• The Student Debt Crisis Is Driving Elderly People Into Poverty
    47 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Dalto11;51559604]I'm sitting at $60K in student debt. My monthly payments for the next 30 years sit right at $500. But hey if I ever make into medical school it will have actually been worth it. For now I'm stuck as a lab tech making $11 and making ends meet thanks my SO making into med school and also taking the plunge of student debt to pay for school and living expenses.[/QUOTE] Man you can make triple that Through Lyft or waitering. Feels like all I'be my friends are getting these career jobs that pay terrible.
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51559234]Why are you going to college if you can't afford it?[/QUOTE] Because that's pretty much the only way to ever see a living wage in this day and age?
[QUOTE=omarfr;51559806]Man you can make triple that Through Lyft or waitering. Feels like all I'be my friends are getting these career jobs that pay terrible.[/QUOTE] Lyft is a dead end, though. He may be making $11/hr now but if he makes it through college and lands a good job, he'll probably be making $100k/yr or more by that point. College is worth it for STEM majors, it's just getting through college that's the problem.
[QUOTE=FreakyMe;51559698]Meanwhile, we have elected a president who is likely to do absolutely nothing to fix this problem, so it will spiral and destroy lives for as long as he is in office.[/QUOTE] Fix the problem? He was [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University]literally[/url] a part of the problem.
[QUOTE=stupid10er;51559682]uh you might be oversimplifying things a bit[/QUOTE] I am, but there's no denying that it thrust our country forward significantly.
Trump actually had a surprisingly progressive stance towards college loans but we haven't heard about it in awhile and I doubt he will go out of his way to piss off both parties by changing the status quo
They'll just keep raising the costs of loans till people decide it's not worth going to college for... which is pretty damn high. It's fucked up and should be capped in my opinion. Its just another thing to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
God damn I'm so glad I have been blowing huge portions of my income at my student loan, I have only 4K left and it's going to feel great to be rid of It's meant a lot of no-name brand chicken and rice dinners but it's worth it
[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;51560181]Source?[/QUOTE] [url]https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm[/url] Statistically speaking median bachelor degree holder over 25 makes almost twice that of a HS diploma. Now that definitely is not a a hard and fast rule. You can make good money only with a HS diploma. But the odds are certainly not in your favor. And those odds change based on who you know, what your career of choice is, where you live, luck, etc. Like anything in life you have to weigh your odds. Do you take a incredible amount of debt and possibly have some upward mobility in your career. Or do you call it quits after HS and hope you can find alternative ways to move up. Neither is a guarantee nor are they wrong.
Does a trade/technical school count as "college"? Go get an associates of applied whatever in two years and actually get to work making money sooner than someone dicking around in the academic system for however long. But if college isn't for you and you don't have the work ethic to make a trade pay off (which requires actual effort, none of this showing up and collecting a paycheck kind of stuff) that's just too bad. Is the government supposed to help you then too?
[QUOTE=TestECull;51559857]Because that's pretty much the only way to ever see a living wage in this day and age?[/QUOTE] *unless you wish to relegate yourself to trade work and/or general labor in fields that manage to pay better than others I went to college for 2 years to learn HVAC as a trade, ended up getting a job that lasted 5 years, $10/hr. starting, $12/hr. ending. So I had to get aid money to go as I was too poor to afford it myself, working ga minimum wage in a taco franchise and all, for a job that paid less than a factory job that hired just about any dumb fuck for $12/hr. back when minimum wage was only $5.35 (best paying job I ever had funnily enough). Then yesterday I get a phone interview from a local cheese plant for a job that requires no special education and starts you off at $16/hr. The moral of the story is that sometimes, even trade schools aren't necessarily what they're cracked up to be. Manufacturing is literally where it's at. It doesn't have to be cars, or TVs, or any of the other material goods that they mostly manufacture over-seas these days, just literally [I]making stuff[/I], like soda, or cheese, or whatever. HOWEVER. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have easier access to venues to enrich yourself, because you are more than a number on a payroll, you're a human being, and human beings excel when they're allowed to learn and become what they want to learn/become. If you're working in a dairy but want to learn electronics, computer science, liberal arts, history, then you should be able to go for it. People aren't machines, after all. Thankfully, with all the free/non-profit options that are available online these days, perhaps eventually expensive college campuses may become all but obsolete.
Not sure how employers in the states look at it, but in Canada, employers hold much more weight in experience, rather than a degree. It's becoming a more accepted sentiment here that post secondary school is becoming a joke, and in most cases does not make somebody more qualified for a job.
[QUOTE=stupid10er;51559682]uh you might be oversimplifying things a bit[/QUOTE] not really, countless engineers, scientists, authors, playwrites, actors and more were able to go to school because of the GI bill it cannot be overstated how important it was [editline]21st December 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Raidyr;51559916]Trump actually had a surprisingly progressive stance towards college loans but we haven't heard about it in awhile and I doubt he will go out of his way to piss off both parties by changing the status quo[/QUOTE] in the words of another tv host: show me the money! college funding is an area where private industry has absolutely too much power, thank god christy didnt get in trumps admin though because his state's student loan program is fucking awful, i just hope to christ that the republicans dont decide to remodel our system to match it nationally
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