Because their parents are in debt and don’t see anything wrong with it as long as they can pay the minimum payment on it.

But seriously, I don’t get why more parents aren’t instilling fear and shame in taking on debt when kids are young. Pay with cash, talk about the impact of high credit card rates and runaway debt – educate your kids.

To be honest, a good, thorough grounding in Nordic Literature sounds good to me, but that’s probably because I just paid off my mortgage and quit my job. When did we confuse ‘education’ with ‘jumping through hoops in order to be more thoroughly tied to the wage-slavery pseudo-ideal we no longer have the time to out-think’?

Let’s face it, people, most jobs — even the ‘good’ ones — we wouldn’t want to do if we weren’t chained there by debt. Then having to get a ‘degree’ to even get there…. aaaah, have we been MUGS, or what???

Are you saying students would show up if they cared? Or that they wouldn’t show up?

After a lot of agonizing, my children went to state schools that offered full scholarships. Honestly, all the agony was on my part. They cared not a whit.

What this does is create a lot of people with superflous “edutainment” in whatever degrees were easier / more fun / cheaper – because it apperently doesn’t matter what your BA is in!

Denmark is awash in people with a BA in nordic literature and a master in danish or some other marginally useful combination. And what do they do then?
(After spending 5-7 years edutaining themselves?)

A few of them actually teach their subject.
(Which is great!)

The rest get a average paid whitecollar paper-pushing, meeting-room, handholding, guitarplaying job, typically in the goverment where they will be eternally shielded from reality.

Great. Sort of. If it in any way helps our country that the “invest” their working life thusly, I admit freely I fail to understand how.

Yeah, personal handgrenades… …they aren’t intrinsically killers, but having used a few myself (training) I’m fairly convinced they could do the job. (Hell of a blast!)

A handgrenade is a tool, just as debt is and both are equally dangerous for the user if used incorrectly. Once you fuck up, a chain of events unfold outside of your control – harming you.

Good point about supply and demand for loans – if fewer people wanted debt, rates would be better for people with debt and worse for the banks/investors.

Certainly, we can outsource, tax and stimulate our way back to properity. Hey China, float your currency – perhaps we can float our way back to prosperity as well.

Anyways, I wanted to see if you’ve seen the short film “Money as Debt.” (You can find it on Google Video). The argument they make is that because we are not on the gold standard anymore, banks literally create money and that money = debt. So, if there was no debt, there would be no money.

Have you seen it? I’d be interested in your comments on it. I could follow it half way but will need to watch it again to understand it better.

While you are more credit conservative than the average American, you may be less so than the average pf blogger dave ramsey fanatics. Most “normal” pf bloggers agree consumer debt is bad and should always be avoided, including car loans. Most think you should buy a responsibly sized house (if you want a house at all), and most encourage evaluating those student loans to determine if they are worth it (trouble is, few 18 year olds are wise enough to do so).

But the average american thinks car loans are a given, student loans are always a good idea, and you should buy the biggest house you can afford.

The library will not give you a degree when you are done, and most people aren’t disciplined enough to get a college education from one. But I do agree with the general thought that paying $40k a year for a low paying degree is a “luxury” that should be reserved for those with wealth they want to waste. Instead, everyone can have it (by borrowing) and by the time they realize it was a horrid idea, it’s too late.

I think that’s sufficient answer for most people who aren’t necessarily driven/skilled enough to do “great” things. So many white collar jobs require that BA/BS just to pass through the HR sieve.

That being said, the smart approach would be to get the basic courses at a community college (~$3000/yr at one near me), then finish the final two years at a less expensive state/commuter school.

The stigma towards the skilled trades industry doesn’t help either. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that *everyone* needs to have a college degree to be useful. Thus a dearth of skilled tradesmen and an excess of debt-ridden dropouts…

Although that knock on soda cut me deeply.

Part of me wants to help yet on my previous blog and other interactions with people at work, I find many of the comments and attitudes focused on justification for a lifestyle, entitlement for things and a focus on living for today. As such, it is hard to feel sympathy given the many bad choices and decisions.

The worst advice I was given by a person was the following “You will always have a car and house payment” which is part of the debt culture and one for which I am glad I am not a part.

And on the topic of college, I dropped out many years ago when I got married.

The idea was that I would work full time while my husband got his degree, and then he would work full time while I got my degree.

Although I attended some classes in the evening, I never went back to college full time. When my husband finished his degree, I had a fairly decent job working in the public relations department for a nonprofit organization where I produced various publications.

The two previous predecessors in my job both had master’s degrees in journalism. If I had gone back to school, it would have taken me two years to get a bachelor’s degree in journalism plus another year or two to get a master’s degree. That would have cost a tremendous amount for tuition plus three or four years of lost wages. And then when I got out, I may well have ended up with a job that payed the same as the job I had before re-entering school.

So, economically, it never made sense for me to get a degree.

(My husband eventually ended up with three degrees, so I like to say that we ended up with an average of 1.5 degrees per person.)

And, for what it’s worth, my husband and I later founded our own business and managed to retire when we were both 49. (Jacob, not nearly as good as your being able to retire at a much earlier age.)

Yeah, just try getting a decent job without a degree, whether or not you actually need any of the knowledge you would have acquired in college in order to perform the job. Nowadays to get a middle-class-wage-paying job, you have to have that degree to even get potential employers to read your resume. I don’t know about your field, but this is certainly true in mine.

For the record, the reason I went to college was to shut my parents up. My whole life they told me “you’re smart, so you’re going to college, and we’re not going to pay for it”. So even though I didn’t want to go to college, I did, to shut them up. I got a full scholarship, but I got tired of it and dropped out. I couldn’t find a job making more than $10/hr until I borrowed some money and paid for some certifications. Now I’m 27 and finally have a job that allows me to not live from paycheck to paycheck, and I’m working on getting a degree, which is required if I ever want to qualify for a promotion.