Can anyone here who opted to take a student loan for a technical degree speak to whether it is daunting to them or they are comfortable with the trade?
I'd say it worked out well for me, but my situation is very different from that of the woman in the article. First of all, I graduated in 2005. Interest rates were much lower, and dollars worth a little less, than in 1994. I also didn't have children, or any intention of having them in the near future -- children are very expensive. Finally, I did have to live frugally for that period. For example, I carried groceries about 3/4 mile so that I wouldn't need a car. It wasn't poverty by any means, but I skipped many things my peers considered "essential".
For that reason I'd say, while it worked out for me, it is certainly not for everyone.
I'm a doctor who had about $160,000 in student loan debt by the time I finished residency (during which I paid $1,000/month on a $45,000/year salary and lived like a student). After residency, my wife and I started throwing about $4-5k/month at it. Yes, that means I didn't go out and buy a brand new S55 AMG fresh out of residency, but I didn't care. I know plenty of people who will lose more on mortgages when their house doesn't appreciate like they thought it would. Or when (not if) the market crashes again.
It doesn't bother me one bit that many people on here get to ride the tech money train that I don't have a ticket for. Enjoy it, homies! But never forget (but don't stress about) the fact that the party music can stop at any time.
Everyone should enjoy what they've got and be reasonable about expenses. There's already enough to be worried about.
I have a financial relationship with Epic Systems, but that's more of a nepotistic thing than it is something I earned. As far as investing in new products, I don't really have an interest at this point. Things are stable and I like it that way.
The reason your federal loans don't have an ungodly interest rate right now is that as part of the economic stimulus student loan interest rates were lowered. The temporary extensions have kept it down since then, but they could jump back up at almost any moment.
That said, you shouldn't need to take those kinds of loans anymore. We went to a top-10 school for CS back when you still had to get loans for them. These days, there are nominal costs, but all of the top-tier schools I know of cover any difference between you/your family's ability to pay and the tuition. I would personally be somewhat skeptical of the lifetime earning potential you are getting from any institution whose alumni have not given so much money that they can easily afford to cover any gap you have in your tuition payments.
This is good advice, but don't forget that "your ability to pay" is just code for "perfect price discrimination."
I'm firmly of the belief that for the top-tier schools they'd do better just having no tuition and making quarterly reminders of the value of their education, counting on getting it on the flipside from alumni donors down the road.
At least when I went to school 20+ years ago, the very top-tier private schools were very close to that, having large endowments and using them for both merit-based and need-based financial aid in grant form, so that most students paid substantially less than the nominal tuition, and quite a lot of students paid very little to no tuition (and often were subsidized for books and housing, too), such that for most students they were less expensive than nominally cheaper less-elite schools.
I finished my program with $60,000 in debt. $40k for undegrad, and and another $20k for graduate. As bad as that sounds, I had a pretty good financial aid package; the estimated cost of attendance was $60k per year, and most of it was paid for through a mix of work study, scholarships, and a very generous need-based grant from the university [1].
I've made enough since I've graduated to repay my debts a few times over, have a great job, learned valuable leadership skills, participated in a couple research projects, and learned things I never would have known how to even approach had I not gone.
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[1]: Good schools will give need-based grants if your financial aid package doesn't cover the estimated cost of attendance (minus your EFC, as calculated by the FAFSA). They'll ask you to take out Stafford loans, but those are capped at about $12k/year for undergraduate study.
That said, my advice is to stay far away from any school that asks you take out private (non-federal) loans. Those are uncapped, and will easily bury you more debt than you can handle.
The way I see it: every option available to me coming out of high school had risk. Taking on debt to go to college is a risk. Not going to college is a risk. For some, these risks are low, due to a fortunate upbringing with financially stable parents. That wasn't the case for me — but I can appreciate having the choice at all, which many people don't.
I achieved the goals that were important to me given the risk I took: to get a job doing something that challenges me, makes me happy, and allows me to live comfortably. The debt is the cost I chose to pay in order to achieve this goal — one of many I could have taken, but there was always going to be a cost.
The article meanders a bit but I think the story is a pretty common one for those of us in a lot of debt: it's a long term partnership. The "amount of debt you're in" is abstract and barely fathomable. It manifests monthly as a force that pushes against you and your bank account, and how you choose to respond to that reflects your priorities at that moment.
I transfered 25 credits in when I went to college, so it was an easy way to get rid of classes that would lecture bowl type stuff in a much smaller / interactive setting.
All things considered, I am happy with my decisions. My loan payments aren't that bad. Rent and car-related expenses are worse. I do live check-to-check, but I could probably get a much higher paying job if I looked.
I have to say I have no regrets. The job opportunities that were available to me with my BS were depressing and (relatively) low paying. Even with my aggressive loan payments I'm still taking home more than I would have without the investment and the lower salary.