College, Loans, And Reality

 h/t McThag

Angus has some oft-repeated thoughts on the college loan debacle. Give it a gander. Our reply was far too long to post there, so we post it here:

I think you're yelling at the wall. And you should probably let it go. And this is me talking. Just saying.

You learned a hard truth, and you got screwed over hard in the process. But your story is not every kid on the hook for $100-200K, who thought majoring in kick boxing or Vogon poetry at night school at Wossamotta U. would get them first dibs in interviews for Harvard Law, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street.

Last I looked, Congress took over student loans, mainly as a boon to leftist colleges and universities, during Obama's first term, with a Democrat congress.

Nobody's parents voted for it, and neither they nor students sure as hell didn't ask for college tuition to skyrocket 500%, which it's done continually after Uncle Fed took over the whole thing.

(The list of things that didn't turn to shit 5 seconds after the feds got involved could be written with a Fat Sharpie inside a thimble. But you know that already, because you've got VA health care.)

This is the mortgage crisis all over again, except with college tuition.

Let it crash.

Stop trying to float a lead balloon.

Colleges will take a dive. Good.

Idiots who majored in stupid majors will eat a fat one too. Boo frickin' hoo.

TANSTAAFL applies, in spades.

I got the degree I have now as an adult, for pennies, from the local JC.

The same programs are available now, and with five times as many slots.

I only delayed that because I hadn't figured out what to be when I grew up earlier in life, and because despite having other choices, I decided to sign up to potentially kill people for Uncle when I could have ridden the wave from college into corporate America. I don't regret either choice. The one college loan I ever took out I got deferred, first while serving in the Corps, and then being a full-time student.

I paid it off after that with a minimum wage job in about two years.

I could have paid it off in 8 months while I was still in the Corps, years before it was due, but I didn't have to, so I didn't.

But anyone, any time, anywhere, who can't figure out that taking out $200K in loans for a job that pays a quarter of that per year is too stupid to go to college to begin with.

Is that predatory? Hell yes it is.

Let the whole silly-assed program die, and let the banks and the universities take it in the keester.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of loan sharks.

And as you mentioned a couple of posts later, apprenticeships in the trades are begging for candidates.

So don't give away squat.

Let the smart and hardworking kids who got worthless degrees go learn plumbing or welding on their own hook, and pay their own damned loans back themselves, with no further assistance. Like the smart ones will.

The lazy millennials who thought they were going to get a Ph.D. in Victim Studies and get rich, and are waiting at Starbuck's until that tenured professorship opens up?

Fuck them, sideways, with a rusty chainsaw.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Caterpillar trains people to repair heavy equipment every year, and the salary two years after graduation is well into six figures.

And they haven't filled all the training slots once in any year in the last 30 years.

(That's an example straight out of Mike Rowe's message, btw.)

Because it's hard, and dirty w-o-r-k, and you have to go where people are using heavy equipment to build things, which is generally hundreds of miles from Hipsterville, and with lousy internet. Boo frickin' hoo.

The government fucked up something it touched? And they lied to people?

Stop the presses.

I see 50 "Help Wanted" signs every day.

The only kids I see taking entry-level slots at McDonald's and Burger King are Asian kids, working their way through college. I can count the hispanic and black kids I see in those jobs on my thumbs.

What I never see are "French Poetry and Victim Studies majors needed" signs.

That hasn't been news to anyone paying attention since...ever, AFAIK.

OTOH, the friend I went to school with, who got kickedTF out of high school in our junior year the day after they found out he signed up for the GED test?

He both entered and graduated college a year ahead of any of us with a degree in electrical/electronic engineering from the local JC and State U., at 1/10th the price of private tuition-based schools, went to work for Texas Instruments, and he's retired years early, after making senior VP. After getting rich over decades of hard work.

I'm pretty sure he never voted to have Uncle Sugar hand out fat college loans to every swinging dick who thought they could be president of Warner Brothers or Activision at 23, or sign with the Celtics or the Cowboys in the first round.

And the total college loan takeover? That kicked in in the 2010, and the kids who signed up for that - as legal adults - were almost completely Millennials*. And that's exactly who's crying about their current situation now. Color me shocked.

The Boomers and even Gen Xers had graduated long before that happened.

People who owe money and aren't lazy, stupid, or both, will ultimately pay it off.

Those who won't are neither bright, nor industrious.

That's just how it is, no matter how big the pitfall that was set before them.

Dean Wormer's advice to Flounder is timeless.

*(That's before we get into the ocean of difference between Boomers from 1946 versus 1964. Generalizations on arbitrary "generations" are ultimately specious. I have more in common with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or Tom Selleck - not a one of whom is a "Boomer" btw, than I do with most of those who are. The only thing kids in a given generation share across the board is similar birthdates, in 20-year swaths. Like you'd expect.)