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Student loans and wine tasting

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Stitch, Jan 7, 2011.

  1. SpeedTchr

    SpeedTchr Well-Known Member

    Anyone who takes out huge student loans for a hoity-toity "education" needs their head examined. Go the community college route and then to the cheapest state school you can find that offers your program. And get busy networking and volunteering in the field in which you wish to work.

    If a school offers you a full scholarship, and it isn't run by satanic elves...take the money.
     
  2. ucacm

    ucacm Active Member

    I went to a middle-of-the-road law school after struggling to really figure out what I wanted to do for a career. Fortunately, I had zero student debt coming out of undergrad. I got my bachelor's degree at a directional school and have no regrets about it. After the second year of law school, I started freaking when I was going to have $60-70k in student debt and I hated the notion of being a lawyer.

    I think my law school has close to the lowest tuition in the entire country, despite being ranked in the top half of all law schools. Certainly not a prestigious school, but not a bottom tier school. Anyways, I was lucky and got a really sweet gig that pays decently and qualifies as a "public interest" job. As a result, I'm eligible for a little debt forgiveness.

    A lot of my fellow classmates, many of whom had MUCH better law school grades than I did, are still having trouble finding decent employment. I really got lucky with my job.

    There are bottom-rung law schools charging $35k + a year in tuition alone. It's criminal. Seriously, $37,060 a year for Whittier College? $39,030 for Touro College? $26,000 for Mississippi College? When you add books, food, rent, and entertainment costs onto this, people could come out of law school with $150-200k in debt (more if they took out loans for undergrad). Coming from those schools, unless you're at the very top of your class, you'd be very lucky to get a job as a public defender.

    In my experience, law school is a place where tons and tons of decently smart and very hard working people end up when they don't know what to do with the rest of their lives. Law schools love to market a law degree as something that will allow you to do "so many different things." It's really bullshit. You study judicial opinions written decades and centuries ago.

    I feel really bad for a lot of people that aren't going to catch the lucky break I did.
     
  3. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    My lawyer friends seem to be doing OK. I knew one guy who went to a lower-tier school, worked hard and became of the honchos for the judicial review board in Arizona.
     
  4. ucacm

    ucacm Active Member

    I'm sure there are some rich people in Bangladesh, too.
     
  5. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-111721-7948-3-5-great-money-ideas-for-2011?ywaad=ad0035&nc

    Item Three.

    Interesting word choice, considering yesterday's events:

    "Schools - including famous ones - that turn a blind eye to the burden of loans should be taken out and shot."
     
  6. MacDaddy

    MacDaddy Active Member

    You can take out huge student loans even for a non-hoity-toity school. I teach at a state university where tuition has been going up by double-digit percentages the past few years. State funding keeps going down so tuition keeps going up, and since student loans are so plentiful there's not a lot of outrage. The bubble has to burst at some point.
     
  7. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member

  8. Jersey_Guy

    Jersey_Guy Active Member

    Everyone who wants government aid or loans should have to do two years in community college first.

    Why? Because it's more affordable for both parties and because the attrition rate for college is something like triple in the first two years.
     
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