If I was thinking about college right now, and was finishing high school, [View all]

[MineralMan]

I'd be pretty damned worried. Now, if I was going to study a technical field where jobs are plentiful and pay very well to start, I'd relax a little and not think about student loan debt too much. Once I graduated, I could keep living low on the food chain and pay that stuff off in five years and then get on with my life.

If, instead, I was going to graduate with a BA in English, Art, Music, History, Social Work, Education, or some other humanities degree, I'd be sweating bullets. I'd be looking for scholarship money and grants, heading to a community college for a couple of years, choosing a public college close enough to live at home, and trying to figure out how to make it out with as little debt as possible. Because the pay sucks, jobs can be scarce, and who knows when those student loans would be paid off.

Or, I might switch horses altogether and try to find an apprenticeship program in some skilled trade that I found interesting. It's hard to find younger, trained HVAC techs, plumbers, electricians, welders, etc. So, the jobs are there, they pay well, and the time and cost to learn the trade won't put a person in debt for 20 years.

What I wouldn't do would be to wait for free college to happen or count on some sort of loan forgiveness down the road. I also wouldn't pay the equivalent of a house for an education that led to a low-paying job, no matter how rewarding that job was in other ways.

Part of my privilege was to have lived in a time when state colleges and universities were subsidized by taxpayers and had no tuition. I did nothing to earn that privilege. Then, I spent four years in the USAF, and had the GI Bill, which covered a lot of the costs of my BA and MA in English. That degree didn't guarantee me anything, and I've done all sort of jobs during my working life. The degrees were essentially useless in any of my careers.

Right now, the cost of higher education is way out of reach for many people, and the only way to get through it is to go deep into debt, unless you happen to have parents who can foot the bills. In many careers, the financial rewards are too low to justify that kind of debt. It sucks. Will something be done by the next wave of politicians? Maybe. Maybe not.

I'm sorry things are that way. I'll vote to try to help. But, think long and hard before committing to a lifetime of debt with no job in the offing that will help you get rid of that debt.