Student Loan Debt Jumps from $200 Billion to $900 Bln in just 10 yrs

They're all playing warcraft. Everythings cool.

And they come out stupider.

:cswarlock:

Study: Half of college students learn nothing

About 45 percent of college students perform no better on a reasoning and writing test after two years of college than before, according to a new study by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. More than 35 percent of students show no improvement on the test even after four years of college.

"Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent," they write.

[link to news.yahoo.com]

My kids are in college right now - I worried when they were little, and the costs started skyrocketing, that we wouldn't be able to afford it. But somehow they (we) managed. I think there will always be room for students to attend college, but they do need to be realistic about their choices. The days of attending an expensive university without a scholarship and then majoring in communications are over. If you merely have an average ACT/SAT score, you might try a technical school instead of a 4-year program.

Student loans need to be privatized. A lender should be able to charge a high interest rate for someone getting a degree in partying 101 than a pre-med student. Credit worthiness and future income prospects should be allowed to be used to set the interest rate.

16 Shocking Facts About Student Debt And The Great College Education Scam

"As you read this, there are over 18 million students enrolled at the nearly 5,000 colleges and universities currently in operation across the United States. Many of these institutions of higher learning are now charging $20,000, $30,000 or even $40,000 a year for tuition and fees. That does not even count living expenses. Today it is 400% more expensive to go to college in the United States than it was just 30 years ago. ... Now our economy is facing the biggest student loan debt bubble in the history of the world, and when our new college graduates enter the 'real world' they are finding out that the good jobs they were promised are very few and far between. As millions of Americans wake up and start realizing that the tens of thousands of dollars that they have poured into their college educations was mostly a waste, will the great college education scam finally be exposed?"

[link to www.businessinsider.com]

The following are 16 shocking facts about the student loan debt bubble and the great college education scam....

#1 Americans now owe more than $875 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

#2 Since 1982, the cost of medical care in the United States has gone up over 200%, which is horrific, but that is nothing compared to the cost of college tuition which has gone up by more than 400%.

#3 The typical U.S. college student spends less than 30 hours a week on academics.

#4 The unemployment rate for college graduates under the age of 25 is over 9 percent.

#5 There are about two million recent college graduates that are currently unemployed.

#6 Approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

#7 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

#8 The Project on Student Debt estimates that 206,000 Americans graduated from college with more than $40,000 in student loan debt during 2008.

#9 In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail salespersons have a college degree.

#10 Total student loan debt in the United States is now increasing at a rate of approximately $2,853.88 per second.

#11 There are 365,000 cashiers in the United States today that have college degrees.

#12 Starting salaries for college graduates across the United States are down in 2010.

#13 In 1992, there were 5.1 million "underemployed" college graduates in the United States. In 2008, there were 17 million "underemployed" college graduates in the United States.

#14 In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

#15 Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's degree within four years.

#16 According to a recent survey by Twentysomething Inc., a staggering 85 percent of college seniors planned to move back home after graduation last May.

When the Fed/Gov pumped out all that money for the housing bubble, they had collateral in the form of all those houses that they guaranteed. Their owners and masters (the banks) are now scarfing those up.

What is the collateral for student loans - which a person CANNOT clear through bankruptcy? How many wars we got going now - and how many more are in the marketing phase? Wull let's see if we can connect the dots and add two and two.

"Hello Mr. New Graduate who can't find a job over the last few years and whose student loans are still piling up shitloads of overdue interest, I'd like to talk to you about a Great New Program brought to you by Sallie Mae and the Department of Defense. That's right! You may have heard of us on the Walmart channel. The Carousel Program - come renew your future with us! We'll take care of everything, and wipe your debts clean! Just sign here...here...and here...Great! Sgt R. Lee Ermey will be taking care of you when you arrive. Congratulations!"

People who find themselves unemployed are getting degrees in hopes of better opportunities. There's been a lot of talk about people wanting MBAs.

I'm not sure how this will all work out.

An MBA degree is very expensive ... typically at least $20,000 / year. So, over 2 years, that's at least another $40K in student loans tacked onto to your undergraduate loans.

The youth unemployment rate was 19.1 percent in July
2010 (20.5% for males), the highest July rate on record since 1948.

[link to www.bls.gov]

So with chronically high youth unemployment rates, many college grads end up working at Arby's and moving in with the folks. Meanwhile, they're obligated to pay back their student loans. This sucks.

Probably because the graduates couldn't get jobs.

