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Comment by sh1ps | Hacker News Reader

A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me.

Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage thing. Person knowingly takes a minimum wage job in the most expensive city in the world and is surprised a year later when that wasn't very much money and they're struggling. The simplest cost of living calculations would have said "moving to that city and taking that job is a really bad idea."

This isn't to say that there aren't things that need to change. Education reform is necessary as well as a living wage, but I'd also argue that basic financial literacy is also a requirement for being an adult and should be treated as such.

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A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further.

I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

> A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further.

> I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

This rings true for me. The main reason I even went to college was because I bought the story that "if you do well in school and get a college degree, you'll get a good job and be set up for success in life."

Yeah. That didn't quite work out as planned. I enjoyed school and the things I learned from my degree were cool, but I use literally 0% of it on the job now, and it doesn't even help get me interviews very often, because it doesn't have the magic letters "CS" in it. Thirty years ago, a bachelor's degree might have been a ticket to a decent professional job, but those days are long past.

I'm not sure what I would have done as an alternative plan, but I'm sure it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. Not starting out behind a very expensive 8-ball could have possibly helped me a lot.

Non-college grad here (well, AA from a community college, but that doesn't really count). I get the impression that that some kids did really challenging programs or went to prestigious schools and that paid off really well, but a lot of kids bought into the "college = success" mantra. Every authority figure they knew was telling them that this was the only way to be successful and the schools were jacking up tuition to pay for more and more amenities. Indoor kayaking! Rock climbing walls! Extend your adolescence for four years and you'll magically be successful and pay it all off!

This is really a shocking dereliction of duty on the part of teachers and guidance counselors. It was just easy to go along with conventional wisdom and not apply any critical thinking and they ended up really screwing a lot of kids over.

All that said, I wish someone would have shown me the value of a really high-end education and helped me attain one.

> This is really a shocking dereliction of duty on the part of teachers and guidance counselors.

Playing devil's advocate for a second, what if the teachers and guidance counselors still believe it to be true? They're likely from a previous generation or two, where simply having a college degree opened up most doors.

Then again, what if having a college degree really is still better than not? You don't have to spend $300K on undergrad to get a degree- and I think that is what we should be pounding into kids' heads. That's great that you want to go to a private school for undergrad and two more years to get your masters so you can be a teacher, but paying 5-10% on $300-400K and topping out at $65K/year is a shitty economic deal. Go in-state and work while you study. Search for the grants, so many random grants go relatively unclaimed.

It's like buying a car- when you focus on the prospect of a low monthly payment and not the fact you're paying for 95 years, it's easy to hide how much money you're flushing down the toilet.

EDIT: I took on about $50K in school loans and worked a minimum 20 hours a week through uni. I worked as a motorcycle mechanic, farm hand on a dairy farm, tech support for the college, hardware testing for a lab, and all kinds of contract development work. Sometimes in the same week.

Some days it sucked, most of the time it was tolerable, and it was often pretty fun. I also learned something about my own intestinal fortitude that school never would've taught me.

This makes no sense. Are you telling me high school teachers and counselors are telling students to go to colleges without factoring in costs/financial aid packages/ROI?

They are saying that teachers/counselors are viewing it from their baked-in perspective formed 30 years ago...back when you could graduate with a bachelor's degree, end up in a school job that gave you a life-long pension and healthcare.

I think it is difficult for someone from my parent's generation, who had so many benefits (no offshore competition, defined benefits pensions, lifetime pensions, etc) to understand how tough life is now. You hear about it, but until you struggle with it it is difficult to know.

Some of what you're saying is true, but some doesn't quite work out:

1. Work while you study: why work a part time job for $X and go to school part time, when you could finish school in half the time by going full time and spend the remaining time working for $2X? Work study is generally counterproductive.

2. $65K is still a lot of debt. Lots of my peers have that and $20K/yr jobs.

The truth is, there simply aren't many good options for today's young adults. There are a handful of fields that can pay well with a degree, but then you have the risk that you won't be able to finish. And there are fewer fields where you can work without a degree and get paid well. Even in CS, a field where you usually can get jobs without a degree, I've roughly capped out my pay without a degree at age 29.

The average Computer Engineering degree from my university was completed (at that time) in 5 years. I graduated in 5 years and worked, so it didn't take me any longer than average, and I switched majors from CS to CpE- costing me two terms.

So I didn't give up any potential salary earnings I didn't already give up by going in the first place.

My point is that college can still be a good option for lots of people, they just need to focus on the cost/ROI. The horrors stories that we hear about are typically from a dumb kid who went to an out of state or private school, got a a 'general' degree and had no job qualifications. Then they were shocked people were t just handing them money.

I've yet to hear a story about a kid that did two years at a community college, finished up their BS in engineering, and then had life crippling problems with their debt.

Not everyone is a computer scientist or computer engineer.

I took a full time class load and also worked part time through college. It wasn't that bad,(in fact it was good) and it was fairly commonplace at the school I went to.

Is this not the case anymore?

I went to college in Brazil, here the class load is fixed for most universities (ie: you don't choose what classes you will go, they will hand to you a list of the ones you are signed up for each semester).

Although the classes themselves took half a day (started at 7:30, finished at 13:00) the coursework we had to do was incredibly high, teachers never coordinated, they just assumed that you had all free time of the world.

In one semester I had to quit my job, and slept to little that I got incredibly sick, my apartment reeked sugar, because I was drinking coca-cola and energy drinks so fast that empty bottles were piling up near my computer, I slept on average 4 hours per day, and went from 110kg to 125kg

And mind you, this was to do coursework, NOT any kind of paying work, when I finished university my net worth was incredibly negative, right now it STILL is negative, I am living with my parents right now to dedicate 100% of my income to debt paying, and still don't see any perspective of actually paying it (specially because when I consider the past year or two, the average INTEREST I had to pay, was higher than my average income).

Geez that hardly sounds worth it. I thought folks in the states had it rough with the loans...

The raw loan amount is not high as in US (when you consider USD... for BRL it is comparable if you consider your own income, but even that some people get lower).

But in Brazil you can't ask for bankruptcy, ever... In US Student Loans can't be rid of with bankruptcy, but you CAN make another loan, pay the student loans, and THEN go bankrupt... in Brazil this loophole doesn't exist.

And Brazil has a incredibly high interest rate, credit card interest is 400% year, overdraft and personal credit interest in a bank is 300+% a year, special credit for business with government subsidies are still around 100% per year. (and I never saw anyone that qualified for it).

