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.