume you know me from a short and brief post I write", and then immediately afterward voice your generalized assumption that I am "typical of the idiots on current who have not yet lived in the real world".

You couldn't be more hypocritical if you tried (and it certainly looks like you're trying).

tommic:

fuck you you r blocked asshole.

fuck you

[/conversation]

Looks like this troll had a fairly low breaking point. *sigh*

tommic:

Jesus Christ, you're short-sighted, and apparently ignorant of all the information that's ALREADY out there on the Internet. No textbook producer needs to be "forced" to make its content available for free online. There is already a plethora of information out there put up BY THE CREATORS who INTENTIONALLY want this information to be accessed freely.

Want to learn linear algebra? Calculus? Biology? Trigonometry? Chemistry? Geometry? Physics? Statistics? Probability? Differential equations? Banking and money? Need help with the GMAT? The Khan Academy (which is a single person) has made THOUSANDS of 10-minute online videos tutorials available for free both on his site and on YouTube. His qualifications? He's a Harvard MBA with both a Masters and a BS in both electrical engineering and computer science, as well as a BS in mathematics - all from MIT.

Speaking of MIT, they have uploaded thousands of their own course lectures on YouTube. A sampling of their offering is as follows:

- Physics I: Classical Mechanics [38 videos]
- Symmetry, Structure & Tensor Properties of Material [41 videos]
- Linear Algebra [35 videos]
- Principles of Chemical Science [36 videos]
- Principles of Digital Communication II [25 videos]
- Electricity and Magnetism [37 videos]
- Circuits and Electronics [26 videos]
- Introduction to Algorithms [23 videos]

...the list goes on and on. Keep in mind that each of these videos is roughly FORTY-FIVE minutes long. Yes, these are ENTIRE courses posted online for *free*.

Not to be outdone, Stanford University has also posted THOUSANDS of videos of lectures and seminars covering everything from quantum physics to software engineering to clean technology, and then some.

Meanwhile, both pale in comparison to the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, a joint venture by Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science, and funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Department of the government of India, which has posted TENS of THOUSANDS of hour-long video lectures on the core sciences, civil engineering, computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering, and mechanical engineering. And these don't just cover the "basics" - "Mechanical - Refrigeration and Airconditioning" and "Electronics - Digital VLSI System Design" are just two example course names. We're talking *highly* specialized material.

Not to mention, there are THOUSANDS of free mathematics and foreign language learning resources online. You could learn any foreign language you want - whether it be Mandarin or Icelandic - without ever having to purchase OR pirate anything. Not to mention, the liberal arts - be it history, political science, or whatever - are in no short supply on the Internet. Considering even textbooks on these subjects are routinely regarded as "biased" by various professionals within each of these fields, you won't be sacrificing any notion of "credibility" or "validity" by using Internet sources instead.

As far as the "effort" put into creating textbooks, perhaps you're not familiar with basic economics, but SUPPLY is subject to DEMAND. "Effort" does not entitle one to demand for his or her product. If you wasted your resources of wL + rK on a product whose demand exists only because you artificially impose it on the consumer because you "worked so hard to produce it", you really ought to allocate your resources elsewhere, for the sake of both ethics and efficiency. Forcing people to buy a product when a cheaper substitute is available is just ethically wrong and makes no economic sense.

how to solve this problem: stop educating women you infidels

Who ever the moron is who thinks textbooks for college should be online for free I have a question for you. Who do you think writes these books? Do you have any idea how long it takes a person to write them? Because you don't know I'll tell you. It takes at the shortest interval one year for someone to write a textbook for students and no they should not be free. People who teach college could earn twice what they earn for teaching in the private sector. Most people who teach at the college level are idealisitic and liberal, not working to get rich, they make the money on the back end of their career via retirement of 70 or 80 percent of their highest pay.
And yes I do know my brother teaches graduate law and writes college texts for graduate law and he dos not even earn twenty grand a year from them and it takes him two years to write a book that can enable a student to learn the tax law needed to succeed. Go learn something about the people who are willing to make other people smart.

tommic

Consider the performance of the college educated people in the White House.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE WINS. Going to CC in NJ for free + extra money from grants, once I get my associates at the end of 2 years, Rutgers accepts 100% of your credits as require by law and you get your bachelors for dirt cheap in 2 years at RU, because they hand out multiple scholarships to in state transfers with degrees. Booya.

The College that i saw for the most part was a drunken orgy. These are the people that are reeling in dept loads because it took them 7yrs to finish or they failed out. A college degree means nothing today...I should have just joined the union when i had the chance....

the albatross of student loans people are leaving school with is just more of the fallout from our government selling citizens into slavery to corporate, banking and big business interests. God help us if health insurance reform turns out to be more of the same....