The effect is that if you are in debt, you are screwed... and if you HAVE money, investing in any business is stupid idea, specially with our high inflation (currently about 11% per year), it makes much more sense to loan to the government (that currently will happily absorb it, and pay interest that is usually at least 14.25% year + inflation), so noone invest in creating business anyway, so you never find jobs, startups are non-existing, creating a startup is bad idea, and so on...

It depends on the rigor of your institution, of the program you're in, and what constitutes "full time."

At the institution I attended, FT was 12-18 credit hours in a semester. You could take up to 21 with permission from the administration and your professors, and up to 24 with permission + paying additionally for the 3 credits.

The difference between 12 credits and 18 in terms of work load and scheduling hassles is astronomical yet both are full time. Our professions always said 1 hour in class = 3 hours outside of class. Assuming that held true (it rarely did on an individual class level but on a semester level it was pretty close), 12 credits = 48 hours a week and 18 = 72.

If you're only taking 12-15 credits you probably should have a 10-15 hour/week job. If you're taking 18 I wouldn't even do work study on campus for gas money, you just won't have the time unless you want no social life.

I pretty much always took 12-15 credits. My school was on semesters and I just went year round whereas most people took summer offer. Summer credits were cheaper and you could cram in a bunch of general ed stuff that didn't need a ton of study.

My engineering classes all preached 4 hours of study for every hour of class- I don't think I averaged two for most classes and graduated above a 3.2 GPA. Except EE courses and physics. I had to buckle down for those.

Yea to be fair I always took 12-15 hours with only 2 exceptions. But that's what I had to do to make it through and still pay bills/eat/etc.

> I get the impression that that some kids did really challenging programs or went to prestigious schools and that paid off really well, but a lot of kids bought into the "college = success" mantra.

Challenging programs have relatively little to do with it. It's almost 100% about the prestigious schools and the networks that come along with them: the old "it's not what you know; it's who you know," deal.

> All that said, I wish someone would have shown me the value of a really high-end education and helped me attain one.

Education is always valuable. It's schooling that's not always worthwhile.

> Challenging programs have relatively little to do with it. It's almost 100% about the prestigious schools and the networks that come along with them: the old "it's not what you know; it's who you know," deal.

I didn't go to a particularly prestigious school. I didn't know anybody at the job I got as a new grad. I individually made more money in my first year out of university than most families did mid-career. I was not unusual among those in my program.

A degree in engineering pays off in part because it's a challenging program.

I went to a prestigious school and studied physics - place was ranked best in the world for the subject at the time.

The degree is worthless. The wretched right-wing connections are even more worthless.

Are you working in physics or a related field? It seems odd that you would associate the political beliefs of what is surely only a portion of your collegiate network with the science degree you got.

Many (most?) people can get into whatever the main land grant/public research university that exists in their respective state, even more so after a year of community college. In general, almost all of these schools offer a good quality education, especially if you avoid degree-mill majors (e.g. communications, psych, history, economics, etc...) and choose any critical thinking degree (STEM, Philosophy, maybe English/Lit).

If you aren't going to meet that bar, then it's probably not worth it to go to college because you're probably not going to learn much.

My post was not about getting a good quality education. In fact, my contention is that getting a good education is less relevant than the specific school and major one chooses. For a software developer just out of college, an EECS degree from Berkeley is going to beat a degree in (say) math, physics, or robotics from Podunk State, all else being equal. And, all else is rarely equal, because the Berkeley grad is going to have a way better network than the Podunk State grad.

an associates degree does count. it shows initiative. it's something completed. don't just toss it out, it's not trivial to employers. And you can learn a ton in community college. I know people who enjoyed it a lot more than 4 year universities and had more available to them. depends on the school and the person of course, always.

When people make this kind of assessment they seem to be implying that because a college education is less surefire than it used to be, that it's useless.

This is demonstrably false, and a college education is still the best bet a person can make on his or her future. In the same breath people say "all our manufacturing jobs went to China" and "why not go to a vocational school and pick up welding?"

The problem is that there isn't a significant differential in price between the institutions that it's really worthwhile to have a degree from, and the ones a couple tiers down the influence ladder.

The options I considered were:

1.) Ivy League

2.) Smaller, 2nd tier private college, with incentives for in-state students.

3.) Private military academy, where my Dad went

4.) My main state university.

Since my parents were kind of lower-middle class, #1 was mostly covered by financial aid, so the real differences in cost between that and the state university were only a couple thousand a year. The doors that having that name on the top of my piece of paper opens are well worth it.

Options that would have been suicidal, financially:

A.) 2nd or 3rd tier, out-of-state non-Ivy private school - most are still in that 40-50k price tag range, without the endowments to offer the same financial aid packages.

B.) Out-of-state tuition at another state university - again, price tag in the 30-50k range, no subsidy, reduced prestige

not so much useless, but really just a negative in so many respects. A massive debt right at the time before you've really even had any personal freedom at all. It's terrible.

Though i went to college, I'd recommend people who don't have a wild passion towards a specific subject (if the outlook is cloudy I mean) earn, save and buy a house in cash.

And in regards to passion, I don't mean necessary a love for something, I mean a drive to REALLY get good. If you don't have that for school, then work, earn and make yourself a good situation so you can get education with disposable income when the passion comes.

Are you really sure that "a college education is still the best bet a person can make on his or her future" ?

College education has quite a lot of worth, but that worth is much less than it used to be and the price is much more than it used to be.

A degree that has some value is useless if obtaining it costs you twice as much as that value.

Well, the ROI calculations still often say it is still worthwhile – for example: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21600131-too-man... (which cites: http://www.payscale.com/college-roi )

I went to college for a number of reasons despite already being skeptical of the "party line" everyone was telling me about how important it was to go to college, but ultimately I was able to swallow the estimated $100k price tag at the place I wanted to go the most (which was small, private, and out of state) because I made the calculations that let me be confident that if I made it to the end it shouldn't be too difficult to get even an entry level job in some field of tech I already had experience in (my degree was computer engineering) at $60k/yr which wouldn't be too bad for paying off that debt. Things more or less worked out, I too don't use any of my degree knowledge on the job and the thing that gets me the most recruiter spam is my broad experience working for peanuts on/off at a local startup while I was still in school. Certainly the degree would have been cheaper by going to the state university, or a community college first, but even those figures are starting to rise and when you can't get any job $30k of interest-accumulating debt probably feels about as back-breaking as $100k. I don't know if I would go back and take the safer, cheaper path. I think I did alright given my information at the time, so I don't put all the blame on the system -- too many college students just don't do the steps of calculating the full program cost (including any loans for housing), the desirability of employees with this particular degree over a degree in general, and then figuring out a plan to actually pay back what they borrow for the degree.

