Interesting Rolling Stone article on college debt

[Capang]

It’s been a rule in Missouri for at least 25 years that teachers must obtain their masters within 5 years IIRC.

We had that rule in Ohio for a while too. Then they nixed it. Districys couldn’t afford to have all of their teachers with M.Ed.s Little known fact in Ohio as well, school counselors get licensed after completing their specific counseling education M.Ed. course. However due to a disagreement between the state dept of ed and the counseling accreditation group the program is a M.Ed degree for a doctorate program. Or at least it used to be. I had to complete 56 credits or something like that to get licensed as a school counselor. My boss did 21 to become a principal.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think your number 1 is the biggest issue. Especially for kids who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, they think that college is the only way out of their hole & think they have to get to college at all costs. Many of these kids come from families who can only worry about day-to-day issues. They don’t have the luxury of meticulously planning out their futures. Life doesn’t work that way for them. I work in an urban public school system. Almost all the kids I talk to want to go to college. That’s just not realistic the for most of them.

Yeah see that's why I think it's a systematic problem much larger than schooling people about college like I mentioned in my above comment.

Wouldn't it be much more advantageous to teach disadvantaged students basic life skills? Talking with them about budgeting for real life (which let's be real should be for all). Okay you've got this job so let's go over how to create a monthly budget, now if you're going to rent a place you should get renter's insurance to protect yourself and your belongings, etc. If your family is worrying about day to day issues then let's tackle those day to day issues. Let's talk bluntly with those students who see college as their way out.

Heck truth be told I wish my high school had a course on things like budgeting, things like changing your own tire with your spare for those times when you've got a flat or how to do simple car tasks like check your oil dipstick or windshield washer fluid..that type of stuff I learned from my parents but I know some fellow classmates who could have used just a course on that stuff for all their parents cared about them.

I mean in other words prepare for life which is more what it sounds like you're talking about. College is just a tiny itty bitty detail if we're talking about knowledge. That's not just an issue with parents (either not wanting to help or lacking the knowledge or resources to help), with the schools (either not wanting or lacking the knowledge or resources to help), the state or area the person lives in (either not wanting or lacking the knowledge or resource to help) and with the federal government (either not wanting or lacking the knowledge or resources to help). It's an issue with all.

 

[disykat]

I agree. Back in my day we had a "personal finance" course. I don't remember learning anything there because of my parents, but I'm sure there were kids who had never had bank accounts or an only buy what you can pay for upbringing like I did. Now, like I said in a previous post, ours is more of a college and career how to educated yourself into a career thing, but they do cover college and trade school costs. I wish it was flat out finances so budgeting, credit, etc. would ALL be covered. I could have used the more practical stuff like changing a tire myself, though I do remember my dad showing me ONCE. I certainly didn't learn home improvement skills from him though! (Sorry Dad, truth!)

 

[Mel522]

No need to apologize wasn't trying to be brisk with you or anything. It's just my original comment I said "In regards to the individual in the article" where I was talking about how their loan was set up.

I was just trying to explain how student loans work specifically. Clearly I was unsuccessful.

In regards to the man in the article, with a $35000 principal at a 8% interest rate (which I believe was the rate at the time,) his monthly payment on a standard plan would have been around $425 with just under half of that going to principal in the beginning. If he didn't consolidate by the 4th year I believe his interest rate would have changed to 10%. Even with that, by the 5th year nearly 2/3 of the payment would be principal. While the article says he had trouble making payments from the beginning, it doesn't say if he tried changing repayment plans, applied for deferment or forbearance, or if he even contacted his loan servicer at all to find out his options. Of course when he consolidated with his wife, they would have new terms and new payments.

Also the article stated he filed for bankruptcy and then quickly defaulted on his loans. I don't know when he filed or if things have changed, but federal student loans are place into a bankruptcy forbearance and no payments are required or can be made at all during the bankruptcy. So again did he contact his servicer to inform them of the bankruptcy and place his loans in forbearance (they don't automatically know, you must contact them) or did he just stop making payments? While it wouldn't have helped with his ballooning debt it would have prevented default.

The article is clearly biased and does very little to explain how he got into his current situation.

 

[NHdisneylover]

This is absolutely true. But...as I've said here for years...what about the girls? Yes, I know girls can be plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. but let's face it, most do not want to take on that kind of work. My husband is in the trades and it's been wonderful. He's been in for 25 years. The number of women has not increased and they aren't really interested.

My daughter was one of these college kids who probably shouldn't have been there but she did make it through. But she needs a "trade" but not sure what that is for a woman. Hairstylist? Nothing wrong with that but certainly not as lucrative or "safe" as the male dominated trades are.

