One Broke Student Had A Powerful Idea And She Wrote It On This Sign

[Playinghardball]

Damn right!


Found on the Facebook page of Occupy Indianapolis/MoveOn.org

[JNelson6563]

1. Well said.

[surrealAmerican]

2. k & r

[a la izquierda]

3. K & R

I'll never afford kids because I can't afford my debt payments.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

4. Yup

K&R

[Odin2005]

5. She kinda looks like Ava. BTW, where IS Ava? I miss her.

[madokie]

7. Yup I miss her too

The kid had/has a lot of talent and will do great things in life. I've convinced of that.
Ava if you happen to see this come back and talk to us old timers who seen so much potential in you.

[LeftyMom]

15. She's on FB.

[abelenkpe]

6. K & R nt

[itaest]

8. It wasn't for me but ...

I studied in the great socialist Germany!

[TBF]

10. Socialist Germany :)

I studied at the University of Wisconsin (a state that was likely referred to as Little Germany when it was formed back in the 1800s - a good share of the settlers there were German/Polish). In the late 80s my tuition was about $800/semester. I paid that with a combination of small loans, Pell grants, GI bill (dad is a disabled war veteran) and odd jobs. I think my debt upon graduation was about 4K. Later I racked up far higher numbers with graduate school at private schools.

I'd love to see more money spent on higher education here - particularly the public universities should have fees everyone can handle - just another thing that we can't do because we refuse to tax our wealthiest individuals and corporations (allow them to loophole out of even possibly paying anything is probably the most accurate description).

Welcome to DU!

[itaest]

20. Thanks for the welcome - $800 per semester is not bad

How about $50 per semester through graduate school? That sounds like a dream, doesn't it?
That was my reality in Germany in the 90s. It is more expensive now I've been told.

[bluestate10]

9. That is true.

An average worker pays about $8,000 per year in taxes and works 40 years before retirement. The government will collect $320,000 from that person. The better educated that person is, the more the government collects. If the argument is boiled down to one of simple finance, there is no sane reason not to make college and trade school educations free for any student that wants to pursue them, even if up to 10% of those people face unemployment over the course of their working lives.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. Exactly. K&R n/t

[DaveJ]

12. I'd like to hear some solutions

Unfortunately I can't think of a better idea than what we currently have.

We shouldn't make government pay for college, because then people who don't go will be funding people who do go, and that would not be fair.

My idea was to reduce costs, but I've had all the college professors on the DU yell at me when I suggested that. I personally do not think a book should cost $300, but I'm sure there are some writers who think it's wonderful.

So I'm not sure what exactly can be done. My student loan is equivalent to a car payment, and I accepted that scenario in advance.

[ccavagnolo]

13. One of the best decisions I made

Was going to a state school, a SUNY University of New York. Kept my grades up which kept my tuition down and paid off all my loans within the first year of being out of school. Only two years out and thinking about another field of work I would like to entertain I now have the opportunity to take an apprenticeship and not worry beyond my daily spendings. I think the biggest issue I saw in my high school and I imagine in a lot of others is the idea that the school makes the student, that the relevance of their Universities name outshines the students performance. Not just an issue caused solely by a students need to look better towards their peers but by guidance counselors, teachers, parents and the colleges themselves. If you have the money, do your thing, but a majority of my friends are stuck in dead end jobs, part time positions or freelance work where they only rack up more dept.

[johnnyrocket]

14. That says it all about our priorities.

[sulphurdunn]

16. I never accrued any debt to go to college.

I enrolled under the GI Bill in a public university in a state that froze tuition on the date of enrollment for the duration of a Vietnam veteran's stay. I was able to make it by living low on the hog and working my ass off as a commercial fisherman in the summer and by missing the fall semester to log. It took 6 years, but I never owed any goddamn banks a dime for it. How many kids in college today know what their education costs will be from year to year or are able to find jobs during the summer that pay good wages? No 22 year old should walk out of a public university in the United States owing a three digit debt to some fucking bank and not be able to find a decent job. If we allow this kind of bullshit to continue we deserve what what we get, and that won't be pretty!

[DaveJ]

17. Those days are long gone...

For whatever reason, the cost of college has increased exponentially. I don't know why, maybe there are more services than there were in the past. It's not necessarily the fault of the banks. I'm not defending the banks, but there are honest "bankers" and there are "banksters." I do not think they are getting rich off of student loans.

There is a lot of improvement that can be made, but generally I think it's appropriate for people to be responsible for paying for their own higher education.

I have no problem having a student loan. I don't think tax payers should be burdened with paying it for me. The money I'm paying is going toward funding other students' education.

Under the terms of my loan (Federal), two years after graduation was interest free, before asking me to make any payments. And they have been very flexible when it came to deferring payments when I was unemployed, when the economy was in the Bushes last decade.

Not everything is perfect. My brother in law has a loan (Commercial) where he was asked to pay immediately after graduation. That's ridiculous. There should be plenty of flexibly that takes into account the circumstances of the individual. And student loans should not interfere with being able to buy a home.

[sulphurdunn]

19. I have no objection

to students paying to go to college. I have a real problem with them not being able to pay off the debt until they're middle aged, or not being able to discharge it through bankruptcy, or it being held against them when trying to borrow money, or apply for a job.

[crazyjoe]

18. go to a state school then. I did

got a great education for short money.

[dkf]

21. Yes. Exactly.

[4th law of robotics]

22. Yeah, tuitions are growing too fast, but . . .

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for people who get 200k in debt to go to a private school to study something with no marketable value.

Frankly they detract from the people with more modest, but still significant, debts who were more sensible with their choices.