Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for May 13, 2023

No, but the college did.

Did that include room and board?

You didn’t……..

If you went to a technical school, you have a chance.

Obviously not at Cornell University.

Obviously understated. That’s not much more than what I spent to send one of my son’s through school 25 years ago.

Our local branch of the state university has a number of students who have meal cards. Some of these are footing the bill on their own (no mom and dad to bail them out). Due to inflation, the meal cards run out a month or two before the semester does. So they come to the food pantry run by our church.

Not YOUR $110,827.00 worth. You parents and the student loan’s worth.

Today that is for one year at some schools.

With some of the loonie profs out there, it’s scarier than ever!

Time to revive Trump University.

You probably didn’t.

Depends on the degree.

than the average high school graduate. If that’s divided by the 4 years it takes to get a college education, and public schools were free, those additional taxes would pay for the cost of college, with a net gain for total income taxes paid. The rest of us wouldn’t have to have a tax raise to pay for it, in fact the net effect would be more money coming in without one. This doesn’t even consider that with the degree, the person is less likely to ever need unemployment or welfare, and that more students would complete high school if they could see it as the way to a good job. They would also be paying a larger amount in all other types of taxes, social security and Medicare.

The best investment we could make to keep America strong is to not just forgive all student loans but to make all public higher education, including trade schools, etc totally free, as long as the student is making decent grades. There is no better way to spend money than, to give our people every opportunity to be the best they can be. Yes, It’s good for them individually, but the country is made up of individuals, so what’s good for one is good for the country.

In a country lacking concrete, non-collegiate pathways to successful careers, attending a college or university is just about the only systematic way up. (Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but hang in there.)

The amount spent will, on average, result in a positive ROI. (College graduates make, on average, hundreds of thousands of dollars more in a lifetime than to high school grads.)

But there’s more. The learning experience, for example, gives you the opportunity to grow and develop in ways you cannot anticipate until you’re in the midst of them.

Then there’s your life after graduation. The professional opportunities a degree can open for you can make your day-to-day, and year-to-year, experiences much more enjoyable, making it more likely you can do work you will enjoy.

Again, there are plenty of exceptions and anecdotes abound. But there’s a whole lot of misinformation about PhDs working at Starbucks—almost always perpetrated by people who have not done it themselves.

There are no certainties, no quid pro quo, and you still have to make things happen.

Everything I have and every professional success I’ve experienced can be traced back to getting college degrees. I had to do it all while working full-time, but it was all worth it.

Before my wife died of a terrible, lingering disease, her $78,000 in student loans were forgiven. She had a good sense of humor. She said that, between the loan forgiveness and the handicapped parking permit, it was almost worth it.

I hope she finds a job with her new college debtgree.

Years later, she will think about her college years and the mandated courses and her specific degree. Then she maybe will decide if anything she studied in those years had anything to do with what she is doing. Probably the best thing about those college years is the friends one makes and the experience of being on one’s own. Maybe.

What sort of degree is worth going that far into debt – without an income already to have the means to pay it off?

Let’s see, your degree was in Home Economics at CSUN, so maybe not…

Probably not, but a lot depends on the subject the degree is in and the specific school/department it is from. I, my wife and both of our sons have done well with the degrees we got, but I have friends who have done just as well in the Trades.

I know of people who lived like royalty, ran up over 1 million in debt with never planning to pay any of it, and then shafted the lawyer who filed there bankruptcy.

Our daughter just graduated with a Masters degree—debt free! We are doubly proud of her. Four years serving in the USAF paid for her Associates and Bachelors; then teaching “Freshman English” paid for her Masters. There are ways to do it without incurring huge debts.

It looks as if with the coming of AI your college diploma can be used for toilet paper. Go to a good trade school, learn electricity, plumbing, carpentry, etc. Trades that a computer cannot do. Better yet a computer expert.

Slave away at Starbucks for twenty years, you’ll find out. HEY, coffee -girl, I said, extra whip….

It’s not likely.