Then again, we rarely talk about it as an option to girls do we? We push women towards "STEM" fields like crazy, but generally only the degreed things. That's one thing I try to make sure my Girl Scouts learn---that they can get their hands dirty too and that Rosie the Riveter represented one of MANY real life women who worked in all of these hands on trades and succeeded at them. But, I see very little of that messaging being sent girls' way at all---even when I am actively looking for it.

 

[tzolkin]

This is absolutely true. But...as I've said here for years...what about the girls? Yes, I know girls can be plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. but let's face it, most do not want to take on that kind of work. My husband is in the trades and it's been wonderful. He's been in for 25 years. The number of women has not increased and they aren't really interested.

My daughter was one of these college kids who probably shouldn't have been there but she did make it through. But she needs a "trade" but not sure what that is for a woman. Hairstylist? Nothing wrong with that but certainly not as lucrative or "safe" as the male dominated trades are.

I tend to think of medical careers as more of a “trade” and I think those are often more appealing to women than trades like electrician or mechanic.

I’m sure someone will be offended by that, but my husband is a nurse and we both consider nursing to fall under the “trade” category based on our personal experience.

 

[adelaster]

It just doesn’t sound like you are familiar with the population I am referring to. Many are first generation college students. They don’t have the resources or knowledge required to seek the resources they need to minimize costs. The public school guidance counselors in this area are a joke & not much help to these kids. They don’t have parental support to help them navigate the process. They may not know how quickly interest adds up even if they can calculate the cost based on tuition. They also might not realize how much payments will be on those types of loans or what they are realistically going to make in their jobs. Like I said, many seek degrees b/c they need them for basic jobs now so they don’t necessarily have a career path so can’t estimate what they’ll make. But they have been told that they must go to college to have a better standard of living than their parents. And that would be true except they’re now swimming in debt & their degree isn’t as valuable as it once was. But if their parents don’t know this, who will advise them of this? It’s a complicated social issue & seems dissimive to say they should have known b/c your kids who you admitted have been lucky knew.

This was me. Exactly. Clueless, but feeling so stupid after. Those posting about knowing better underestimate how ignorant you can really be. I was told I had to go to school, and I really had no grasp on what the loans would look like or what the payments would look like. I also had no idea how hard it was to earn enough to even make the payments. Beyond that, I would say I was sort of naive at the time. If all the grown-ups are telling you you should go to school, you weren't thinking, "Hey, the grown-ups are conning me into paying interest for years and years of my life and preventing me from contributing to the economy or owning a home". Maybe if I was 18 again today it would be a different story. At the time we were all told it was something we had to do, and I had no one to guide me. With a class of over 600 students the guidance counselor doesn't know your name much less care about your future.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I was just trying to explain how student loans work specifically. Clearly I was unsuccessful.

In regards to the man in the article, with a $35000 principal at a 8% interest rate (which I believe was the rate at the time,) his monthly payment on a standard plan would have been around $425 with just under half of that going to principal in the beginning. If he didn't consolidate by the 4th year I believe his interest rate would have changed to 10%. Even with that, by the 5th year nearly 2/3 of the payment would be principal. While the article says he had trouble making payments from the beginning, it doesn't say if he tried changing repayment plans, applied for deferment or forbearance, or if he even contacted his loan servicer at all to find out his options. Of course when he consolidated with his wife, they would have new terms and new payments.

Also the article stated he filed for bankruptcy and then quickly defaulted on his loans. I don't know when he filed or if things have changed, but federal student loans are place into a bankruptcy forbearance and no payments are required or can be made at all during the bankruptcy. So again did he contact his servicer to inform them of the bankruptcy and place his loans in forbearance (they don't automatically know, you must contact them) or did he just stop making payments? While it wouldn't have helped with his ballooning debt it would have prevented default.

The article is clearly biased and does very little to explain how he got into his current situation.

Your questions are the same as mine when it comes to the article that's for sure.

 

[Colleen27]

This is absolutely true. But...as I've said here for years...what about the girls? Yes, I know girls can be plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. but let's face it, most do not want to take on that kind of work. My husband is in the trades and it's been wonderful. He's been in for 25 years. The number of women has not increased and they aren't really interested.

My daughter was one of these college kids who probably shouldn't have been there but she did make it through. But she needs a "trade" but not sure what that is for a woman. Hairstylist? Nothing wrong with that but certainly not as lucrative or "safe" as the male dominated trades are.

Yeah, that gets sticky. My husband works in the building trades and my son is studying welding, but while those jobs are technically open to women, they have a very hard time finding work in those fields in a lot of places and proving it is due to their gender is tough. A lot of the men we know who work in construction or factory professions are rather critical of the idea of women intruding on the "boys club" on the job atmosphere. My son has always known he wanted to go into a trade - he asked for a small welder for Christmas when he was 13 - and we've encouraged that, but I'm not sure we'd have handled it the same way if it had been one of our girls expressing the same interest.

