But what's the cut off for "that much income?" Really the problem now is either you don't go to college and you sit there trying to live off minimum wage, which really isn't sustainable anymore, or you go to college and take on this huge debt in the hope of getting something above minimum wage. Even if it's just a little bit above that, it seems like a decent tradeoff.
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PoliGAF 2012 Community Thread |OT2| This thread title is now under military control
- Thread starter AlteredBeast
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But what's the cut off for "that much income?" Really the problem now is either you don't go to college and you sit there trying to live off minimum wage, which really isn't sustainable anymore, or you go to college and take on this huge debt in the hope of getting something above minimum wage. Even if it's just a little bit above that, it seems like a decent tradeoff.
Damn.
What field is she in, and what is she going to be doing for a career?
I'm looking at $42k in student loans for my MPP if I move back in with my family for the two years and don't do any TA work my second year. While that's reasonable, the 6.8% interest rate on graduate loans is not. It should be three points lower.
empty vessel
Member
I agree, but the solution is ...
Not have those jobs?
Have those jobs pay more?
Have only fewer, less qualified people who can "afford" the education do those jobs?
Structure education so that it does not require indebtedness to obtain for those jobs?
I would go 6.8 points lower. In fact, I'd have the government pay you to go to grad school.
Archaeology. She works for a program within the gov't. that hires disabled vets given disability discharges from the military and teaches them office skills, how to actually show up for a 8-5 job, etc. via having them help process and curate archaeological artifacts.
She's had about 20 vets work for her that I've met who served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. You couldn't pick out any single one of them as being disabled if you saw them on the street. It is absolutely surreal the kinds of injuries people are coming home with.
I've got that same interest rate on some of my undergraduate loans. It definitely should be lower. That I'm paying that much into the government for education is just crazy.
I just bought a 50 trill off ebay for 1.99USD, thanks for the idea.
I'm riiich beeatch!
Refinance as soon as you're able, it helps a ton if you have good credit. I refinanced all but my last loan for 2nd semester senior year before even graduating and I've got an interest rate of 2.08 on the majority of it. That through a provider who drops another .25 every so many months for consistent payment. Right now my loans are at about 1.08.
How exactly do you do that and when can you?
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
there is a middle ground. I don't have a degree and I make 75k/year in sales. I am not saying it is optimal to not have a degree, but everytime I hear about people and their student debt and how unfair or crazy it is, I can't help but think they are not as smart as they think they are.
this is a valid sentiment, but I think if she were only happy doing one thing, heaven forbid her department/field of expertise ever become redundant or unprofitable.
Bingo.
Well, you are a robot.
What exactly do you do again, and when did you get into it? I think instances like that will become increasingly less common as time goes on. Especially in times like this, you just won't get a job like that without some sort of degree. You won't even be looked at.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Interesting read from a staunch conservative women who moved to Canada and fell in love with their healthcare system: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/07/12/how-i-lost-my-fear-universal-health-care
I'd make a thread for it but I don't think even GAF is going to get too much of an actual debate out of the things she says. Still, interesting read.
I'd make a thread for it but I don't think even GAF is going to get too much of an actual debate out of the things she says. Still, interesting read.
empty vessel
Member
I agree.
You should wait until you're ready to start paying them or very close to it, as by most refinancing programs they'll go into repayment when you refinance (at least mine did).
To do it all you need to do is get in touch with your lenders about it, most of them are very willing to take on government backed education loans as there is no real risk there, it's basically free money if you pay, no losses if you don't.
But before doing that do some serious google searching as new programs come up all the time. My wife got into a program that ended about a month or two ago that will consolidate all her loans and drop the weighted interest rate by 0.25 just for refinancing. Then she can still get all the benefits of consistent payment reductions as well.
and that's why it's important we shift our costs over time to online education, at least for lower level undergrad classes and perhaps even further. There's no future in education as it currently works in America, we need a sustainable model that can grow with the population's desire/imperative to educate themselves.
I've been paying them for years now. I graduated in '08.
I tried getting a hold of my lenders (Sallie Mae) back in like '09 or '10 to try and see if I could consolidate or do anything like that and I got no help at all. They said they couldn't put my loans together at all because some were government and some were private. Their only real options were the payment options. i.e. I could choose a payment option that would go up over time, and I could choose income based repayment, and I could choose some options on number of years for repayment. That's when I chose the 30 years and the total payment thing.