I want to see a study on college graduates debt to income ratio -vs- non graduate debt to income -vs- high school dropout debt to income

I feel that education is yet another method to which people are discriminated against and kept below their potential by others.

Well yeah, that's because college is the new High School. It seems as though anyone can get into some college of some sort, and as a result, the degree is cheapened. It gets even worse when college start making up degrees with no real world application and lacks accreditation. There are people who are going to graduate from college and instantly become homeless, because they aren't going to get employed, and the lack a family to fall back on. I can only imagine the terrors of someone graduating with a degree in philosophy or a painting BFA in this economy.

Be careful when choosing schools and degrees. The canard that to be a well rounded person one had to graduate from college was eclipsed when students no longer shared a common basis of knowledge upon arrival. Look at the curriculum you are paying for and the anticipated job if you are borrowing to go to school.

If your aptitude leans towards technology/computers, some of the Cisco and MS certifications carry handsome salary for very low tuition costs. A recent list I saw listing salaries by certification had the lowest starting salary at 60k ( for metropoliton areas ) and most were at 90k and above for about 2 years or less of coursework.

What I owe for school is simply astronomical... and embarrassing. For the most part I was driven to college after being laid off from a military contractor at the end of the Cold War during the first Bush depression. I remember being lined up at a table with hundreds of others in the same predicament. The union was busted by federal attorneys and the company stock was skyrocketing as investors were speculating on our layoff. There were no jobs to apply for.

Eight years later I had a mountain of debt and a job as a scientist. I have to admit here that even though I had gone out on a limb I probably could have made it if my wife had stayed healthy. She quit her struggling business to follow me into school. It turned out she was the wrong kind of Indian (literal meaning intended) and that she didn't qualify for the same benefits she hoped for. Then suddenly she had life threatening and crippling health problems. When, in part, she had recovered she found that there wasn't an alternative but to continue school and driving up loans. She never graduated. Somewhere along the way our loans were consolidated.

Overall, college is very healthy, but the whole thing has been turned into a scam. When combined with my field work I have discovered entire processes in geology that have never been described. On the other hand, my bosses tell me there is no time to write anything up because there is a big political push to finish our job, and few people could follow my overly technical work anyway. My federal agency had demanded the maximum when I was hired, but they only needed, or could even use the minimum amount of knowledge in a worker.

voted up

You cant repossess an education.

I could care less about my student loan debt. I am both working and doing online grad school after having graduated in May with a BA in Sociology. I consider myself lucky to have found a job but I really don't NEED it. For me, my student loan bills, when I start paying them back, will be just another bill every month like the numerous others bills the system requires us to pay.

It was worth the high cost for me, since it’s pretty hard to do what I love (computer programming) without a degree. Although now I can’t find a job, and I wish my debt was more like those averages in the image…

a long time ago it was illegal to educate slaves because they might revolt. It seems the same goes for wage slaves...

Here's an easy solution. Don't pay it back. Your credit probably sucks anyway. What are they going to do? Put it on your credit report? Ooooo.

A lot of creditors have sold and resold the debt and tacked on lots of fees and they don't even have documentation on the original loan or how much you've paid off.

People have won cases against creditors when they take them to court and make them show the terms of the original loan. They often don't have it and then the debt is dropped.

I make a loan agreement with one bank. If that loan is sold a few times over to other creditors all bets are off. I don't have agreements with those secondary lenders. Prove that I owe the money. They can't.

The people have the power but no balls to use it.

The problem is that employers have a stigma for college grads. They don't care so much what your degree is in, or if it's necessarily related to the job. They just want to know you've been to college, any college, sometimes even if you didn't graduate.

Yet they don't really consider your education as much as your experience. Why else would so many grads have so hard a time getting a job? Sure there are some professions where you have to have a college background, like medicine or law. But often, if you have equivalent work experience and can show you know how to do the job, you'll get the job. Rarely do they even check your degree.

In computer technology I've found that college means nothing. The industry moves so fast that college is always a few years behind. You have to be up on stuff that's been out for the past year, not five years ago. That's ancient history.

So yeah, college is often a total waste of time and money and it's really just a credit industry and college industry scam to make it seem more necessary that it really is.

Einstein was a C student. Bill Gates dropped out of grad school. What does that tell you?

