I think the problem is with those 18% loans (covered by your 3rd point, I think). What the hell? Who pays that kind of interest rate?
The article states: A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college.
I would say that there is likely to be a strong correlation between being foolish enough to take an 18% student loan and getting a low-paid job later (taking on that kind of loan shows a staggering lack of common sense).
Seems to me that that's the only problem there. People should not be allowed to turn that kind of profit on student loans of all things. If there's one kind of loan that should be government-sponsored, this is it.
For the record, in the UK, student loans come in at about 2.5%.
Your quote from the article highlights yet another fallacy - that if you are educated you will make more money. This is marketing at its worst.
It's because of this reasoning I'm surrounded by people who studied CS as a major and learned Java because it was projected to pay well (hint hint about the age level of developers I'm working with lately). The result is that I fix the mistakes of people who possess coding skills that I wouldn't even qualify as AP high school level. My point here is to highlight the idea of choosing an education that compels you to develop yourself into a "somebody" instead of being an "anybody".
Education is polish for the mind. It's best used towards developing yourself as an individual. Unfortunately it has devolved into a tool to charm money out of the system.
Most student loans backed by the government have pretty decent interest rates in the US, too. However some people either can't get enough in government-backed loans or fail to qualify or are stupid.. or something.. and so they hit up the private lenders which prey on them something terrible. I never went private so I'm not really sure, but I suppose another reason to go with private loans is so you can spend the money on things much more disconnected from your education costs - like a car. I seem to remember the government loans being pretty tightly tied to the school and thus it wasn't like I could borrow more than the cost of school without going outside the government-backed loans. (But I could be wrong.)
My girlfriend has some student loans that made me inhale sharply through my teeth when she described them to me.
Her and her family are not good at finance or math, and they got swept into the popular way of looking at college in America: Get into school, take loans, finish school, pay off loans.
That was all true for a long time, but interest rates have risen sharply for loans in the last 5 years, and the value of a degree (especially a liberal arts degree) has fallen.
I'm not making excuses for them, I'm just offering a data point. My feeling is that we're about to see a shift in the popular view of college, but these views always lag the reality. Because of this lag, newly graduating students are going to have it worst of all.
The article states: A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college.
I would say that there is likely to be a strong correlation between being foolish enough to take an 18% student loan and getting a low-paid job later (taking on that kind of loan shows a staggering lack of common sense).
Seems to me that that's the only problem there. People should not be allowed to turn that kind of profit on student loans of all things. If there's one kind of loan that should be government-sponsored, this is it.
For the record, in the UK, student loans come in at about 2.5%.