I think I also called the government loan people at that time, too, and only got the same sort of thing. I had what options were available at the time on the website. 15 years was the longest I could go on them, too. I barely know who to talk to anymore with my government loans. They've been pushed around to different providers and sold or whatever the hell is going on a few times. Now some company named Mohela is managing them. I think my rates did just go down a tiny, tiny bit, possibly because I've made every payment on time (except one or two when the sites switched and they fucked up because I pay everything really early, so a payment didn't register because it had already gone through or something....)
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
retail sales, this job as of 2009, but I have been doing sales in one way or another (founding member Sales-Age at Best Buy back in 2000
) for the better part of 12 years. I am not saying this job was easy to get or maintain, but having a degree was inconsequential. Working my way up through the ranks of crappy retail to today is making me better money than what my future degree will ever give me.speculawyer
Member
The 'Club for Growth' are wankers. They were amazingly successful in getting things they wanted passed during the Bush administration . . . and growth slowed. They should be called the 'Club for Blind Ideology'.
retail sales, this job as of 2009, but I have been doing sales in one way or another (founding member Sales-Age at Best Buy back in 2000
Ah, yeah experience'll help you quite a bit. You probably do have a good leg up compared to a degree, and for you it probably is inconsequential. Problem is that way of going up in a company is now pretty much completely shut out for people just starting out.
For example, I worked at a grocery store for about 5 years. After college and having to repay my loans and stuff I really wanted to move up. I wasn't getting lucky in my field, so I wanted to move up in the company I was with. I tried everything. I put in resumes and applications to almost every opening higher up in the company. In the end they were just confused. I had a talk with my store manager during that, and he lamented the way things had become. He told me straight up that he didn't have a degree and back when he was working you could just work hard and move up. He said that's just not possible anymore. You need a specific degree in what you're applying for, and you already need experience in doing that specific thing, or they won't look at you.
That's kind of the whole story I'm getting from everyone I know. No one's moving up in their companies. It seems like those paths are blocked off. Companies just hire from outside and get people with degrees and experience already in that position. They don't want to promote from inside.
Yeah, I know they're terrible. I just was surprised that they were railing against two bigger republican candidates. I didn't know they had endorsed Neumann.
Its not an issue of intelligence, its an issue of awareness. Partly a problem with self awareness for many people, but also party the mythology we've built and continue to push about higher education.
Case in point, I'm sure anyone who has ever attended a university has been told that the average college grad will earn over $1M more than the average non-college grad. When the very institution you're attending is telling you this it makes it seems pretty worthwhile to go 50-100K in debt knowing that you'll get a $1M payoff on the back end. No one at those schools ever take the time to point out how that $1M in additional earnings is heavily weighted towards a handful of fields.
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
By that comment, I didn't mean intelligence, but the overall awareness and sense to step back and say, "is it worth it for me to go into debt 50k, 100k, or more?" I think people get corralled into thinking that success is only assured with an expensive degree when in reality success and happiness in your field is NEVER guaranteed.
You should check again. It sounds like you probably had a bunch of gov't. direct loans and another bunch of FFELP loans (federal family education loan program). Recently the gov't. passed a law allowing for FFELP loans to be consolidated with direct loans at a reduced rate. Worth looking into, though having already refinanced once you might not be a candidate anymore.
I'd say the biggest issue we have right now isn't even about building up online education. That is taking care of itself for the most part.
The biggest issue, to me, is a lack of viable trade/technical programs. I work with people throughout the manufacturing industry. Almost all of your factories are looking for new workers for good pay ($50-$70K depending on region). They just can't find good employees. Why? Because a factory worker used to need to know how to run a rivet gun. Now he's got to know how a machine that rivets ten times faster than any human ever works. That means he needs to know the basics of that entire machine. That requires a lot of mechanical aptitude like the old school factory worker would have, but it also demands basic programming, trig, algebra, and electrical skills. You don't need the education of a B.S. in comp. sci. or electrical engineering, but you need some basic proficiency so you can trouble shoot the small stuff yourself and talk intelligently to the programmer or EE when they need to fix a higher level issue.
We just aren't training those people in this country. No one has designed a post-high school program that actually prepares people to work in the contemporary manufacturing industry. Instead we maintain this sharp divide between "smart enough for college" and "working minimum wage henceforth".
That mindset needs to stop.
