depalma13 said:Most high school graduates these days are better off skipping college altogether, staying home, working a minimum wage job and investing their money.

That's absolute nonsense.
Plus 10 or 15 years down the road when they realize they "missed out" on the college experience they'll decide to go back with significantly more adult responsibilities (children, spouse, ex-spouse, whatever) than when they were 18, needing far more student loans to stay afloat.

Xenth said:narshe14 said:From what I've seen, only students majoring in engineering/software/IT have these decent paying ($20/hr) part-time opportunities available; generally others majoring in the sciences/business/etc. usually aren't able to find "real" jobs while in school, except for summer internships or unpaid research positions.

$20/hr is extraordinarily rare even for engineering students and those engineering students are often as concerned with obtaining good, possibly unpaid, work experience as they are a salary. Those that aren't majoring in engineering or something of similar workload also have considerably more free time available to work.

Still it's obvious someone going the liberal arts route is going to have a harder time. If you choose the easy, common route then why would you be compensated as well as someone aiming higher?

Uhh what? I graduated w/ 2 engineering degrees in '08, and I know of nobody in my class that took an unpaid internship. Engineering internships/co-ops are always paid, sometimes quite well.

$20/hr is high, but not that rare. My co-op job paid $22+/hr, and I know many in the same area. The average was around $18-19/hr for a co-op, ~$15/hr for internships.

I remember watching a young couple complain on national television that their educations have saddled them with half a million dollars in student loans. "It bothers me," says Lust. "It makes me upset that I have to maybe not do what I want to do because I won't be able to pay my bills at the end of the month." The couple was forced at gunpoint to attend MIT and Columbia. And if that weren't enough, NYU Medical School then forced them to attend, allegedly with threats against their parents' lives. Now they are both doctors, which means they do not have the wherewithal to make anything but a peasant-like living for the rest of their lives.

Actually, I got that wrong. They're going to be rich. The debt enabled them to make a great living. Their short-term sacrifices will let them live a life of relative ease and prosperity.

At the same time, student loan lenders are some predatory bastards. We recognize that 18 year olds don't have the full set of experience necessary to make good decisions. That's why we don't let them drink. But we let them sign promissory notes for tens of thousands of dollars. The student loan lenders do not disclose anything. When I took out a Sallie Mae loan, I had to fight to get them to disclose all the terms and fees. They didn't have a truth in lending document that summarized everything. Instead, they gave me a huge packet with tiny print that I spent days looking over. We have laws protecting grown ups taking out a mortgage. But we have no laws protecting teenagers taking out student loans. Obviously, shady characters have taken advantage.

darkmeridian said:
At the same time, student loan lenders are some predatory bastards. We recognize that 18 year olds don't have the full set of experience necessary to make good decisions. That's why we don't let them drink. But we let them sign promissory notes for tens of thousands of dollars. The student loan lenders do not disclose anything. When I took out a Sallie Mae loan, I had to fight to get them to disclose all the terms and fees. They didn't have a truth in lending document that summarized everything. Instead, they gave me a huge packet with tiny print that I spent days looking over. We have laws protecting grown ups taking out a mortgage. But we have no laws protecting teenagers taking out student loans. Obviously, shady characters have taken advantage.

Really? I think its pretty reasonable to expect that a 18 year old is capable of understanding what loans are. If this is something they are not capable of understanding, perhaps college is not for them. I got so much paperwork because my school kept awarding me loans, and all of it had the interest rate and terms plastered everywhere - and that was just in the initial financial aid award rounds. I cant imagine how they could have made the terms more obvious, and I ended up declining them all anyways.