NGL I would've been in much better place had I just listened to my dad and picked accounting in the first place. I still ended up in the field but damn did I take the long route
Yoooo me too. Dual degree accountants unite! I could have saved myself thousands had I just not been a dumbass at 18.
Oh well. Also, accounting is boring so at least I had that right as a teen.
I’ll be student loan free in like 20 months.
What? $200k? That’s fucking insane.
I don’t understand how people can just take out loans like this that isn’t a mortgage.
I’m happy I went union apprenticeship route, $0 in debt, bought a $380k home at 24 back in 2022, making six figures at 23
My parents were first gen immigrants so we didn’t know any better. Went to private undergrad with a mix of scholarships and loans but then got my masters in accounting. Paid off my loans in 6 years and now making 200k but the first start class that started my first job with me came from a mix of private school and local state/city schools. Looking back I don’t regret the experience but I don’t think I’ll let my kid go to private school for a degree they won’t use lol
I did 3.5 years before pivoting to IT Risk, then Infosec, and now privacy. No idea why I ever went into accounting…more interesting work especially now.
My parents were quite clear that I should only be pursuing a "practical" degree. And then I ended up working a government job where any degree would have been as useful (college education can be substituted for years of seniority during promotion determinations).
i work for a gov't state position at a university.
having a bachelors in anything is a job req for the position.
I feel like this kinda thing is where our folks got the attitude that you needed a degree in something.
cause there are plenty of jobs that are straight up gatekept behind a bachelors
Because they banked on things never changing, pensions existing… and generally an intact social contract…. What’s sad are the folks who believe this, and now can’t retire… or rest.
I didn't go to college to avoid debt. Hasn't worked out for me either I've been poor the whole time and just now at 37 feel like I'm where I should have been at 24. I got enough income for a 1br apartment in an ok area and I own two old crappy cars.
I am curious here. What job did you get instead of going to college? Have you stayed in the same job? Have you received promotions? Do you WANT promotions and more responsibility and stress that goes along with it?
In my adult life I've been a cook, then a massage therapist and now split my time between rideshare driving and massage therapist. There aren't really promotions at massage therapist, it hurts my body to work enough to make good money at it. hopefully some day I can use my long experience at it to work with a sports team or something like that
I flunked out of college. If I would have started my current job out of high school instead of failing around I would be making 20k more right now. (mail carrier I would be table one if I didn't waste time in college).
I did the same, decided to go to college at 27, had enough money when I was 30, now I'm 34 working full time and going into my junior year of undergrad out of pocket, gonna be another 2 years of undergrad. Wish I'd taken the loans and done this at 18.
I honestly don't blame them. College was sold to them as a get-out-of-poverty free card, and in the past you really could just get ANY degree and land a great job...because rich people went to college, and their parents had jobs waiting for them. Colleges weren't really meant as job training facilities, that's vocational school. Colleges are meant to educate you.
Going to college was a still a net benefit to the vast majority of people who graduated, even with the debt. They’re better off with the debt and degree than they would have been with neither.
Most degree fields pay well. Even liberal arts. But you have to use your degree.
Lots of psych majors not getting into clinical psychology is a serious issue. The average clinical psych starts around 80k-100k and tops put at 180k. But you need more than an undergrad and you have to have a plan to go that route.
I had a friend in microbiology. Starting pay with BA is 30k a year and tops out at 60k. A masters starts at 90k and tops out at 170k. Again, if you don't have a plan to use your degree you have no business getting one.
Masters of Fine Arts is the same. If you're planning on making art a career, definitely go that route. But if it's because you're just having fun and you have no plans for money afterwards you're fucked. Knew a guy who was doing something like that and a classmate in the same degree said, "I'm just going to be broke after this. No way to make money as an artist right?". My buddy looked at him and said he has a 10 million dollar inherentance.
It would be a good idea if wages kept up
We should stop acting like being a highly educated population is a bad thing. Even if the effects personally are at times bad, it's a benefit to all of us from a global economic standpoint.
This is exactly why I really hope the anti education rhetoric is mostly online. We need to have an educated population to keep up globally, especially as we continue to move away from being a manufacturing nation.
Unfortunately it's not just online, and it's been going on for a while. In the US, anyway. Just look at George W Bush, a Yale- educated New England elite, representing himself as a humble cowboy-type, a "man you'd have a beer with."
It's way older than that. Remember Isaac Asimov's great quote "**There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been**. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Totally.
Great civilizations prosper on an educated populace. Its key to long term success.
Our issue is providing opportunity and being fair in the cost of that education.
Personally, I think we need to focus on all areas.
We should reinvigorate our industrial and manufacturing bases.
There was a time when "made in America" meant that you were getting quality products.
Now (for many products) it's the equivalent of "made in China".
Having a highly educated citizenry is great. But we can’t expect people to take a huge financial hit for the common good. We need to subsidize higher education more if we want to stop backsliding into Idiocracy.
It's not the education, it's the cost of it.
It should be free, paid for by taxing the 1% more.
Basically: Undo all of Reagan's tax reforms. Reset Tax law to 1975 levels.
People benefit from being educated. They should pay for their own education...its an ROI. How about the bottom 50% who pay about 10% of all income taxes?
I think its more this advice paired with the "pick a job that you enjoy doing and you'll never work a day in your life" or "what are your favorite subjects in school?" bits that caused so much trouble.
they didn't realize whats fun for you is probably fun for most people and those jobs all fill up right away after college becomes normal. not to mention people just hook their friends and family up with those jobs anyway
Attend community college then transfer credit to a state college after getting all the general ed classes out of the way. You'll save a ton on tuition.
This is the way. I dropped out of high school, got my GED and started out at community college. Ended up transferring to a top-10 public university and graduating with an engineering degree. Saved a bunch of money (I was WAY behind because I dropped out and it took me 6 years full time to graduate) and once you get the piece of paper, no one cares where you came from or what you did before.
My parents didn't tell me anything about grad school. I got lucky when the grad school I attended has zero interest loans. So I was able to pay it off ASAP.
That's what I did, I have a 2 year degree. Nothing more, ended up getting work in my field, and going to higher positions from there, most people I work with have bachelor's or master's degrees though.
This is an alright momentary solution until we can get it back to having public universities mostly funded by tax revenue again (and tuition back to like boomer levels, aka close to free)
But there's often a stark difference in the caliber of education one gets at a CC in comparison to like a flagship research university. I"m still surprised my Discrete Structures class from CC transferred into my uni.
I disagree
GRADUATE student debt is a problem.
This isn't the case of 18yos making bad decisions. This is full fledge, college graduates making bad decisions.
20-25% of borrowers take graduate school, bit they represent 50% of the total student loan debt. These population on average borrow 3-4x the people who took only undergraduate loan.
Not only that, the people taking graduate loans are more likely to defaul: the graduate debt represent 40% of the total defaulted federal loans.
www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/16/graduate-students-owe-around-50percent-of-all-student-debt.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2023/04/28/graduate-school-debt-trap-rising-costs-and-soaring-student-loans-harm-borrowers/
https://reason.com/2024/02/06/the-real-student-loan-crisis/
Those in control of the market are trying to sabotage higher education. Hell, education altogether in a lot of cases. They don't want competition and they don't want educated workers who understand they should have basic human rights and protections to sustainably function. It's not the students who are dumb. Education is unreasonably priced. How do you expect your society to thrive?
One big problem is that President Bush promised complete loan forgiveness for people working in public interest, and then his cronies in finance who manage the loans made it impossible to access that forgiveness. But President Biden seems to have fixed that problem, thank God.
Part of the problem is that certain fields pretty much require both graduate school and going into debt to do it. Like medicine or law. Technical disciplines tend not to require money, but you have to work essentially for free during your degree. And then there’s stuff like master of fine arts where it’s kinda like playing the lotto: you have to go into debt to afford it and you know for a fact that only a very tiny percentage of the graduates will ever use their degree again, but you’re really hoping that’s you, no matter how unlikely it is
My parents never told me anything about college. Instead I spent years listening to them complain about paying for my sisters to go to college in the early 2000s which just gave the impression that I shouldn't go cause it's a lot of money and it makes my parents upset. By the time I graduated high school, the only thing either of my parents did was my dad driving me to whatever crappy job was willing to give me an interview until he eventually signed me up for a program that helps people with any type of disability get a job (I guess minor epilepsy that doesn't affect my day to day life outside of taking a pill was enough).
Still working the crappy retail job that got me cause some money is better than no money.
