Naive Students and Gigantic Debt: A Case Study
December 29, 2008
This young woman agreed to $140,000 in debt to attend a little-known school that teaches photography. The story appears here. Her expenses in debt repayment exceed rent and car payments. There is no light at the end of this tunnel.
She could have served as a paid apprentice to a photographer. She would owe nothing. She would have salable skills. Instead, she indebted herself.
"The financial aid officer just said that my federal loans weren't enough to pay the tuition, but that was OK because they had these great alternative loans," Hickey said. "They made it sound so good that I didn't ask that many questions."
These kids are lambs sent to the slaughter by self-interested bureaucrats.
Why don't parents warn their children of this madness? Because they are debt junkies, too.
Certification by a bunch of bureaucrat professors who are not meeting a free market is a huge waste of time and money. But students have been told that formal education is crucial to success. Who tells them this? Bureaucrats called teachers, whose guilds certified them. These people are funded by taxpayers.
The solution is to get a college degree by mail and the Internet, for under $15,000, and to work part-time as a low-paid worker. In effect, this is apprenticeship. You get paid to learn a trade. You avoid all debt for college.
This should be obvious. It isn't.
Read more here: //www.garynorth.com/public/729.cfm