B.A. in Sociology, $200,000 in Debt. Want to Marry Her?

Gary North

Dec. 9, 2010

A 23-year-old girl ran up a debt of $200,000 to earn a B.A. in sociology, the most unmarketable of all college degrees, in my book.

Why?

She never counted the cost. She never used a financial calculator. She paid $200,000 for a degree that should have cost her about $15,000.

Does she think some young man will marry her and saddle himself with a debt of $200,000? Did she consider this when she began college? Of course not.

She will soon pay $1,600 a month. She gets no home, no husband, and no kids. But she has a B.A. in sociology.

There is no escape. The bankruptcy law does not protect her.

Did her parents intervene? If not, why not?

Here is reality.

Over the last decade, private lenders, abetted by college financial aid offices, eagerly handed young people hundreds of thousands of dollars to earn bachelor's degrees. As a result of easy credit, declining grants and soaring tuitions, more than two-thirds of students graduated with debt in 2008 -- up from 45 percent in 1993. The average debt load is $24,000, according to the Project on Student Debt.
In some respects, the student loan crisis looks remarkably like the subprime mortgage crisis. First, outstanding student loan debt has ballooned: It grew roughly four-fold in the last decade to $833 billion as of June -- surpassing outstanding credit-card debt for the first time.

Don't do it.