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Comment by mojoe | Hacker News Reader

This was definitely frustrating to read. I graduated from college in 2008, and myself and most of my friends went to state schools with relatively low tuitions. We got some academic scholarships to cover parts of the tuition, and even then we had to work part-time and (some of us) had to take out some small loans. Reading about people who made such poor decisions is tough. The hardest to read (for me) were the sections about the person who had a full ride scholarship but got a D freshman year and lost half of it, and the person who went to a 54k/yr private college with no plan to pay back the loans. My opinion is that the the US should prioritize making education more affordable, but these loan-dodging students made conscious decisions that they are not taking responsibility for.

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> but these loan-dodging students made conscious decisions that they are not taking responsibility for

The entire time I was growing up, I was told it was "college or bust". I was never told that it would be "college and bust", but that seems to be the reality.

Kids were told over and over that a college degree would ensure their future success, that they'd be practically guaranteed to get a career that made paying their student loans trivial, on top of a nice house and a car because that's the American Dream, isn't it?

It's easy as an adult to look back on it and say "wow, that was a big mistake", now that I know how jobs and the economy actually work, but first we had to unlearn everything our parents, teachers, career counselors, and college financial advisers told us in the first place.

A decade ago I was berating myself for my laziness and other personal factors that led me to going to a "backup" in-state tech school instead of the #3-in-nation that I tried for but could not get acceptance.

Now, seeing that the place I could not get into had quadruple the tuition as the in-state and almost double the room and board, I'm starting to believe that perhaps it was for the best that I did not get in that place.

There are definitely a lot of school officials that do a disservice to students by not explaining to them what the job market actually looks like. It would be amazing if more officials and parents were able to convey to students which degrees are in demand and which degrees have a higher likelihood of high (or just livable) salaries.

What stood out to me the most was being shown a chart in high school showing the average earnings of a high school graduate vs a college graduate. A college grad earned $1m more over their lifetime than the high school grad, and I never thought to (nor was I encouraged to) dig into those statistics any further.

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