To a staggering degree, nearly all college grads in debt (Fed student loans near mortgage bubble)

Star Tribune ^ | 05/13/2012 | ANDREW MARTIN and ANDREW W. LEHREN

[SeekAndFind]

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is working two jobs and will soon move in with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her.

"If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also," said her mother, Marlene Griffith.

Griffith, 23, wouldn't seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams.

"As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it," said Griffith, a marketing major. "But when I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that."

With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts or graduate students. Now, nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor's degree is borrowing. As prices soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment, but it often comes with an unprecedented burden.

Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor's degree borrow to pay for higher education -- up from 45 percent in 1993, said a New York Times analysis. This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives. For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

At Ohio Northern, recent graduates with bachelor's degrees are among the most indebted of any college in the country.

[SeekAndFind]

Kelsey Griffith, an Ohio Northern University student who has $120,000 in student debt, counted her tips at the end of her shift at the Red Pig Inn, one of her two jobs, in Ottawa, Ohio.

Much like the mortgage brokers who promised pain-free borrowing just a few years back, many colleges don't offer warnings about debt in their brochures. Instead, reading from the same handbook as for-profit colleges, they urge students not to worry about the costs. That's because most students don't pay full price.

Even discounted, the price is beyond the means of many.

[George from New England]

Get ready for punishment of those who went to a college they could afford. My kids live debt free and they will pay the price for all those whining today.

Punish the prudent and wise.

[Leo Carpathian]

Paying that much for screwing your kids heads with commie garbage?

Pricelessssss!

[fremont_steve]

If someone follows “conservative” principals - one isn’t willing to go into such deep debt, even for a college degree! I saved for my son’s college and we chose a university together with him earning a scholarship that lets him get though college with out loans, and isn’t taxing the family’s welfare. It isn’t that hard. My son isn’t going to Harvard either - so what!

[Tijeras_Slim]

But when I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that."

Not a mathematics major I presume.

[EGPWS]

That's the best the "Star & Sickle" can do?

They're slipping.

[EGPWS]

Paying that much for screwing your kids heads with commie garbage?

A meat pounder to the brain is cheaper.

[Vince Ferrer]

I am getting tired of this being called a student loan debt bubble, because it is really a college cost bubble. For a generation now, universities have raised costs at a far higher rate than inflation and the average income. This is the natural outcome of that.

University students today at my school are going to literally the same classrooms, sitting in the same chairs that I did years ago. The buildings are built on land that was donated to the university a hundred years ago. There is no justification for these cost increases. The university even avoids outside audits and sunshine laws that other government agencies are required to abide by.

I support no solution that doea not force colleges to cut costs.

[allendale]

As bizarre as it is for a nation to accumulate unsustainable debt and saddle future generations, it is even dumber for individuals for whatever reason to incur such debts. There are always choices. The full ramifications of bankruptcy is becoming more than an abstraction for America.

[I cannot think of a name]

Folks, this is all about the good old taxpayer being screwed into paying for all kinds of worthless liberal indoctrination. These articles aren’t about people graduating with degrees in math, science, computers, or any other “hard” subjects. They are about people paying $300 per semester hour to be taught liberal BS like the following worthless courses:

1. “The Phallus” Occidental College. A seminar in critical theory and social justice, this class examines Sigmund Freud, phallologocentrism and the lesbian phallus.

2. “Queer Musicology” UCLA. This course welcomes students from all disciplines to study what it calls an “unruly discourse” on the subject, understood through the works of Cole Porter, Pussy Tourette and John Cage.

3. “Taking Marx Seriously” Amherst College. This advanced seminar for 15 students examines whether Karl Marx still matters despite the countless interpretations and applications of his ideas, or whether the world has entered a post-Marxist era.

4. “Adultery Novel” University of Pennsylvania. Falling in the newly named “gender, culture and society” major, this course examines novels and films of adultery such as “Madame Bovary” and “The Graduate” through Marxist, Freudian and feminist lenses.

5. “Blackness” Occidental College. Critical race theory and the idea of “post-blackness” are among the topics covered in this seminar course examining racial identity. A course on whiteness is a prerequisite.

6. “Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration” University of Washington. This women studies department offering takes a new look at recent immigration debates in the U.S., integrating questions of race and gender while also looking at the role of the war on terror.

7. “Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism” Mount Holyoke College. The educational studies department offers this first-year, writing-intensive seminar asking whether whiteness is “an identity, an ideology, a racialized social system,” and how it relates to racism.

8. “Native American Feminisms” University of Michigan. The women’s studies and American culture departments offer this course on contemporary Native American feminism, including its development and its relation to struggles for land.

