I find it sad when I see people working the same job as me, making similar pay meanwhile they obviously spent plenty of money on college education and have loans to pay off and I spent nothing. My position now requires previous experience or some sort of schooling. I work in the Aerospace industry in Production Control. I started off in a lowly stock room position and hard work opened up avenues for growth within the company. Only took me ~7 months before I was offered a promotion out of the stock room. Been in this position for ~4 years now.

I never went back to school after graduating high school. Of course that was due to me being too engulfed with hanging out with friends and playing hockey and baseball and not caring. Still, I ended up doing pretty well for myself. I make a bit over $42k/year, so I am in no way rich, but luckily I worked my ass off and did all the child raising work so my fiance could go to nursing school, so now we can afford nice stuff and pay $10k/year to send our daughter to schooling since she was 1-1/2.

Interesting how you have a choice to pay it of once you get a job.

In Australia our Student loans are done through the government so the moment you start earning money (over 30K a year) your Uni debt is paid through additional taxes deducted by your employer. Depending on how much money you earn your repayments vary from 4% to 8% of your yearly wage.

my experience is limited but for the girl i know that took out 80k in loans to become a first grade teacher because she insisted on going to a school located in warm weather instead of the really cheap one (in-state tuition rates) in Minnesota...

..yeah, i don't feel bad.  also, she shouldn't be teaching kids.  just saying.

school is an investment.  too many kids are going to school for all the wrong reasons and not thinking about what they are actually spending their money on. 

Well, we have multiple problems at play, here:

1) Why are graduate jobs not hiring

2) Why are people still opting for college when they know these problems? We've been hearing about this for years now. Surely this should cause demand to fall, and thus result in falling prices. But, it seems like the reverse is happening

I think the answer with the first part is that /nobody/ is hiring, at just about any level within the economy. Hell, I know that even the banks are cautious about hiring at the highest of levels, let alone bringing in new people. At the end of the day, the only reason the unemployment number has been going down, is that people are stopping looking for work, not that they are getting jobs (the official unemployment number only counts those who are "looking" for a job... if a person gives up, they are counted as "out of the labor force" and thus not unemployed... makes sense in good times, because people /do/ opt out of working for other reasons that they shouldn't be counted... a two-working household might drop down to , if one partner's income rises substantially, for example).

Graduates feel the brunt, because if there is a job going... there will be countless people who have the exact same degree, and some of them will also have years worth of experience behind them.

We've discussed why the job market is so shit numerous times before. Don't need to revisit that.

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The second question, however, is more telling of attitudes in the first place. Time preference is pretty much non-existant. People would rather get into tens of thousands of debt today, rather than work and study, or work, save, then study. This is very analogous of many of the West's problems today... the housing bubble, obesity, Government debts and deficits and unfunded liabilities, why people still choose to smoke, etc.

Why is it like this? I don't know. I think it's, in part, because of flawed thinking and misunderstanding, and, in part, because the price system is so fucked by Government manipulation, that costs don't mean anything, anymore. Even people in this thread are demanding a bailout for this action... in fact, I bet others expect it to happen at some point (and they'd probably be right). The costs are socialised, and nobody pays the full brunt of their actions.

It's like owning a puppy, and not bopping it on the nose with a newspaper when it chews your wallet.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that neither of those are the real problem here.

Do you want to know the real problem? Hey Sally, you can go to WHATEVER school you want to go to. If you can't quite afford it, it is totally ok for you to take out some student loans to help pay for it. Yea Sally, you should go to that private school where you can have tuition of $30,000 a year, and get $10,000 in scholarships, so you are still paying $20,000 a year. You will be totally fine coming out of school with $80,000 in student loans.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

If you don't want to come out of school with $80,000 in debt, some simple planning, as well as smart decision making relative to choosing your school will majorly reduce, if not eliminate your student loans.

I could have been one of those students with that much debt. I would have been accepted into every college in the state if I had applied to them (Considering all MN schools care about is ACT score and I got a 33, which is better than 99% of Americans). Instead, throughout my middle school and high school years, whenever I made a buck, I always tried saving almost all of my money. If your parents are making you buy your own car, your own insurance, your cell phone, etc., there is still no reason you can't save as much as I did (I barely worked, just didn't hardly have any expenses at the time).

For my senior year of high school, I went to college full time (No excuse not to do this, you are auto accepted if you are top 50% of your class in high school). The State of MN paid for this entire year, including books. My second year of school, without even signing up for scholarships, I received a $2,000 presidential scholarship. Oh, but you have high grades, blah blah blah. Do you have any clue how disgusted I am when people look at my high school grades and say that is why I got that scholarship? It is highschool, if you don't get a bare minimum of a B, it is because you didn't care/try (with few exceptions...some people truly struggle with math, etc.). This scholarship was continued for my 2nd year of paying (3rd year of school). I'm now in my 3rd year of paying. I regularly attend Accounting club meetings, and have gotten very good grades in the Accounting program through lots of hard work. Due to this, I received a $1,000 scholarship this year.

I have one full semester left next fall (Accounting program is 150 credits), then a full time paid internship next spring. Unless something catastrophic occurs in my life, I'll be able to get through my entire college with several thousand left in savings.

Oh, I almost forgot, don't forget about the education credits. Many of your parents are likely claiming on their tax returns that they are paying for your college (even if they aren't), and they proceed to get $2,500 back in taxes because of it. Yea, I've made sure that it is me getting this money back every year, not my parents.

I've discovered after 4 years in college that there is absolutely no reason one shouldn't get at least $1,000 of scholarships/grants per year of school. While all of mine have been academic (and I believe most people who have truly tried hard in high school / early college should get academic scholarships), there are TONS of scholarships based on need (which I don't even qualify for because...I saved my money and they say I have too much). Understand I have yet to write a single essay, or anything of the sort for scholarships, I'm only going for the easy ones.

Oh, and don't try telling me you don't want to work while going to college. I would be so incredibly bored if I wasn't working 20+ hours a week, it would be unbelievable (and that's with doing lots of stuff with friends). If you truly want to just drink your college life away, then I really don't feel sorry for you having tons of debt.

I'm not really sure why you quoted me? tbh, most of your post was agreeing with the secondary implications of my point 2. ie, people are making fuckwit decisions, and drinking college away, because the costs of doing such are not fully understood, and there's an implicit belief that they will get bailed out, in the end.

And then when they make those stupid decisions, get saddled with 80k of debt, the problem is compounded by point 1, where they are unable to get a job.

Well, the unable to get a job problem I'd say has more to do with getting irrelevant degrees. The Accounting program at my school has recruiters salivating over all of us, hoping they can snag us instead of the company next door getting us.

Animation. Not the most practical major in the world, but it's something I enjoy, plus this particular animation program actually covers a wide base of skilsets, (2D/3D animation, game design, 3D modelling, special FX, some graphic design, etc)

After 1 year of college I'm currently 4,000 in debt so after another three years I should be 16 K in debt but I will try to avoid most of that if I can.