I do think there are some "feminine" trades but on whole they don't pay as well as the male-dominated trades. Things like para-pro or preschool teacher, a lot of medical technician roles and LPNs, etc. Most of those only take an associates, rather than a bachelors, but they're not exactly a ticket to a middle class lifestyle the way training as a welder, electrician, or plumber is.

 

[Jen414]

Do many teachers here agree that if a student wants to go into teaching, that they pretty much stick with a low cost college program? Asking because a friend's child now is looking at schools and planning to go the private route for teaching. (Obviously, a lot of factors involved for each individual student, but asking your thoughts on it generally.)

I haven't read through the whole thread yet, so I'm not sure if others have answered already. I have been a teacher for 23 years. I have had student teachers in my room from the local public university as well as from a private college. All have been excellent. However, when you get hired into a public school, you will make the same no matter where your degree is from. I have also sat on multiple interview committees for classroom teachers and even for our current assistant superintendent. Where you went to college played virtually no role whatsoever as to whether or not you would even get an interview, never mind get hired.

 

[NotUrsula]

This is absolutely true. But...as I've said here for years...what about the girls? Yes, I know girls can be plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. but let's face it, most do not want to take on that kind of work. My husband is in the trades and it's been wonderful. He's been in for 25 years. The number of women has not increased and they aren't really interested.

My daughter was one of these college kids who probably shouldn't have been there but she did make it through. But she needs a "trade" but not sure what that is for a woman. Hairstylist? Nothing wrong with that but certainly not as lucrative or "safe" as the male dominated trades are.

First, to address the bolded: yes, they are interested, and many are perfectly capable, but as the daughter of a carpenter who knows how the trades work, the answer is that they lack real opportunities. Sexism is VERY alive and well in the trades, and unless you have a skin thicker than a rhino, that will usually wear you down enough to quit before you even finish the classes, assuming that in your area the union doesn't have a lock on access to the classes (which means that you need the recommendation of a member to get into them, and very few of those will go to women when members are pressured to give them to other members' sons/brothers/grandsons instead. And if you finally do finish the classes and need to get into the union to get an apprenticeship, the old-boy network will probably shut you out again. There are fewer organizational roadblocks to women in right-to-work states, but the sexism is still there. IME, most women who manage to successfully enter the trades are related to contractors; they work in the family business and come up that way, with double the usual amount of hands-on experience under their belts, so that they can outperform the men in their classes. (A man will be asuumed to be competent unless he royally screws up and proves he isn't, while a woman will be assumed to be incompetent until she proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she not only knows what she is doing, but is REALLY good at it.)

Now then: if you are looking for a "trade" that doesn't involve outdoor physical labor, there are quite a lot of possibilities, most commonly in allied health occupations. Just look at the catalog for any community college for quite a few cerfification programs. Most of them start out fairly low-paid, but have very solid advancement opportunities, especially for someone who manages to earn a bachelor's along the way -- in ANY subject.

Oh, and I'll second what the teacher up-thread said: in 99% of jobs, no one really cares where you earned your undergraduate degree. (There are a few high-end situations where it counts, mostly because of the implication that you made necessary social connections there: investment banking comes to mind.) What counts is that you finished it, and therefore possess the minimum job qualification. The other skills you bring to bear are much more important. For anyone who plans to enter a civil-service type job, such as teaching, social work, or law enforcement, a private school education is pretty much NEVER worth the cost unless you somehow get it for free.

 

[star72232]

I'm so glad I live in Canada.

Tuition in my province for undergrad is under $10000/yr. Still high, but not $50-60k in some US schools.

We also pay teachers more. Starting salary is around $42k, up to over $100k for elementary. There is a surplus of teachers here, not a shortage!

 

[runwad]

Students get statements from their student loan providers advising them of their balances, I believe after every semester. There really is no excuse for not knowing how much you have in student loans. Although, I believe few actually read their statements so remain ignorant.

I don't know how we can solve this problem guys. I think things got out of hand when the government got into the loan business. Maybe if we didn't fill out the fafsa and have an option to get loans the Universities would have to lower tuition or have no students.

 

[LSUmiss]

This was me. Exactly. Clueless, but feeling so stupid after. Those posting about knowing better underestimate how ignorant you can really be. I was told I had to go to school, and I really had no grasp on what the loans would look like or what the payments would look like. I also had no idea how hard it was to earn enough to even make the payments. Beyond that, I would say I was sort of naive at the time. If all the grown-ups are telling you you should go to school, you weren't thinking, "Hey, the grown-ups are conning me into paying interest for years and years of my life and preventing me from contributing to the economy or owning a home". Maybe if I was 18 again today it would be a different story. At the time we were all told it was something we had to do, and I had no one to guide me. With a class of over 600 students the guidance counselor doesn't know your name much less care about your future.