9. “’Mail Order Brides?’ Understanding the Philippines in Southeast Asian Context” Johns Hopkins University. This history course — cross-listed with anthropology, political science and studies of women, gender and sexuality — is limited to 35 students and asks for an anthropology course as a prerequisite.

10. “Cyberfeminism” Cornell University. Cornell’s art history department offers this seminar looking at art produced under the influence of feminism, post-feminism and the Internet.

11. “American Dreams/American Realities” Duke University. Part of Duke’s Hart Leadership Program that prepares students for public service, this history course looks at American myths, from “city on the hill” to “foreign devil,” in shaping American history.

12. “Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism” Swarthmore College. Swarthmore’s “peace and conflict studies” program offers this course that “will deconstruct ‘terrorism’ “ and “study the dynamics of cultural marginalization” while seeking alternatives to violence.

[Kenton]

This is a huge problem, caused by the naievety of these students and their parents who co-signed for their loans. I have a sister and niece in this exact situation.

For years Americans have been hearing that a college degree is required for success, and nobody bought into more than non-college parents trying to make sure their kids had it better than they had.

Colleges and academics have been inflating the cost of college at an obscene rate, offering nothing but vague promises and useless degrees in return.

Until Americans start assessing the cost versus benefit of college before running up the bills, this will be a problem.

[USNBandit]

For a generation now, universities have raised costs at a far higher rate than inflation and the average income.

In that way it really does look like the housing bubble. Through massive loan programs the buying power of students increased so the university system started charging more.

[pepsionice]

There are several issues at hand.

First, these loans have reached a point where you know they just can’t be paid within a reasonable amount of time. They should have set a limit of $800 a month for ten years, and that’s all the money you would have gotten. I can’t imagine how some idiot could come up at 22 years old...owe $100k and they’d have to deny themselves ever buying a house.

Second...you’ve got big name professors who demand big salaries, but rarely teach more than one or two classes in a semester, and never in the summer. You can’t sustain madness.

Third....look around at the administrative staff of every college. Everyone has an assistant, and they usually draw a minimum of $60k. Toss in the fact that each has a secretary or assistant....and you probably are thirty percent overmanned at each university. All layers of cost.

Fourth....every year....a new structure is built...all driving up the cost of each university.

Fifth....ever noticed how major universities now have buffet meal operation going on....almost sixteen hours a day?

No legislature will dare step foot on a campus and investigate what is their own operation.

[1malumprohibitum]

I agree BUT everyone else gets to discharge in bankruptcy. All the student loan people will be shackled for life. I am in no way in favor of rewarding bad behavior but it seems silly to me to allow ADULTS who made spectacular bad financial decisions to accept the consequences of their bad decisions (bankruptcy) and obtain relief while we say CHILDREN who made horrible decisions must bear it for life.

[The Antiyuppie]

“Punish the prudent and wise.”

This is nothing exactly new. A friend of mine demonstrated to me 25 years ago that his family would have been better off buying a bigger house, a boat, two new cars, and to go on European vacations instead of saving for his daughter’s education at an Ivy league school. His resources prevented her from obtaining any scholarships in spite of her inarguable academic qualifications. This happened to me also but on a lesser scale.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Fifth....ever noticed how major universities now have buffet meal operation going on....almost sixteen hours a day?

And the “dorms” of NYU rival some of the best apartments in the city. Someone has to pay for living there... guess who?

[Presbyterian Reporter]

“”” Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters.”””

The acorn certainly did not fall very far from this Government Employee Tree.

It is pretty obvious that her parents assume that the government will take care of them as employees and will take care of their offspring as well.

When the Ohio Voters enact legislation cutting the benefits given to government employees, then you will hear them really screaming.

What a bunch of dysfunctional idiots to let their daugther spend $50,000 per year on a college degree that they cannot afford.

[SeekAndFind]

Boston University, Johns Hopkins, University of Pittsburgh, NYU all have rock climbing walls as part of their indoor recreational facility.

Here’s another:

http://recsports.osu.edu/facilities/recreation-physical-activity-center-rpac

[Vince Ferrer]

No legislature will dare step foot on a campus and investigate what is their own operation.

I once had a neighbor who was an officer at a large bank. The state commissioned him and others to go audit the state university's finances. They were completely stonewalled even though the university is subject to sunshine laws and everything about the university should be public information. The audit group finally disbanded without even writing a report. And this was years ago.

It is way past time for state governments to crack down and get these schools under control. They always back down though, because they are accused of being anti-education.

[G Larry]

And for over half of graduates, they haven’t learned anything that will help them become productive citizens.

[Traveler59]

The comments at the site are the typical socialists crap. Rather than ask why the costs of education is so high and what can be done to bring it down, they'd rather go the socialist route.

[Cowboy Bob]

I guess the only people without College debt are the poor - who usually get to go College for free - and athletes.

