In Debt With No Degree
Like many people, I have student loans to pay every month. Unless something extraordinary happens to alter my financial circumstances to the better, I'll probably be paying them until I'm retirement age.
But at least I have the degrees to show for them. Although I never finished the Ph.D, I do have a bachelor's and two masters' degrees to my name.
It's a far worse situation for the people who borrowed for degrees they never completed and are now trapped trying to pay off those loans on minimum or near-minimum-wage jobs they can get without one. Many of them seem to have been unready or unprepared for post-secondary education, whether they were the first person in their family to go to college or they were simply not yet mature enough to deal with the level of independence they experienced in an environment where there's no one making sure you get to class on time or do your homework.
Their situation underlines just how dangerously easy it is to get student loans, with little or no evidence of one's ability to complete the course work or to actually obtain a job that would enable a person to make the monthly payments and still pay for the basic expenses of life. The Crash of 2008 was created by the convergence of several factors that allowed people access to easy money to buy houses, whether or not they could really afford that much house. When rising gas prices made those mortgages unsustainable, people defaulted, creating a domino effect throughout the economy. Now we are looking at the probability of a similar scenario with student loan defaults.
Things like these end in tears, because bubbles invariably burst.
But at least I have the degrees to show for them. Although I never finished the Ph.D, I do have a bachelor's and two masters' degrees to my name.
It's a far worse situation for the people who borrowed for degrees they never completed and are now trapped trying to pay off those loans on minimum or near-minimum-wage jobs they can get without one. Many of them seem to have been unready or unprepared for post-secondary education, whether they were the first person in their family to go to college or they were simply not yet mature enough to deal with the level of independence they experienced in an environment where there's no one making sure you get to class on time or do your homework.
Their situation underlines just how dangerously easy it is to get student loans, with little or no evidence of one's ability to complete the course work or to actually obtain a job that would enable a person to make the monthly payments and still pay for the basic expenses of life. The Crash of 2008 was created by the convergence of several factors that allowed people access to easy money to buy houses, whether or not they could really afford that much house. When rising gas prices made those mortgages unsustainable, people defaulted, creating a domino effect throughout the economy. Now we are looking at the probability of a similar scenario with student loan defaults.
Things like these end in tears, because bubbles invariably burst.