I know a lot of people don't even have CS on their radar when they enter college.
There are much more opportunities nowaday to use coding in almost every major, sadly, the schools haven't changed, ending up imo ruining a lot of career.
A decade later and I'm working in UX research and digital strategy and the finance stuff feels like a lifetime ago. Everyone's journey is going to be different.
That being said, discharging debt in bankruptcy will haunt your credit for 7 years, or so I've heard. Being forced to not finance anything for 7 years is a decent way to save money if you've got a good paying job, I suppose, as you don't fall into the trap of only looking at the monthly payment without thinking of the total cost.
It was unethical for the system to push an 18 year old down the route of taking on huge loans. I'm not sure that finding a way out of that is.
So we are going to absolve all 18 year olds of decision making because of 'the system'?
As an 18 year old I was keenly aware of debt. My college experience was going to a local school while working 20-30 hours/week and living at home. All because we didn't have much money, and I wanted to take as few loans as possible.
So maybe this persons parents and primary school failed them, but I don't buy it was the system.
Blaming the parents or primary school is useless because this person had no control over who their parents were or what school they went to.
I'm glad you had some self awareness at 18 but that isn't the norm as we can see from the rising student debt.
When I hear someone say 'the system,' I wish they would be more specific.
I think a small group of corporations being in direct control of the mass dissemination of corporation serving behavioral role models and information is a problem that needs to be addressed in order ensure the quality of freedom in the marketplace.
Taking the oceanic volumes of weapons grade, artificial psychological pressure off the kids seems like a great place to start.
Be responsible. At 18 you're not a kid anymore
I knew full well what I was doing when I took out my student loans. I knew how much I was borrowing. I knew it would have to be paid back. I knew loans would have to cover both tuition and living expenses because I had no savings and I knew my parents weren't going to help very much. I also knew I could reduce my loan burden by starting at community college and/or going to state school. I still went to private school for my entire degree.
While it was scary to jump into my adult life with debt, and it was a bit of a leap of faith, the risk was obviously worth it, both at the time and definitely in hindsight. Once I graduated I put my head down and aggressively paid off my student loans, kept living like a college kid until they were paid off.
The debt is the obligation to pay back. As far as I know, education loans don't include the clauses you mentioned.
> It was the lender's decision to invest their money into such an obviously money losing strategy and yet they did so despite the high risk.
That's true, but that doesn't absolve the person who took the loan from the responsibility to pay it, and doesn't make not paying it any less unethical.
Ethics and causality are not the same. If you don't lock the door of your apartment, that can dramatically increase the probability of being robbed, and your actions would be the cause of this robbery. But it wouldn't by any yota affect the ethical side of it. (I'm not saying that not paying back the loans is the same as robbery, I'm just explaining the logic using a more obvious example).
I have 100k+ of unsecured credit available to me at any given time. If I go and spend that on hookers and blow is that the lenders fault or mine?
I believe the lack of personal responsibility is problem that will not be fixed by absolving even more responsibility.
I don't have the debt (just the opportunity cost of wasting a decade doing something I didn't really want to do), and this program wouldn't have saved me, but I understand your regret.
Is that hyperbole, or literally your debt is that much?
One possible way for it to happen is if a student's parents have a high income, are unwilling to pay for the student's education and force the student to shoulder the financial burden, and the student does not argue his/her case to the financial aid office. Another possible way is if the family has a relatively high pre-existing net worth, but low income, and is unwilling to spend the income, and again the student shoulders the debt.
i may be book smart but ive made some colossal screwups in my life.
I'm in my 30s-40s - was entering college before need-blind was a thing. It absolutely happens.
It's just usually not the case that you'll graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, at least these days. It's quite rare IIRC among students receiving financial aid to graduate with more than several thousand dollars of debt from an Ivy over four years, and if you go back several decades I'm fairly certain those numbers go up, but I'd be rather shocked if they went up by more than an order of magnitude.
The OP got really screwed by the Singaporean situation, where if you don't fulfill the post-graduation government work posting obligations, the Singaporean government will claw back all the money it gave you for college plus interest.
Tuition alone is $50k/yr, which would equate to $250k for a 4-year degree not accounting for living costs. Even at 50% off the sticker price, you're looking at over $125k in debt upon graduation.
You may want to reassess your understanding of middle class.
Call it whatever you want, but there's a huge difference between $135k/yr household income split among 3 kids in an expensive metro area where a house in the suburbs costs $600k+, and $300k/yr with 1 kid in a low cost of living area.
That is entirely without subsidy. It leaves out other living expenses that can come with various club activities and other activities of that nature. But 300k would leave about 5k per year for other incidentals. Again this is entirely unsubsidized.
The only other factor here is summer breaks, but those are usually filled in by paid internships/research positions at Ivy schools.
this Shopify program would have been a lifesaver. we need way more Shopifys in the world.
Are your loans from the government? If so, you can likely qualify for the Pay-as-you-earn program where your payments are capped at 10% of your disposable income, and debts are forgiven after 20 years (though you have to pay taxes on the amount forgiven I believe). Of course it still stings to see $1.3k/month get sucked out of your bank account to pay the interest on this student debt scam, just know that the pain is mostly psychological. I just choose not to think about it, because it's too depressing otherwise.
I honestly believe that student debt will be forgiven within 10-20 years. Candidates like Elizabeth Warren are already pledging to eliminate student loan debt. Once the younger generation is in power, they will likely kill this giant pyramid scheme and forgive all student loans. And no matter what happens in Congress, if all of us collectively strike on our student loan debt, then the government will have no choice but to fix this problem they created.
I could've gotten a M.S. for free at my state university, but I wanted the prestige. Dumbest decision ever.