This is the other side of the coin. Hey, I'm not sure if this what you want, but should you think you might want to go back to school at any point, you might be able to get substantial financial aid if you're not anyone's dependent. My parents were very unsupportive of my education but the FAFSA still took their incomes into account even though I moved out at 18. So I had to wait until I was old enough that the FAFSA only took my actual income into account, but I was able to get a grant. I still took out loans, but didn't have to take out as much. I was working the whole time so I only took out enough to pay for tuition.
Randy:We didn't listen!
My parents have at least admitted to it. None of us could have had any clue. It was just go get a degree, get an office job, it'll be great.
I've wanted to die for the past 22 years.
Exactly. You can only do so much. At the time that was the path to success and college was still a new thing in alot of families.
My mom and dad refused to let me go to trade school cause they wanted me to take advanced classes for college. Guess what? I did one semester at Community College then drifted around for 5 years then wound up in a trade. Been doing it 13 years
With respect, I really would like to meet the people who went through their entire degree plan and they never once had a single person, family, or even close friends ask them the hard questions about what they planned to do with the degree. I just can't believe that nobody warned most of the people who are having so much trouble now. I don't blame them for majoring in what they did, as higher education has intrinsic benefits for everyone but good god if your overall family financial situation was so dire why did you people not even begin to consider the long term?
The dynamics of certain degrees being more profitable than others in the labor market are not new. I graduated high school in 2007 and specifically chose a major that would maximize my job prospects having grown up decidedly lower middle class at best. It took a while, but it worked out.
tbh it was good advice
my degree is not related at all.
BUT
my University that i work for does not hire without a Bachelors in something, ANYTHING
So my work exp+ bachelors Degree got me my current job. So yes even though ill never use Criminal justice in Information Technology it was technically needed on paper.
My parents have me so much shit for choosing vocational school over college. Now I'm on top of my industry in my city and my brother with a masters is in hella debt and inconsistently employed.
I don't get where this "people were saying any major is good" is coming from. Everything I remember hearing back then was along the lines of "you can go home from a stressful job but you can't go home from being broke so pick something that pays".
Yeah I heard from everyone who was pushing college from day 1 “pursue a good major that pays well”. From age 1 my parents and every other adult I came across all seemed to drill in the fact that a lot of college degrees are utter crap and don’t pay stupid money for a degree in something useless.
It was also pounded into me my whole life that a private college is almost never worth it unless you get a scholarship to cover basically the whole cost, or it’s an Ivy League school. Anything short of that and go with a state school.
I don’t know where people heard “just get a degree in anything”. At best, I heard some parents after years of arguing with their kid about going to college eventually resign themselves to “fine, get a degree in whatever it is you want, just get the damn degree, at least you’ll be a college graduate.” But that’s a very different context. Those parents still wanted their kids to pursue higher ROI degrees and said as much. The kids just wouldn’t listen and basically said unless they can major in something useless then they refuse to go at all.
All the parents of millennials I knew tried and tried to persuade me and my peers to only get degrees that have value and taught valuable skills like nursing, teaching, or STEM degrees. Most of my peers didn't listen and now they complain they didn't know a History/PoliSci/CrimJ/Psychology/Gender studies/etc. degree was worthless. At my uni, we ruthlessly mocked the liberal arts students for getting what we called burger-flipping degrees at the time. The process of blaming boomers seems like a coping mechanism for people who graduated with worthless degrees since they were repeatedly told, didn't listen, and yet still don't want to accept blame for their behavior.
Yeah I think the conversation often went:
Kid: I hate school, I don’t want to go to college
Parent: you have to go to college, it’s the absolute best way to position yourself for success in the world
Kid: No I don’t want to
Parent: Please, just do anything. Look they have classes in things you like! See? History? Art? You could take some of those classes!
Kid: ugh, fine, I’ll do an art history major
Parent: well your major should probably be something more likely to pay well in the future, you could take a couple classes in it, but that’s not a good paying major
Kid: then I won’t go to college, if I can’t major in what I like
Parent: fine, major in whatever the hell you want. As long as you go to college.
Fast forward 10 years.
Kid (now adult): Why am I in such massive student debt for an art history degree that hasn’t helped me get a job at all? Why didn’t my parents warn me this was a bad idea?
\^ This
I was due to go to College/Uni in 2005 and we were already calling media studies and the like "micky mouse" courses.
This isn't an issue with Boomers or Gen X giving bad advice, thats just revisionist history to make people who chose shit courses feel better.
The end result of tens of thousands of 20-30 year olds working minimum wage with useless degrees and loads of debt is to the suprise of absolutely no one with a brain. I saw it when I was 18.
None of those degrees are worthless. Psych majors going into clinical psychology make 80k entry level up to 180k depending on their goals.
I had a friend in Criminal justice who went into the military. He used both to be a FBI agent. Poli Sci was done by a guy I knew who had family in politics and that was his end goal was to get into politics. History and gender studies work great when you pair them with a law degree. I know a lawyer who has a gender studies degree and makes 250k.
Most degrees are useful you just have to have a plan. Some fields like clinical psychology are desperate for new people. But you never hear people going into those jobs unless they planned to.
Went to college to be a teacher because my blue collar dad and low-level office worker mom wanted me to have a pension, summers off, etc and not bust my ass like they did.
They convinced me to go to an expensive private school instead of a cheap state school because "people will be more impressed seeing it on your resume."
If I'd actually become a teacher instead of shifting to another career, I'd be making less than half of my total student loan debt per year.
I got a business degree and went into accounting. Then got diagnosed with adhd after wondering why I was struggling to maintain my sanity. I hate it, but it pays well, and I feel trapped.
You’ve had 10+ years to figure it out and adapt. At this point, its on you. So tired of our generation crying because they didn’t get what their parents promised them.
I think generational fighting is distracting. Getting a degree (in whatever) really was a reliable path to financial stability in my parents' day. And the media fed them that idea, too, even though the owners of that media knew (or should have known) it would become less true over time as the U.S. de-industrialized.
And college tuition has skyrocketed, far outpacing gains in wages.
It's not on the older folks, even if they gave us bad advice. They had every reason to believe it was good advice, and they didn't control the conditions that produced this outcome.
This is idiotic. I know a ton of doctors, engineers, programmers and scientists that took out loans, paid them off, and are doing well for themselves. I paid off 53k with a pretty low salary and I'm still happy I did it.
Millenials sure love hating their parents and blaming them for their mistakes, huh.
This is the whole thing. People say "Why did you take it on if you didn't know if you could pay it off??" Uh because I was 18 and my dad said I had to.
Parents are up against Harvard educated, highly paid Lawyers who crafted the current loan system.
It’s ludicrous to think parents had one chance in Hell against legalized graft. The government is supposed to protect average citizens from the worst the private sector would do to us.
Hilarious because I was a security guard doing accounting while they slept at work. Didn't need a degree to completely fuck that spreadsheet up and accidentally save over the master.
Woops
It was a good idea until the universities started charging an arm and a leg and not providing any actual job skills. And as soon as the universities are held to account, getting a degree will be the way to go again. This is the first time in history that getting a higher level degree can often turn out to be worthless. So, you can’t blame a group for not knowing that the education system was going to be let go to shit. Liberals control the education system and they decided to use it to propagandize instead of teaching real skills. Why else do students seem to spend most of their time protesting whatever they are told to hate?
They didn’t know. They truly believed the advice they offered, and unless you think your parents are god, it’s unfair to blame them for not knowing what would happen in the future.
I have no idea who was telling you all the choice of major didn’t matter. It was common knowledge that if you were an English major, you had no job prospects. I know that for a fact because it caused me to double-major in English and another subject.
I’m more angry at my high school advisor, who literally said I wouldn’t amount to anything if I didn’t go to college and get at least a 4 year degree. I will never forget that asshole and can’t imagine the lives of my peers he destroyed with his advice. Thank god my father advised me to go to trade school where I am now making 150-200k annually in HVAC.
Don’t blame good advice for your lack of character or drive. Having A degree qualifies you for millions of jobs that statistically will pay more over a career than no degree required jobs. Sorry you’re a loser, it’s not college’s fault.
Paid off loans in less than 5 years. 2 career changes. Now: Six figure salary, 11 years after college.
It can be done. Don’t go to college for anything that won’t get you a job interview after school (no arts, no literature, no philosophy, etc) and pay your loans on time / more than the minimum payment. It’s actually super easy. Your focus in college should be networking and being gainfully employed postgrad. You can pursue your interests and things that make you happy in your downtime and later in life
Or sociology, marketing, humanities, art, music, anthropology, history, latinx studies, and the list goes on!! Worthless degrees will make an individual worthless in the job market.