[Bibman]

When the Feds took over the college funding,
I knew it would only be a matter of time.
The NWO wants everyone owing them $$$$$
What better way to get them right out of school,
owing the gov?
Can you say IRS enforcement?

[drunknsage]

It is a familiar tactic / strawman used against ANY time of reform. Want to reform drug laws then you are pro drugs. Want to reform entitlements and welfare, you hate the poor. Stand against abortion and you are anti women. The list goes on and its an effective tactic.

Everyone I know with a higher education degree got it off the backs of their rich parents. Few, especially if you arent from a favored class / race, are able to complete without that financial support. One of the many crimes of the student loan program are the women who suck up federal funds to get degree’s only to stay home. There should be a rule mandating 4 years of work for anyone receiving federal aid. If you fail to work, you must pay a portion back so those that actually want to learn and work can gain access. Why should we, as tax payers, fund the education of those who dont want to use it.

Higher education in the US

[Presbyterian Reporter]

When the Feds took over the college funding,

—

I agree. Additionally, Obama is freely giving out student loans in order to keep kids in school and out of the work force.

In similar fashion Obama is freely giving out Social Security Disability checks in order to keep the unemployment numbers down.

[Freedom4US]

Does the article ever mention, even in passing, what degree Ms. Griffith was graduated with?

That is key.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This is a certified Strib “Sunday Weeper Piece.”

[Mr Ramsbotham]

This is a certified Strib “Sunday Weeper Piece.”

Precisely. Whenever the article leads off with an anecdote, you can bet that's what it is.

[suthener]

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while. I live down the street from the University of South Alabama, a public school that I guess would be a medium size university. Over the last few years, I have watched them build two new multi-million dollar class room buildings. No big deal. I’ll assume their enrollment is increasing. But they also built an incredible number of apartments (student housing). Okay, again, increased enrollment. Now, let’s talk about the multi-million dollar student center, with indoor basketball courts, a swimming pool, and I don’t know what else. And let’s talk about the new clock tower. Yes, a brand spanking new CLOCK TOWER! Every college has to have one of those, right? How about two ball fields, one for baseball and one for women’s softball? And, to top it all off, I would venture to guess that their new entrances, all brick work and beautifully landscaped, must have cost near or above another million. I can’t for the life of me understand how they can have that kind of money, and, if they do, why not lower tuition instead of building unnecessary brick walls and clock towers?

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

I must have missed it. What’s her degree?

[goodnesswins]

Actually, just like the “housing bubble” it’s just another GOVERNMENT SCAM!

[goodnesswins]

You think “government” is going to do anything? Government CREATED the problem....

[goodnesswins]

Honest...I only posted ONCE!

[bagman]

She is a marketing major. She obviously picked the right school, since Northern Ohio U seems to do a masterful job of marketing.

[PeteB570]

I notice the average was at $23K.

My Daughter just graduated with a four year degree yesterday.

It will take a while to get everything settled but near as we can figure her total collage loan will be around $20K. Total cost would be around $50,000 but she did well, got a few small scholarships and we sunk all the spare cash we could into each semester.

Less than most people’s car loan and her plans are to work like a dog and get it payed off as fast as she can.

[Jeff Chandler]

How to Survive the Obama Economy:

1. Live on a sailboat.
2. Steal wifi.
3. Eat ramen.

[bushwon]

Another huge contributor to this problem is the high school “guidance” department’s “advice.”

I cannot count how many student/parent college “information” programs I attended with my 3 children or programs that parents and kids attended separately where the audience was explicitly told not to worry about the cost of the education. There was a concerted effort on part of high school guidance offices and college financial advisers to push students to attend schools without regard to cost; the local community college was acknowledged as the option for those who had no other options...Families were encouraged to find the perfect school and then deal with the financing. Have a reach school (pricey, selective) and a safety school (cheap, local) Really? Really! It is one of the most important financial investments a family will make and we were told we should not worry about the costs?!?! So it seems to me that there was an effort to push students towards the pricey schools to enhance the school’s reputation without regard to what a family was comfortable borrowing/spending.

So rooms full of students and parents did just that~they did not worry about the costs. The children got into expensive schools which made the high school look attractive in the evaluations. However, now students and parents are left with huge loans; tho I don’t know how parents and students can act as if they did not know there would be huge payments associated with the huge loans~it was all spelled out to both students and parents. How can anyone assume loan payments would be any different for a $200,000 mortgage than a $200,000 student loan?

BTW, our family did consider the price, and all 3 went or are paying in-state tuition or equivalent sums....no bargain, but much cheaper than the $50,000+/year charged for out-of-state and private schools.

[RightField]

Another huge contributor to this problem is the high school “guidance” department’s “advice.”