I got lucky and decided to work on various scholarships starting as a freshmen in high school. As a senior at Oklahoma State University I am being paid to go to school rather than paying. Sadly, I think many people will be having to plan as early as I did just to get through without paying for a second mortgage worth of student loans.
There are scholarships out there for everyone, low income, high income, people of different nationalities, even for people who aren't even legal citizens believe it or not. Crap, I have a five thousand dollar scholarship for being an orphan and I listed my mother as my emergency contact! Read the guidleines carefully; that particular scholarship stated "for those students who have lost a parent". After I was awarded the scholarship they contacted me and asked what this was about and I told them. Once awarded, they cannot deny you the scholarship if you met all the guidelines and won it fair and square. It is up to the individual to spend the time and effort to find the scholarships.
I just started learning how to write grants ...I wish I would have began this in high school too. Working on three of those currently for a research project that will pay for my law school.

Ugh, not looking forward to the bills. Luckily Community College is cheap compared to other schools.

In all reality ... a college degree doesn't always mean you are guarenteed a positive future. Most of my friends earned a degree in psych, english, art, ect...guess what they are doing now???? Bartending, cashier, or me...working in shipping and recieving at a manufacturing facility. The sadist part about this is I was in a Master's program, but I dropped out b/c in the career I was going into(clinical counseling) you only make 35,000 a year or less yet have how much debt???? Not only that ...I didn't learn a damn thing in grad school. EVerything I learned about counseling I could have read in a book that was rented at the library. And it's not just me...grad school is nothing but a waste of money. Experience is more important than anything. Everyone should go for a BA or BS, but only go to grad school if you plan on getting a doctorate. And your BA/BS degree needs to be something practicle...like buisness or computer programming or engineering.

As a college student-- I knew when I selected my school that I was signing up for some over-priced and over-stated education. I can't say if it's worth it quite yet... but I know that my education is not likely to be over with a bachelor's. I can think of very few career choices that would allow that...

Our intelligence is going down and costs are going up. College should be provided by the state (free). Seriously. It's an easy answer. I mean we get screwed on every possible avenue, our tax money ALL goes to war. Make some damn room for education already!

Is war worth the high cost, both in lives and moolah?

Like everything else, government also messed this up. By guaranteeing education through easily available student loans, universities have no problems with raising tuition to ridiculous rates. If the federal government stopped handing out student loans then nobody would be able to afford college. Thus, universities would lose millions of dollars and be forced to drop their tuition to prices that students could afford.

I owe about $90k in loans for my undergraduate degree in English Literature. I had some financial aid, but that didn't cover much so I took the rest due in tuition out in private student loans with interest rates currently around 5%. I did this because student loans usually don't count negatively against your credit, and the rates on student loans are much lower than other loans so I would have the cashflow to use on other things.

In retrospect, it would have been worth it if had more direction in my life when I was 18 and knew what I wanted to get out of a college degree. If I could do it all over again, I would probably spend those 4 years learning how to program and make websites. Instead, I went to college before I knew what I wanted to do because that's what you're supposed to do after high school. I pretty much wasted 4 years of my life. Now that I'm starting my own business, I realize that my undergrad degree really isn't that helpful since it's more about what I produce than what my background is.

So to wrap it all up in Rich Dad Poor Dad words, a college degree IS necessary if you plan to graduate and work for a corporation and be an employee for your entire working life. It IS NOT necessary if you plan to create and own your own company.

Fuck College and Fuck School.
Hooray Education, which is rare in either.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Content will make a poor man rich, and discontent will make a rich man poor,” be happy with what you do and you will find contentment
tommic.

speaking of expensive shit. do you know what it feels like to lose your job? 80 employees at current do. i feel for them. outsourcing and longer programming is not the answer for current. it is losing what set it apart from other stations.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/current-tv-staff-suffer-a-major-bloodbath-a...

I myself refuse to go to college unless I know for sure what field I want to work in. It doesn't make sense to spend money on something I might even not use. And I'm not going to spend money going to school for 2 years in the hope i might "find out" what I want to do and then declare a major.

I'm 21 and have my own house and car. The job I have now not only pays all the bills, but I am also able to save a good 2-300 a month. My manager, who has a bachelors, makes 5000 more a year than me. More than half of that 5000 goes toward paying off her student loans. Why should I spend 20k+ to get a position in which I would have to work 10 years just to pay off those student loans? And what if I want to change fields? Go back and get another degree specialization?

I understand that needs change, that the amount I'm paid now might not cover expenses in 5-10 years. But I also don't think spending money on a general degree is wise either. Besides, maybe in 5-10 years regulations might have changed and I will be able to afford to go to college and not wind up with a huge amount of debt. Until then, college is a waste of time unless you're sure about the field you're going into.

