At 9:24 PM -0400 4/16/08, Christopher R. Merlo wrote:
>So, anyway, I felt compelled to write, because I'm afraid that
>people trying to choose whether to get a college education or not
>might be misled into thinking it's something it's not. The service
>we provide is not something you can get anywhere else, and for lots
>of people, it's the difference between promotions or not.
>$0.02,
>-c
It's a big problem for Generation X and younger people.
I know a lot of people who are stuck with $100,000+ in college debt but
aren't able to get jobs much better than answering the phone at a mutual fund
or managing a video store.
Student loans have created an ecological crisis much like the housing
bubble that's currently unwinding. People were willing to spend more for
college from 1980-2008 because financing was available and aggressively
marketed. So the price of college went up.
Although I think there are some higher values involved in education, the
"market" value of a college education hasn't really increased -- it's certainly
a ticket to a certain strata of "top of the low end" jobs in the service
sector, line management in particular, but it rarely leads up.
Why? There's a limited amount of opportunity in the world. People who
"blame the victim" and say that people who are stuck should get themselves
unstuck and get a better career might be right on an individual basis -- some
people certainly can do this -- but if everybody did it, there wouldn't be
anybody to answer the phone at the mutual fund.
In fact, I've seen that college and other debt have a destructive effect
on people's ambition just as much as welfare. I'm debt free, so if I hustle
and make an extra $50 or $1000 or $20000, I can put it in my pocket, put in
the bank, buy something I like, roll the money into a new project. That
gives me some motivation.
I know people who spend half their time at the bankruptcy court and family
court... For them, any extra $ they make is just going to go to their
creditors, so why bother?
I know a lot of 20-somethings who need to make a huge payment every month
on their student loans... They're under a lot of pressure to get the first job
that's "good enough"... Taking the risk to find "something better" could land
them in default.
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