1.5 Trillion!

[GMDino]

(03-14-2020, 04:16 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I guess that would be more of my opinion, than anything.  I'll use myself as the "good example of a bad example".  Back when I was in HS (class of '87), the guidance counselors just hammered us with the idea that we MUST have a 4 year degree, in order to be competitive in society.  Not sure if it was the same everywhere else, but they made it seem like settling for anything less than a 4 year degree was selling yourself short, and that two year and trade school programs were setting oneself up for a life of being a peon.

So, after drifting from crappy job to crappy job for a couple of years after HS, I eventually decided that college must be the way to go.  I really wasn't interested in it, but discovered that it was a great place to have a blast and avoid responsibility for a few years.  Eventually I graduated with a pretty much worthless degree in Mass Communications and a job in radio that wouldn't even afford me to fund my own place to live.  I eventually ditched the job in radio for a trade that I worked for many years.  Thanks to the Student Loan programs, I'm still paying for that degree, today.  Even though I went back to school during the recession to learn a new skill, and paid cash at a Community College.  I now have a salaried position with an Engineering firm.

Had anyone really looked at my aptitudes back in HS, they could have efficiently directed me to a more effective path than pursuing a 4 year degree.  I call it irresponsible on my part, as I should have realized that my heart wasn't into the 4 year college degree and changed my own path back them.  However, the lure of guaranteed student loans to provide for my fun existence in college was just irresistable.

My story starts the same as yours.  Class of '87.  Told we HAD to get a degree to get a "good job".  But I always wanted to go to college.  In fact I'm the first in my family to get a four year degree.  I was destined to be, as my father once put it to a guy he worked with at the factory, a "pencil pusher".  So I went straight to college after high school while working at McDonald's in the summer and on campus.

I wanted to be an attorney but a recruiter changed my mind and I went for accounting.  (That lasted about half of the first semester...my advisor was a law whiz but had trouble adding and I lost interest.)

Got out of school in 91 with a BA in Communication all the while we were THEN being told that we HAD to have a Masters if we wanted a "good job" but I wasn't going there.  I was done.

And within a year was working in radio...making no money.  Left radio in 95 and progressively made more money at each job that, while using my major, was not in the media.

I went to a private college and my TOTAL four year bill was $48,000.  I paid $160.75 a month for ten years to pay it off.  Along with a second loan that was $90 every three months for three years.

Next Fall our son starts college at a local branch of Penn State.  $13,000 a year before loans and scholarships.  Hopefully, with his choice of majors, he will make enough to quickly pay back whatever we have to borrow.

College is NOT for everyone.  It was for me.  I had no skills other than a love of math and the gift of gab.  Somehow I turned one of those into three different careers post college AND was able to pay everything back with (relative) ease.  But I know that's not everyone's story.