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Anecdotally I think the idea that a lot of "career" grad students get into bad debt because they come from upper crust backgrounds or want to keep up with peers is pretty valid. A little E/N but here goes: Around 7-8 years ago I dated a PhD candidate for a long while who admitted to me before we broke up that between student loans and other debt she was probably $115,000 in the hole. I know, "Pshew!" Right?  The worst part? Like only $35-40k of that was student debt, since she had a full scholarship for undergrad. The rest was store cards (Saks, Macys etc.), credit cards, auto loan etc. On a $1100 a month stipend. She always claimed she was handling everything herself but I always suspected her mom and dad (who weren't rich at all) were helping her out. They had to have been. I think it stemmed from the fact that she had a lot of super-wealthy friends from her undergrad days who she wanted to keep up with. I was dragged to a couple of their weddings which were borderline ridiculous in their extravagance. She was always complaining about money and how her friends would say they felt sorry for her because she was so poor. Rather than skipping that bachelorette weekend in Napa or wherever because she was broke, she'd just go anyway and charge it. Her rationalization was always "But my credit is really good!!" I honestly felt bad for her when she'd go on these trips and feel like a fifth wheel because she couldn't afford most of the excursions/tasting rooms/spas/whatever they were going to. When I saw the movie Bridesmaids I wanted to call her and tell her she should sue Kristen Wiig because she ripped her off.
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Jul 12, 2013 20:45
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gvibes posted:I don't understand how people of moderate income levels can afford all the stupid destination bachelor/bachelorette parties people go on. If you are bad with money and can't resist peer pressure, the worst situation I can think of is to have a group of fancy-pants friends who do these types of things. The first one who gets married will do something expensive, then all of the rest of the group has to follow suit so they don't look bad. And of course everyone has to go to everyone else's stupid destination wedding/bachelorette. Otherwise people might talk you know. It's a cycle. (or a spiral) I used to work with a guy who was going through it. He and his wife both got their MBAs at a top-5 school, but took out loans to do it. (They met in school) They were both so drat broke due to renting in a top neighborhood, student loans, car leases and otherwise keeping up with their peers they couldn't afford childcare for their baby. They had to leave him with his wife's parents who lived 50 miles away for 4 days a week. He basically only saw his kid Thursday night through Sunday night so he and his wife could drive nice cars, have the right zip code and pretend to be wealthy. Last time I talked to him they were getting ready to go up to Bar Harbour so his wife could be a bridesmaid (one of 8) in some ridiculous wedding. They're only 30 so I'm sure they have plenty of these things left to go to. What the gently caress.
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Jul 12, 2013 21:39
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systran posted:Obviously it would be cool if there were another path where you could opt out of the "get a degree, get a job" fallacy and instead just start learning a practical skill late in high school. There is more or less no push for this; most students think they need to go get a degree no matter what it takes unless they want to work minimum wage forever. Outside of shop class most high schools have nothing like what you mention here and most schools have dropped shop altogether. Some school systems have a few technical classes seniors can take something but they all seem to be geared towards IT stuff. I would have loved it if my senior year I could have learned about HVAC or land surveying or something but it was all about COLLEGE!!! In hindsight I'm generally glad I did what I did but I would hate to be a recent graduate. It seems like in the US the idea is for community colleges to more or less exclusively fill this role. Problem is you still have to pay for community college and although it isn't as much as normal undergrad would be- it's still expensive for someone who is probably only qualified for entry retail or McJob. Another problem is that not all community colleges are the same; some are just feeders for nearby universities and have very few vocational classes. So if you figured out that there was a dearth of HVAC techs in your area and wanted to go to school for it for a few semesters, you may end up SOL anyway. Then of course, if you were a HS student in the US anytime in the last say, 25 years, "MUST GO TO COLLEGE AND GET DEGREE" has been drilled into your head so much that even thinking of doing otherwise is practically heresy. Haifisch posted:It doesn't help that every adult they know is likely still pushing the "getting a degree=job, not getting a degree=work at mcdonald's forever, learning a trade is for the dumb kids who never really amount to anything" fallacy. I graduated high school the same year the bottom fell out of the economy, and there wasn't really much talk about how you really got a job after school, just a nebulous command to go to college or else you'll never be stable. Colleges don't really help much either; their career counciling departments often don't do much other than revise your resume & tell you what clothes you should wear to an interview. I was just talking about this with my brother. He's a commercial electrician and his company is working him all the time because of his skillset and they have so much business. They pay for any electrical related schooling he wants as long as he gets a B in the classes. He gets job offers fairly often because his skillset is in such high demand. He has a journeyman electrical license on the way to master, a CDL, a security clearance from all the government contract work his company does, he is checked out on all kinds of heavy machinery like earth moving equipment and has no criminal record. This is like a perfect storm of qualifications that are in demand, and nobody can fill them because everyone has BA in History that the whole world bullshitted them into thinking they had to have. When he was farting around after high school working in mom and pop electrical shops learning the trade nobody thought he would ever amount to anything. Conventional wisdom is an oxymoron.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:20
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I get that for some things you really have to go to grad school... for a while even. But this idea that if you don't find your perfect job right out of grad school you have to go back to grad school for something else is pretty silly.
