I think where my thoughts come from is that when I see a figure like $8,900 I am seeing the people in my life who have no idea what they're doing. Not people who have it rough from the start necessarily but also not people who have it crazy easy. Just "middle class" people who's parents where never able to save for their education. Those people also don't get grants so they either have to put off going to school or get in debt. What I see is how incredibly easy it is to get $10 000 in debt as a 20 year old. Whether that's by signing up for a program you don't actually care about just because it's what you are supposed to do or moving out with the wrong people. I remember my friend graduated from engineering debt free because he saved from when he started working in high school. I worked the same job as him, with similar hours and had nothing to show for it. Literally nothing and I'm the norm not him. I still don't understand it because it's not like he was a recluse. He had a car, he went out drinking, he built computers ( I don't think that's cheap), he just lived life generally and still managed this. I can't figure out how he did it and I don't think anybody I know could either. When I look at most of my friends though, they took on debt to go to a program and now they can't even use it. It's really easy to just say screw it to paying it off in that situation because you don't actually gain anything obvious from doing it. They got stuck with bad roommates or were the bad roommates. It's so easy for a young person to just move in with their friends because why not ? Then they get stuck with all this money to pay when someone can't and all of a sudden it just gets out of control. Especially when now this person finally finished school and wants to get on with their life. Maybe they met somebody and they want to have kids so they think screw all that debt it doesn't really matter. It was money they had to spend year ago for one stupid roommate which they put behind them. People don't want to put off their lives to pay off the debt so they just don't pay it. In fairness, this is an article about students in America so my experience is likely less realistic and I should have known that going in. There are tons of grants for students for low income families in Ontario and our federal government introduced plans to make it so that until a person is making $25 000/year they don't have to make a payment. Interest won't accumulate over that time either ( well it does but the government pays it ). I am the poor person spending money on entertainment and booze. :) I don't even blame the people who find themselves in this situation, most of them where my friends who where just doing what they thought they were supposed to do and now years down the road are pissed off about having to pay this money back. Edit: I'm also pretty sure he didn't deal drugs before anybody says that.
This is an interesting concept for me... I know this has become a bit of an expectation, or a norm - but I've never understood it. Why is it my parents' responsibility to pay for my education? And now that I have a teenager - why is it my responsibility to pay for his? Of all of the contributing factors to the cost of education... I think this is one. Why WOULDN'T a school charge more when they know Johnny's parents are paying instead of Johnny himself? I don't know... I'm weird about this topic... if a kid (I shouldn't' call him/her a kid...) - if a young adult wants more out of life than minimum wage, then he/she should get some valuable training. Take a forklift operator certification class. Become a plumbers apprentice. Shoot - my wife hated Uni. When she finished her Associates degree, she bailed and went to Medical Assistant school. She made a great career of that for a few years. You wanna be a tenured Anthropology professor at a quaint little liberal arts university? Heaven help you - it's gonna cost you, and you're gonna get paid peanuts.Just "middle class" people who's parents where never able to save for their education.
I'm not really sure what came first, the expectation that parents help out or the high price. My parents have helped out how they could but none of us actually went to University. That always makes things substantially less expensive and I don't know how much they would want to help out if they didn't think the programs would pay off either. I feel like that would result in a lengthy wtf is your actual plan discussion. I don't really know anybody who could completely finance their childs education. I still made minimum wage when I drove a forklift :( but I agree with your general sentiment because these things are really valuable. I could have got my certificate and worked somewhere that paid more but I wasn't in to that. I have a few friends who ended up as plumbers or ironworkers which are really smart careers. Most parents I know want to help because they know it will put their kids on the right track so they won't have to help out much later in life. Granted that backfires sometimes and a lot of people just really can't help. I think all in all parents are more likely to either help or want to help if they know the program will get their child somewhere.
What you're describing sounds a lot like for profit colleges, like Devry or Phoenix. I wonder if for profit colleges are a thing in Canada. Here, in the States, they are. They're a big problem too, they're one of those kinds of companies that profit off the poor. Basically, they convince the poor, minorities, and former servicemen into going their schools, promising cheap and easy education. They're extremely aggressive in recruiting and they often go after people who can get loans for school easily due to their social status, but don't know any better to use their loans for trade schools or community colleges. The degrees they give you are worthless, because they have a reputation for teaching crummy classes. What's worse, most of their credits don't transfer to real schools. When you combine for profit colleges with smaller colleges who often lose accreditation, a lot of people are left high and dry with debt. I wonder if living with a lower income is easier in Canada too, thanks to your social health care and probably cheaper rent and such. I'd actually love to see a comparison of Canada's food welfare programs versus programs like Foodstamps and WIC here in the States. God knows you probably do have better health care, even with waiting lists. Hell, I don't live in Canada and even I had to wait a month and a half to see a doctor more times than I like to admit. It sucks. The least they could have done was make it free.
