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While I agree with many of your points in principle, I think your rhetoric is a bit off. For one thing, I think it's ridiculous to even bring up Ivy League when discussing overall student debt. Ivy League's total enrollment is something like 100,000. Assuming every single freshman took a full debt load, thats 'only' 5 billion or so. The government report linked in the article states that in 2010-2011, $117B of student debt was generated. Ivy League doesn't even matter.

Furthermore, while its easy to criticize the students themselves - obviously many of them are not paragons of responsible spending, but it also kind of misses the point. For one thing it's easy to wave away and say 'many' students have shit they 'don't need', but how many really do? And how much is that really contributing. Without data, its just a gut feeling. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Because I can tell you that where I live, very few students have 42" TVs. Yes, we have smartphone and Macs, and some of us have video game consoles, but how much does this really add to our debt load? Certainly not trivial, but when you consider the average student debt is like 25k, you certainly can't say that the extra 4-6k on random gadgets is what is driving the problem. After all, if you can pay a 20k loan and avoid defaulting, you probably can also pay for a 25k load and avoid defaulting.

And finally, how does one even approach solving a systemic problem (it obviously is systemic) like this if all you do is place the blame on the actors. Clearly the problem is large enough for blame to be ladled on everyone.

A lot of private schools follow the "charge just as much as the Ivies, so you can tell employers we're just as good" model.

As a percentage of students, the Ivies are small. As trend-setters that lots of other people follow, they are very significant.

I think a big aspect of the problem is that people literally are children (or less than a year into adulthood) when social proof from their high school classmates dictates that they choose a college. As PG said in "Why Nerds are Unpopular," if he could go back and give his thirteen year old self advice, he'd tell him to realize the world around him was fake. Most students coming out of high school simply don't have the perspective to know "the big picture" like you did, nor do they know that they should be seeking that perspective. By the time they might realize this, they may already be half-way (or fully) invested in a bad decision that has significant barriers to fix.

(edit: "Nerds are Unpopular" => "Why Nerds are Unpopular")

I attended the University of Chicago, paid for it myself, and took on 100% of the debt.

I'm still paying it off, but it was worth it! My life is without question 100x better for it.

Your point is fair, though: with few exceptions student's expectations of how transformative their college education to be absolutely eclipses the reality.

Yeah, sometimes I think I might have had a better experience there, but then I think "I'd probably be more than 150k in debt" and the feeling passes. Plus I'm doing fine without having gone there. It's definitely a great school.

I can't imagine what it's like to have that debt hanging over your head. It seems like it'd only be worth it if you get hired out of school for something really amazing or with a ridiculously high starting salary.

I think the OP's characterization of the decisionmaking process that leads to crippling educational debt is somewhat unfair. It's definitely driven by the parents and children who he condemns as "clueless." But I think it's important to consider that many of these "clueless" have been told their entire lives that "education is a great investment" and "graduates of prestigious universities all become successful and rich," and have never really been confronted with any reason to question these pronouncements, which have appeared consistent with their own observations and experiences. Colleges and universities don't hesitate to trot out these tropes in their recruitment literature, though I suppose it's a mark of the "clueless" that they hold educational institutions to a different standard of credibility than used car salesmen or carnival barkers.

I see a parallel to the recent mortgage crisis. Sure, fundamentally, the crisis was just huge numbers of people defaulting en-masse on their mortgages. They all made "clueless" decisions by taking on more mortgage debt than they could handle. Maybe they deserve what they get, and maybe the appropriate response is to be angry at these entitled whiners who made worse decisions than the OP. But these decisions were facilitated by lenders and securities brokers who were acting in less than good faith.

I'm inclined to view both the homeowners in the mortgage crisis and the students and families struggling with education debt right now more as victims of poor information availability and outmoded decision heuristics that fell behind the times, and less as entitled whiners.

I guess I should note that I also went to the University of Chicago (hi Jesse) and it's fairly clear by now that it was a terrible choice for me. So maybe I'm just grasping for rationalizations while desperately fleeing from the crushing psychological weight of the responsibility for that choice and the long and uninterrupted sequence of related bad choices that have more or less ruined my life.

Can't really tell if the last line is sarcasm for sure (I think it is?).

I can't stand when people are taught to listen instead of think, and that predilection of mine is why I can't see the sub-prime mortgage crisis as being at all similar to college debt.

Someone who is going to college is supposed to be bright, intelligent, and motivated. A budding critical thinker who can deal with new and complex ideas. Hence I don't think someone who makes decisions based on what they're told is a good candidate for college. Likewise I don't think someone who is focused on the past success of others is exactly an ideal college candidate, either. Both of these things are ostensibly why there are large essay sections as part of the college application process.

In any case, I think it's kind of disingenuous and silly to have the same expectations of someone without a high school degree and three kids working 60 hours a week getting pitched on a bad loan and a top end of the spectrum student getting pitched on colleges. You can't have the same expectations.

