Fair is fair - are you willing to accept criticism for all the ways you, personally, take advantage of gov't backstops?
Take a loan to get a degree. Raise a family. Pay off your loans in time to borrow to send your kids to college. Oh I suppose you could save for your kids college but what a way to run an economy.
The rationale behind the bank bailouts was that they were a necessary evil. The bailout was necessary to keep the economy plugging along. I don't the necessity of bailing out this girl. You have a point; it sucks. But again, the argument is that the bailout was a necessary evil. I don't know how else to say it.
This is one of the next bubbles that is going to burst big-time, and cause many colleges to go out of business, and many students to default on their loans. Living in a fairly affluent community and having been responsible for much hiring during a 20-year IT management career (past life), I can summarize what the problems are here: - There seems to be a pervasive attitude out there, that the more expensive university one attends, the better one will do post-graduation. This couldn't be further from the truth, in that there is little correlation between the money spent on education, and the amount of money you will make utilizing your degree, post-graduation. The exception to this rule is for kids that come out of top Tier-1 schools (Ivy League, MIT, Cal Berkely, etc.). Even with those schools, the correlation is not direct, but the job availability pool does become larger for those graduates; - Parents give their kids poor advice when it comes to a college education. More often than not, the parents giving the advice never went to college themselves, and don't understand the cost/benefit angle at all; - Parents and kids alike do not appreciate the financial aspect of taking out huge loans. The kids and parents do not appreciate the post-graduation burden in most cases, and there is almost a feeling of "going to college for free", since the repayments don't begin until post-graduation; - There has never been a bigger "keeping up with the Joneses" aspect to going to schools, as there is today. There are many students who forgo "free rides" that they could get by going to a local school, or decide that State schools aren't sexy enough name-wise, due to this ridiculous peer pressure. I recently read in a news article in Yahoo that now 72 % of high school seniors wind up getting a 4-year college degree (this # seems high to me). Nonetheless, it's getting to the point that a 4-year degree doesn't mean much any more, and is hardly worth any more than what a High School Diploma was worth 20 years ago. My philosophy in my household and with my kids, is to go to the best school possible for the cheapest dollars, and never, ever go into College debt - that is, pay your tuition in cash. If you cannot afford to do that, well, take some time off, make some money, and then go back to school. Only pay what you can afford. You will be better off for it in the long run. We know what happened with the real estate bubble, and we are fast approaching the same sort of bubble, with the same kind of mentality, here. Meanwhile, this college loan bubble is getting darn close to bursting.
"Nonetheless, it's getting to the point that a 4-year degree doesn't mean much any more, and is hardly worth any more than what a High School Diploma was worth 20 years ago." Exactly. The push for everyone to go to college has only succeeded in devaluing a degree. Parents and kids still see the degree and "choosing your school" as the keys to the promised land, when it quite clearly is no longer true. I say unless you can get into a tier 1 school, Stick with the best campus of your state school system. Every other option is basically useless waste of money. The system is so bloated with government "mad money" it is insane. Instead of the promised land, new graduates are the new indentured servants.
How can it burst? As far as I remember as long as you get a C average, you get financing for college. This is the equivilent of saying "as long as you work 40 hours per week, you can buy whatever house you want." In fact, some people go to college just for the extra money. If you are getting unemployment, or Social security, or just make a small amount of money and need more, you can just go to community college. You get $5500 for the pell grant, plus you can take out a loan for about $10k per year. Classes & books for the year at CC will run you maybe $3k for a full schedule. That leaves people with $12k extra per year. About 10 years ago I saw the older people doing this and I would say about 10-20% of them were going to college just for that extra cash. I can only imagine how many are doing it now. The college bubble should burst, but I dont see it happening anytime soon. It will burst when the US economy bursts.
There were quite a few historical events post WW2 that changed the course of the original plan. Akuma