I'm only 1 year into college, and I have already racked up 30,000.. and im not even done the first year

I am more than let down by the so called investment in my education. After four years of undergrad on a scholarship, I went to medical school at a cost of about $140,000. And this was by working and living on next to nothing. Now I am trying to keep a private practice afloat and pay nearly $1500/month for the next thirty years. Most of the time my receptionist makes more money than I do with the low reimbursements of insurances. Every day I wish I would have simply taken my BS degree, taken a job and stuck with it. I could have been as far in the black as my education has now placed me in the red. So kids - when it comes to professional school - just say NO!

uni is free in many eu countries... over there its not a business.
annddd don't even get me started on the differences between studying in the US and overseas, its not even a fair fight.

I squeezed the deal. Got a little under 20k in loans, a BS in engineering and BA in German, another BS in engineering wraps up this spring, MS in 2011. This gave me one full year in Germany with a 6 month paid internship, 4 years of living on the ocean and college parties. I'm funded now, so money isn't a problem and my thesis is already planned, PhD by 2014. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

The key is enthusiasm! Find something really interesting and devote yourself. If professors and scholarship committees see enthusiasm, they'll want to foster the growth. Take on everything you can and then more... will you regret trying too hard?

That depends on why you are going to college.
I need a degree for what I want to do, so it isn't really a financial issue.

People who look at it as a financial investment may be disappointed. Especially if you're paying $80k+ for an BA, which is completely outrageous.

As a person who has a masters degree, I can tell you that the value of a college education has changed. Our world is so technical now that just having some broad based liberal arts degree really doesn't mean anything other than the fact: you were able to afford the tuition, and jerk off five years of your early adulthood doing who knows what. I definitely wouldn't bet the farm on something that isn't very special anymore. It might be sad, but just about anyone can get a college degree now days. One should really look for value from a bachelors degree. Go to the school that will give you the best bang for your buck.

Are you better for graduating from college? Of course! The old saying is true that much of what you learn in college isn't in a book. However, that doesn't separate you from the crowd like you think it does. Currently, not only do you have to be educated but you also have to be specialized. You need to train for a job that one cannot do, unless they trained for that field in college. An accountant, nurse, doctor and engineer are just a small example of such careers. That is also why they are almost always guaranteed a job, and paid the big bucks when they get out.

As far as graduate school goes? I feel I am an extremely better person for finishing my thesis. However, I always tell people "Don't do it unless you have a specific goal in mind or your career requires it. Otherwise, your just wasting your time and money, instead of advancing within the career portion of your life."

At some point, you got to join the real world.

Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon lays on the best message I ever heard.
You spent a hundred grand on an education you could have had for a couple of bucks and a library card. Reading is more than fundamental, its the way to learn everything you ever wanted to know. The internet is everything you ever wanted to know and a whole lot you wish you never knew.

tommic

I live in Utah and will graduate with no debt as will a majority of the people I know because it really is pretty cheap here. Even if I was graduating with 50,000 dollars in debt college would have still been worth it. An amazing experience and a higher paying job at the end of this year.... not much more you can ask for

many careers require more than just a bachelors degree. if you choose that career (or it chose you), then you don't really get a choice in paying the high costs of higher education. i'm looking at this from an economists perspective. if you want a job as an economist, you need at minimum a masters. otherwise, that bachelors in econ will place you somewhere like marketing. my only recommendation would be to don't jack around in your undergraduate years if you're looking for a masters or phd. only the candidates with a solid history will get grants and scholarships that make continuing to the next level a cheap route. a lot of phd's are fully funded by the school. you just have to get in. is college worth it? unless you have a mentor (whether it's some form of art, or trade mentor) that can take you on his/her back (show you the way) to accomplish your career goals, you've really got no other choice. in the case that you have no career goals, then sure, why throw yourself into debt..

this all goes back to the question: does being stupid make you happier?
-- my answer would be that if you stupidly take out loans for a degree that doesn't help you in your career, then no, you're not going to be very happy... somebody already hit on the high price of paying for a philosophy degree.. for what might i ask do those people do? moving on to obtaining a phd in philosophy for teaching is the only thing i can think of...

Education is priceless. There is more to this world than money. I would rather be poor and be able to think critically than be rich and uneducated.

With that said, I would appreciate some sort of student loan amnesty program.

I have racked up more debt than the average of any state, but I still believe college is worth it. I haven’t graduated yet, but I have already worked better jobs for higher pay than any of my friends who did not go to college. If you want to make your college education worthwhile on a financial level, you need to pick a major that is both difficult and functional in the real world. A lot of people who complain that college wasn’t worth it need to blame themselves. They should have considered the employment prospects of being a philosophy major when they chose what they were going to study.

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
-Frank Zappa

fantastic post!

There are many factors not mentioned in this article that should be evaluated when considering if college is worth the money/time. For instance forgone wages while your attending school and forgone experience in a trad that could have been acquired.

wow somebody slap me did he actually ask that question?