In the US, that retirement age has been forced upon the people. My parents got to retire at a younger age than I will because the government won't let me until I reach an older age than them.

ILN - I would question *what* diplomas are being given. If kids actually accumulated debt on WORTHWHILE degrees -- engineering, science, etc -- instead of some of the fucked up worthless degrees you see from a lot of the collective retards around here, they would have jobs.

Our bestest and brightest mod Abge has an Engineering degree....and if I'm not mistaken, our young friend in gainfully employed. Contrast this fucktard Thucy with some worthless feel-good libtard arts degree making barely above minium wage and there you have it.

Sometimes jobs are waiting for you...sometimes you get a degree of value and you create a job for yourself.

I call bullshit on part of your argument -- a college degree is totally worth the debt -- you'll make higher earnings enough to pay that debt off in under ten years IF....IF you get a worthwhile degree. If you get some shit degree, or no degree at all, then you'll be one of those worthless assholes complaining that you aren't getting paid enough for the highly skilled jobs of flipping burgers.

As for retirement age, it is going up in part because the US has the best food system, and best health care in the world, and people are healthy far longer than they used to be and they WANT to work. My parents have all the cash they need to grow old and die...my Dad works during the cold season because he's bored sitting at home when he can't golf, not because he has to work. Lot's of workers are in this situations. The last three businesses I have worked for are run by "post retirement" old guys that love working.

So the analysis you guys have been is wayyyyy overly simplistic.

Hoping I can disprove krellin by overindulging in Twinkies and crisps and dying early, contravening " best food system and best health care in the world." Here I go...Twinkie 1.

Hamilton - fortunately (or unfortunately) they will pump you full of drugs and filter your blood and stick electronics in you to keep your sorry ass running late into life.

That being said, my trip to the grocery store typically brings me home with 10 different varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables, a supplement of frozen vegetables, and fresh animal flesh. Throw in some eggs and almond milk, yogurt, and yeah, it's a pretty freaking good food system (healthy, tasty and costs less than eating shit packaged food.)

But yes, you also have the choice as an American to stuff your body full of garbage and be artificially kept alive beyond the life span you would enjoy in lesser countries.

While STEM fields are certainly very important and the US desperately needs more of it, I really wouldn't want to live in a world that had only engineers. I think the arts, music, literature, are very important for society and as a member of society I'm happy to support them.

The problem more in my mind is people getting degrees for the sake of getting a degree and then getting a job that doesn't use any of the skills they've learned.

So many things to say about some of the responses to this thread.

@ draugh. You have to retire later in life than your parents because of a deteriorating social security trust fund, that has 1920s standards applies to the 21st century. We never counted on life expectancy being pushed to the limits that is has been as well as many other reasons. You will be lucky to see just about anything even at your age, and forget about the generation behind us.

@ILN. Degrees are worth the debt. Higher learning no matter what it is, is better than nothing. .. Wealth is a relative thing to the younger generation. Problems exist because saving is something not taught in our country. Credit for too many years was to easy to get, with no strings attached, and now for the last five years we have payed the price... Student debt is the next bubble to burst, because there is no penalty with teeth if the student defaults on their loan, the tax payers end up eating it I the end. After they default on that debt, along with whatever credit cards they have or home mortgage, everyone seems to feel the libtard govt will bail them out with some crappy social program and no harm no foul.

We as a country have moved on from a manufacturing based economy. We have continually have had to reinvent our work force. Now tech and bio engineering have taken over a avenues to create wealth, and most of our economy is service based. The middle class has fallen away and class disparity has grown. We are the haves and havenots. With current laws this will never change, and the havenots will always want from the haves,and will call it unfair,also wanting some libtard social reform program to give them something for nothing.

@Krellin
Well, personally I'm going into robotics/mechatronics...... so....

Well, it depends on how much debt. 100k for a history degree probably isn't a good investment. Of course, 100k for an engineering degree isn't really a good investment either.

Public schools are actually very good and perfectly adequate for most professions.

I agree it's a nuanced issue, but my gen Y sister and me have just about paid of our student debt in less than 3 years and enjoy our jobs. Lumping whole generations together bugs me, and the state of many economies right now means lots of unemployed youth no matter what.

I admit a lot of people aren't doing their degrees because of a genuine interest, but I don't think thats a new thing

It is a new thing in the sense that, in the us at least, the % of people going to college has skyrocketed over the last 2 generations.