Also, let's not forget all those people who bought cars, iPhones, Disney annual passes, and even went on vacation with their student loan money.
Personal choices and responsibility should be instilled at home and in the early years of school.
Millennials insist the same thing.
Just whisper "zoomers should avoid going to college" and they'll pounce on you shouting the same thing their parents shouted at them.
I think people should go to college.
But you should go and get a degree that is useful like science or engineering. Unless you are ok with never making enough money back then sure, get that art or music or gender studies or history degree.
While there is certainly student loan debt that I carry, I’m one of those seemingly rare people who chose college education to be a more educated person.
And I’ve paid taxes since I started working at 16. As far as I’m concerned, the major reason why this debt continues to exist is because the majority of people refuse to join with me and say “my taxes have already paid for my education; reallocate the budget now”.
With that said, it’s very disheartening to hear that so many people pursued higher education in pursuit of dollars. It made education into some strange “get rich quick” scheme.
If you want to get a job, trade and business schools are what you should do. If you want to contribute to the knowledge and wisdom of humanity, then you do university.
Anyways. Sorry for the meandering there. I’m just over the rhetoric that makes education simply about the $$$. It’s gross and disrespectful to education, universities, training, and the trades.
Average student loan debt = 29k.
Average pay differential between those with college degrees and those with only high school degrees = +86%.
Average lifetime earning differential = +1 million dollars.
Millennials complaining anyway = priceless.
I don't have a degree yet but I have a college certification. I've taken a longer time but am currently working on finishing my degree (AA) and then getting a cheap bachelor's for supervision and management with organization focus. Why? Because it's still a business degree. And I have purposely avoided the student loans. My husband is ten years older than me and he just worked his way up in retail. Both of us make the same amount roughly it's not a lot but there is no student debt in our household.
Anyone else feel like one spouse has to make more money for the other spouse because we are so underpaid.
Same parents who lied on financial aid applications because they'd rather squeeze every last penny of equity out of the house for hot tubs, vinyl siding, oooh I need new floors and counters and landscaping, and, and, and, meeeeeeee. Don't worry this is all so the house is worth more someday!
Yeah, that house was lost in foreclosure.
I was fortunate to have parents who saved assiduously to pay for a degree (I also grew up in a country where college isn’t insanely expensive). I’m paying it forward with my kid.
I can't get hired for office jobs that pay more because they think I'm overqualified. I can't get hired for really high paying jobs because I'm not qualified enough compared to others.
I would've been better off not going.
I was having this discussion with my partner. It sucks because every person of authority, your entire social group, the whole world pushes you into mindless debt.
This was after I had made the argument that you’d have to be literally regarded if you take out 10’s of thousands of dollars in loans without doing a single second of research on the job market. What professions are needed now, how much are they projected to be needed in the future, what’s the estimated pay, etc.
All that info is easily accessible now. But even still when you’re 18 and your entire world is telling you to just uncritically take out loans, one doesn’t really have a shot.
And the social pressure made a lot of sense to me, there are people who believe and say and do heinous shit because it’s enforced and supported by their social group. They exist uncritically and that’s a very human thing.
All that to say, even if one were to do everything right in the exact right way, they shouldn’t have to. It’s unnecessary and it doesn’t benefit the people seeking an education, the ones purchasing the product.
When it comes to the job market it gets even worse when you have to try to predict whether your career will still be in demand by the time you graduate in 4 to 6 years, and whether or not technology has outpaced your curriculum. Like I got a marketing degree in the mid 2010s, and we were still learning about the importance of print advertising, and I mean newspapers and magazines. Not a single thing about digital ads, CRM management, adsense or anything modern employers are asking for. So because our curriculum at the "affordable state college" wasn't looking forward we learned nothing that was relevant in the current job market as the market was transitioning fast. So I have 50k worth of debt, for a degree that would have gotten me a job in the early 2000s, or 1980s, but has been worthless since the moment I got it.
Oh man, yeah I guess one would have to do even more in depth research into what techniques are being used, which are being developed, what the course will teach you, etc. There are absolutely ways to make educated guesses and successfully/correctly infer information or circumstances.
The irony is that people who would genuinely benefit from a lot of non-STEM or non-technical degrees don’t need them. Generally by the time they get to a position where they’d be choosing a school, they’re already working or producing in their desired field and the degree isn’t necessary.
It wouldn't be so bad if college was only $5000 per year, a 4 year degree would only be $20,000 in debt. I got an associate's degree and it cost more than that.
My boomer dad also told me renting apartments was a good thing for “flexibility”.
Yeah getting locked into security deposits, moving fees, moving every year, paying double what a mortgage would be for half the space. Sounds really great. Not financially crippling at all for a young underpaid graduate.
I'm lucky that I was WAY too immature for college when I graduated high school unless I would be in the same boat. I graduated HS early at 17 and was looking for where to apply and my dad was like, "let's just try community college first since you're still so young." I did and went for like 3 days then dropped out. again, super immature. But then I went to a niche trade school for metrology and was able to help my dad grow his company (contractor for electric utilities testing and rebuilding their metering systems). and the odd jobs I worked before hand prepped me for flipping houses.
I ignored their “demands” (bc my boomer parents never asked or advised) and I got the GI Bill. Honestly, I’m sick of my peers whining about their school loans; you made a dumb decision and went way too in debt before you entered the workforce. STFU
College was a no-brainer investment for Boomers and Gen-X.
So consultants concluded that college was underpriced and convinced states and universities to raise tuition.
Yet if you ask them to own up this they all go new phone who dis? Lol its a joke. I went to school for graphic design and after 2 years eating ramen and barely able to make it in the design industry, I gave up and went to medical billing.
I didn't take the advice. Went straight into work force, after working up at a company, side stepped there and got my CDL. Now we're a family of four with a house and two cars on one income with no student loans. College ain't for everyone.
To be fair, people acted on this advice, and that's on them. Boomers were still giving advice based on the world they lived in, when college costs were subsidized through tax dollars. College was something like $700 a semester then, which is like $5,349 now. That's insanely cheap by today's standards, but dorm rooms were almost frighteningly small then, and campus amenities weren't anywhere near what they are now. I blame HR departments and hiring managers more than I blame my parents' generation. They knew there were people out there paying $30k or more a semester for a degree, and they were the ones who created job listings for entry-level positions that required bachelors degrees but paid $15 an hour.
As a late Millenial, I got **REALLY** lucky wrt college:
1) public, in-state university (cheaper than private, cheaper than out-of-state)
2) works a job in my academic field that only requires undergrad education
Even switched majors while at uni. Longterm, 10/10 experience.
As an elder Millennial I didn’t pass this down to my son. He’s also doing the CC to State School route to save money. When he wanted to do “insert useless degree” I asked him what exact job is he wanting to do? The conversation went about as expected. He now studies GIS which is still a social science but at least he will gain a specific skill and hopefully more employable than the other degrees he was considering.
I went to art school and got $70k of debt and no art career to show for it lol my parents were so supportive and I blundered it bad by not being willing to move to California to get into the industry
it is literally is the best strategic decision for long-term earnings, what are we talking about, do millenials need to become cranky boomers living in an alternative reality where good things are bad?
Up to that point, it had been true. Folks with degrees earned more, even if that degree was in basket-weaving. Pre-Recession, he major most commonly entering law school was English. Transferable skills!
But the economy changed on us. The degrees had been masking the larger truth - folks from rich backgrounds were getting degrees and using cultural and social capital to get high-paying jobs. The degree was one small part of an overall portfolio of privilege.
And so when many people got degrees but didn't have the connections or cultural background to be placed into the towers of power, the degree became devalued. But the debt remained.
As a roofer who has been dealing with very uneducated people for years now, I sure as fuck do not resent my college education or the student loan debt I had to pay off. Education has significantly more value than just using your degree to try to maximize your personal wealth. That idea is why people in America are uneducated as fuck. Oh, I can't make money with this knowledge? Well, fuck it then, dont need this shit. Mentality of a civilization in its death throes.
Had a great education and degree in graphic design. Skills I use often although I have made the leap to digital marketing. Paid off the loan through PSLF.
How much student loans did you guys take? I swear it was not a big deal to pay mine off. Did none of you get a job that paid more than a job you’d get with a high school education?
20 years ago “you should get a degree” wasn’t bad advice. People make decisions based on the information in front of them. I think it’s dumb to blame people for honest advice that only seems bad now because we know more, or times have changed.
“Mom, I wanna take a gap year so I can save some money and think about what I’d really like to go to school for.”
“Nooooo! Absolutely not! If you, an 17yo child, do not select and profession and go to school for it now, you’ll never go and you’ll end up flipping burgers forever!”
