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Comment by seansmccullough | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry, but it was completely irresponsible for her to rack up 400k in student debt in the first place.

This. She started down one path, gave up on it to pursue another, gave up on it after getting ill and continue down the original. However this time around she thought she needed to immediately get her graduate degrees just so she could earn the "highest possible income". Stupid mistake. Let's count the ways she could have prevented this:

1. stick with the original plan of becoming a teacher. Take out minimal loans, work, pay off loans.

2. move towards a degree in law and complete the degree after her illness. Work, pay off loans.

3. get a teaching job after her illness, hold off on the graduate degree, work, pay off loans.

I have no sympathy for her. She clearly couldn't afford college (which is acceptable, that's why loans exist); however she also couldn't think to budget or plan financially for the future. She should have stuck to a single path and slowly worked forward rather than trying to do everything in as short a time as possible.

The first problem with college in America is that it assumes college students are fully-formed adults who know what careers they want to have for the rest of their lives. The second problem is that college has become the mandatory mealticket into the middle class.

Most traditional US colleges don't have students specialize until junior and senior years. There is plenty of opportunity to figure out what you want to do. In addition, many people don't use their majors in their future careers as well:

> A new survey from CareerBuilder suggests that plenty of Americans never work in the field that they prepared for in college. Among the 2,134 workers surveyed, 47 percent of college graduates did not find a first job that was related to their college major. What's more, 32 percent of college grads said that they had never worked in a field related to their majors. [0]

Also, if the student is not an adult, perhaps granting federally subsidized cheap credit is ill advised.

[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-study-shows-careers-and-coll...

I've seen studies like that before, but I've never seen it broken down at all. I'm not surprised by someone with a bachelor's in psychology never working in psychology, same for English, but I would bet that a much higher percent of teaching majors actually go on to be teachers.

I'd be willing to bet that most majors aren't clustered around a figure of 32% never working in a field related to their major. It's almost certainly a wide spread. That means it's less useful as general advice, and more an indicator that some majors prepare you for a specific career, and some majors are just used as a generic signal that you graduated college.

Yeah, it's not a study, it's a survey by CareerBuilder. My personal (anecdotal) experience would suggest that many people don't use their degree directly for their current profession. Examples of jobs for which there doesn't really exist a college major include most service jobs (sales, waiter, etc) and secretarial work. True that many working in those fields don't have a college degree, but since these are some of the most common jobs in America, a large percentage of workers in the field do have some kind of higher education. Also, let's not forget about the immigrants who's previous educational achievements aren't recognized in America (the PhD driving a cab in NY).

Depending on the state, working as a teacher requires an advance degree in education. So some people go to college to study English or science and then return to graduate school for an advanced degree in education.

The third problem is that college has become widely regarded as job-training by industry. Broadly, it means non-STEM/medicine/biz students end up underemployed in the service sector, but even narrowly within CS you get the perennial debate about students wanting their college programs to teach them software engineering, instead of fundamental theory.

How would one even measure how directly a degree is being used? Outside of pure professional degrees (medicine, law), is it just a gut feel?

My degree is Economics. I'm a project manager at a large software company. Am I using my degree? Probably not directly, but I certainly use the critical thinking skills obtained during my years in school. A bit of the math comes in handy as well.

The two largest programs at my university were English and Psychology. I guarantee very few of those graduates pursued careers in either field. But, a good psychology degree takes a fair bit of statistics with a dose of scientific method. And the English degree took critical reading and analysis.

Just as an example, from my (top tier) college engineering class, of 5 friends and I, only 2 individuals are still practicing their original major. Some went into business, law, finance and the remaining a different engineering major. I think it is very common for people to different things than their original major.

"The second problem is that college has become the mandatory mealticket into the" lower middle class. So, costs and salary's have diverged rapidly.

Worse the government compounds interest while people are in deferrals. At 8% interest the first year of collage loans cost an extra 36% in just 3 years. But, you prepay for each semester which adds even more months on top of that.

On the second problem, there is no reason you have to pick a college far from home. Go with a state university. Certainly don't go out of state and pay higher tuition.

Most state universities have been losing public funding and raising tuition. It is not hard to rack up lots of debt going in-state.

Sure but it is still cheaper than many private universities or out of state. Exception might be if you got a full scholarship to a private university.

Maybe, but I find it frustrating that many people seem to believe that in-state universities are the solution for not going deeply into debt while supporting state policies that make them more expensive. I think state-supported higher education should be an important part of the solution to this problem, but policy is headed the opposite direction in most states.

>I have no sympathy for her.

Tells more about you than about her.

It's really inexcusable. I can't believe the NYT is trying to play it off as the big, bad student loan system. Naive 18 year olds taking out giant loans is one thing, but this lady was never in that position.

"She briefly enrolled in an education Ph.D. program at Texas A&M before withdrawing, but not fast enough to avoid an additional $7,458 in loans."

Unbelievable. Makes it sound like student loans are just lurking around waiting to attack unsuspecting victims.

I'm guessing you're not sorry at all. Just blame her. It's more honest.

in order to take out federal student loans, you have to go through a big online educational program on the risks of loans, the dangers of interest, and how youll screwed if you take out too much.

I wouldn't blame the woman in the article because this program was likely before her time, but I would certainly blame anyone who takes out too much now.

I graduated with over $80k in student loans and I don't recall anything like what you're describing. I also know that if I had gone through something like that at 18, it would have made precisely zero impression on me.

At what age do you think it would make an impression?

I think there would need to be more substantial financial education over a longer period of time. I'm not sure there's any other way for someone who hasn't supported themselves to understand.

> also know that if I had gone through something like that at 18, it would have made precisely zero impression on me.

Honest question. Do you think the age of majority should be raised form 18 to some higher age? (Like 21?). I hear a lot of this sentiment when discussing student loans, and it makes me think that if one is not capable of understanding the consequences of their financial decisions at 18, then their parents should still be in charge of their life.

I lean towards thinking that a good amount of maturity comes from experience, so simply sheltering people from the world for longer will only push the age of maturity further out. There should be a more common, encouraged (not forced) mechanism where young people can learn to deal with financial problems before the consequences can ruin their life.

Having taken federal student loans when I was 18 (since repaid) I can say I have absolutely zero memory of any kind of educational program that taught me about loans. In fact, it was only after I'd finished paying them off that I learned student loans couldn't be discharged through bankruptcy. That fact wasn't relevant for me, but if life had thrown me a few more curveballs it easily could have been.

I am sorry, I wish she had made better choices and had a better outcome.

Credit and Debt always involve two parties. Student loans are a stupid instrument because there is hardly any way for the debtor to default. That is a perversion of the very idea of credit. It should be the responsibility of creditors to deal with the risk of default, not saddle people who cannot pay with debt for the rest of their lives. That's how it's supposed to work.

Also, so what if it was irresponsible? Does being irresponsible mean that you deserve all of the consequences of your actions and no further examination or thought is necessary? That's just terrible black-and-white legalism. Legalism sucks.

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