There are a lot of people in college who are doing as little as possible to get the degree. They shouldn't be surprised that they find it hard to get a job on graduation.

The value of a college degree is largely up to the student. Chart a course to it that takes the hard courses and masters them, takes advantage of the research and other opportunities there, and the resulting degree will be worth something.

Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?

I'm a software engineer now. I majored in math. I've literally had recruiters tell me they couldn't offer me an interview because I didn't study "computers," including once at a college career fair. I wanted to tell that woman about the people who invented computers, but I held my tongue as she threw my résumé back at me.

I work in a big beauraucric .gov. We had a guy who majored in robotics and was one of the best programmers hired in some time. (Iirc, he had some health challenges that made getting underpaid attractive)

He got demoted to some horrible computer operator position because an audit of HR revealed his degree, and the auditors found that robotics wasn't computer sciencey enough.

The union grieved it and he was eventually made whole a few years later.

God bless the union. Exactly the kind of thing they're for.

Better yet to fire HR.

I am surprised that you would not be well-served by a math degree from a half-decent institution, and very skeptical that your degree has not actually helped you obtain your career, versus not having any baccalaureate degree at all.

I've worked with software engineers senior to myself who had B.A.s or Ph.D.'s in math and no degrees with the letters C and S in them, including a few younger, fairly recent graduates.

I do have the magical letters "CS" in my degree, but I also have a second major in mathematics. While I must confess I hardly use a fraction of the math I studied on a daily basis and have forgotten most of it, it has served me well and there have been numerous times I would have been lost without it.

Pardon, but you seem a little bitter. I suspect you have no idea how good you have it, compared to say, most graduates with a degree in humanities from an expensive liberal arts college.

All that being said, if your intended career path is software engineering, I would tend to agree that studying software engineering is the best education to prepare for it.

> Pardon, but you seem a little bitter.

They seem extremely bitter with little justification, to be honest.

> I suspect you have no idea how good you have it, compared to say, most graduates with a degree in humanities from an expensive liberal arts college.

Poli Sci degree from an expensive liberal arts college checking in. Ask me how many sub-$40k/yr programming jobs I've taken because they're all I could get with a Poli Sci degree.

Many of the people I have worked with had degrees in math. I'm not sure if more had CS degrees or math degrees, to be honest.

This is the problem when the gatekeepers (recruiters) are not your peers.

It's a shame that we've somehow structured our systems so that we clearly do candidates a disservice, even though we keep saying that attracting talent is of the utmost priority.

I have a degree in political science. Today I am the Director of Government Relations and I've been out of college for 10 years. Many of my friends from college are shocked that I am still in the career of my degree. Rather to the point, their shock that I made a career out of my degree. It's only a hypothesis, but I suspect that I was a little more desperate than some of my peers, and that allowed me to work for shit pay for many years as I clawed my way up the ladder.

Replying here because the above comment is too many levels deep: this shows exactly what is wrong with hiring. Especially the HR manager who is so used to getting 100 resumes and trying desperately to find a reason to throw out 80 of them. Some of the best people I ever worked with didn't have CS degrees, and it's sad that HR still works this way at so many places.

(We are working to change it in our niche of Sales, but even there we have these same battle stories).

OT/pro-tip: the trick to reply when the reply button is gone is to click the timestamp and reply on the item's page instead.

> Thirty years ago, a bachelor's degree might have been a ticket to a decent professional job, but those days are long past.

My CS degree definitely helped me out.

When everyone goes to college, the bachelor's degree becomes the new high school degree. Then you either split between "good" bachelor's and "bad" bachelor's (depending on the institution), or all the degree requirements increase one step, or a little of both.

You can't just expect to give everyone a degree and have a nation of professionals, with "someone else" (people in foreign countries, immigrants) doing the blue collar work. For two reasons: one, there just isn't enough demand for professional-level work. Two, people differ in innate ability, and education level is often more useful as a proxy for that ability than for what it concretely teaches you. Giving everyone the same degree, even if you somehow get everyone to recite the material, will not give everyone the same level of ability - it will just destroy the degree's value as a proxy.

I wouldn't blame the councilors, teachers and parents too much, though - they have to focus on the individual case. Blame the politicians and thought leaders instead, who should have been able to see the effect at the collective level. If you're advising an individual, it's fine to assume that the market environment will not be affected by their actions. If you're advising a nation, it's not!

I saw taking out student loans as just another hurdle I had I cross. Same with taking the ACT and writing admissions essays.

I'm doing fine now and paying back my loans. But I wish I better understood APRs and monthly payments and what those numbers actually meant in context.

Yea Plus Loans are the worst at 8% interest a year. Do I invest in index funds that average 7-8% or pay down student loans that guarantee you're relieving 8% interest a year. It's very disheartening to see one losing $1k/mo purely to interest. But also a big motivation to just make more money yearly.

Woah what loan are you speaking of??? My federal loan was about 3% in 2005.

In the 90s, some unsubsidized loans where north of 9%.

I was the oldest of the brood, and my parents didn't have any money, so I chose to go to SUNY whatever for something like $8k/year.

Graduated with $1,200 in debt, for my apartment deposit and repairs to my ancient car.

MANY of my friends who went to prestigious private schools got bait and switched on aid in their sophomore year and got stuck with loans that they are paying to this day.

My parents didn't have college money set aside for me either, but even if they did, I don't think I would have taken it.

I would take it if I had a rich father, but mine wasen't.

He liked to brag he was a well paid union electrician, but we seemed to barely get by. After taxes, and my mom's depression shopping. (She didn't spent much, but she needed to buy something everyday. She was clinically depressed before people knew about depression. Later in life when she got a job, the depression went away completely. She is now literally afraid to retire.) My father always said she was the reason he didn't have any saved money. It wasen't the tiny amount she was spending, it was taxes, bills, life, etc. We did have money for emergencies though. I remember the family dog, a dachshund, slipped a disc. My father walked in, and said no to the operation. We all started to cry, and he asked how much. He gulped, and he finally said yes. She lived another 7-8 years?

Oh yea, why wouldn't I take money from him to go to college?

I just didn't want any more stress to succeed back then. I was taking hard courses, but my father was working harder at his job. When he died, he told me thanks for not asking for money growing up. Yea, we had our differences, but I never felt indebted to him for any big decisions in my life. It was a liberating feeling at the time. Looking back, I could have used some help, but glad I didn't take it. I did take the student loans though.