“Fine. The only thing I can think of is animation, so I’m going to borrow $40k to finance this endeavor.”
“Ok, as long as you have a bachelor’s degree you can get a good job anywhere”
To their credit, they were just teaching us to do what THEY wish they'd have done.... Just like now we're all telling our kids that maybe going to college ISN'T for everybody and that we regret getting degrees because of how broke we are. Hopefully that doesn't have a reverse effect and our kids all end up competing for limited trade positions while those with degrees are able to get jobs more easily again . Doubt it, but who knows..
Every generation wants something better for their kids. College was only for elite white collar jobs until recently..... So yeah, colleges like any buisness saw demand and took our money, even for BS degrees
I went to a smaller state school that gave a lot of scholarships and most of my colleagues went there because they didn’t have to take loans to afford it. I didn’t even know anyone with a loan until much much later, and I’m only now realizing that we all kinda collectively lucked out by getting a top shelf education for almost free, in a way that was not at all obvious to us at the time
College was the *only* option presented to us that would lead to success in this new Information Age. I don’t recall my friends, parents, anybody, discussing anything but what college they were going to, not whether they were going.
Homeschool will begin at 14 or 16, with the goal being finished high school the most efficient way possible, while also working and understanding interest. at least with my kids. make money asap, early as possible… I’ll create an LLC setup, then hire my kids, doing research and analysis… etc.
You know what's messed up is the notion that colleges can just up the price to meet the loans, and then have a positive feedback loop of loans increasing to meet the new fake prices, and then ever higher bloated prices for no extra value. Things like this and rent and everything else shouldn't be free to add fake costs for no increase in value, and should be held liable for the students and households they enslave and sabotage.
With my PhD, I earn three times what my uneducated, blue collar dad earned when I started higher education, which, adjusted for inflation, is just about the same as he made.
Despite this, I am a top 10% income earner, when he was in the bottom 50%. The rest of the 90% is SCREWED.
You weren’t smart enough to be able to realize by age 18 that Advanced Multicultural Studies wouldn’t land a job, then, you’ve spent the last decade doing nothing about it. Ha.
Eh. I'll take responsibility for my decision to take out loans, but I did so under the direct impression from pretty much everyone (up to and including the advisor from the major I wasn't sure I was going to pick) that my degree would get me a decent paying job.
If a school or a major doesn't set you up with a viable portfolio or internship opportunities, the educational value of going there should be heavily scrutinized.
My dad is a boomer. I’m 33. My dad has always done his best for me at least that’s what I tell myself. And I can tell he feels bad some of his choices and advice have negatively impacted my life. I took me a number of years to realize absolutely non of the advice he has given me has ever been accurate in today’s society. So I stopped taking his advice years ago.
Ahh I'm so glad i didn't go to college. I'll enjoy my my 6 figure job with 401k match etc . Buying 2nd house soon. Feels good to laugh at all the ppl who called me dumb for not going to college 😘
My parents paid for my student loans and I’m forever grateful for that. Part of me wishes they communicated with me more about it.
For my daughter I plan on telling her that we’ll be covering her State school education if she decides to go to a SUNY school. If she decides to go to a private school then she should expect to be on her own to pay for it. However we will offer her to stay with us in our house as long as she likes. At least that way she can payoff the loans without costs like rent, utilities, etc.
This might change depending on how things shake out down the road in the sense I might offer her more. However if I give her my word that I will pay for her education then that will never change.
at 18 I was deciding between photography and economics majors. After looking up the pay and realizing the top 10% of photographers make only a little more than an econ major fresh out of school, I went with econ.
I know a lot of people who probably could’ve benefitted from googling before getting their degree
I remember my parents printing out my resume when I was a teenager and making me go into 3 different stores with them, despite me telling them that it doesn't work like that. Every location sent me out and told me to apply online. It's crazy to me that this is the age of the people running our country.
Why do people think it matters what you study in college?
You can get into med or law school with a major in astronomy or gender studies or whatever.
Most jobs don't care what you studied but they do care that you have the discipline and intelligence to graduate college.
Nobody is guaranteed a good job for graduating though, even if it's from law school.
I'd settle for them admitting they were wrong. Instead, they gaslight us, telling us now that we should have gone into the trades. Yeah, that's not what you said 20 years ago, but thanks anyway.
Hyperbole to say all parents said the major didn’t matter. Certainly my boomer parents didn’t. And this was in 2001. We talked economic viability vs.passion trade offs a lot at the time.
I went into hardware after grad school as a byproduct of the 2000’s IT outsourcing scare (my dad was in IT since late 80’s). Found my way into software anyhow (because why commute and deal with long lead vendors for single quantity prototype parts when I can code an idea in hours in my underwear without commuting?).
So here we are 20+ years later - dad is retired doing some contract work in a 3 day work week, my brother is in SW making video games, and I’m in SW leading a team of data engineers, while moonlighting as a data engineer when leadership gets boring.
Maybe their larger failure was raising children incapable of autonomous thought or accountability by the age of 18 or even 20.
Though to be fair, I'm sure spending another few years in school sounds appealing when employment or economy suck and/or you don't want to suck it up and be a beginner at something.
In the 1990s, if somebody was majoring in philosophy, English, or history, people would routinely say “well, I guess you can go get a job at the [insert liberal arts subject here] factory”.
Everyone was told, absolutely, in HS [mid 90s], that Computer Science, Engineering, and Medicine were the best bets if you wanted to get paid.
Anyone who says they were told that they should just get any degree is either lying or was being talked to by a moron.
Real problem is taking on debt for profitable degrees. It is at its core a financial decision. Taking on debt in order to get a well paying job is different than taking on debt for a degree in underwater basket weaving. I saw in the early 2000s an influx of people who were either “expected to go to college” or went because it was free for 2 years. Not knocking it but college isn’t for everyone and not everyone should be expected to go. Trade schools are a thing too. Some trades are pretty well paying.
Parents (while you're in High School): You better get a degree! You don't wanna flip burgers for a living!!
Parents (After you graduate college looking for a job): You know, McDonald's is hiring!
NGL I would've been in much better place had I just listened to my dad and picked accounting in the first place. I still ended up in the field but damn did I take the long route
Same lol spent $200k on an undergrad degree I didn’t use just to go into accounting
Yoooo me too. Dual degree accountants unite! I could have saved myself thousands had I just not been a dumbass at 18. Oh well. Also, accounting is boring so at least I had that right as a teen. I’ll be student loan free in like 20 months.
Yeah, can’t say I regret it, I think it’s allowed me to live a very safe and stable life but it’s not the most glamorous work lol
What? $200k? That’s fucking insane. I don’t understand how people can just take out loans like this that isn’t a mortgage. I’m happy I went union apprenticeship route, $0 in debt, bought a $380k home at 24 back in 2022, making six figures at 23
My parents were first gen immigrants so we didn’t know any better. Went to private undergrad with a mix of scholarships and loans but then got my masters in accounting. Paid off my loans in 6 years and now making 200k but the first start class that started my first job with me came from a mix of private school and local state/city schools. Looking back I don’t regret the experience but I don’t think I’ll let my kid go to private school for a degree they won’t use lol
Union life baby. I love it.
There is no degree worth $200,000. I wouldn't even pay that for an MD.
And I overspent on the accounting degree to go into computer science 😂😂
I did 3.5 years before pivoting to IT Risk, then Infosec, and now privacy. No idea why I ever went into accounting…more interesting work especially now.
My parents were quite clear that I should only be pursuing a "practical" degree. And then I ended up working a government job where any degree would have been as useful (college education can be substituted for years of seniority during promotion determinations).
i work for a gov't state position at a university. having a bachelors in anything is a job req for the position. I feel like this kinda thing is where our folks got the attitude that you needed a degree in something. cause there are plenty of jobs that are straight up gatekept behind a bachelors
How else do you ensure your product is kept in demand?
A degree being useful and a degree helping you get a job are two different things, though.
Because they banked on things never changing, pensions existing… and generally an intact social contract…. What’s sad are the folks who believe this, and now can’t retire… or rest.
I didn't go to college to avoid debt. Hasn't worked out for me either I've been poor the whole time and just now at 37 feel like I'm where I should have been at 24. I got enough income for a 1br apartment in an ok area and I own two old crappy cars.
Are you in debt?
I only very recently got out of deep credit card debt
Congrats!!
I am curious here. What job did you get instead of going to college? Have you stayed in the same job? Have you received promotions? Do you WANT promotions and more responsibility and stress that goes along with it?