I think your experience is much more typical & why the student loan issue had become the next housing crisis. Everyone can’t just be irresponsible which is partly the point of the article.

 

[LSUmiss]

Further, in Louisiana, there is a new rule that it will soon be part of high school graduation REQUIREMENTS to fill out FAFSA before graduation! So not only are students encouraged to go to college but required to see what financial aid they qualify for.

 

[Hikergirl]

I'm so glad I live in Canada.

Tuition in my province for undergrad is under $10000/yr. Still high, but not $50-60k in some US schools.

We also pay teachers more. Starting salary is around $42k, up to over $100k for elementary. There is a surplus of teachers here, not a shortage!

Tuition at my state's Universities is affordable, the one my dd is going to is currently just under $6500 per year.
It is the added fees and room and board that bring it to about $23K a year.

 

[NotUrsula]

Students get statements from their student loan providers advising them of their balances, I believe after every semester. There really is no excuse for not knowing how much you have in student loans. Although, I believe few actually read their statements so remain ignorant.

I don't know how we can solve this problem guys. I think things got out of hand when the government got into the loan business. Maybe if we didn't fill out the fafsa and have an option to get loans the Universities would have to lower tuition or have no students.

Actually, it really began to get bad when the federal government started backing away from the College loan business. In my day (late-70's and early 80's) all educational loans were regulated by the Federal government, but the rule changes of 1991 gave private lenders a lot more incentive to get into the industry, at the same time removing most of the protections for borrowers. The kind of students that LSUmiss is speaking of would have been able to manage college tuition solely on Pell Grants back then, but when those grants were drastically cut, poorer students were forced to turn more and more to loans, at the same time that states started to really cut their tax funding to higher education, which in turn sent tuition rates soaring.

 

[LSUmiss]

Actually, it really began to get bad when the federal government started backing away from the College loan business. In my day (late-70's and early 80's) all educational loans were regulated by the Federal government, but the rule changes of 1991 gave private lenders a lot more incentive to get into the industry, at the same time removing most of the protections for borrowers. The kind of students that LSUmiss is speaking of would have been able to manage college tuition solely on Pell Grants back then, but when those grants were drastically cut, poorer students were forced to turn more and more to loans, at the same time that states started to really cut their tax funding to higher education, which in turn sent tuition rates soaring.

That’s exactly right about the Pell grants. I actually forgot about that. That brings up another point about staying informed. Rules often change from yr to yr so maybe students thought they knew going in, but then things changed but they want to finish their degree.

 

[runwad]

Actually, it really began to get bad when the federal government started backing away from the College loan business. In my day (late-70's and early 80's) all educational loans were regulated by the Federal government, but the rule changes of 1991 gave private lenders a lot more incentive to get into the industry, at the same time removing most of the protections for borrowers. The kind of students that LSUmiss is speaking of would have been able to manage college tuition solely on Pell Grants back then, but when those grants were drastically cut, poorer students were forced to turn more and more to loans, at the same time that states started to really cut their tax funding to higher education, which in turn sent tuition rates soaring.

Well I guess I didn't know that. All I know is in the mid 80's when I was in college we all worked and paid our way. I honestly don't know ANY of my friends that had loans, and I was in a sorority so I had a lot of friends.ha

I guess I don't know who had pell grants, I never did, and I "think" we were all around the same income bracket. Loans just weren't in my world then. I'm not really sure when I started hearing about kids getting loans for college??? 2000's I guess.

 

[maddiel]

Tuition at my state's Universities is affordable, the one my dd is going to is currently just under $6500 per year.
It is the added fees and room and board that bring it to about $23K a year.

The variation of costs to attend Canadian universities is much smaller than in the US. Macleans Magazine calculated attending the most expensive away-from-home university would cost $23,485 and the cheapest would be $11,556 for tuition, rent, groceries, food on campus, traveling home, books, alcohol, daily travel and extracurriculars. The most expensive live-at-home university would be $12,300 and the least $4,284 (those costs are for tuition, food, daily travel, books, alcohol and extracurricular activities.) That's for every university in the country, doesn't include scholarships or aid, and is in Canadian dollars (1 CAD = 0.80 USD) Our student aid system is very different as well.

I'm not sure what province star2232 lives in, but in NS we are experiencing a shortage of some teaching specialties for the first time due to incrased depand because of classroom size caps. A full time permanent teacher starts at about $56K and tops out just under $100K depending on experience and education. It could be more for an administrator. Teachers need bachelors degree + a teaching degree that usually takes an additional two years. Most newly graduated teachers will sub for a couple years before getting a full time gig - math and french are in high demand and more likely to get a contract quickly.

M.