100K for any degree is a doubtful investment. I can never understand lawyers who go into such astronomical debt. Hell, even if a doctor ends up with that much in loan debt, it still takes 15-20 years to pay it back, so where's the extra benefit?

I think Pres. Obama's recent student loan legislation has the right idea - provide loan forgiveness for ten years of public service. Work for any nonprofit or public institution for ten years and make on time payments on loans and the balance is forgiven after ten years. Had I known that I wanted to go into teaching when I started my undergrad, I would have definitely skipped the private school and gone public, which I did for my Masters.

I think the statistic that most people forget about when focusing so heavily on STEM is that students (and people in general) get better grades and are more productive when exposed to a diverse curriculum that includes the arts, music, social sciences, and physical education. Its great that computer science is such a hot field right now, but I'd personally rather not be a mindless corporate drone with a one track mind and no appreciation for the arts or music. I play guitar and several other instruments to keep me sane and creative and I'd be pretty miserable without it.

"I think Pres. Obama's recent student loan legislation has the right idea - provide loan forgiveness for ten years of public service. Work for any nonprofit or public institution for ten years and make on time payments on loans and the balance is forgiven after ten years."

This might actually be one if not the only thing that I agree with our president about.

When it comes to lawyers, I would agree with you as well ,because there are already to many, but doctors on the other hand are needed, and in my estimation, there can't be enough of them.

Sigh.... I suppose it wouldn't even be worth mentioning that I know what I'm doing with my life and I'm happy where I am? Nah probably not.

Fuck your happiness Thucy. Show me the $$$.

I got a degree in history, a job in history, and I'm on track to pay my debt in a couple years. And I work hard and don't post during the work day unlike Krellin.

I work hard AND post during the work day AND a full time mod. Suck on that.

2ndWhiteLine, wDM

but, at the same time, I think parents fail their kids when they let them pass up the full ride to St Johns and then support them when they pay their way at NYU for a photography degree. I went to two public universities to get my degrees and was lucky enough able to work for my tuition in grad school. I don't understand folks who get my degree paying completely out of pocket the whole way.

Agreed. My undergrad was paid about 25% through scholarships and grad was paid fully by RA/TA positions.

When I went to school there was so much pressure for kids within the school to get intot he best school possible and then go to it. I really think schools and guidance councilors need to do better taking kids aside and telling them, listen kid, unless your parents are paying you need to take your future into account.

In my experience they do not and just try to push the kid toward the most exclusive school possible so the school can claim 25 kids went to Ivys this year.

My parents are paying for my undergrad (and as a result I'm going to private school, which they're okay with), but I assure you if I'm going to be in debt after grad school at a certain place, assuming I get a graduate degree, I'm not going to go there. If that means I go to the University of Toronto, great. I don't know what's so difficult about that for most kids. If I weren't getting what essentially equals a free ride to school, I would have already signed to go to school at Indiana by now, or maybe I'd be going to a Canadian public, which is crazy cheap compared to our schools.

There is a girl in my school whose grandparents were some of the richest people in Indiana way back when. They had their own business empire and had more money than they knew what to do with. Her parents are equally rich, partially from inheritance from the aforementioned, but partially because they sold their own business for a pretty hefty sum (over seven digits, but I don't know exactly how much). Now their only daughter is going to a private school in Seattle to get a degree in some abstract form of photography, and the school costs $50,000 a year, not including housing, books, food, etc., which surely adds up to $60,000+ a year. I doubt she's ever going to have anything close to that, and she could go to IU for $16,000 a year in-state, probably getting all of that paid for in scholarships with how (school-)smart she is, and get her photography degree without taking away what her family has worked for since the post-WWII era at no real gain.

This, of course, is the anomaly, because she has a crazy rich family whose name is on tons of buildings around the city, including the hospital I was born in. There are other kids whose parents can in no way afford for them to go to these places, so they assume they can take it upon themselves to pay a good portion of that $60,000 tuition, when in fact they're going to be in debt up to their necks for thirty years, and there's certainly no potential partner-for-life that's going to want any part in assisting with that debt, if you know what I'm getting at.

That said, there's two sides to this. I intend to study philosophy, which can very easily be a worthless degree since it doesn't have a direct lead-in to a career, but combining with a graduate degree in something like communications or education can lead to anything from law to journalism to education, all of which I am interested in, and there are so many 5-year undergrad/graduate options nowadays that it's actually a time-smart move if you can afford it, which, fortunately for me, my family can.