By that comment, I didn't mean intelligence, but the overall awareness and sense to step back and say, "is it worth it for me to go into debt 50k, 100k, or more?" I think people get corralled into thinking that success is only assured with an expensive degree when in reality success and happiness in your field is NEVER guaranteed.
Exactly true, and the universities people are sent to work very hard to keep this myth in tact. You get as much honesty about job placement and post-employment salaries from a for profit institution as you will from a major public university.
Hence why the current employment crisis for the young and college educated is being blamed entirely on a bad economy while no one mentions an education system that is lying to their students in order to maximize revenue for talking too many people into degrees they can't use.
I almost went to law school. I had a full ride on the table from a law program in the 75-125 national rank range. Glad as hell I didn't attend because I never would have found a job with it.
By that comment, I didn't mean intelligence, but the overall awareness and sense to step back and say, "is it worth it for me to go into debt 50k, 100k, or more?" I think people get corralled into thinking that success is only assured with an expensive degree when in reality success and happiness in your field is NEVER guaranteed.
People definitely get corralled into thinking that. For one our entire country now believes college is necessary just to get into the middle class. To illustrate, I'll use an Elizabeth Warren quote, because I love it: "Twice as many people in America in 2002 believe that the moon shot landing was faked... than believe you can make it into the middle class in America without a college diploma."
Growing up college wasn't just a thing pushed for added success and happiness. It was pushed in that if you didn't go you were basically giving up. You were a failure. You were a disappointment. It was a necessary thing for everyone, reinforced from the ground up. That's what the counselors pushed, and that's what your parents pushed even more.
And then yeah you get to choose your college and get all these numbers thrown at you, but you're only 18. A lot of times literally days or months beforehand these loans would have been completely illegal. They're predatory in nature. They give you inflated numbers where it's good for them and deflated where it's bad. And god forbid you have parents that didn't go to college either, because then they're still learning everything, like mine were. Everyone pushed and had this idea that the payments wouldn't matter. You'd get long enough, and the rates would be low enough, and you'd get a good job out of it. Don't worry about the money they tell you. They barely ever actually add up the money, anyway. The whole thing is just short of a scam on the college's part and a cultural brainwashing on the parents part.
I know I take some personal responsibility, and I know I'll pay everything despite my feelings on that. I still feel stupid about the whole thing, though. I feel like I didn't know enough, and I feel like I trusted things too much. I thought I did the no brainer thing, and feel like I really probably didn't use my brain enough for the whole thing. I dunno, I feel like I was 18 and dumb back then, pretty much still a kid.
This student loan discussion is why I'm very pessimistic about the future of our country. No one seems to care that we're loading up the future (and current) drivers of our economy with a huge ball and chain right out of the gate. There are no signs of this practice slowing.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
One of the ways I've justified the loans my brother is going to have to take out for his education is by thinking of it as "well, at the very worst he's only as screwed as everyone else"
Nobody will care until it gets to a crisis level, like it did with the housing market.
Not even sure what a student loan crisis would look like, since it's such a slow-burning problem. It's hard to default on those loans and servicers are willing to slow payments down to a microscopic crawl as long as they're still getting paid.
It is crazy, and I believe it's going to have a massive effect on things. I would even personally try my hardest to push for changes and/or forgiveness type things even if those things didn't affect me and my loans at all. That's how strongly I believe in it. I just don't see how we're going to see an economy improve that much when we've got an entire generation saddled with this stuff. These are supposed to be the people buying houses, having children, and doing all that sort of stuff. Those are the people that drive a large part of the economy. We're supposed to be starting out and gathering things. But we can't. We can't buy houses, we can't have children. We're just stuck.
What's funny/interesting is that my dad, who is a staunch tea party-esque republican (I've talked about him here before) even things the country needs to do a loan forgiveness type program. He thinks things are ridiculous, and he hates how things have become. As he puts it, "You guys did things right. You did everything we told you, and now you're screwed for it. That's not fair." He also believes it's going to have a huge effect on our economy. It's one of the few things we agree on.
By that comment, I didn't mean intelligence, but the overall awareness and sense to step back and say, "is it worth it for me to go into debt 50k, 100k, or more?" I think people get corralled into thinking that success is only assured with an expensive degree when in reality success and happiness in your field is NEVER guaranteed.
hard to be a doctor without an advanced degree in this country. Can't even be in the field to see if you are happy without it
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
Doctor is at least a degree where you can pay off 6-figure student loans
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Yeah, but people get crazy defensive when you suggest that statistically some degrees are more likely to put you in a financially sound position then others.