Plus, going to college was easier in the 90's. The courses weren't easier, but the price was reasonable, or at least I thought. My biggest gripe was the cost of used books, and transportation to school. I still think if I had a reliable vechicle back then, my college life would have been easier. Later in life, I went to automotive school. One of the reasons was I just want to know how to work on vechicles the right way. It was still pretty cheap to go to a community college in the late 90's.

I got by cheaply by going to a state school, and working security jobs. Actually, my best college jobs were mini-storage assistant manager jobs. These mini-storages are 99% full. You just basically sit in an office, and walk the grounds every once in a while. I would get all my studying done on the job.

Cost of going to school back then was cheaper than today though. I repeated that because I see how you young graduates have been extorted.

And it definetly wasn't a party school. I don't remember one party, but then again it was a state school that was out in the boonies, and most of the students just wanted to graduate.

I still knew the worst day at school was better than working construction.

>I still knew the worst day at school was better than working construction.

I assume you never worked construction? As someone living in a rural area, working outside, staying physically fit (honestly a huge factor for me), working in a different place (all local) every 6-months to 2-years, making a minimum of ~$35K (and more as you learn more skills and management know-how) is not so bad.

I'm not saying education is bad, not at all. I am saying be careful what you disparage...

I second bcook's response.

I have a good friend of mine who moved locally from the Kansas City area. He was a union carpenter, electrician, and framer there, so he approached our union hall. They snagged him up the same day, and was out on site the next.

He has full benefits. 401k, insurance, vacation, sick pay, etc... And he works for the union hall. He decides the radius where he works, and gets paid 38-52k year, depending on the specifics of the job.

Contracts last here from 6 months-2 years, just because there is that much work available.

I've honestly given thought going down that path, purely because everywhere needs construction. It's damn useful for houses to high rises.

Construction is feast or famine. I remember friends whose parents were laid off all winter -- makes life tough and uncertain.

Federal loan rate history: http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicalrates.phtml

I consolidated but I know that some of mine were at 6.8% fixed thanks to this lovely change:

2006-07: Replacement of separate variable in-school/grace and repayment rates on the Stafford Loan with a single fixed rate of 6.8%. Replacement of variable interest rates on the PLUS Loan with a fixed rate of 8.5% (FFELP) and 7.9% (DL).

If you don't mind, was refinancing a good move for you? What rate were you able to get it down to?

We're at 6.8% right now.

The consolidation loan rate was the weighted average of the loans consolidated, so it didn't offer any benefit beyond making the rate fixed. I think the rate ended up being ~5.5%.

Consolidation loans also offer a longer repayment timeframe I believe. In this way if you make the payment amount small but pay double, the extra will be entirely on the loan principal.

Back when I consolidated SoFi (and probably others) didn't exist. It might be worth comparing rates and terms with them as well.

When I consolidated my loans, they became fixed at 6.8%. Meanwhile my wife was lazy and did nothing and then the great recession happened and her loans have been at 3% for years and years.

I looked up my rate from 2000-2001...FFFFFUUUUUUUU

My federal student loan I got in 2003 was at 3.6%. My parents had good credit and co-signed.

My loans average 7%. Federal.

I had a similar problem - I was around 7.8%. I refinanced (with Earnest, though SoFi and others provide similar service) and got it down to 4.71. Increased my payment a bit, and cut my term down by more than a decade. Now, just 117 more payments to go.

These figures shocked me. I'd assumed when Americans said "federal" loans they had a low interest rate.

My British student loan, from the government, is currently at 0.9%. It's never been more than 5%. I have cash I could use to pay it off, but it earns more interest in a savings account. (And may be useful if I want an extra £12000 towards a house at some point.)

http://www.studentloanrepayment.co.uk/portal/page?_pageid=93...

6.8% and 8.4% on my grad loans. I believe they eliminated the 8.4% loans after I graduated. There's even a 4.5% "loan origination fee."

My loan balance was $96k when I graduated 4 years ago. I have not made any real payments on it and the balance is now $125k from interest capitalization.

Note, I went to one of the lowest tuition schools in the nation for my grad program and lived at home with my parents the whole time.

Did your parents never talk to you about this kind of thing? I have already had this discussion with my 10 year old. For what it's worth, I never went to college but I understand the importance of compound interest and understanding financial contracts which involve you.

I hope your ten year old has more options available than "go to college and take a gamble on being underwater" or "learn a vocation and hope you retire before it's swallowed by outsourcing or automation."

Despite the statistics, there is no obvious choice here. Why are the wise old people encouraging young people to choose the path their generation just got screwed out of? This generation of students has only ever heard of our parents longterm careers getting vanished by computers or foreigners.

> I hope your ten year old has more options available than "go to college and take a gamble on being underwater" or "learn a vocation and hope you retire before it's swallowed by outsourcing or automation."

There are still many state schools w/ scholarships that are low priced; or upper tier schools if the family doesn't make enough money.

None of which guarantee a job anymore, which is exactly the problem. The average student loan debt for graduating undergrads is somewhere around $30,000.

It's not like they're taking out loans to buy their way into Dartmouth. They're taking out reasonable amounts of money to go to a reasonable school to get a reasonable job.

The "unrealistic idealists" in this situation are the people who think it's the student's fault for planning on getting the job that was more or less promised to them by society. And when they are woken up by the fact that there aren't jobs waiting on the other end, the rhetoric seems to be, "these stupid kids listened to what every adult in the country told them for the first 18 years of their lives!"

It's shameful to act like kids should've known better than to pay for a quality education. What the hell kind of society actually places that blame on children?

Now, the alternative is the same thing. Now adults are telling kids to go to vocational schools. Okay. By the time they get established in those fields, those jobs will be gone too. Then we can blame the kids for listening to us again!

She totally has options available. She has me for guidance! I'm not forcing anything on her. Right now she is interested in everything and I'm just helping her understand how things really work. Things like I mentioned above are critical for success - college or not.

I had this very experience. Everyone I encountered in my schooling and personal life basically pushed me to take out loans and get a degree by whatever means necessary. Even after I explained that I had no idea what I wanted to do (at the time).

Thankfully I thought it foolish to put myself in significant debt for an education I wasn't passionate about and a direction I wasn't sure about. The whole "just go and get it done" excuse is thrown at a _lot_ of young adults and those loans are sure easy to get. Just crazy.

I am from Brazil, and was victim of the same thing.

