For people complaining about their massive student loans...

In my state, high schoolers can actually get college credits at CC that transfer to state schools. I was a junior credit wise when entered college. So, not all state schools are working against kids like you stayed.

Yep. That guy saying colleges are stopping people from transferring and not accepting Community College credits is FOS.

If you are in a state with an excellent state university, it is pretty silly to go out of state to a private school for 2 to 3 times the cost. California, Texas, Virginia, Illinois, etc. are all states that have great public universities. The problem is with the east coast meritocracy. If you have a degree from U Mass, Rutgers, one of the SUNYs or Penn State, big east coast employers will not give you the time of day because they have stacks of resumes from graduates of more competitive schools. So, people in the east will do anything to keep from ending up at their state school.

work hard and wrote:

Here's a simple solution for you... I know it's going to be mind blowing, but here it is.

Go to your state school! It's as simple as that. If you weren't smart enough or did enough activities to stand out to get scholarships, just go to your state school where your schooling will be fraction of the cost. If that's too expensive, you can go to community college for two years, then transfer to a state school for your 4 year degree.

It's ridiculous to hear about these student loans horror stories where they owe couple hundred grand. You are the idiot for taking on that much debt where you could've just gone to your state school to get the education.

State school is still only affordable for the wealthy and/or talented. Most state schools cost $10-20k a year. That's simply not a reasonable cost to take on for working class families. And the average student can't get much in scholarship money. Most of it is already earmarked for high test score students or minorities.

FYI I went to a private university on a full tuition merit scholarship, and took out loans and a job and cobbled together some outside scholarships to pay for room and board, fees, books, and travel expense.

Precious Roy wrote:

If you are in a state with an excellent state university, it is pretty silly to go out of state to a private school for 2 to 3 times the cost. California, Texas, Virginia, Illinois, etc. are all states that have great public universities. The problem is with the east coast meritocracy. If you have a degree from U Mass, Rutgers, one of the SUNYs or Penn State, big east coast employers will not give you the time of day because they have stacks of resumes from graduates of more competitive schools. So, people in the east will do anything to keep from ending up at their state school.

Roy... Wtf? So according to you my nephew (Penn state) is not really not employed as an architect and his roommate is not an employed as a structural engineer in nyc. My daughter (unh and sju) doesn't work in comp science and all the people in my international company that went to umass and unh really are not employed. My pals son (uvt) is not a doctor either. You just make everything up?

R1200 wrote:

Roy... Wtf? So according to you my nephew (Penn state) is not really not employed as an architect and his roommate is not an employed as a structural engineer in nyc. My daughter (unh and sju) doesn't work in comp science and all the people in my international company that went to umass and unh really are not employed. My pals son (uvt) is not a doctor either. You just make everything up?

State school logic right there. "I can name some people who have competitive jobs and went to a state school therefore everyone who went to state school has competitive jobs."

This is because student loans can rarely be discharged in bankruptcy nowadays. For this you have MDs to thank.

Jobs have not kept up with inflation and kids want some help? Get real.

This is America. Land of opportunities. If you grind it and work hard, you will rise above mediocre and get a great paying job. But you have to work hard at the right things.

I'm sorry but people who do not get great job with enough schooling to get you in the door, then you're just not working hard. Sorry but when I wasn't getting paid much, I deserved that with the amount of work I was doing to bring profit or customers to the company. You gotta be worth it for the company to justify the pay. It is as simple as that.

How is the state school not affordable? That type of debt is much less than a mortgage and if all the people who bitch about their student loans actually went to a state school, they would be fine.

For what it's worth:

I was at a tech conference last week with both some pretty big names from the known tech world and other rising names from the underworld of tech.

One of the more knowledgeable people I met was a distributed systems engineer. He was born here but his parents migrated here from the Middle East. He had very little money growing up, spent two years at a community college then 1.5 years at Illinois-Chicago before basically being forced to drop out because he couldn't afford it about a semester short.

He makes north of 150k per year.

d is for dropout wrote:

He makes north of 150k per year.

LOL.

