Degree not worth the cost

Whatever you do, don't go to a for-profit school. A degree from a community college has a better reputation.

 

When did "college" become synonymous with "trade school?"

 

Late '80s to early '90s, it seems, with the glut of DeVry and ITT Technical Institute advertising on TV starting it all.

 

He told me once that he only had 56 published clips.

I said, "I'll have more than that during the first three weeks of training camp."

 

Az: With tuition going through the roof in step with the availability of loans, it is easy to imagine one wanting something more out of college than a wide-ranging exposure to different viewpoints.

 

But you miss out on the girls.

 

I sort of agree with that, but if all one wants is a trade, a revenue stream, go to a trade school.

If you want your ticket punched for a white(r) collar job - engineering, etc., as was the case here - then understand the changing nature of the employment pool and manage the amount of debt you take on. Going $180K in the hole to find a job that pays $75K a year on average is ridiculous.

 

My brother-in-law got his bachelor's at Kettering. I'll have to ask him about his experiences. I don't think he has $180K of student loan debt. His wife, my sister (stepsister to be precise), racked up a lot of debt for her master's at MIT, but is doing OK.

 

Whatever happened to grants and scholarships?

This dates me, but I remember when I was in school there was a much-coveted scholarship, one for each high school in the school district. The winner would get $500 a semester, which pretty much covered tuition at the local commuter college. If you could also get the $250 leadership scholarship, you basically had a full ride if you wanted to stay home with mom and dad.

I remember hearing complaints that costs had gone up because at one point the $500 would cover everything except room and board.

I know the in-state tuition at said local college has much more than doubled since then (still a relative bargain). Books have probably doubled. But I doubt if the amount of money in either of those scholarships have more than doubled.

Is this a factor on why there is more debt? Are the costs going up faster than the endowments for scholarships are going on?

 

My wife and I started college funds for our kids a few years ago and I told her, "The only way I'll let them go to a private school is if they get into an Ivy or an Ivy-level (Stanford, Duke...) school and they need the fancy degree to become a doc or a lawyer or to get into business school.

Anything else, go to a public school for a third of the cost.

 

I have heard that college girls of this generation have been influenced in a very positive way by the portrayal of threesomes and casual sort-of-lesbianism in mass media. Researching that phenomenon would be worth a few thousand in loans.

 

The most bizarre to me are the really expensive liberal arts colleges out east. I mean, maybe going to Haverford or Amherst opens more doors than I think, but I'd never heard of those places when I was coming out of high school. I'm not an East Coaster, though.