You are exactly right. Sadly, many high schools are trying to enhance their reputations as 'high quality" schools. These schools are measured on such things as the percentage of grads who go on to 4-year colleges, or the numbers of AP students, etc.

Two questions parents should always ask at these "information" meetings: (1) How many of your graduates are required to take remedial English and/or math classes their freshman year? and (2) How many of your graduates are STILL at the same college for their subsequent years.

I almost guarantee the guidance counselors will not answer your questions. They know the answer, however. Sadly, even the best graduates from the best schools are ill-prepared in language and math skills. These students often incur a year's worth of remedial classes, at college costs ... thousands of dollars spent and loans taken out to learn material they should have learned in high school.

[RC51]

So here is how to fix this situation:

#1. Set a federal minimum GPA students must have prior to entering any university in which any student at that university accept, VA, Pell Grant, Federally backed loans of any kind or Federal Research grants. If you didn’t have a HS GPA of at least 2.5 (C average) then you shouldn’t be going on to College. Similar to the Japanese model but their min GPA is more like a 3.5.

#2. Require any public university to open their financial books 100% and posted online for anyone to audit.

#3. Establish a list of “desirable” programs eligible for Federally back loans & grants. If you want a degree in “Gender Studies” then you best save your pennies and pay your own way.

#5. Reduce the number of Student Visa’s the US gives out every year. The massive inflow of foreigners into our University System is inflating demand and increasing costs. This prices real American’s out of the market for our own publicly funded universities.

#6. Charge $20,000 per year for every Student Visa. This income from these funds will fund the Pell Grant program.

#7. Allow anyone to default on their student loans through bankruptcy after 10 years has passed paying off a student loan. Once a single student loan has been default that person will be ineligible to sign or co-sign any further student loans for life.

#8. Prosecute the AMA for restricting the number of certified university medical programs, as unfair monopolistic trade practices. The AMA does this to keep costs high and protect industry profits.

#9. Restrict University’s from padding their programs with needless “filler” courses. For example a bachelor’s degree program currently takes 5 years on average.

These are just a few ideas but the most important thing we need to do is to reduce the demand for college, lower demand will cause lower prices.

[tbw2]

Part of the solution is cutting useless degree programs that are subsidized by programs that generate both money and jobs, where engineering and nursing majors pay extra to support liberal arts and ethnic studies. Another solution is to say “I’m sorry, you’re not 4 year degree material, go to trade school” - so the college has fewer remedial students, repeat coursework and kids who drop out without a degree.

[Jeff Chandler]

#5. Reduce the number of Student Visa’s the US gives out every year.

#10. Require a minimum proficiency in punctuation.

[hoosierham]

The best way would not be more federal standards but the complete abolition of federal interference and support of “education”.

Whenever government money is injected to help the “poor” the providers of goods and services simply raise their prices so the poor are still strapped.

It is what happened to Section 8 housing.It is what happens every time.

[Vince Ferrer]

You think “government” is going to do anything? Government CREATED the problem....

Yes, that is true. I do not support a bailout of student loan debt, because that would simply reward the institutions that caused the problem. If we do nothing about the debt, then students will start approaching their education as a business, which they should. When this happens, colleges will have to respond.

State governments need to audit their schools and keep a tight lid on their expenses. They should not be able to raise tuition rates far above the rate of inflation.

And lastly, we should be pushing towards completely reforming education in this country, because it is an obsolete business model. The model has not changed in a thousand years, from when the cost of storing and transmitting information was orders of magnitude higher than now. Today we can retrieve almost any useful information nearly instantly anywhere we happen to be with our smartphones. Why is it that when the cost of information is the lowest it has ever been, that the cost of education is nearly as high as it has ever been?

[ladyjane]

"But when I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that."

Kelsey, you don't sound bright enough to even attend college.

[RC51]

As long as there is such a thing as “Student Visa’s” then the government will be interfering in the market. Do you propose the Govt:
Do away with the VA education benefits for our soldiers?
Do away with research grants to universities?
Cancel the Student Visa program.
No longer back student loans?
Cancel all federal grants to universities?

I respect your purist conservative / federalist beliefs. However proposing any of these things in a National Platform would be electoral suicide.

[jjw]

I think the only important issue causing the high prices of college is that you cannot discharge your debt in bankruptcy. The money would not be there in loans if the borrower didn’t have to pay it back.

[ladyjane]

Everyone I know with a higher education degree got it off the backs of their rich parents.

That's strange. You don't know anyone who went to a community college and lived at home or anyone who attended a state college?

[SauronOfMordor]

Anybody contemplating college needs to look at the FAFSA calculation documents. NEVER have funds in the kid’s name-FAFSA will have it ALL going to tuition. Parents should minimize assets in their names as well. Use assets to pay off debt, especially mortgage (home equity is not counted as asset by FAFSA)

[RedMDer]

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