Worse, I could if I had spent a year studying or so, join a free university, but even that was unnaceptable, the "right thing" to do was take a loan and dive in a expensive course.

I finished college in 2009, I still don't got my first legal job, and I still have debts, I am struggling to buy medicine I need.

Meanwhile everyone I know that ignored the "adults" and did whatever they wanted, managed to actually start a life, and now have house, vehicle, sometimes kids... meanwhile I just have a stupid piece of paper that is not good even to wipe my ass with (the university diploma they gave me is just a normal A4 paper printed in a normal inkjet).

No seal?

Nope, when they told me my diploma was "ready" and I showed up, the person just walked off, then I heard inkjet noises, and came back with a half-assed official looking normal A4 printed paper.

No seal, also the Rector signature is obviously just a printed JPEG file on what is probably a word document.

Gotta have a seal! lol

>Guidance councilors,

This is a profession which needs to be eliminated ASAP. Councilors are absolutely clueless and are misleading millions of youth. They have no experience on the job market and just regurgitate what they are told. They mislead students, have trouble spotting floundering students and are just dead weight in school bureaucracy.

I personally never got that message. I got the "you will go to college" message, but it came bundled with a "don't borrow $40,000 for college" message. In fact, I turned down my first choice school (Rose-Hulman) because I would have accrued $50,000 on loans over four years. That seems to be unfortunately typical now.

I really wanted to go to MIT, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when they were bragging that average student debt after graduation was “only” the price of a brand-new minivan or sports coupe.

The return on investment on an MIT degree and a sports car is pretty different.

If you graduate MIT with a decent degree in a wanted field you are going in the right direction.

That sounds quite reasonable actually. A degree can be a good investment. The right degree from MIT will open a lot of doors .

Do you think everyone who has gained an education should then be burdened by an inescapable bondage to a particular high-paying career?

What if they decided they would rather be a teacher? A musician and band director? A serial backpacker? What if they are injured and can no longer take the 40, 50, 60 hours in a chair at the office it would require to maintain the level of salary?

Just because a college degree is often a great ROI doesn’t mean that it can justify the expense for all students, or even for all students with a "wise" career in mind at time of enrollment.

If you want to go to a very competitive school like MIT, probably. Generally the "best" schools are those that have better access to good professors, and resources that the brightest can best take advantage of. Now you can be bright and not want to make a lot of money out of MIT, but generally the assumption is that in capitalism if it is valuable it is worth money, and if you go into a job that pays a lot you are doing a more valuable job than if you were doing something that paid less.

If you want to go into a less competitive career, going into a less competitive school can make a lot sense, often because the less competitive schools can have better programs appealing to less lucrative fields because the pressure is less severe than it is for an MIT undergrad.

That rules out the careers of two friends from school, who both studied at Cambridge (UK). One runs an educational charity programme in Congo, the other does cancer research.

Another top-school engineering graduate I know spent 5 years building water facilities (pumps, wells etc) in Africa.

> What if they decided they would rather be a teacher? A musician and band director?

There are literally government-subsidized student loan forgiveness programs for exactly this purpose.

> A serial backpacker?

Most student loans are backed by the government. As a tax payer I have no interest in subsidizing someone's backpacking trip. You can't be a serial backpacker if you have a car payment, rent, or a mortgage either.

> What if they are injured and can no longer take the 40, 50, 60 hours in a chair at the office it would require to maintain the level of salary?

A. Disability insurance exists for exactly this reason

B. You can make the same argument against getting a mortgage. FUD.

I guess I passed the first few screening stages at MIT. They wanted to setup an interview and all that. My father had just gotten a programming job so suddenly, on paper, we were far too high income to qualify for any aid. I never bothered to schedule the interview.

I don't know if it worked out for the best or not but it seems insane that university is so money driven here in the US.

Well it's a bit more nuanced isn't it?

- Oh of course you're going to college, only losers don't go to college. + But I have to take out loans. - Yep, par for the course.

So you're getting peer and parental pressure to get higher education, and in effect make a pretty questionable business decision: it's effectively a modern version of indentured servitude.

Tell them to go to a European university. It's almost free, a lot of countries offer courses in English, they get to see Europe, and even if the living costs are higher, it's not going to be 6 digits expensive/they'd get an education plus a few years adventure for that money.

I agree with your general advice, but I'd add on that university education in the UK is expensive (though not as expensive as the US), so they should be prepared to learn another language (for life outside the University course).

>so they should be prepared to learn another language (for life outside the University course).

Maybe, maybe not. University itself is not uncommonly taught in English and English competency in northern Europe is generally high. If you're just planning to stay for the education then learning the language might not be necessary.

> When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

To some extent people make their own bad choices. I graduated with 30k-ish in debt (canadian). A reasonable sum considering the job options immediately available that wouldn't have been a possibility without a degree.

On the other hand I have a friend who went to the same school, but stayed to do a masters. He owes over 70. Still possible to pay down. While he's worried about that I'm 4 years out of school, 1/3 of the way through paying my loan off. We wound up with comparable jobs in terms of pay as well.

He's was in his mid-late 20s when he started as well. Not 17.

I believe some US high schools were even holding mandatory-to-attend collage finance classes that were actually paid-for hard sell marketing events by commercial banks for their student loans.

This could not be more true. I'm of that very generation, went to an expensive technical school with no clue what I was getting myself into, and managed to flunk out in the first year.

Never even considered that possibility, because high school had been such a breeze, and now I'm stuck with a huge loan and nothing I can really do about it other than make payments. Minimum wage is difficult enough to deal with when you don't have an extra $200 coming out every month that you can't make go away.

Of course I know about all of this now; in hindsight I would never have made those decisions. So, that's a huge lesson learned. It's something I think society will come around on eventually, but a huge number of students bought into the trap blindly, and are now stuck without a good escape plan.

I've managed to get my life back together and I have things under control, but I'll be paying that loan off for the next 20 years if I'm quick about it. The only thing I've really gained is a strong distaste for the college system. I've had to learn to build my portfolio and sell myself to potential employers based on what I can do for them with my current skills, rather than what I have paid to put on my wall.

Yes, 17 year-olds are being indoctrinated into the idea that a degree is the Key To Success, but it's not like the issue of having to pay back the loans isn't brought up.

I went to college not to terribly long ago, and I remember having conversations with various people (guidance councilors, parents, teachers, peers, etc.) about career prospects and the kind of income one can expect. In fact, I switched to Computer Science precisely because of a conversation with a fellow student regarding future income potential.