Nice! I've lived in South Africa, but never managed to become a Zimbabwe trillionaire.
I do think you're a bit too glib about currency debasement. Frankly, that's surprising from you since currency debasement (and accompanying inflation) hits the lower and middle classes the hardest. It's true that after two rounds of QE and Operation Twist we haven't seen core inflation rise, but that's due to the new money offsetting the collapse of liabilities in the shadow banking system. Eventually those positions unwind, and if QE (or other debasement) continues, you will have inflation at a rate that will be felt by the lower and middle classes (as it will likely accompany wage stagnation).
The US does have a bit in common with Zim in that we have a large trade deficit, and currency debasement will drive the prices of our imports up. We're obviously in a better position than Zimbabwe (or Greece), and I don't see hyperinflation as a realistic outcome, but there's some pain ahead if we continue to think we can inflate our problems away.
And yet we still require less advanced degree holders, like Nurses, Ultrasound Techs, and Medical Assistants to take 4-6 years of classes, incur the same percentage of debt as these docs, and make 1/2 to 1/3 as much. A lot of times even young people with a good solid, realistic and quick plan end up getting loaded with debt. Even if they didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer, and instead chose something realistic, obtainable, and marketable.
College, theoretically, should train people at the very minimum to become good critical thinkers and thus have enough knowledge to work through problems that come up at the plant. In addition, we've just spent the last 20-30 years talking about the decline of that sort of industry. Education has moved beyond that point -- theoretically looking towards the future and the type of jobs available there. Training people for industries that will become obsolete seems like a bad deal for both the student and the university.
Those industries will never become obsolete. Manufacturing needs to be done somewhere and if you ignore hourly rates American manufacturing is more productive than almost anywhere else in terms of man hours for product production.
We've been told a story about how that kind of industry is declining over the last 20-30 years, nothing more. There is a large portion of this nation's youth who aren't compatible with college for various reasons but are valuable workers. Technical education needs to be restored as this nation can't live off of service industries no matter how many 4 year degrees we turn out and how little loan burden they might be saddled with.
So I was watching Hardball before going to sleep yesterday and John Feehery said that the ad Romney made taking Obama's comments out of context was okay because even though it was out of context, Obama still said the words that appeared in the speech.
WTF?
WTF?
Al-ibn Kermit
Junior Member
I think he was arguing about what is legal versus moral in a political ad.
Manmademan
Member
Isn't this exactly what republicans are trying to do with voucher programs?
It feels like Manos keeps getting banned like within a week of getting unbanned. I'm surprised he's not perma'd yet.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
Compounded with a lot of public trade schools being de-funded, it's making the situation worse. Like I said in another thread, a lot of the teachers that used to teach at public trade schools got picked up by private ones. Those private ones can cost thousands of dollars for a certification program and many times they are predatory.
I wanted to do a ASE auto mechanic certification program for fun and to gain some experience and training and maybe a job meanwhile I gain some experience in the auto industry (my goal being to end up writing for something like Motor Trend). But the public trade schools have been so underfunded that they don't offer the same amount of training as they did maybe ten years ago.
This is in Los Angeles by the way. Also, some community colleges have started to offer more technical training but classes and locations are limited.
speculawyer
Member
Poor Manos must be kicking himself.
Yeah, I laughed when I saw that thread created right after he got banned.
Pretty sure he wasn't. He was saying he was saying it was actually a good ad, AND legitimate.
Captain Pants
Killed by a goddamned Dredgeling
Is 'Manos The Hans of Fate' the same guy as 'Hans' and 'Snah'? That dude got banned all the time too.
Don't think so. Manos was an Xbot, iirc.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
What did Manos do this time anyway?
It's another instance of our country's woefully inadequate investment in public goods. Our myopic failure will not only constrain future growth and diminish our quality of life, it will attenuate our power. Nearly every facet of our infrastructure has been neglected. Even our electrical infrastructure is suffering from inadequate investment.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Bwahaha, what an ass. He'll come back from a ban and post with his tail between his legs for a week or two but he usually can't resist the call to be an edgy attention whore for long.
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
I did not expect to be in the minority in that thread. Holy crap America loves it's guns, even insanely overpowered assault rifles and hunting rifles.
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