Yeah. My wife's doctorate cost $130k. She had a full ride to undergrad, as did I, so that's all the debt we got. Putting it on deferral for 12 months pushed it to $220k. So that's $100k in debt the "government" (more on that if asked) earned just by letting us get on our feet. We consolidated into an income matching program, the payments of which do not keep up with interest. By the time we hit Payment 360, at which point it all gets forgiven, our initial $130k debt will have ballooned to $2,600,000. But fuck you, we will have paid $163k. Fortunately she's in an "essential profession" which means that 360 payments gets cut to 120 payments half of which we've made. Here's the funny thing: the financial institutions we bank with consider that $2.6m income for purposes of banking. And I doubt we're the only ones. We've still got a house with renters in it up in Seattle. We refinanced from a 30 to a 15 and managed to keep the payments nearly the same - win/win. It's gonna be near-pure income right about the time my daughter starts looking for colleges. So we run some calcs to see how much 4.5 years of private school education is expected to cost when she's ready, and how much we need to set aside right now to get her there. The answer? "$2 million dollars" and "$1200 a month." Now, maybe there will be an education worth $2m in 2030. I doubt it. Even if there was, I'd be a lot more likely to buy my daughter a half-dozen Starbucks franchises and say "follow your bliss." And I can't be the only one looking at those numbers and deciding the system isn't sustainable. I think as they stop being kids they start looking around and realize just how badly they've been scammed. A 24-year-old kid living with his parents? He's startin' out. A 30-year-old kid still living with his parents and making 10% more than he made at 24? That kid's got a reason to be angry. I have a one month old, so I was recently looking at the projected price of college in 2034, and fuckin a if it won't make you choke.
nd the school thing can't continue. For one thing, Obama poked a big fucking hole in it through debt forgiveness. Some fun facts from my own life, excuse me for oversharing:
That "kid" ends up in Charlotte with a tiki torch because, why not? Not like there is any other way out, and blaming "the other" works short term until the war you start goes south and you end up in Nuremberg on the end of a rope. Anyone who has ever read a history book is having a bit of a panic when they see shit like this.That kid's got a reason to be angry.
You're not wrong. However, I'd argue he ends up with a tiki torch in Charlotte because once the Berniecrats got demobilized they got disenfranchised. The Right sure as hell knows how to recruit Nazis. If the Left had better things to do than whine about safe spaces imagine what they could do.
Having been first introduced to the concept of safe spaces on Reddit, I find myself now wondering if it was encouraged and spread by Russia.If the Left had better things to do than whine about safe spaces imagine what they could do.
Quoth the bread book: All this may please those who like the theatre, but it is not revolution. Fast forward 120+ years and we've got a proud (only somewhat sarcastically) tradition of fucking up on that score. Mocking Trump and generating tones of internal noise is way easier than actually getting shit done. Mind you, a lot of the time we don't actually know how to get shit done even when we try. Coming together with diametrically opposed views, they are forced to form arbitrary alliances in order to create majorities that can but last a day. Wrangling, calling each other reactionaries, authoritarians, and rascals, incapable of coming to an understanding on any serious measure, dragged into discussions about trifles, producing nothing better than bombastic proclamations, yet taking themselves seriously, unwitting that the real strength of the movement is in the streets.
From MSU Monday. The ubermench cowering on the right is this guy. The right recruits nazis and the left recruits people to punch nazis. I'm not sure either is really benefiting from the situation, but somewhere along the way we started getting local news stories vaguely sympathetic to the kid on the left.
This one. This is the one. This guy came to discuss eugenics and crack skulls and he's all out of eugenics. Either that or catch the early show of Cabaret. You're right - it had not occurred to me that a battle between Oregon anarchists and the Alt-right would be impressively one-sided.
The right recruits nazis and the left recruits people to punch nazis.
This is playing a role in how I'm planning for the eventuality of college. I opened a 529, and am committing myself to a few hundred dollars a month for it, which at today's projections will not be enough even if it gets a 6% return over its 18 year life (which I think is overly optimistic). The alternative is to buy into the Michigan Education Trust, which will sell you a fully paid college tuition (128 credit hours to any Michigan public university) for something like $117,000, if I remember right). At 6% interest for 18 years that's around $350,000 depending how you compound. $350,000. For a middle of the road state school. And that's supposed to represent a significant savings over the actual cost (since you're buying now). So they're projecting that in the mid 2030s a college degree from a reputable-but-not-elite state school is going to be the price of a brand new 6 series every year. Considering the number of people who could afford that, I'm calling bullshit. For example, My wife and I both make very good salaries; our mortgage is $320,000, and I would be hesitant to go any higher. We've both been working in our industries for a long time, have built a good niche for ourselves, are close to free of other debts, and we wouldn't take on half a million in debt. These kids are supposed to do that with an entry level salary? I could barely afford my rent when I was just out of college. Give me a break. The way we fund education has to change. Not because it's the morally correct thing to do (and it is certainly that), but because the alternative is full blown Idiocracy. The people should riot if nothing changes. I'm very heartened by the WV teachers' strike, and there is talk that it could possibly lead to similar action in Oklahoma. Things are already so bad that there could be collective action in OK. Let that sink in. That is why I think the Michigan Education Trust is a bad bet. There's no way we're going to continue on this trajectory, because we will have crashed into the goddam mountain long before we arrive at our destination. Fuck you, GOP. Edit: Wait, also, Fuck you, democrats.I can't be the only one looking at those numbers and deciding the system isn't sustainable.
I talked you into reading Wrangham's Catching Fire. Even more vociferously, I recommend College (Un)Bound. Useful takeaways: - the market is converging on universally accepted standards and protocols for distance learning and online instruction that will likely reduce the cost of general requirements education substantially. - the more expensive the sticker price, the likelier everyone's on scholarship. As an example, 57% of Yale students are receiving an average of $37k a year. - Unless you're a foreigner, in which case you pay full sticker price, which is why there are so many foreign students in US universities - they're underwriting your kid. - College reports are pure bullshit and brazenly manipulated. A better metric (not the best metric) for determining the quality of education at an institution is to examine the size of its endowment. The more cash they have on hand, the less beholden they are to market forces, like the "build more fitness centers" plague of the '00s that didn't improve academics one iota. A financial planner would look at a $320k mortgage at what? 4%? and a $350k college education amortizing at 3% if you're lucky and say "pay the goddamn mortgage down." In 18 years your house will likely be worth a factor of two or three more than the college education even at worst-case $350k and a HELOC for half the value kicks the shit out of a house barely paid for and a crapton of student loans. I know that I looked at 529s and all that jazz and my daughter's allergy money is going into a Coverdell. There's far too much uncertainty about the education landscape 13 years from now and the ROI on 529s has been underwhelming.