Posted on 06/01/2010 4:44:02 PM PDT by jerry557
Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.
Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.
This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.
Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn't ask borrowers to verify their incomes.
Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn't have a lot of good options for digging out.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
A good part of the blame belongs to people who demand that you have to go to college to become something.
It simply isn’t true. College isn’t for everyone, smart or not.
Many of these persons will flock to other countries to doge the repayment of student loans
Had to read pretty far down to get to this nugget:
“She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies.”
Probably out on a limb for some useless liberal arts degree. Would you like fries with that?
I just finished reading this and was shocked by that!!!
Two years at a community college with a transfer to NYU would have saved her $45000 and her BA diploma would look exactly like the one she has now.
>>Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are.<<
She can’t. They will hound her for the rest of her days. Hey, Ms. Munna — PAY IT BACK LIKE YOU AGREED!
And I had a hefty student loan debt when I left college and started working. I paid it back over 10 years as I agreed to do.
I have no sympathy for someone who borrows money then cries because he/she has to pay it back.
Not to mention that most of the dumbest folks I’ve ever had to horror of working for had advanced degrees...
I wonder if she teaches Sunday School or works with youth groups to keep up her job skills...out there in San Francisco
I also noted that her expenses include $750.00 a month for rent in San Francisco. Assuming she has a room mate who pays the same, you still do not get much in SF for $1500.00 a month.
God forbid Mommy should have to sell the B&B or give her a room
I wonder. Something tells me a future Timmy Geithner is among this lot, and today he's sexting pictures of his boyfriend. Oh wait, that would be a future POTUS.
That’s the society we live in. The schools and parents push their kids into thinking that if they go to college, there will automatically be a dream job at the end waiting for them. If they dont go to college, they will be garbage men or working at fast food for the rest of their lives.
That’s not the kids fault. That’s the parents that are doing that. And the schools are also to blame because they play into the scam. Universities dont advice kids about the loans they are taking out or advice them about the truth of the job market because if they did, they would lose students and the university loses money.
Go to a law school admissions office and they will flood you with more bullcrap than you would hear from a used car salesman.
Many? As in 10%?
These people have no one but themselves to blame for their situations.
More proof that some people are too stupid to benefit from attending college.
Does that means she probably wants to be lesbian priestess?
The idea that everyone should go to college has led to the proliferation of worthless degree programs like the one in which the woman in this article was enrolled. It just seems like all of the people who couldn't hack it in real majors would end up taking these programs instead.
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