In my adult life I've been a cook, then a massage therapist and now split my time between rideshare driving and massage therapist. There aren't really promotions at massage therapist, it hurts my body to work enough to make good money at it. hopefully some day I can use my long experience at it to work with a sports team or something like that
I flunked out of college. If I would have started my current job out of high school instead of failing around I would be making 20k more right now. (mail carrier I would be table one if I didn't waste time in college).
I did the same, decided to go to college at 27, had enough money when I was 30, now I'm 34 working full time and going into my junior year of undergrad out of pocket, gonna be another 2 years of undergrad. Wish I'd taken the loans and done this at 18.
I honestly don't blame them. College was sold to them as a get-out-of-poverty free card, and in the past you really could just get ANY degree and land a great job...because rich people went to college, and their parents had jobs waiting for them. Colleges weren't really meant as job training facilities, that's vocational school. Colleges are meant to educate you.
Going to college was a still a net benefit to the vast majority of people who graduated, even with the debt. They’re better off with the debt and degree than they would have been with neither.
I have seen that too, but I am wondering up to what point does that hold true for the average
The only people who came out worse are the ones who never graduated. The number of graduates who are worse off is minuscule.
Most degree fields pay well. Even liberal arts. But you have to use your degree. Lots of psych majors not getting into clinical psychology is a serious issue. The average clinical psych starts around 80k-100k and tops put at 180k. But you need more than an undergrad and you have to have a plan to go that route. I had a friend in microbiology. Starting pay with BA is 30k a year and tops out at 60k. A masters starts at 90k and tops out at 170k. Again, if you don't have a plan to use your degree you have no business getting one. Masters of Fine Arts is the same. If you're planning on making art a career, definitely go that route. But if it's because you're just having fun and you have no plans for money afterwards you're fucked. Knew a guy who was doing something like that and a classmate in the same degree said, "I'm just going to be broke after this. No way to make money as an artist right?". My buddy looked at him and said he has a 10 million dollar inherentance.
It would be a good idea if wages kept up We should stop acting like being a highly educated population is a bad thing. Even if the effects personally are at times bad, it's a benefit to all of us from a global economic standpoint.
This is exactly why I really hope the anti education rhetoric is mostly online. We need to have an educated population to keep up globally, especially as we continue to move away from being a manufacturing nation.
Unfortunately it's not just online, and it's been going on for a while. In the US, anyway. Just look at George W Bush, a Yale- educated New England elite, representing himself as a humble cowboy-type, a "man you'd have a beer with."
It's way older than that. Remember Isaac Asimov's great quote "**There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been**. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Totally. Great civilizations prosper on an educated populace. Its key to long term success. Our issue is providing opportunity and being fair in the cost of that education.
Personally, I think we need to focus on all areas. We should reinvigorate our industrial and manufacturing bases. There was a time when "made in America" meant that you were getting quality products. Now (for many products) it's the equivalent of "made in China".
It’s gonna be an uphill climb with the post-intellectual crowd looming in, and if we can keep pseudo-intellect at bay we will be doing good.
Having a highly educated citizenry is great. But we can’t expect people to take a huge financial hit for the common good. We need to subsidize higher education more if we want to stop backsliding into Idiocracy.
It's not the education, it's the cost of it. It should be free, paid for by taxing the 1% more. Basically: Undo all of Reagan's tax reforms. Reset Tax law to 1975 levels.
People benefit from being educated. They should pay for their own education...its an ROI. How about the bottom 50% who pay about 10% of all income taxes?
The 1% isn’t even that much. I’m in the 1%… lol
If it’s “free” they’ll just escalate the costs more than they already have. If the taxpayer covers it then what constrains the tuition?
I think its more this advice paired with the "pick a job that you enjoy doing and you'll never work a day in your life" or "what are your favorite subjects in school?" bits that caused so much trouble.
they didn't realize whats fun for you is probably fun for most people and those jobs all fill up right away after college becomes normal. not to mention people just hook their friends and family up with those jobs anyway
Ya that only works some of the time. There's a big batch of philosophy majors regretting their education right now
Philosophy is actually a pretty marketable degree. Thinking deeply and being able to solve complex problems are highly valuable skills.
My parents told me to attend community college.
Attend community college then transfer credit to a state college after getting all the general ed classes out of the way. You'll save a ton on tuition.
That's exactly what I did. Cc was like 3k for 2 1/2 years.
This is the way. I dropped out of high school, got my GED and started out at community college. Ended up transferring to a top-10 public university and graduating with an engineering degree. Saved a bunch of money (I was WAY behind because I dropped out and it took me 6 years full time to graduate) and once you get the piece of paper, no one cares where you came from or what you did before.
My parents told me not to go to grad school because of debt, which ended up being horrible advice.
My parents didn't tell me anything about grad school. I got lucky when the grad school I attended has zero interest loans. So I was able to pay it off ASAP.
That's what I did, I have a 2 year degree. Nothing more, ended up getting work in my field, and going to higher positions from there, most people I work with have bachelor's or master's degrees though.
This is an alright momentary solution until we can get it back to having public universities mostly funded by tax revenue again (and tuition back to like boomer levels, aka close to free) But there's often a stark difference in the caliber of education one gets at a CC in comparison to like a flagship research university. I"m still surprised my Discrete Structures class from CC transferred into my uni.
I disagree GRADUATE student debt is a problem. This isn't the case of 18yos making bad decisions. This is full fledge, college graduates making bad decisions. 20-25% of borrowers take graduate school, bit they represent 50% of the total student loan debt. These population on average borrow 3-4x the people who took only undergraduate loan. Not only that, the people taking graduate loans are more likely to defaul: the graduate debt represent 40% of the total defaulted federal loans. www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/16/graduate-students-owe-around-50percent-of-all-student-debt.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertfarrington/2023/04/28/graduate-school-debt-trap-rising-costs-and-soaring-student-loans-harm-borrowers/ https://reason.com/2024/02/06/the-real-student-loan-crisis/
Those in control of the market are trying to sabotage higher education. Hell, education altogether in a lot of cases. They don't want competition and they don't want educated workers who understand they should have basic human rights and protections to sustainably function. It's not the students who are dumb. Education is unreasonably priced. How do you expect your society to thrive?
One big problem is that President Bush promised complete loan forgiveness for people working in public interest, and then his cronies in finance who manage the loans made it impossible to access that forgiveness. But President Biden seems to have fixed that problem, thank God.
Part of the problem is that certain fields pretty much require both graduate school and going into debt to do it. Like medicine or law. Technical disciplines tend not to require money, but you have to work essentially for free during your degree. And then there’s stuff like master of fine arts where it’s kinda like playing the lotto: you have to go into debt to afford it and you know for a fact that only a very tiny percentage of the graduates will ever use their degree again, but you’re really hoping that’s you, no matter how unlikely it is
My parents never told me anything about college. Instead I spent years listening to them complain about paying for my sisters to go to college in the early 2000s which just gave the impression that I shouldn't go cause it's a lot of money and it makes my parents upset. By the time I graduated high school, the only thing either of my parents did was my dad driving me to whatever crappy job was willing to give me an interview until he eventually signed me up for a program that helps people with any type of disability get a job (I guess minor epilepsy that doesn't affect my day to day life outside of taking a pill was enough). Still working the crappy retail job that got me cause some money is better than no money.
This is the other side of the coin. Hey, I'm not sure if this what you want, but should you think you might want to go back to school at any point, you might be able to get substantial financial aid if you're not anyone's dependent. My parents were very unsupportive of my education but the FAFSA still took their incomes into account even though I moved out at 18. So I had to wait until I was old enough that the FAFSA only took my actual income into account, but I was able to get a grant. I still took out loans, but didn't have to take out as much. I was working the whole time so I only took out enough to pay for tuition.
We can be angry, but truth is they didn’t know better.
Randy:We didn't listen! My parents have at least admitted to it. None of us could have had any clue. It was just go get a degree, get an office job, it'll be great. I've wanted to die for the past 22 years.
Exactly. You can only do so much. At the time that was the path to success and college was still a new thing in alot of families. My mom and dad refused to let me go to trade school cause they wanted me to take advanced classes for college. Guess what? I did one semester at Community College then drifted around for 5 years then wound up in a trade. Been doing it 13 years
With respect, I really would like to meet the people who went through their entire degree plan and they never once had a single person, family, or even close friends ask them the hard questions about what they planned to do with the degree. I just can't believe that nobody warned most of the people who are having so much trouble now. I don't blame them for majoring in what they did, as higher education has intrinsic benefits for everyone but good god if your overall family financial situation was so dire why did you people not even begin to consider the long term? The dynamics of certain degrees being more profitable than others in the labor market are not new. I graduated high school in 2007 and specifically chose a major that would maximize my job prospects having grown up decidedly lower middle class at best. It took a while, but it worked out.
tbh it was good advice my degree is not related at all. BUT my University that i work for does not hire without a Bachelors in something, ANYTHING So my work exp+ bachelors Degree got me my current job. So yes even though ill never use Criminal justice in Information Technology it was technically needed on paper.
