Default: The Student Loan Documentary

I just finished watching Default: The Student Loan Documentary. If you are not convinced that the average, over-priced, four-year college education is for suckers, you will at least see why student loans are definitely worth avoiding.  Speaking as a “rube” myself, I was lured into the student loan scam (along with my parents) thinking that the value of a college education was “priceless”. Well, that is obviously a big load of crap. Check out the price some of these people payed for a college education. By the way, these are smart people who were literally swindled, lied to and cheated by the student loan system. This documentary exposes the business of student loans in a whole new disgusting light. Before you even think about getting a student loan, check out the Default Movie’s web site.

April 26, 2011   Posted in: Student Loan Debt  No Comments

Colleges Selling the Harry Potter Experience

Colleges are selling starry-eyed applicants the idea of living in a fantasy world -literally. As if college was not a fantasy world in its own right, recruiters are taking it to a whole new level. “Welcome to the college that best resembles Hogwart’s”, they pitch. Some have gone as far as naming dining halls, libraries and classrooms after names in the famed school of wizardry in Harry Potter. One school has a sport played with actual broom sticks.

Get a Major in Wizardry Arts
Get a Major in Wizardry Arts

Get a Major in Wizardry Arts

(Photo by Andy Welsher on Flickr Creative Commons)

The New York Times featured an article called Taking the Magic Out of College written by a very mature and intelligent high school senior, Lauren Edelson. Edelson writes about her experience on college campus tours. She is growing tired of hearing college comparing themselves to the fantasy world of Harry Potter that her generation grew up with and adores. Yes, this smart young lass is a Harry Potter fan, but she is no fool for the smoke and mirrors world that is being marketing to her.

December 8, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: College Fantasy, Living in College Luxury, The College Vacation  No Comments

Too Many Students in College?

In a recent article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Are There too Many Students in College?”, 9 higher education experts gave their views and opinion on the economic impact and actual value of going to college.

November 13, 2009   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

Students Get College Credit For Playing Guitar Hero?

The average four-year college education costs over 50 thousand dollars. Parents write out tuition checks assuming that their kids are being taught valuable knowledge and skills -skills taught by an experienced professor. So how would you feel if you found out that you were paying $1,078 per credit hour for your kid to play Guitar Hero?

New York University now offers a class called “Guitar Heroes: Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition.” While many students are excited about the class, many parents are upset by paying for something that their kid has most likely mastered outside of school in the first place. Have schools gotten lazier? Are there not enough underpaid adjunct professors willing to actually teach something that kids won’t learn on their own?

Offering trendy classes in college is

Facebook For Dummies
Facebook For Dummies
not new. In the 70’s, students took college courses on Tarrot card reading and the Ouija Board. In the 80’s students studied slasher films for college credit and in the 90’s the trend started of taking classes that revolved around popular TV shows like Alley McBeal or Sex And The City. Take a pop culture subject, throw in “and the Nature of Human Cognition” in the title, and bam! You have a popular college class.

Are these pop culture classes worth paying for? That’s debatable.

Many people (including myself) think its kind of a cop out. Its time filler. What else can you throw in a four-year general education? I can just imagine the professors coming up with these classes. “I’ll teach a class that is timely, easy, and will make grading papers fun.”

In Kentucky, author and professor Ken Keffer really enjoys walking. He came up with the class “The Art of Walking” (which also happens to be the title of his book.) The course offers a mixture of lectures and walks around the Danville, Kentucky area including strolls with his dog through nature preserves, battlefields, cemeteries, the nearby Shaker Village, campuses and farms.

I’m not saying that college classes need to be boring and hard. But come on! Twitter and Facebook classes? Seriously? Maybe if you live under a rock. But for most of us, what a waste of money.

September 10, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Waste-of-time classes  One Comment

Is College Debt Worth It?

For an article in USA Today,Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University attempted to answer the question using number-crunching data from the free software he developed called ESPlanner Basic.

He analyzed four hypothetical scenerious to determine lifetime disposable income of 18-year olds:

1)      One who borrows $30,000 a year to attend a four-year college.
2)      One who borrows $15,000 a year for four years.
3)      One who graduates debt-free.
4)      A high school graduate.

Student Loan Debt
Student Loan Debt
Kotlikoff assumed that all college graduates earned $45,000 during their first year out of college, as that amount is said to be half the median income for workers with a college degree. (Of course, that salary never specifies what kind of college degree.)

What Kotlikoff found:

Using the starting salary of $45,000, all the college graduates ended up with more disposable income than workers with just a high school diploma. (This study does not include those who went to a tech school or obtained an associate’s degree or apprenticeship somewhere.)

The college graduate who borrowed only $15,000 a year ended up with 4.4% more spending money than the one who borrowed $30,000 a year.  (Obviously, the more you borrow the more you will pay back-with interest.)

The college graduate who graduated debt-free had nearly 9% more disposable income than the one who borrowed $30,000 a year. (Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had access to a free education or at least a rich grandparent?)

But get THIS…

If the heavy borrower earned the same median income as a high school graduate immediately after college, which is $28,000, the graduate’s spending power would be 16% lower than that of the high school graduate!

Kotlikoff’s final conclusion…

Because it’s nearly impossible for a borrower to discharge student loans through bankruptcy, the debt just keeps accumulating –even if the borrow can’t make payments. “It’s like a debtor’s prison for life,” he says.

September 1, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: College Tuition, Student Loan Debt  No Comments