It's just another bubble, based on more predatory lending practices with loans that were designed to fail. The last one out of the pool dies. The banks, corporations, and colleges all worked together to make this situation possible. God bless America! What would we ever do without all this debt?

The older generations might have thought we would pick up the bill, but we don't have jobs... so I guess have fun with the retirement you fucks won't be enjoying.

#16 According to a recent survey by Twentysomething Inc., a staggering 85 percent of college seniors planned to move back home after graduation last May.

That surely marks a generation gap doesn't it. I can't imagine any of us doing such a thing when we graduated in the eighties. But even though rents were spiraling upward then, they were nothing like what they are now.

This is happening around the globe though.

I could tell you stories about a girl with a law degree who is currently earning money as a cleaning lady for a video rental store...

Or guys with business degrees who now make business in the bartender industry...

Keep in mind that these are the fortunate ones who are able to even find a job.

the main reason for this, is the fact that they have been pushing college on everyone for years.

The simple fact is that a large percentage of those college students should not be there. If you have been to college in the past 20 years you know exactly what I am talking about. There are people there that barely made above c's in high school and will take 5+ years to graduate, all while guidance counselors push them along and push the debt along with them.

Some of the dumbest people I have met were in college with me. I graduated under 4 years while most took atleast 5 years, and my cost was significantly lower because of it. We need less people in college, more will only water down the system and as its quite obvious, there is not enough jobs to support it anyways.

Our high schools should change to career oriented programs, not just general diplomas. Highschools should be focused on certain industries and should be getting the local communities involved. Highschools should have internships with local businesses so that kids can figure out what they want to do earlier... (saving money) in the long term.

Of course in order for us to change the highschool system, we need to have more accountability there, which our public unions will never allow, hence the current debate.

Very true. In the 17 Eurozone countries, joblessness among the young now stands at 20.4 per cent, up from 14.6 per cent in February 2008. “Young people trying to get into the labour market is the biggest employment issue in Europe right now.”

[link to www.ft.com]

Spain that has the highest youth unemployment rate in Europe, with 42.8% of under-25s seeking work. The youth unemployment rate in Ireland is 36%, and in Greece it's 35%.

In the UK, the youth unemployment rate is 20.5%, and the number of young people who have been out of work for a prolonged period of time has soared by 43% from a year ago.

[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]

85% of college grads plan to move back home ... that's staggering!

For many people, college is merely a way to postpone REALITY for 4 or 5 years.

Yup, a college education has been pushed so much that even without a shitty economy these kids couldn't find jobs...A friend of mine spent 100K on his son's education and the kid drives a parts delivery truck for minimum wage...

college has become one big scam, give us your money ( go into massive debt ) and after 4yrs and $100,000 in debt we will give you a paper that is good for toilet paper.

Good luck finding a job with it ,thanks for the $$$$$$$ Sucker!!

Last Edited by Nailer45 on 03/09/2011 07:32 AM

Wall Street has become too greedy! They are hoarding all the money and not sharing. This is what is causing the nationwide State budget deficits and millions of people to lose both their jobs and homes. It is time for America to wake up and re-take their government back from Wall Street.

Another friend of mine was a professional student until he was in his 30's...He took classes just to avoid paying on his loans...now he's a dentist, and there's one on every corner, so his business sucks and he and his wife are over a million dollars in debt...which includes home, cars, and a practice they bought on top of their student loans...

It's totally a bubble ... the student loan bubble is at least as big as the subprime bubble in real estate. More generally, there's a massive bubble in higher education (soaring tuition, soaring debt, soaring salaries for professors), and when it pops, it could cause at least as much turmoil as the real estate bubble. And remember, in real estate, the lender is protected by having collateral in the property; but student loans are unsecured.

My ex-wife went to school for almost 10 years to become a secretary/data entry...

I don't know what's worse: that Wall Street has caused most of our problems, or that Wall Street got BAILED OUT for causing the financial meltdown.

People in college who can't find jobs have 2 choices: move back home, or become professional students to defer reality for a while longer.

Higher education bubble poised to burst

By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst

Imagine that you have a product whose price tag for decades rises faster than inflation. But people keep buying it because they're told that it will make them wealthier in the long run. Then suddenly they find it doesn't. Prices fall sharply, bankruptcies ensue, great institutions disappear. Sound like the housing market? Yes, but it also sounds like what Glenn Reynolds, creator of instapundit.com, writing in The Examiner, has called "the higher education bubble." Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts. ... The people running America's colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that's wrong.

[link to washingtonexaminer.com]

andy is that you? was her name kris? if so I know her..LOL