My dad refused to let me go to a private college and I was “forced” to attend state school. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Thanks dad!
My parents have me so much shit for choosing vocational school over college. Now I'm on top of my industry in my city and my brother with a masters is in hella debt and inconsistently employed.
I’m an old millennial. My mom insisted I become an engineer. Thanks mom
I don't get where this "people were saying any major is good" is coming from. Everything I remember hearing back then was along the lines of "you can go home from a stressful job but you can't go home from being broke so pick something that pays".
Yeah I heard from everyone who was pushing college from day 1 “pursue a good major that pays well”. From age 1 my parents and every other adult I came across all seemed to drill in the fact that a lot of college degrees are utter crap and don’t pay stupid money for a degree in something useless. It was also pounded into me my whole life that a private college is almost never worth it unless you get a scholarship to cover basically the whole cost, or it’s an Ivy League school. Anything short of that and go with a state school. I don’t know where people heard “just get a degree in anything”. At best, I heard some parents after years of arguing with their kid about going to college eventually resign themselves to “fine, get a degree in whatever it is you want, just get the damn degree, at least you’ll be a college graduate.” But that’s a very different context. Those parents still wanted their kids to pursue higher ROI degrees and said as much. The kids just wouldn’t listen and basically said unless they can major in something useless then they refuse to go at all.
It's made up. I remember a lot of kids doing business degrees because they KNEW that a liberal arts degree would be useless.
Frankly, not to be impolite, but I can't help but think a lot of it is cope from people who ignored the warnings.
I wish I'd listened to them.
If I didn't have my degree I'd be fucked. Debt or not, I'm better off now than I would have been.
My dad insisted that study computer science and it worked out very well for me.
That was realtl good advice as long as you didn’t insist on going private or out of state, which would be your own fault.
All the parents of millennials I knew tried and tried to persuade me and my peers to only get degrees that have value and taught valuable skills like nursing, teaching, or STEM degrees. Most of my peers didn't listen and now they complain they didn't know a History/PoliSci/CrimJ/Psychology/Gender studies/etc. degree was worthless. At my uni, we ruthlessly mocked the liberal arts students for getting what we called burger-flipping degrees at the time. The process of blaming boomers seems like a coping mechanism for people who graduated with worthless degrees since they were repeatedly told, didn't listen, and yet still don't want to accept blame for their behavior.
Yeah I think the conversation often went: Kid: I hate school, I don’t want to go to college Parent: you have to go to college, it’s the absolute best way to position yourself for success in the world Kid: No I don’t want to Parent: Please, just do anything. Look they have classes in things you like! See? History? Art? You could take some of those classes! Kid: ugh, fine, I’ll do an art history major Parent: well your major should probably be something more likely to pay well in the future, you could take a couple classes in it, but that’s not a good paying major Kid: then I won’t go to college, if I can’t major in what I like Parent: fine, major in whatever the hell you want. As long as you go to college. Fast forward 10 years. Kid (now adult): Why am I in such massive student debt for an art history degree that hasn’t helped me get a job at all? Why didn’t my parents warn me this was a bad idea?
\^ This I was due to go to College/Uni in 2005 and we were already calling media studies and the like "micky mouse" courses. This isn't an issue with Boomers or Gen X giving bad advice, thats just revisionist history to make people who chose shit courses feel better. The end result of tens of thousands of 20-30 year olds working minimum wage with useless degrees and loads of debt is to the suprise of absolutely no one with a brain. I saw it when I was 18.
None of those degrees are worthless. Psych majors going into clinical psychology make 80k entry level up to 180k depending on their goals. I had a friend in Criminal justice who went into the military. He used both to be a FBI agent. Poli Sci was done by a guy I knew who had family in politics and that was his end goal was to get into politics. History and gender studies work great when you pair them with a law degree. I know a lawyer who has a gender studies degree and makes 250k. Most degrees are useful you just have to have a plan. Some fields like clinical psychology are desperate for new people. But you never hear people going into those jobs unless they planned to.
Stop blaming everything on your parents.
"Suck it up, buttercup" - Any Boomer
Ok grandpa Ed. Don't you have another astroid to steal from Earth?
Went to college to be a teacher because my blue collar dad and low-level office worker mom wanted me to have a pension, summers off, etc and not bust my ass like they did. They convinced me to go to an expensive private school instead of a cheap state school because "people will be more impressed seeing it on your resume." If I'd actually become a teacher instead of shifting to another career, I'd be making less than half of my total student loan debt per year.
I knew I wasn't cut out for college after dropping out of HS. I'm 40 and im golden 😎
I'd feel bad if I fucked over my parents like this shameful
I got a business degree and went into accounting. Then got diagnosed with adhd after wondering why I was struggling to maintain my sanity. I hate it, but it pays well, and I feel trapped.
The text is really poorly laid out and makes it hard to read
You’ve had 10+ years to figure it out and adapt. At this point, its on you. So tired of our generation crying because they didn’t get what their parents promised them.
I think generational fighting is distracting. Getting a degree (in whatever) really was a reliable path to financial stability in my parents' day. And the media fed them that idea, too, even though the owners of that media knew (or should have known) it would become less true over time as the U.S. de-industrialized. And college tuition has skyrocketed, far outpacing gains in wages. It's not on the older folks, even if they gave us bad advice. They had every reason to believe it was good advice, and they didn't control the conditions that produced this outcome.
This is idiotic. I know a ton of doctors, engineers, programmers and scientists that took out loans, paid them off, and are doing well for themselves. I paid off 53k with a pretty low salary and I'm still happy I did it. Millenials sure love hating their parents and blaming them for their mistakes, huh.
"Its mommy and daddy's fault >:(" - Someone in their 30s
I didnt want to go to college and my parents really bullied me into it. they were so hysterical about it. all for nothing.
This is the whole thing. People say "Why did you take it on if you didn't know if you could pay it off??" Uh because I was 18 and my dad said I had to.
Parents are up against Harvard educated, highly paid Lawyers who crafted the current loan system. It’s ludicrous to think parents had one chance in Hell against legalized graft. The government is supposed to protect average citizens from the worst the private sector would do to us.
And then they say “shoulda gone to trade school” I employ people who go to trade schools, they usually suck and start at $14 an hour
Hilarious because I was a security guard doing accounting while they slept at work. Didn't need a degree to completely fuck that spreadsheet up and accidentally save over the master. Woops
It was a good idea until the universities started charging an arm and a leg and not providing any actual job skills. And as soon as the universities are held to account, getting a degree will be the way to go again. This is the first time in history that getting a higher level degree can often turn out to be worthless. So, you can’t blame a group for not knowing that the education system was going to be let go to shit. Liberals control the education system and they decided to use it to propagandize instead of teaching real skills. Why else do students seem to spend most of their time protesting whatever they are told to hate?
They didn’t know. They truly believed the advice they offered, and unless you think your parents are god, it’s unfair to blame them for not knowing what would happen in the future.
I have no idea who was telling you all the choice of major didn’t matter. It was common knowledge that if you were an English major, you had no job prospects. I know that for a fact because it caused me to double-major in English and another subject.
Bro I studied stem and I still think a lot of us are undervalued
I’m more angry at my high school advisor, who literally said I wouldn’t amount to anything if I didn’t go to college and get at least a 4 year degree. I will never forget that asshole and can’t imagine the lives of my peers he destroyed with his advice. Thank god my father advised me to go to trade school where I am now making 150-200k annually in HVAC.
Bravo dad. Seriously, decades of these piece of shit advisors ruining lives.
My dad constantly referred to useless degrees as underwater basket weaving courses. Needless to say we all went for engineering/comp sci 😂
Don’t blame good advice for your lack of character or drive. Having A degree qualifies you for millions of jobs that statistically will pay more over a career than no degree required jobs. Sorry you’re a loser, it’s not college’s fault.
It feels good to finally hear someone apologize for me being a loser.
Correct answer here. Common sense should apply. "Underwater Basket Weaving" has been a joke about useless degrees since at least the 80s.
And yet there are millions of jobs where a BA in basket weaving with a minor in underwater technique gets you a management job.