That said, I think you hit the nail on the head when comparing modern college recruitment practices to used car salesmen. In fact, visiting MIT (academic activity related) remains one of the most disillusioning experiences of my life. Sure, science goes on there, but I felt like I was inside of an infomercial.

If anything perhaps both are a sign that K-12 needs to have more coverage of financial- and media- literacy.

But I guess I've regarded the success of graduates of Ivy Leagues and other prestigious schools as having more to do with being part of the good old boys club and networking with the wealthy than actually having anything to do with having good teachers.

No sarcasm; just a lot of regret and self-loathing.

It seems like the root of our disagreement is our differeing expectations for the cognitive and decisionmaking abilities of teenagers. As other posters have mentioned, there are lots of social factors at play in the college decision, and I think those factors can be far more powerful than what's necessary to lead a straight-A high school student astray.

If we pared away all of the people who were susceptible to making bad decisions based on what they're told or who are focused on the past successes of others, only the tiniest sliver of the population would remain as viable candidates for college. Maybe this is the point you're making - maybe you think we should shut down almost every university and tell everyone outside the enlightened sliver to go figure out something else to do. (Might actually not be that bad of an idea.) Or maybe you have a different view of people's cognitive abilities at age 17.

The approach that you personally took toward your college decision is, I think, pretty exceptional, and puts you toward the top of the top 1% of rational 17-year-old decisionmakers. I hesitate to condemn people as clueless and undeserving of our sympathy because they fall short of that lofty standard.

I'm not really sure what point I'm making.

I agree there are large structural flaws with college (well, pretty much the whole educational system). Good teachers and good researchers aren't the same thing for sure. Likewise, many amenities at college today are not really necessary, but also likely don't have a anywhere near an order of magnitude impact on costs. At some schools healthy food is often replaced by junk food provided through restaurant contractors, which is not so great, but maybe is a little cheaper. I agree that something needs to change with how college works, and that the costs are getting a bit silly when they're almost at the point that you could get together with a class of friends and hire expert personal tutors instead.

Likewise, I definitely think that many people who feel they need to go to college are people who shouldn't go to college, or who at least aren't ready for it. Witness the huge numbers of remedial courses at many public institutions, as well as decreasing standards in many courses. I sometimes take classes at the local community college for fun and I'll have classmates who can barely read and write using student loans to fail their courses. Sadly enough, I've seen some of the same at 4 year schools. It's just depressing and I often wonder how they even got through High School. (And I'm not talking about non-English speakers or anything, either. Upper or upper-middle class Caucasians who have maybe 5th or 6th grade level language skills.)

Of course some people just eat McDonald's and play WoW instead of going to class while living off loans. I had a room mate one year in the dorms who did that.

I'm sure you're right that social pressure is a lot of it. Dad goes to college, assumes the kids will too, then doesn't much pay attention while they do rather mediocre in school, aren't ready for college, but absolutely feel like they've got to. So on and so forth.

I can't accept the notion that social pressure is really a valid excuse, though, even if it's behind the reality for some of the problems.

But I'm the kind of cruel bastard who hates it when people worry about what everyone else thinks and who if ever has kids will move several times on purpose and keep them from watching TV and hopefully raise them so that they can trust themselves instead of their peers with lots of comments like 'well, if Freddy jumped off a cliff would you?.'

I've also got to think another part of it is the notion that the credential is meaningful, but doesn't represent any skill or knowledge. So many people these days think of the paper first, the socialization second, and learning third.

I'm sure there's something, too, with the excessive helicopter parenting keeping even smart 17/18-year-olds from really thinking for themselves.

I guess I'm just not super sympathetic about things that irritate me, and my experiences have rarely exposed me to the sympathetic side.

One thing I just thought about is ROTC. Better than debt, I guess? The people I knew in it were definitely on the straight and narrow and all set to finish with decent grades and no debt.

Hi lrs! Do we know each other?

It sucks that Chicago was such a negative and destructive experience for you. I knew plenty of people who hated, hated, hated their time there.

It has strong ideas about what an education should be that I happen to agree with, so I was happy as a fish in water there.

I mostly have a problem with the people for whom it CLEARLY was a bad decision and they continually try to insist that it was a good one when it clearly did not work out at all for them. Such unwillingness to think rationally about poor decisions only makes it all the more easy for these ridiculous tuition hikes and loan schemes to continue.

The reasonable people (like you seem to be) who have their regrets along with their debts have my sympathy. I hope that things manage to improve for you someday. :(

It used to be transformative because the student would spend several years living like a poor student.

But schools have seen that their customers hardly respond to price, while they do respond to amenities. Everything follows from that.

Well said.

Mostly, I see student debt as a glaring indicator that the system as a whole has some serious problems. I don't like to place blame on who is responsible.

But, it can't be denied that student and family responsibility is a factor in the massive student debt problem.

But keep in mind there are external pressures on families and students as well. Schools will sell students very hard. Peers. Our entire culture. When your president gets on air and says "We are dedicated to sending every kid to college", that's a very strong cultural message.

I commend you for making wise decisions when you went to school, though.