I also saw many/most fellow students actively ignore or avoid the issue of future debt. Granted, they were supported in their behavior by various authority figures, but they still had a choice.

Of course, the solution isn't to complain about the stupidity of teenagers. Personally, I think the solution is fixing how the banks give out loans in the first place (i.e. allowing them to refuse to issue loans unless they think they'll get their money back).

A compounding issue is that not all kids are made for higher ed. Some just don't have the aptitude, but the conduit towards vocational schools isn't there as it probably was long ago (we don't have the hauptschule/gymnasium system).

Unfortunately, such a system in the US would quickly run into trouble as schools would quickly get accused of funneling 'good' students one way and 'bad' students the other way and there would be accusations of unconscious bias of one type or another.

So we only have the "go to college/university" recommendation, for everyone, even students who clearly don't have the aptitude and would do better in a vocational school.

Yes. My nephew is a Junior and starting to look at schools and my main message to him is "wherever you can minimize your debt."

Guidance counselors, teachers, and parents should have to take a course and pass a test on:

  http://www.payscale.com/college-roi.

There's also another site (that I can't recall right now) which lists ROI by Major and School. It should be on the mandatory list also.

It will only change if there is an alternative.

As it stands now, the "Brand" of having a university degree on your resume is still one of the signals used in hiring candidates for jobs.

> A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan.

Student loans are the only legal way to sell yourself into "debt slavery"[0] in the United States. It's not the 17 year olds that are screwing up, it's society as a whole by even allowing this situation to exist.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

I agree with this 100%. Student loan debt should not be treated specially. It should just be normal debt that you can discharge through bankruptcy.

At that point, the incentives of schools and the incentives of students would be aligned. Schools would not lend huge sums to students unless they had confidence that the education those students got was adequate to prepare them to repay. And the situation would fix itself. The fixed situation would probably have a lot fewer humanities students, and those students would have better job prospects since supply and demand would be aligned. Degrees would be shorter and less expensive, and overheads would be lower.

Mostly it is the federal government doing the lending, not the schools. Eligibility is fixed by law and has nothing to do with ability to repay.

Good point, which allows them to make lending decisions for political rather than purely economic reasons.

I agree that there are a lot of government loans for education-- another thing that ought to stop. The government shouldn't be a loan shark for young people.

It should just be normal debt that you can discharge through bankruptcy.

I think doing that would likely result in no loans for many students or at least higher interest rates. Hell, if I were 22 with $100K in student loan debt to be discharged, I'd be silly not to declare bankruptcy.

It's not clear to me that this would be a bad thing.

Especially since loan availability and price would likely factor in the earning potential (aka social demand) of the subject of study.

I don't disagree.

> Student loans are the only legal way to sell yourself into "debt slavery"[0] in the United States.

Do you mean that student loans are the only legal way to attain a loan whose collateral is your future earnings potential? Because if so that's very wrong.

no, the poster meant that student loans are the only kind of loans that are NOT dischargeable through bankruptcy. literally. look it up.

What should really be surprising about the Yelp thing is that Yelp didn't understand what would happen. A company that spends money to recruit and train a member of staff but doesn't pay them enough to stay in their job is just throwing money away.

That a company the size of Yelp can't see this really obvious situation arising is amazing. I'm surprised their HR people don't get fired over it.

You're assuming that Yelp made a mistake by spending money to hire (and eventually fire) this person. I disagree. I think that was the plan all along. I used to work for Backcountry.com in Park City, UT in the mid-2000s. Back in those days, BC used its ski town locale and perks like "powder days" to attract gen-Y'ers fresh out of college at rock-bottom wages. Smart young people out of good schools showed up, did some okay work for a year or two, accumulated some experience, and then left for greener pastures in the big city. BC understood this and was happy with it. These hires weren't experienced but they were scrappy and bright and they'd work for almost nothing just to be able to strap on snowshoes after work or go mountain biking on their lunch break. When they left, there was a resume stack full of new ones to take their places.

HR is a profession where you're allowed to believe that someone with a math or robotics degree isn't a good fit for a programming job because there's not enough of that Computer Stuff in their background.

It's part of a very curious corporate phenomenon - above a certain level of power you're defined as competent by reason of your department and job title, irrespective of your actual ability.

You can be breathtakingly clueless, to the point of creating very negative consequences for the company that employs you, but you will never be held responsible for it.

This is insulting. What choice do you think these kids have? A university degree is the only gateway to social mobility available to most young people in the United States, and at current prices, most of them can't actually afford it. What do you expect the kids to do? "Gee, I guess I'll just have to spend the rest of my life in the service industry, making other people rich." Give me a break.

Of course they're going to take on the loans, and of course they're not going to pay them back. This is even more predictable when you realize that plenty of good careers requiring college degrees also don't pay enough to cover basic expenses and make loan payments at the same time.

Blaming the victim for a system that is too big for them to do anything about is the wrong way to look at this. The education system is broken, and I don't blame anybody who simply blows off their creditors in the meantime.

Social mobility means that people who have talent and work hard can get to a higher class even if they were born in a lower class. It cannot possibly mean that the entire population is going to become college professors, while nobody does service jobs any more.

Social mobility should mean that, but doesn't in practice. Most job opportunities involving any kind of "knowledge work", or really most jobs that pay better than subsitence income, that don't formally require college degrees, still have them as a job requirement. Most people aren't goint to college because they want to be professors, they're going because they want to be able to get their foot in the door at firms that require at least a bachelor's degree.

University professors usually have a phd, no one is suggesting everyone get a phd, yet.

Does Saas count as a service job?

They have the choice to get a degree that actually makes money, not <insert anything> Studies or Art History.

Being indoctrinated with, "it doesn't matter what the degree is in, just that you have one," absolves them of at least some of the responsibility.

That, as well as a highly linked issue right now that people at the end of their careers are still hanging in the workforce because they can't afford to retire. I think normally if you didn't have 2008, that adage about "just get a degree" might have still rung true. It's not like kids without degrees are making out like bandits in the job market -- it's just that outside of a few lucky / strategic fields, the jobs aren't there.

Which is also why blaming kids sucks for them, because theyre about the least culpable members of society for the macroeconomic conditions that landed them in this predicament.

Is it necessary for the 17-year old to fully grasp what he's getting into and how to deal with it? The point of an education loan is that it will pay to mature the young person and provide him with the capital necessary to become educated about how to handle debt. And more specifically to obtain skills and experience that can be converted to a prosperous career which allows him to repay what he owes.

