My son is 17. He's very bright and plans on going to an engineering school. The ones we've visited cost $40-50K. A year. Just tuition. And that's typical. Are you ******* kidding me!? Now I know that financial aid and grants will knock that down somewhat, but really what's the ROI on college education?
I'm 52 and, though I've attended college, never received a degree. I did get practical hands on technical training in the military. I was able to parlay that that into further various high-tech jobs. Now none of my high school friends make significantly more money than I do nor are their families better off than mine. And they all graduated 30 years ago when college cost a fraction of what it does now. I also expect that I'll retire before most of them.
Now, I realize that my situation is not typical and that, on the whole, college grads command better salaries than none. But how much will it suck to enter the job market already saddled with $100K or more of student debt? I'm glad I was not stuck with that at 22. Who's getting rich when tuitions have increased 60% in a decade? There's a lot of talk lately about keeping student loan interest at 3.4% instead of 6.8%. BFD, it's still a huge load.
When I was a kid, vocational technical school was looked down on as the place to send the kids who were too dumb or too poor for college. Now my daughter attends one and the competition to get accepted there was fierce. So maybe she'll enter the workforce making, perhaps, $20-30K less than her college peers. But she also won't be spending the following decades paying back large sums of money that she never imagined. It's hard to quantify the stress that can cause, especially when you're just some kid still trying to figure out life.
I'm 52 and, though I've attended college, never received a degree. I did get practical hands on technical training in the military. I was able to parlay that that into further various high-tech jobs. Now none of my high school friends make significantly more money than I do nor are their families better off than mine. And they all graduated 30 years ago when college cost a fraction of what it does now. I also expect that I'll retire before most of them.
Now, I realize that my situation is not typical and that, on the whole, college grads command better salaries than none. But how much will it suck to enter the job market already saddled with $100K or more of student debt? I'm glad I was not stuck with that at 22. Who's getting rich when tuitions have increased 60% in a decade? There's a lot of talk lately about keeping student loan interest at 3.4% instead of 6.8%. BFD, it's still a huge load.
When I was a kid, vocational technical school was looked down on as the place to send the kids who were too dumb or too poor for college. Now my daughter attends one and the competition to get accepted there was fierce. So maybe she'll enter the workforce making, perhaps, $20-30K less than her college peers. But she also won't be spending the following decades paying back large sums of money that she never imagined. It's hard to quantify the stress that can cause, especially when you're just some kid still trying to figure out life.