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Aug 8, 2013 14:11
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Speaking of parents ruining their lives to spoil their children... I knew a girl who was getting married around 10 years ago, she was about 22 at the time, worked 2 nights a week as a cocktail waitress and was in community college. Daddy's little princess. Her parents didn't have a lot of money but wanted to buy her a dream wedding. She planned a blowout at some rented estate with 7 bridesmaids, stuff like ice sculptures, multiple cakes, a $10k+ dress, 5 course dinner, horse-drawn carriages, open bars, booked a popular local band, etc. All kinds of extravagant bullshit. Her parents footed the bill for all of it and ended up remortgaging their house and taking on oodles of credit card debt so they could pay for it. The groom's parents wanted to give them something nice so they bought them a deluxe Hawaiian honeymoon package. Some kind of super fancy all-inclusive thing. Six days before the wedding the bride called it all off and broke up with the groom. Her parents lost every single deposit and just about every red cent they had to pay in advance for things. It basically ruined their marriage too- they had been married for nearly 30 years but got divorced probably 6 months after this all happened. I think her father kind of cracked up. Her mom never really worked and he watched them flush something probably like $40,000 down the toilet and couldn't deal with it. The groom's parents? They flew into town to be with their son and help him out for a few days. They helped him call all of the friends and relatives they needed to notify of the cancellation (virtually all of his family lived elsewhere.) After a few days they left town and quietly filed an insurance claim. They knew the bride was a flake and bought a trip insurance policy when they booked the honeymoon. 
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Aug 23, 2013 16:56
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Rick Rickshaw posted:
I know a young lady who is married, both she and her husband have shiny newish SUVs, they have a kid, dog, go on crazy trips to weddings in Napa California etc. They both have MBAs from one of the top schools, wear all the nice clothes etc. etc. They spend a fortune keeping up with their friends from college/grad school but their dirty secret is that they are loving slaves to debt. They literally have almost nothing in the bank. No retirement to speak of, 100k in student loans EACH, leased cars, they live in a "luxury apartment" (in the proper neighborhood befitting individuals of their "status" of course) and can't usually afford daycare for their kid so they have to literally drive over an hour away Sunday and Friday to dump her off with her aunt and uncle during the week. And that's just the stuff I know about. There are literally millions of couples like this walking around the country, working their asses off so they can borrow money to check off a bunch of imaginary boxes on their bullshit Facebook social hierarchy. They're basically zombies, mindlessly droning through 60 hour weeks so they can hand most of their money over to banks. It's really sad. Most people's finances are hosed up like Polio.
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Jun 5, 2014 20:08
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Zhentar posted:Overheard a Ruth's Chris bar "Well, [my child and their spouse] only make $250k between them, so we help them out." Not surprising though. Americans are conditioned that their yearly income is the be-all end-all social measuring stick. Because that determines what monthly payments you can afford in order to finance the purchase of stupid poo poo.
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Jun 5, 2014 20:23
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xie posted:I think it's far more likely that the bubble bursts in Higher Ed long before the cost of college reaches $250,000 per student. Not enough to try to put money on it, but I think it's pretty unlikely that nothing changes over the next 15-20 years. Bubble's already leaking IMO. Federal grants are drying up and newer scientists/researchers are scrambling to find funding everywhere. Their employers have been picking up the slack for now but FY15 will be when salaries start getting cut and folks start getting let go. The days of NSF/NIH etc. throwing money at everything are over. Getting funding has gotten way more competitive and most of it's going to seasoned/experienced researchers. The next shoe to drop will be demand, people are finally realizing saddling themselves with 100k in debt to make coffee or (if they're lucky) create pivot tables is not the best idea.
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Jun 13, 2014 14:27
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FrozenVent posted:I don't think the bubble is so much in grad school as it is in undergrad tuition, though. At research universities grad students have to work on certain grants with a professor or whatever, and they get benefits/stipends/insurance paid for either from F&A money from those grants, or with money from the grants themselves (usually the former.) If there's less grant money there's less F&A so either the school has to fund more of the expenses themselves or they admit less grad students. And the tuition for most professional school is just as ridiculous as undergraduate.
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Jun 13, 2014 14:51
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 14:35 |
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It's also going to cause a ton of resentment amongst professionals who already work in public service. If you're a dyed in the wool social worker, counselor, or teacher or whatever and all of a sudden there are tons of recent grads with Masters/JDs/Whatever showing up wanting to work for ten years then bail, well gently caress them.
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Jun 13, 2014 15:27
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