Here's what I learned with my kid now in college. Both good students, good test scores (one a Merit Scholar Commended Student), good extra curriculars, divorced parents so only counting the lower income (about $60K).

- State U = poorer kids, aid goes to those who need it. Offered almost no financial aid outside loans. Net cost after grants and scholarships: $15K

- Nice private school = wealthy kids, lots of need and merit aid available. Only kid on his dorm floor who worked. Net cost after grants, work study and many more scholarships: $13K

These threads are so often a circle jerk for people who mindlessly buy into market ideology and don't understand the place of a university in a free society, or even the degree to which public higher education has been gutted by state legislatures.

PS: you might think you're being edgy when you reiterate a "suck it up" or "work harder" mentality, but you're really just rehashing the status quo in an uncritical/uneducated way.

Hey, watch yourself. I make weapons for the government and I absolutely love the money and security. So please let's just let the schools die since all we are teaching kids is to serve the industrial machine; which is killing our planet, and depressing our population.

4 years is Spanish and and art!

No education on finance! Liberals are to blame.

They keep you dumb and own you.

They lie that Spanish and art are important !

Teach kids finance and buisness and people will make better decisions. Teach kids the color wheel and Spanish and you get what you get.

Illinois - great public universities - plural?

2015 grad wrote:

Yep. That guy saying colleges are stopping people from transferring and not accepting Community College credits is FOS.

Yeah you're right, the policy on my institution's website that clearly states what transfer credits they will and will not take is complete BS. Made the whole thing up. If there was only some massive search engine that people could use to check facts out...

I never once said that every school that ever existed does the same exact thing, I just said there are schools, manly private schools, that are limiting transfer credits. State schools also limit transfer credits. Connecticut, for example, limits transfer credits from the state schools to UCONN. For example a student going Central Connecticut State University wants to transfer to UCONN, they will not let them transfer over many similar courses.

This is going to be more prominent as budgets tighten and public funding remains the same or decreases.

Student loans are a larger issue than just simply "go to a state school"

Hello, I'm sorry the Ivy League all rejected you. Good luck with your state school degree.

work hard and wrote:

Here's a simple solution for you... I know it's going to be mind blowing, but here it is.

Go to your state school! It's as simple as that. If you weren't smart enough or did enough activities to stand out to get scholarships, just go to your state school where your schooling will be fraction of the cost. If that's too expensive, you can go to community college for two years, then transfer to a state school for your 4 year degree.

It's ridiculous to hear about these student loans horror stories where they owe couple hundred grand. You are the idiot for taking on that much debt where you could've just gone to your state school to get the education.

Sorry (actually I'm not sorry) but I have zero sympathy for ppl complaining about student loans. Zero. It is the definition of a first world problem. You agreed to take money now and pay it back in the future. That's how the real world works. I dgaf if you were led to believe some dream job that will make you feel perfectly fulfilled and "make the word a better place" lay on the other side, and now you're sad to find out that isn't true. Fking deal with it.

And don't try to tell me that "the kids were just doing what they were told." How about the parents stepping in and explaining how debt works?

Now I'm going to toot my own horn here: I graduated college in 09, in the heart of the recession, with 80k in loans. I worked at my local running store making slightly better than minimum wage because I couldnt find anything else. I worked extra shifts, and I mowed lawns/landscaping in my neighborhood on the side. Finally a year and a half later I got an entry level IT job making 40k/year and busted my butt in that crappy job, still doing yard work on the side. I poured every dollar left after living expenses into those loans.

By sep 2015, about 6 years after I graduated, I had completely paid off 100% of that debt.

How? I lived at home for 5 years (still paying my parents rent) and drove a crappy used car. I didn't go on any awesome dream vacations, and most weekends (when I want working) involved drinking a couple cheap beers at a friend's house. I didn't "live life to the fullest." I made sacrifices. That's how the real world works. Now I'm in a much better job (tho not by LRC standards) making 80k/year. And I'm 100% debt free, planning to buy a house next year.

If you don't like your situation, even if it's not your fault you're there, it's on you to change it. So grow the fk up, stop blaming other people, and do the work.