Student loan debt passed credit card debt in 2010, will top $1 TRILLION in 2011

Part of the problem with running universities likes businesses comes from precisely the issue noted above - lowered standards. More students means more money, so the goal is to attract any student who can afford the tuition and this, necessarily, means letting dumber and dumber students in.

The side effect of this arrangement, for those of us who already have degrees, is that our degrees are increasingly worth LESS on the job market.

The main source of the problem arises from administrators who try to run universities likes businesses - the second part of the problem is preferring money to reputation. The only real requirement for most universities now is that you can afford to pay the tuition and fees - this, of course, leads to a bunch of middle-class dumbasses who get the same degrees that smart people have just because their dumbass-breeding parents can afford to pay the cost.

It's not really fair to those of us who HAD to test in, and who HAD to take out loans just to afford our books.

 

There is good chunk of harvard law school students who don't have jobs. you have students going to ivy league schools who have no jobs. I know a few people in this situation. we clown on devry but there are bigger problems here.

 

Thats because law is one of the most over saturated fields out there, was like this before the recession. Hope he wasn't lured in by the rosy picture of the job market painted by the university, despite the opposite being true. I think thats another major problem with colleges today, giving an unrealistic to downright lies about the job market for certain fields. Just google the job market for lawyers and you'll find all sorts of sources saying how over saturated the field is, but I bet you not one university is telling their current and prospective students how dismal the field is.

 

So I guess Pacino said it best in The Devil's Advocate:

Did you know there are more students in law school than lawyers walking the Earth.

 

I'm somewhere b/n 10,000-15,000 in loan debt through almost 4 years at UH
And now, there's a lot of layoffs in schools which worries me since I'm majoring in Education to become a math teacher...kinda scared I won't have as many job opportunities as I originally thought I was before I decided to get into Education.

 

Truth be told - if you weren't born wealthy, then you're probably getting ****ed right now.

 

There are only two situations where law school is sensible:

1. Full price at Harvard/Yale/Stanford
2. Substantial scholarship to a school ranked 4-14

In other words, 95%+ of law students are complete morons who did not perform proper diligence when buying a piece of paper that costs as much as a starter mcmansion. On one hand they deserve what they get for dropping $150k without running a five minute google search. On the other hand, the kind of misrepresentations law schools make with their employment statistics would result in felony prosecution if made with regards to securities.

 

I seem to meet a lot of dumb people who are going to law school. It just seems like the "thing to do" instead of getting a job.

 

Define wealthy. Most people I know are doing just fine.

 

have you ever thought of...you know, people who actually like law?

I understand the people who enroll in any joe-schmo law school because they believe that they are automatically going to be paid big bucks upon graduation, but there are a bunch of people who are actually interested in working as a lawyer.

 

I am going to go ahead and call BS on this.

 

why???

 

This thread is probably headed to the D&D soon, but here's my answer from thadeus's, Why do non-wealthy people in the 'free market'?:

"those in the top 0.05% who actively work in Congress and the media to keep the status quo of extreme wealth and income disparity"

"For me, the superficial definition of wealthy (different from 'success') off the top of my head: invested assets of at least $1 million with an income of ~$500k, zero debt, etc."

The-most-people-I-know-are doing-fine comment is anecdotal. The US economy, demographics are ideas beyond the scope of your biological capacity (I studied this in evolutionary psych), and human beings have a tendency to be myopic and think the world displays different qualities than it actually is.

To counter this, one needs to use statistics: large amounts of data to analyze based on ideas like historical trends of income and wealth inequality in post-Industrial Revolution economies, and how this affects government policy, revolutions, etc.

An analogy of our situation would be a very large bowl that's slowly collapsing on itself and this bowl has been slowly spiraling down gradually since the late 1970s. It represents America's short-term developments and its historical and long-term trajectory as a society/empire. This was from a sociological theory class that used multivariate statistics, which I'll elaborate on in a future thread in the D&D. Simply put: things are worse for most Americans

 

about 200K for dental school and that's without any undergrad loans (4 years at a university) to include.


SMH

 

No, it's uncommon, but there are quite a few like me who love our work (in different ways). It's why I'm still at the office right now.

You cannot do this for many years passionless without having some sort of a breakdown or being a shell of the person you can be because the supposedly great income blinds you to other possibilities out there. I just lurk this site throughout the day by keeping it open in a tab or on my phone, and it lets me stay sane yet cognizant of what other people outside my world are doing - stuff I wouldn't learn only reading the WSJ or Reuters.

I agree with some of your comments. Too many people in law school and recent hires would've been happier and better workers doing something else. However, some of the unhappy lawyers are simply focusing on the wrong area of law. Like doctors, lawyers can have countless specializations. Herd mentality leads many of them to work on transaction or litigation only when they might be IP or immigration people at heart.

But, I will concede that in spite of my efforts to balance work with life, it does get tiring. On top of that, the area of law I practice forces me to work with scumbags in Texas and Washington. My body and moral compass can only hold out so long, which is why I'll move to a smaller, relaxed field and firm after some years.

 

I feel for you, man. Most districts in Texas are on an indefinite hiring freeze, especially for new teachers. I'm not sure what this year's graduates are going to do. There are literally zero jobs out there for the next school year.

 

I have $800 in credit card debt, and $45,000 in student loan debt... Yeah...

 

I agree tuition in the States are way too high. In Canada, most school charges from 8k to 11k for 2 terms(which is a year for most student). Of course most of the schools are public institutes.

 

wasn't it discussed in another thread how the university of phoenix and devry type degrees are ignored by most employers.

 

Does that include room and board, books, etc.? If not, that doesn't really seem any better than what I am used to seeing.