Philosophy -> Law School is actually a very popular route, bo

I'd more likely go to journalism or education. I could do that in five years, as opposed to law, which would take at least 7 as far as I know.

UFT is a very good choice Bo. Its a very good and prestigious university.... and cheap

"100K for any degree is a doubtful investment. I can never understand lawyers who go into such astronomical debt. Hell, even if a doctor ends up with that much in loan debt, it still takes 15-20 years to pay it back, so where's the extra benefit? "

Because they can make that money back within 5 years, not 15-20. And by the time they're 50 they'll be pulling in 200k easily. That's worth the investment.

"Public schools are actually very good and perfectly adequate for most professions. "

I'd like to stress the "for most professions" part of that. If you're getting into, say, finance, then your undergrad school 100% matters. Same thing for accounting. If you're not in one of the bulge bracket/big four firms' target schools, then you're not getting into the bulge bracket/big four firm, period. There are some exceptions, of course, but about 75% of those exceptions are people with contacts inside.

Yeah, sure, there are a few professions where the name of the school matters, but that's not who makes up the majority of these school's enrollment. Further, there are plenty of private schools that don't have the name recognition of Harvard, Yale, etc which are particularly bad choices.

These threads always make me greatful for living in a country where all the good schools are public and free.

There are dozens of amazing public schools in the US that aren't that expensive.

100k is cheap. That's only 25k per year for undergrad. The aforementioned Jarvard and Yale cost way more than that.

@Draug

Yeah, but the people with 100K loans going to a private school likely were *also* pay 25k/year out of pocket, so 200K+ in total.

There are lots of amazing public schools that are of just as high quality as the elite private schools. Michigan, UC Berkeley, UVA, UNC are all at the same caliber as Duke, University of Chicago and other top 20 private schools.

So you're right abge, I'm not saying private is better than public. I'm just saying the *right* private school is better than public.

@gold

Yes, of course.

@ILN ... all the deadlines are gone now, and I've done *tons* of research into the places I'm still considering. Thanks though.

@Draug ... leaving college with $100,000 of debt is not "cheap." Not one bit cheap.

But my point is 25k per year is not that extreme an amount.

Let's put it this way, I'm going to an online school where tuition is 21k per year assuming a 12 credit hour semester and 3 semesters a year. Books are another 2000 per year. This is online with professors that conduct classes from their comfy backyards part time while they run their businesses or enjoy their main stream business retirement the rest of the time.

Don't you think paying $21k+ for that stuff is outrageous?

@bo

It depends on how you look at it. Compared to a roughly equal education at a $60k+ private college, it's a great deal. Compared to other countries, it's not so great.

Honestly, though, I don't think $20k/year is bad for a good education.

Oh, I see. $21k/year for an online degree is preposterous.

Yeah, I was referring to the online degree, but still. Public school is essentially free up through high school, and most places have some funds put aside for families that need help with book costs and lunches and other asides so it really is essentially free, then all of a sudden a state school here is $24k/year. How does that logic go together?

Also, regarding private schools, they're private; let them charge what they want.

The logic is that, at one point, a HS diploma was all most people needed to be productive members of society.

Sure, private schools can charge what they want. But we shouldn't be giving students crazy loans to attend when they'll never be able to pay them back.

I don't follow your first point...

Also, if you consider that, for me at least, close to 50% of costs were room/board, my tuition/fees were only around $12k/year. Pretty good deal, if you ask me.

Posting to break the gold icon streak.

Community Colleges and State Schools are not free, but they are very cheap. Most people can afford them.

Abge, I could drive nine hours across the Canadian border and go to school for literally 20% of what it costs here in a public setting, and 5-10% of what it costs in a private setting, depending on scholarships.

And how do those two schools compare?

I'm not saying US has the cheapest colleges. That clearly isn't true. I'm saying you can go to excellent colleges in the US without breaking the bank.

Canadian schools are nowhere near as cheap for international students, fyi. They are just cheap for Canadian residents. If you live in Indiana and are not Canadian, IU is definitely cheaper than any Canadian school.

Also, in general, you shouldn't have to pay for graduate school -- in almost any field, you should be able to find a school that will fund you through grants or TA/RA jobs.

Understand the the school I attend has regular classes too. I choose online because I don't have a fixed schedule or a lifestyle that is conducive to spending two evenings every week in a classroom. I can work.out of my home office. But seriously, it's $600 per credit hour with classes being from 2 to 4 credit hours.