I have a question for you, though. Did you ever get your student loans paid off? And if so, at what age were you when you finally paid them off?[/quote]
BG – here’s what I don’t get. We’re all about the same age. My brother in law went to a big 10 school, did great and worked a combination of three jobs to pay for college. Never took a loan and got a great job. When we were in school it was cheaper and many people worked their way through school. Heck, there’s a girl who paid for UVA as an out of state student (final cost was about 40,000 a year after scholarships) selling jewelry on Etsy. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247609
I think your fixation on loans and such, especially for those our age who didn’t have very high tuition costs (and lived in a house with 13 other people 😉 is a little off. I know a lot of people who’s parents didn’t pay for school but didn’t end up with much (or any) student debt.
People need to be willing to work harder than they are. One of my coworkers was saddled with loans, some of which had been used for his weekly massages. I never got massages in college. . . . but I did get help from my parents.[/quote]Oh, I agree. My siblings had/have college degrees, even a Masters but worked their own way thru school (back in the ’70’s).
The problem, nj, is that just to get a teaching credential in CA (1 yr) in combination with a Masters in Education (1 yr) now costs $15-$16K per yr. That’s ~$32K for the whole program (which a teaching candidate really needs to have the necessary expert feedback, coaching, mentoring and reccos for a demanding public school job today), directly out of those (UCLA) programs I posted here today. This cost is over and above the undergrad work already undertaken.
The CA UC/CSU/CC started out with “free” tuition for CA residents (plus campus fees and books) back in my day and climbed up to what it is today. The CSU tuition and fees for a FT student totaled about $168 semester in 1980 for CA residents (plus parking and books).
I DO agree that student loan funds have been mishandled by the masses (as you said, massages, and I will add regular mani/pedis and $150++ hair salon visits as well as trendy clothing and party/entertainment funds). A lot of former students are currently paying 6.5%+ interest on all the stuff they spent their SL funds on in college.
Student loans did not even exist for me when I was college age. If they did, I’m sure I wouldn’t have taken any out because I was risk averse to anything which would curtail my freedom back then (and still am to some extent today).
scaredy just posted that he enrolled in law school (as you know, much more expensive than undergrad) at least 7 years after graduating from college. He’s posted before on this forum that he took out student loans to fund his way thru law school. I’m just asking him here how many years out of his working life it took him to pay them back. The length of time it took is neither good nor bad. Everyone has their own journey in life and makes their own choices as to how they want to lead it and in what order they want their milestones to occur. I’ve known dozens of lawyers who were still paying on law-school loans in their late 40’s … yes, even with several minor children at home. And they were “successful” in their careers.
I personally think student loans are evil and hamper a former student’s ability to actually move on with their lives after graduation. Especially if they didn’t even graduate. If they are large (over $100K), the debt tends to cripple the individual financially and ruin their credit if they take too much time off without making regular payments on them … all the while “life” is happening to them.
I would have rather made less money working FT as a HS or CC graduate than have to face a mountain of student loan debt in adulthood and that’s what I did but that’s just me. At least I got a jump start on working FT while a portion of my “brethren” was in college … and sometimes graduate school. I bought a new car at the age of 21 and paid it off in 2 years. I bought my first house at the age of 22. I now have a pension to show for all my efforts.
Those days are long gone, now, of course, but a college student at a 4-year university is essentially putting their adult life “on hold” for 4+ years while they attempt to earn a bachelor degree which seems to be a necessity today just to land a similar job to what we did right out of HS or CC.
Yes, people CAN work harder (my youngest, a FT college student, often works too many hours in my opinion). But at $10 per hour today, they’re not getting very far. They couldn’t possibly pay their tuition, campus fees and exorbitant books and still put gas in their vehicle and pay Greek dues and all the other minor incidentals that go with being a FT student and member of a Greek organization.
My kids never took out student loans and never will. They got help from parents for room/board, iphone bill, auto insurance, health insurance, a tuition waiver and scholarship $$ to cover the rest (campus fees and books) as long as they carried 12 units. Their tuition waiver only covers a portion of summer term … not all. Summer tuition and fees run $1000 and up WITH the fee waiver.
My youngest, of course, is being charged the most due to tuition and fee hikes in recent years. Tuition now costs nearly $7K to attend FT year round (all waived) per year at a CSU (more or less, depending on campus). Campus fees are $1800 to $2000 year. Books are ~$1000 year, even if some are purchased used. Room and board costs between $10,200 and $10,500 per year (4 students to a living unit) but their school is NOT located in a pricier coastal area.
A CA 4-year public university is still doable for a middle/moderate income family (we have a higher income) but I’m really grateful that we’re almost done. We’re both old and teetering on the verge of retirement. Time to call it a day and get the last kid “off the payroll,” as carli so eloquently put it :=0
Everything is so exponentially costlier today and minimum wage has not even begun to keep up. So I don’t think a kid could “work themselves thru” a public 4-year CA university today unless they had a tuition waiver on file AND made $15-20 hr for 20-24 hrs per week. And in So Cal, that is next to impossible to do.