We have thing called career colleges which I think are very similar and receive similar complaints about crummy classes. A friend of mine went to a college in my city which had a really good Massage Therapy program with these two girls who had transferred from one of these colleges ( I think it was Everest) and they were so behind they pretty much had to restart. I can't imagine how pissed off I would be paying off the debt from that school. Even reputable colleges however have programs which don't really benefit the student as I'm sure any school does but people do it since they think they should. Which is a really crummy way to go about things. My only friend who really has his life together joined the military, and from constantly looking at people struggle I'm determined to just pay it off as quickly as possible. For me to achieve that I tell myself it's a small amount and life will be so darn grand after I'm done. If I told myself it was a huge amount then I wouldn't see how I was able to pay it off and I would just give up. It's like I get you aren't supposed to have everything figured out at 20 but I really wish they didn't make it so easy to fuck everything up at that age. I'm getting that impression ! I mean I got lucky in a lot of ways, my first job as a part time cashier gave me 100% prescription drug coverage so on top of not having to worry about doctors visits I also didn't worry about prescriptions. On top of that I got 10% off groceries which might seem small to start but it's not. I kept that job through college because on top of that I was guaranteed a certain number of hours for being there for a long time. After that I worked in a bar and I am fully aware I got that job because of looks/body. OH and also server wage in Ontario is higher than some minimum wages I've seen in the states. I could have easily stuck with that and done quite well for myself but I wanted to travel for work a bit. The local doctors office that most of my family goes to is amazing too, I don't know how they swing it but they have a counselor you can see for free. The wait list can be like 3 week long but as you point out you've waited longer to see a doctor that you paid for. So ya I got lucky in a quite a few things. Obviously not everybody around me has that stuff though, and they still seemingly have it better. Everybody complains about the buses but they are actually really good. I'm not saying it's easy to get everywhere or particularly safe but the buses are there. Actually they started a new thing in my city where after a certain time you can ask the bus driver to let you off at a certain spot along the route that's safer for you. I've had to add 30 minutes to my trips because I didn't feel safe at the stop I should have got off at and I've also had to walk 30 minutes to the main bus since one bus didn't run early enough but all in all it's pretty good. I don't know much about our social programs in comparison but I know they are pretty good. I also know we have things that don't exist in the states like the child care benefit. For people who live in rural communities that aren't near major cities it kind of sucks because they don't have as many opportunities to get ahead. As far as thing like rent and utilities go that varies a lot depending on which province you are in which I imagine is similar to the states. Even then though you can generally live in a crappy neighborhood without actually worrying that much about violence. I mean I lived in those neighborhoods, and sure one of my friends got stabbed but it's not like that's the norm. On a long enough timeline somebody is going to get stabbed everywhere. So we technically have "bad" neighborhoods but I wouldn't compare them to ones in the states. Other than first nations reserves that is, and that is a whole complex problem. I wonder if living with a lower income is easier in Canada
Holy shit, yeah, Everest is one of those for profit colleges. It's absolutely insane to think that these places actually exist. A lot of my old friends are in the military. They either never went to college and ended up joining the military almost right away, or they went to college, dropped the idea for one reason or another, and joined the military as a backup. For a lot of people, there's a lot of appeal to becoming a serviceman. Garunteed pay, decent benefits while you're active and after (kind of, the VA is actually pretty fucked up), a promotional structure, on the job training, etc. The only downside is, a few of them have decided that career military is not the way for them to go, so when their time of service is up, they don't re-up. Now they're almost back where they started, because despite what military recruiters tell you, on the job military training doesn't always translate to marketable skills in the civilian world. As for poor neighborhoods, while the actual risk of being a victim of a crime is statistically higher, sometimes people blow it a little out of proportion. However, whether or not you actually ever get stabbed or mugged or burgled is a bit of a moot point. The environment alone can be draining. When you're not home, you're worried about your possessions at home and whether or not they're safe. When the neighbors down the way are being loud as fuck for a place that already has thin walls, up until 3 o'clock in the morning, the loss of sleep has a very real impact on your mood and ability to be productive. When the pipes in your apartment building freeze and burst and your landlord takes a week to fix them because he doesn't give a fuck about the law, there goes your ability to shower and make yourself coffee. On and on it goes. Not only that, but I sometimes think that the actual worry of being harmed is more damaging than actually being harmed. It can be really difficult. We've both been very lucky and I think the majority of the people on Hubski feel the exact same way. In comparison to what's going on in a lot of the world, we have it pretty alright. You gotta give yourself credit though, cause luck is only the half of it. You're also smart and it sounds like you're hard working as well. You've made some good, well thought out decisions to get you where you are in life right now and if you keep making good decisions, you'll probably turn out a little "luckier" every year. You got a lot to be proud of. :)I mean I got lucky in a lot of ways.
They really are the worst, they prey on people and make them think that going to their crappy school will result in actually getting something. The thing is to in my city we have a really good college that offers the same programs but obviously better which makes it even harder to find something after the fact. Like not only does your diploma pretty much suck but you have to compete against people who went to the good college for jobs. It's just not going to happen. Something interesting I found yesterday was 54% of borrowers said that if they could do it over they may have made different college choices. It would be interesting to find out how many of those students went to these for profit colleges.
It seemed low when I look at my friend but really there was a bunch of people who did pretty good. I just don't talk to those people. A couple of my friends have more or less accepted it and made peace with things too. My friend and I actually had a conversation the other day in which she was saying that although she knows she could have been in less debt she doesn't regret it. So I don't think people like her would say they would do things over even though it didn't pay off in an obvious way. Like I moved across the country and after the first night woke up with bugs crawling on me. Most people would regret that, and at first I did but in the end I wouldn't actually change anything. They even came back just before moving to fuck with me but I still wouldn't have changed things. I'm hoping, I mean the conversation has really shifted in the past years. Going to community college and then university is seen as a good option more as well and people are just starting to look at it differently in my experience. It's helpful to talk about how insane the cost is overall but that just doesn't help the people who want to go to school now and get on with their lives. It helps the next generation which is awesome but this one needs solutions too.