Student loan forgiveness

[Tradd]

I don't see much logic to going to a super-expensive school for a teaching degree. Maybe I'm out of touch.

I don’t see the logic either. But I’ve known a fair number of people who’ve gotten degrees from expensive private colleges for teaching, social work, and other similarly low paying fields. Some wanted to go to a certain religious college. A friend’s daughter recently graduated with $100K in student loans for a social work degree. It makes no sense.

[flowerseverywhere]

This is very interesting how Devrie defrauded students and the students were given government relief and the school is still eligible for federal loans to students. doesn't make much sense to me.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/16/10811...ower%20defense.

It seems like if they just came out and said taxpayers will pay you instead of the government it would be more honest

[JaneV2.0]

A relative of mine got involved with DeVry, and ended up working in robotics engineering for a Fortune 100 company. Rare happy ending?

[jp1]

Back to my earlier post, when I was contemplating college instate tuition at the University of Colorado was about $1250/semester for a full time student. Today it's $6,812 per semester. If I had taken out loans for 4 years' of tuition that would've been $10,000, or $27,528 adjusted for inflation. Today it would be $54,496. Literally just under twice as much. For the same degree. The problem is bigger than student loans. It's that society has decided that funding college education is not a priority. Looking at the politics of education today probably offers some clues as to why that is. Student loan forgiveness is necessary but so is finding a better long-term solution to the cost of higher education.

[flowerseverywhere]

A relative of mine got involved with DeVry, and ended up working in robotics engineering for a Fortune 100 company. Rare happy ending?

Probably not so rare. But if you say 99% of our graduates a employed in their field, for examp!e and only 50% are and they take massive loans on that basis, it is not right. In many cases people hear what they want to hear and make assumptions. I remember a friend saying you can do anything with an English degree. Maybe so but probably not make enough to pay student loans, live on your own and perhaps not be able support a family.

[JaneV2.0]

Probably not so rare. But if you say 99% of our graduates a employed in their field, for examp!e and only 50% are and they take massive loans on that basis, it is not right. In many cases people hear what they want to hear and make assumptions. I remember a friend saying you can do anything with an English degree. Maybe so but probably not make enough to pay student loans, live on your own and perhaps not be able support a family.

He managed to finance most of his education with the GI Bill.

My mother was one who touted the English degree theory. That may have held water when I started school, but it was just a memory by the time I graduated. In my next life, I won't touch a liberal arts course--I can easily learn that stuff on my own.

[bae]

My mother was one who touted the English degree theory. That may have held water when I started school, but it was just a memory by the time I graduated.

My daughter is a Research Fellow at Cambridge. Her salary is ~$52k/year. She also receives hugely discounted faculty/fellow housing consisting of a very small flat with kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and a sitting-room meant for receiving/teaching students. She receives two meals free a day at the College dining hall, which is no meagre benefit - dinners are served with wine, and many meals have servants doing full table service. The hall also looks just like Hogwarts.

For all of this, she had to work her way all the way up to Ph.D., publish, and then compete for one of the handful of positions available, there were ~400 applicants for the position. Probably the other Anglo-Saxon/Norse/Celticists are working in museums as guides, or teaching Latin to high schoolers.

Now, she'd make *more* here working on one of our local whale-watching boats being a wildlife guide. Or cleaning houses. Which is her backup plan.

She graduated from her US undergraduate institution with no debt, had to pay for her UK Masters out-of-pocket as she was a foreigner, and her UK Ph.D. was entirely grant-funded and included a $31k/year stipend for living expenses.

She refused my suggestion to get a minor in petrochemical engineering so she'd be employable.

[JaneV2.0]

"She refused my suggestion to get a minor in petrochemical engineering so she'd be employable."

I think it's smart to get qualified in two disparate fields.
I've thought I should have moved to Europe and specialized in translations and editorial work.

[Tradd]

Probably not so rare. But if you say 99% of our graduates a employed in their field, for examp!e and only 50% are and they take massive loans on that basis, it is not right. In many cases people hear what they want to hear and make assumptions. I remember a friend saying you can do anything with an English degree. Maybe so but probably not make enough to pay student loans, live on your own and perhaps not be able support a family.

I have a journalism degree. I have always touted at job interviews that I can write and don’t need spell check (typing on a smart phone here get you weird auto correct results!). A lot of people can’t string coherent sentences together and spell badly. I think it’s been one thing to make me stand out.

[jp1]

I have a journalism degree. I have always touted at job interviews that I can write and don’t need spell check (typing on a smart phone here get you weird auto correct results!). A lot of people can’t string coherent sentences together and spell badly. I think it’s been one thing to make me stand out.

Being able to write well is absolutely a worthwhile skill. I wasn't a journalism major but I wrote enough papers in high school and college that I can also write reasonably well. I've never touted that as a particular skill but it's definitely come in handy in various jobs I've had over the years.

THinking about autocorrect, there used to be (maybe still is) a site with a name like "damn you autocorrect" that posted hysterical autocorrect gaffes.