Here, I offer extracts from an article that summarizes the reality of the cost of earning a college degree without any of my recommended loopholes.
Click the link for some true horror stories on what credit card debt has done to college students who did things the conventional way.
Don't do things the conventional way. //www.garynorth.com/products/item7.cfm
This was published in Business Week
. . . Two new economic realities are at work. Many had to borrow serious money to attend colleges that are ever more costly. And as soon as they entered school, they were offered credit cards; by 30 many have accumulated thousands of dollars of that very expensive debt, too. Imprudent choices sometimes have compounded their troubles. The consequences can be profound: Many of those 30-year-olds feeling unduly burdened by their financial obligations have had to make compromises on some of life's vital decisions. . . .
In myriad ways, the economics of being 30 have changed for the worse. A college degree is now the minimum required to find a place in the working world that affords some job satisfaction and material comfort. But it doesn't offer protection against turmoil in the labor market, as it once did. Nor does it guarantee such things as health insurance or a retirement plan. And real earnings for college graduates without an advanced degree have fallen four years in a row, for the first time since the 1970s.
The cost of higher education, however, has increased so dramatically in the past decade and a half -- up by 63% at public schools and 47% at private -- that more students have to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to attend, ensuring that many of them are paying off those loans well into their 40s. The median debt-to-income ratio now is about 8%. But fully one-quarter of graduates are paying more than 12% of their income, a level many financial experts regard as worryingly high. That burden will only grow: Interest rates on student loans are going up for the first time in five years.
Their financial obligations leave them particularly vulnerable to life's discontents. Nellie Mae, the student lender, found that 55% of all borrowers felt hampered by debt in some way in 2002: They changed career plans, gave up on graduate school, put off buying a home, getting married, or having kids. "This is the first generation who won't necessarily do better than their parents," says Tamara Draut, director of the economic opportunity program at Demos, a research and advocacy organization in New York. "They've been told: 'Apply yourself. You'll get a job, a home.' For many young people that's not the case." . . .
Thirty years ago, when many of their parents attended school, it was entirely possible to get through college with modest family savings and steady work during the summers. Since the mid-1980s, though, tuition has been growing far faster than many families can afford. The price of public colleges, where about 80% of all students are enrolled, increased 28% in the past five years alone, far more than in any five-year period since 1975. At private colleges, the total cost increased 17%. Those figures, it should be noted, already take inflation into account. At the same time, outright grants have been shrinking as a proportion of total financial aid. "The costs of education are moving from the government to families, and in families from parents to kids," says Melanie E. Corrigan, associate director of national initiatives and analysis at the American Council on Education in Washington. . . .
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