If a college graduate is not able to keep up with his student debt is it his fault for not being fiscally responsible? Or is it the school's fault for not doing the job it was paid to do?

It is as if we are building bridges that collapse easily then blaming it on the trucks being too heavy when the problem is the engineers are making crappy bridges.

The kicker to me is that you can't drink till you're 21; look at porn, buy cigarettes, or consent to sex with an adult until you're 18... but you can sign a federal promissory note for "super debt" that will fuck up your life and the lives of your next of kin.

> consent to sex with an adult until you're 18

Holy shit, there are places in the USA where you have to be 18 to have sex. TIL.

Well both are right. Yes, 17 year olds need to fully grasp these decisions, and yes colleges and gov should do more, much more, too.

For example my gf's now doing her 2nd master's to become a teacher, in a field which, surprise, there are no jobs in. Now frankly she mostly knew this, wanted to do it anyway because she's got the resume to get that 1 job that opens up every 5 billion years and she's really passionate about teaching this field. But what struck me was that a few days ago as she was complaining about her job prospects, I said 'your uni has a responsibility here, too', and I went to the website to see if they offered any support. Got to the 'employability' page, and it essentially said the prospects were 'good'. In reality, the employability of this particular degree is probably in the bottom 5%. I mean this is the Netherlands, tuition is $2k a year, it's a 1y programme and student loan rates are currently 0.01% (fixed until 2020, and averaged < 1% in the past 20 years), so it's fine. But for other institutions in other countries, that's blatant false advertising bordering on the criminal as we're talking about multi-year time investments in addition to tens of thousands of dollars. And I see this all the time, but institutions and governments aren't currently willing to be dead honest about job prospects.

But if there are very few qualified engineers that exist, maybe we should slow down on the bridge building?

Education isn't the problem. Indoctrination is.

Responsible, reasonably intelligent adults are encouraging children to take on this debt. If there is anyone to educate, it is the adults, not the children.

Discriminating against people with college degrees is the last bastion of acceptable racism.

We would look askance at companies that put out ads that advised that people of color should not apply. But there's not nearly the same level of outrage when a college degree is required to be an administrative assistant.

Having or not having a degree doesn't make you a certain "race". College degrees are proxy for skill set and ability. Sure, maybe not a good once, but one that's used. And companies are allowed to discriminate based on skill set/ability.

I'm strongly with you but it's hardly the last bastion of acceptable racism. It's one of very many we still have. Adequate education in any form or at any age, he kind that is crucial for access to college, is flat out unavailable for many people in underserved communities.

I would interject that the problem is that problem isn't a lack financial literacy but a lack of good choices for those 17 year olds.

No amount of financial understanding can squeeze a good deal from "barrow $100K and maybe get great success or start on a minimum wage job now".

And sure, there are half-way points like entering a trade but the future of those positions is pretty uncertain as well.

There's also a lack of experience dealing with (comparatively) large amounts of money. When I was in high school, a hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money. It's hard to compare the costs of rent, food, transportation, insurance, interest payments against potential income, when all those numbers sound like unfathomably-huge sums of money.

I think you have to live at a certain income level for awhile to really understand how much money you're making and what things cost relative to that. You can make a mock budget as a high-schooler (I was required to do that for one of my classes), but it's hard to know if the numbers you're plugging into your budget are even remotely realistic.

But a lack of knowledge and understanding is a solvable problem by education and advice.

A lack of reasonable choices is a problem that can only be solved by social change of one sort or another.

You could almost say that "you have known better than to get yourself into this" aspect of the situation is a cover for the "you were screwed no matter what by the way things were set up" problem.

> And sure, there are half-way points like entering a trade but the future of those positions is pretty uncertain as well.

I would totally go with welder or carpenter. Or better yet, robot repairman. Things will have to be pretty far gone before robots are able to repair each other.

I was fairly financially literate, and I was fortunate to have a family who supported my education, and grandparents who wanted to do what it took to fund it.

That said, it's a very ... odd process for most people. You're told to go to college, so you jump through the hoops; SATs, applications, etc. You choose a school. Now, hopefully as you're choosing a school, you're aware of costs and whether or not you can reasonably afford it. But, if I remember correctly, you don't have full information on what forms of aid you'll be receiving. Some schools offer much more generous financial aid and scholarships than others, and you don't have all of the info up front (again, from what I remember). You also don't know how much you'll be borrowing.

So then during your orientation you go to a "responsible borrowing" class and sign the paperwork for your loans and find out how much they'll be. It doesn't really feel like you have an option.

In my case, I only had to take out federally backed loans, which (for me) had very low per-year borrowing limits, so we're talking a minimal debt burden; a few thousand a year. I knew I'd be borrowing, and knew it wouldn't be an obscene amount.

But it just feels like the borrowing component is so far down the line that you're already committed to a school before you even get to it. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't be prepared and have frank discussions before even choosing a school. Just that the system makes it easy to NOT be aware of it until it's too late. Nobody wants to back out of their freshman year in college at the last minute (likely after some money has been put down) because they balk at the loan paperwork.

And once you get that financial info from the schools you really don't have a lot of time to make a decision -- only a few weeks in many cases. Very little time to make a $160K+ commitment. (It took us a year to buy our first house and it wasn't much more then that...)

Financial literacy is important, but honestly most of these loans shouldn't be given out in the first place.

If I take out a loan for a house, I provide evidence that I will be able to pay it back, and there is the collateral of the house in case I don't. Banks won't give out a loan unless there is a reasonable chance that they will make a good return on their investment. As far as I can tell, banks are prevented from making those same kinds of calculations for student loans.

That is the actual reason for the government giving student loans instead of the banks - there really isn't a good way to tell if someone will pay it back, and no one has had enough time to prove responsibility at that age. Most of the private loans require parents or others to co-sign for the loans, and sometimes they don't really understand what they are getting into.

Even the banks rely on a credit score based on how well you've paid back credit cards and other credit. One cannot prove responsibility simply by saving money and paying bills on time and living within one's means - if one does this, they go to the bank for a loan, and despite having saved a sizable chunk of down payment, get told they have no credit.

> That is the actual reason for the government giving student loans instead of the banks - there really isn't a good way to tell if someone will pay it back, and no one has had enough time to prove responsibility at that age.

Fair point, but if it is really true that there is no way whatsoever to establish credit-worthiness, I don't think anyone (government or private business) should be issuing student loans.