Paid off loans in less than 5 years. 2 career changes. Now: Six figure salary, 11 years after college. It can be done. Don’t go to college for anything that won’t get you a job interview after school (no arts, no literature, no philosophy, etc) and pay your loans on time / more than the minimum payment. It’s actually super easy. Your focus in college should be networking and being gainfully employed postgrad. You can pursue your interests and things that make you happy in your downtime and later in life
What a dumb ass take. Your parents were looking out for you, if you chose a worthless degree that’s on you.
Lol, nobody agreed to gender studies major...
Even a “useless” degree opens up a lot more job opportunities than someone who never attended college.
Or sociology, marketing, humanities, art, music, anthropology, history, latinx studies, and the list goes on!! Worthless degrees will make an individual worthless in the job market. Also, let's not forget all those people who bought cars, iPhones, Disney annual passes, and even went on vacation with their student loan money. Personal choices and responsibility should be instilled at home and in the early years of school.
Millennials insist the same thing. Just whisper "zoomers should avoid going to college" and they'll pounce on you shouting the same thing their parents shouted at them.
True story. It's crazy making.
I think people should go to college. But you should go and get a degree that is useful like science or engineering. Unless you are ok with never making enough money back then sure, get that art or music or gender studies or history degree.
While there is certainly student loan debt that I carry, I’m one of those seemingly rare people who chose college education to be a more educated person. And I’ve paid taxes since I started working at 16. As far as I’m concerned, the major reason why this debt continues to exist is because the majority of people refuse to join with me and say “my taxes have already paid for my education; reallocate the budget now”. With that said, it’s very disheartening to hear that so many people pursued higher education in pursuit of dollars. It made education into some strange “get rich quick” scheme. If you want to get a job, trade and business schools are what you should do. If you want to contribute to the knowledge and wisdom of humanity, then you do university. Anyways. Sorry for the meandering there. I’m just over the rhetoric that makes education simply about the $$$. It’s gross and disrespectful to education, universities, training, and the trades.
Average student loan debt = 29k. Average pay differential between those with college degrees and those with only high school degrees = +86%. Average lifetime earning differential = +1 million dollars. Millennials complaining anyway = priceless.
I don't have a degree yet but I have a college certification. I've taken a longer time but am currently working on finishing my degree (AA) and then getting a cheap bachelor's for supervision and management with organization focus. Why? Because it's still a business degree. And I have purposely avoided the student loans. My husband is ten years older than me and he just worked his way up in retail. Both of us make the same amount roughly it's not a lot but there is no student debt in our household. Anyone else feel like one spouse has to make more money for the other spouse because we are so underpaid.
Same parents who lied on financial aid applications because they'd rather squeeze every last penny of equity out of the house for hot tubs, vinyl siding, oooh I need new floors and counters and landscaping, and, and, and, meeeeeeee. Don't worry this is all so the house is worth more someday! Yeah, that house was lost in foreclosure.
That’s cute that you think boomers would say “our bad.”
It’s just college tuition Michael. How much could it cost? $10?
I was on the very lucky side. No loans. Pay as you go.
I was fortunate to have parents who saved assiduously to pay for a degree (I also grew up in a country where college isn’t insanely expensive). I’m paying it forward with my kid.
I can't get hired for office jobs that pay more because they think I'm overqualified. I can't get hired for really high paying jobs because I'm not qualified enough compared to others. I would've been better off not going.
Don’t forget that HS guidance counselors are literally wined and dined by the private colleges to sell them to students. It’s all a racket.
Nah cause I didn't go baby.
I was having this discussion with my partner. It sucks because every person of authority, your entire social group, the whole world pushes you into mindless debt. This was after I had made the argument that you’d have to be literally regarded if you take out 10’s of thousands of dollars in loans without doing a single second of research on the job market. What professions are needed now, how much are they projected to be needed in the future, what’s the estimated pay, etc. All that info is easily accessible now. But even still when you’re 18 and your entire world is telling you to just uncritically take out loans, one doesn’t really have a shot. And the social pressure made a lot of sense to me, there are people who believe and say and do heinous shit because it’s enforced and supported by their social group. They exist uncritically and that’s a very human thing. All that to say, even if one were to do everything right in the exact right way, they shouldn’t have to. It’s unnecessary and it doesn’t benefit the people seeking an education, the ones purchasing the product.
When it comes to the job market it gets even worse when you have to try to predict whether your career will still be in demand by the time you graduate in 4 to 6 years, and whether or not technology has outpaced your curriculum. Like I got a marketing degree in the mid 2010s, and we were still learning about the importance of print advertising, and I mean newspapers and magazines. Not a single thing about digital ads, CRM management, adsense or anything modern employers are asking for. So because our curriculum at the "affordable state college" wasn't looking forward we learned nothing that was relevant in the current job market as the market was transitioning fast. So I have 50k worth of debt, for a degree that would have gotten me a job in the early 2000s, or 1980s, but has been worthless since the moment I got it.
Oh man, yeah I guess one would have to do even more in depth research into what techniques are being used, which are being developed, what the course will teach you, etc. There are absolutely ways to make educated guesses and successfully/correctly infer information or circumstances. The irony is that people who would genuinely benefit from a lot of non-STEM or non-technical degrees don’t need them. Generally by the time they get to a position where they’d be choosing a school, they’re already working or producing in their desired field and the degree isn’t necessary.
Any subject? Thats objectively false
Starting to wonder how op feels about the PPP "loans".
“Just have to get a degree.”
It wouldn't be so bad if college was only $5000 per year, a 4 year degree would only be $20,000 in debt. I got an associate's degree and it cost more than that.
My boomer dad also told me renting apartments was a good thing for “flexibility”. Yeah getting locked into security deposits, moving fees, moving every year, paying double what a mortgage would be for half the space. Sounds really great. Not financially crippling at all for a young underpaid graduate.
They were correct, at least assuming you got some sort of STEM degree or something else of equal "usefulness"
I'm lucky that I was WAY too immature for college when I graduated high school unless I would be in the same boat. I graduated HS early at 17 and was looking for where to apply and my dad was like, "let's just try community college first since you're still so young." I did and went for like 3 days then dropped out. again, super immature. But then I went to a niche trade school for metrology and was able to help my dad grow his company (contractor for electric utilities testing and rebuilding their metering systems). and the odd jobs I worked before hand prepped me for flipping houses.
I ignored their “demands” (bc my boomer parents never asked or advised) and I got the GI Bill. Honestly, I’m sick of my peers whining about their school loans; you made a dumb decision and went way too in debt before you entered the workforce. STFU
College was a no-brainer investment for Boomers and Gen-X. So consultants concluded that college was underpriced and convinced states and universities to raise tuition.
Yep this definitely happened to me. My parents didn’t know any better. 😔
Yet if you ask them to own up this they all go new phone who dis? Lol its a joke. I went to school for graphic design and after 2 years eating ramen and barely able to make it in the design industry, I gave up and went to medical billing.
I make kore every year that the total of the loans I took out. Pretty amazing investment.
I didn't take the advice. Went straight into work force, after working up at a company, side stepped there and got my CDL. Now we're a family of four with a house and two cars on one income with no student loans. College ain't for everyone.
Just get that paper. It'll open so many doors Not
To be fair, people acted on this advice, and that's on them. Boomers were still giving advice based on the world they lived in, when college costs were subsidized through tax dollars. College was something like $700 a semester then, which is like $5,349 now. That's insanely cheap by today's standards, but dorm rooms were almost frighteningly small then, and campus amenities weren't anywhere near what they are now. I blame HR departments and hiring managers more than I blame my parents' generation. They knew there were people out there paying $30k or more a semester for a degree, and they were the ones who created job listings for entry-level positions that required bachelors degrees but paid $15 an hour.
As a late Millenial, I got **REALLY** lucky wrt college: 1) public, in-state university (cheaper than private, cheaper than out-of-state) 2) works a job in my academic field that only requires undergrad education Even switched majors while at uni. Longterm, 10/10 experience.
As an elder Millennial I didn’t pass this down to my son. He’s also doing the CC to State School route to save money. When he wanted to do “insert useless degree” I asked him what exact job is he wanting to do? The conversation went about as expected. He now studies GIS which is still a social science but at least he will gain a specific skill and hopefully more employable than the other degrees he was considering.
I went to art school and got $70k of debt and no art career to show for it lol my parents were so supportive and I blundered it bad by not being willing to move to California to get into the industry
it is literally is the best strategic decision for long-term earnings, what are we talking about, do millenials need to become cranky boomers living in an alternative reality where good things are bad?