Yet, are you sure that just because these kids^H^H^H^H young adults don't have a credit score that there isn't a way for banks to assess the likelihood of repayment? We all have ways of informally assessing a person's likelihood of success (and therefore at least their ability to repay). We look at things like SAT scores, college GPA, the quality of their school, the quality of their choice in major, etc. Banks could make the credit available to a student each year/semester dependent upon whatever of these factors are available. Banks could try out different risk-assessment models and the market would select those banks that have good enough models to produce a return on investment.

And if our current credit score system is the only way to reliably measure credit-worthiness, why not use it? The obvious negative consequences include delaying when people can get a start on their career, and just the general economic chaos that would result from drastically altering the incentives at play. I am skeptical of radical change, but it is not immediately obvious that these negatives (while serious) are less than the consequences of our current usurious system.

Honestly, screw the modern "higher education" system. It's a business, pure and simple, designed to milk out every penny from kids and their parents, as much as humanly possible while still being "legal". It wasn't always so unbalanced, but that's the way it is today, and that's a crying shame.

Many would say that it's actually designed to milk the pennies from the federal government by proxy of the student and parent with a significant markup.

This is somewhat worse than simply taking from individuals because it implies a systemic breakage that someone is taking advantage of, possibly using political influence to keep that breakage from being fixed.

This. Although I am a believer in and a onetime recipient of federal student aid, there's no denying that there exists an educational-financial-industrial complex which needs to churn through new student borrowers as the substrate for keeping uncle sam's cash flowing. Very similar to the Medicare and 401k industries in a way, given their ostensible social goals, the massive government supplied sums involved, and the need to attach these sums to individual names and lives.

Financial literacy is not enough. Lenders are always going to have more knowledge about their own financial products and the ability of the borrower to make payments. For example, in the subprime mortgage crisis, borrowers were blamed for recklessly borrowing money. This makes no sense. Who is more reckless, 1) a working class borrower with little financial literacy taking a loan, or 2) a multibillion dollar, multinational bank with extensive financial knowledge giving that loan to the borrower? It's the same situation with student loans. Don't blame the students, blame the banks.

More victimization of the people who take these loans on. If you can drive one ton of sheet metal 60 miles an hour among peers, you can understand that spending other people's money on something requires you pay it back. The problem is people think it is worth it, not that they are victims.

How many 16 year olds have a clear enough mind to realize how much responsibility driving is? And is there an actual choice for most people? McDonalds used to as on their application if you had transportation to and from work, and public transportation is non-existent in most places, and horrible in many others.

For example: I lived in one city that only had cab service. You could not rely on it to get to work on time. You could not order a cab in advance, and the wait time for a cab could be anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours. Many of the city's roads had no sidewalks, and bikers were required to share the road with cars and follow the same legal rules as cars - turn lanes and all. Which might not be so bad on a nice day, but during a snowstorm it would be downright treacherous.

Besides - one must prove, to an extent - that they can drive the cars and know rules of the roads. The same sort of thing is completely absent in schools. The most 'personal finance' training I recieved was in 8th grade - a 6 week course ran by a dude that owned a car dealership. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at a car, and more if they bought one.

Depending on type of degree, skill and country etc it can be even earlier: I had to decide this at 16 and really besides girls, guitars and computers I had no clue what I would be doing later on. I did dev for clients freelance already and thought I might just as well get a degree. Turns out that I would never have needed it as I never had a 'job' (41 y/o now), always had my own companies and that allowed me to pay back my loan (which was not that big) when I sold my first company in my 20s. Besides that I like theoretical CS it never helped me as far as the title is concerned; I have always been the gatekeeper in my companies meaning I help out or pick up slack both hardware and software when needed in whatever tech needed but never had to use my diploma's, grades, minors/majors or title.

If I had done what my parents wanted though, aka work at a big corp, diplomas, grades and titles work imho. Most (maybe all) people I work with at partners or clients (usually banks or big financials) have degrees and would not be at the company they are without I believe.

I find the age or 16/17 way too young though to decide anything like that as you won't probably understand the impact until much later. Better is just fixing the rediculous fees etc.

> Person knowingly takes a minimum wage job in the most expensive city in the world

I want to work in Yelp's Monaco offices!

I think kids are perfectly capable of understanding it, and most of the time they do. They just think to themselves "I'll just get a $100k salary and pay it off in no time, because it's easy and I'm special".

Source: Pretty similar to my life story.

It's unfair to blame the 17 year olds who are told by everyone they know and trust that getting a college education at the best school you can get into is the most important thing in the world. It's also unfair to blame them for not calculating the risk that in four years the degree they've been taught means everything will not be sufficient to get a high-paying job to cover rising housing costs and student loan debt when median wages have been falling.

Not sure this has anything to do with young age (e.g 17 year olds). Plenty go to graduate school, to get MBA, Law degree and end up with insane amount of debt. Even from top tier schools, most are struggling to pay it off.

I remember seeing an article talking about removing some advanced math in high school and replacing it with something more useful like statistics.

IMO it should be replaced with basic finance.

I actually was taught a lot about personal finance in highschool and was absolutely horrified at the way higher education was financed to the point of avoiding it for years.

I question whether we should be shocked that we have taught such little financial literacy by the age of 17.

But the truth is that the kids mowing the lawn each weekend are getting rarer.

Well you can take the job on the risk that you learn something, get promoted and get a better job. But I agree, even for the median wage programmer it is too expensive.

Who is supposed to work those jobs then? Even if Yelp relocated their non engineering staff, paying them minimum wage in some other city won't help them.

Actually, it can. It's not just the payment; it's payment against cost of living.

$9 an hour might afford a house in the suburbs of a small city, or an apartment in a smaller city. It doesn't scratch the paint on the cost of a basic apartment in the Valley.

And that's assuming you can get enough hours to work full time, and also have benefits to cover whatever mishaps may develop. And that you don't have any dependents.

This is part of the reason zapped moved their call center out of the bay area and into Nevada.

Sure it will help them. Paying a $1200 rent in San Francisco is much harder with a $10 wage than paying a $200 rent in Alabama with a $8 wage. It may not help them enough, but it will help.

I would think their parents would help in making that decision.

A lot of parents grew up in the era of "get a degree, get a job". Their experience doesn't actually help as much as they'd like in today's world.

Nothing malicious or anything, but times have changed.

What special knowledge do they need except basic math?

I know more about managing debt than most 30 year olds, and I did when I was 17. I think it's just a matter of interest in understanding it; and also people's inability to come to terms with the fact that they can't actually afford the things they're buying.

For what it's worth, I never did go to University or College; never planned on it. I wouldn't understand the motivation for it.

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