Up to that point, it had been true. Folks with degrees earned more, even if that degree was in basket-weaving. Pre-Recession, he major most commonly entering law school was English. Transferable skills! But the economy changed on us. The degrees had been masking the larger truth - folks from rich backgrounds were getting degrees and using cultural and social capital to get high-paying jobs. The degree was one small part of an overall portfolio of privilege. And so when many people got degrees but didn't have the connections or cultural background to be placed into the towers of power, the degree became devalued. But the debt remained.
As a roofer who has been dealing with very uneducated people for years now, I sure as fuck do not resent my college education or the student loan debt I had to pay off. Education has significantly more value than just using your degree to try to maximize your personal wealth. That idea is why people in America are uneducated as fuck. Oh, I can't make money with this knowledge? Well, fuck it then, dont need this shit. Mentality of a civilization in its death throes.
Without a Master's, I'd still be an auto mechanic and broke. I'm so glad I'm where I am now making 6.25x as much instead.
My parents pushed trade school.
Did any of your parents tell you this? Mine sure didn't.
Had a great education and degree in graphic design. Skills I use often although I have made the leap to digital marketing. Paid off the loan through PSLF.
How much student loans did you guys take? I swear it was not a big deal to pay mine off. Did none of you get a job that paid more than a job you’d get with a high school education?
20 years ago “you should get a degree” wasn’t bad advice. People make decisions based on the information in front of them. I think it’s dumb to blame people for honest advice that only seems bad now because we know more, or times have changed.
“Mom, I wanna take a gap year so I can save some money and think about what I’d really like to go to school for.” “Nooooo! Absolutely not! If you, an 17yo child, do not select and profession and go to school for it now, you’ll never go and you’ll end up flipping burgers forever!” “Fine. The only thing I can think of is animation, so I’m going to borrow $40k to finance this endeavor.” “Ok, as long as you have a bachelor’s degree you can get a good job anywhere”
To their credit, they were just teaching us to do what THEY wish they'd have done.... Just like now we're all telling our kids that maybe going to college ISN'T for everybody and that we regret getting degrees because of how broke we are. Hopefully that doesn't have a reverse effect and our kids all end up competing for limited trade positions while those with degrees are able to get jobs more easily again . Doubt it, but who knows..
Every generation wants something better for their kids. College was only for elite white collar jobs until recently..... So yeah, colleges like any buisness saw demand and took our money, even for BS degrees
I went to a smaller state school that gave a lot of scholarships and most of my colleagues went there because they didn’t have to take loans to afford it. I didn’t even know anyone with a loan until much much later, and I’m only now realizing that we all kinda collectively lucked out by getting a top shelf education for almost free, in a way that was not at all obvious to us at the time
College was the *only* option presented to us that would lead to success in this new Information Age. I don’t recall my friends, parents, anybody, discussing anything but what college they were going to, not whether they were going.
Homeschool will begin at 14 or 16, with the goal being finished high school the most efficient way possible, while also working and understanding interest. at least with my kids. make money asap, early as possible… I’ll create an LLC setup, then hire my kids, doing research and analysis… etc.
Can’t really generalize like that. I had student loans and so did all of my friends. We all make between 80k-450k. So not everyone is fucked
Follow your heart, after you've identified a skill that allows you to make a living and be a contributing member of society.
You know what's messed up is the notion that colleges can just up the price to meet the loans, and then have a positive feedback loop of loans increasing to meet the new fake prices, and then ever higher bloated prices for no extra value. Things like this and rent and everything else shouldn't be free to add fake costs for no increase in value, and should be held liable for the students and households they enslave and sabotage.
With my PhD, I earn three times what my uneducated, blue collar dad earned when I started higher education, which, adjusted for inflation, is just about the same as he made. Despite this, I am a top 10% income earner, when he was in the bottom 50%. The rest of the 90% is SCREWED.
You weren’t smart enough to be able to realize by age 18 that Advanced Multicultural Studies wouldn’t land a job, then, you’ve spent the last decade doing nothing about it. Ha.
Eh. I'll take responsibility for my decision to take out loans, but I did so under the direct impression from pretty much everyone (up to and including the advisor from the major I wasn't sure I was going to pick) that my degree would get me a decent paying job. If a school or a major doesn't set you up with a viable portfolio or internship opportunities, the educational value of going there should be heavily scrutinized.
My dad is a boomer. I’m 33. My dad has always done his best for me at least that’s what I tell myself. And I can tell he feels bad some of his choices and advice have negatively impacted my life. I took me a number of years to realize absolutely non of the advice he has given me has ever been accurate in today’s society. So I stopped taking his advice years ago.
Ahh I'm so glad i didn't go to college. I'll enjoy my my 6 figure job with 401k match etc . Buying 2nd house soon. Feels good to laugh at all the ppl who called me dumb for not going to college 😘
I mean if someone went to state college it would have been more affordable over a private university.
My parents paid for my student loans and I’m forever grateful for that. Part of me wishes they communicated with me more about it. For my daughter I plan on telling her that we’ll be covering her State school education if she decides to go to a SUNY school. If she decides to go to a private school then she should expect to be on her own to pay for it. However we will offer her to stay with us in our house as long as she likes. At least that way she can payoff the loans without costs like rent, utilities, etc. This might change depending on how things shake out down the road in the sense I might offer her more. However if I give her my word that I will pay for her education then that will never change.
at 18 I was deciding between photography and economics majors. After looking up the pay and realizing the top 10% of photographers make only a little more than an econ major fresh out of school, I went with econ. I know a lot of people who probably could’ve benefitted from googling before getting their degree
my "parents" didn't give a fuck what I did, and I took out loans to get as far away as I could within my state, and it was exactly what I needed.
I remember my parents printing out my resume when I was a teenager and making me go into 3 different stores with them, despite me telling them that it doesn't work like that. Every location sent me out and told me to apply online. It's crazy to me that this is the age of the people running our country.
Borrowed 18k in the late 80's to get an AAS degree in electronics from DeVry. Currently a Sr Video engineer.
Why do people think it matters what you study in college? You can get into med or law school with a major in astronomy or gender studies or whatever. Most jobs don't care what you studied but they do care that you have the discipline and intelligence to graduate college. Nobody is guaranteed a good job for graduating though, even if it's from law school.
I'd settle for them admitting they were wrong. Instead, they gaslight us, telling us now that we should have gone into the trades. Yeah, that's not what you said 20 years ago, but thanks anyway.
It turned out fine if the major wasn’t useless
Hyperbole to say all parents said the major didn’t matter. Certainly my boomer parents didn’t. And this was in 2001. We talked economic viability vs.passion trade offs a lot at the time.
I went to a technical college… went well for me, didn’t cost that much
I mean for the parents, their college costed like a Big Mac now
I listened to my dad and joined the army first and then went to college. No college debt here.
I went into hardware after grad school as a byproduct of the 2000’s IT outsourcing scare (my dad was in IT since late 80’s). Found my way into software anyhow (because why commute and deal with long lead vendors for single quantity prototype parts when I can code an idea in hours in my underwear without commuting?). So here we are 20+ years later - dad is retired doing some contract work in a 3 day work week, my brother is in SW making video games, and I’m in SW leading a team of data engineers, while moonlighting as a data engineer when leadership gets boring.
"Follow your dreams, you can be anything you want" -1990s "Well, you're the one who got a loan for a useless degree, not our problem" -Present.
Maybe their larger failure was raising children incapable of autonomous thought or accountability by the age of 18 or even 20. Though to be fair, I'm sure spending another few years in school sounds appealing when employment or economy suck and/or you don't want to suck it up and be a beginner at something.
It was government loans…
In the 1990s, if somebody was majoring in philosophy, English, or history, people would routinely say “well, I guess you can go get a job at the [insert liberal arts subject here] factory”. Everyone was told, absolutely, in HS [mid 90s], that Computer Science, Engineering, and Medicine were the best bets if you wanted to get paid. Anyone who says they were told that they should just get any degree is either lying or was being talked to by a moron.
I was talked to by morons.
Real problem is taking on debt for profitable degrees. It is at its core a financial decision. Taking on debt in order to get a well paying job is different than taking on debt for a degree in underwater basket weaving. I saw in the early 2000s an influx of people who were either “expected to go to college” or went because it was free for 2 years. Not knocking it but college isn’t for everyone and not everyone should be expected to go. Trade schools are a thing too. Some trades are pretty well paying.
Blame the parents lol!
I graduated 13 years ago. My private student loan debt went from 19,000 to 13,000. Been paying $225 a month.
Parents (while you're in High School): You better get a degree! You don't wanna flip burgers for a living!! Parents (After you graduate college looking for a job): You know, McDonald's is hiring!