The inescapable weight of my student debt

There are books published by the US Government in almost every public library in the United States that have detailed earning stats and employment forecasts on every career. There are an enormous number of web sites (including sites maintained by the government) that offer the same information with a few seconds of searching. At some point people need to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.

There&#x27;s the loan forgiveness program if you work at a non-profit or in education for 10 years. That seems like one pathway out at least for the Federal loans.<p>There are some people who don&#x27;t pay the loans at all and take the credit hit and find their tax refunds taken. The interesting thing is that the refund directly reduces the principal and is not applied to the interest. For some people that seems to be a reasonable mitigation. I could be misremembering the details here though.<p>The other thing is that people need to vote. Vote for politicians who will reform student loans.

“I have spent a great deal of time during the last decade shifting the blame for my debt. Whose fault was it?”<p>After all that he has been through, he still doesn’t seem to give consideration to his choice of major as the root source of the problem.

Great read. Looking back I’m so glad I chose to go with the in-state public school in my home town for a CS degree. I am looking at graduating in a year with zero debt and some good career prospects.<p>Makes me shutter now to think I was considering out of state $40-50k per year universities. I was 17 years old and in my undeveloped head I was really thinking it would be worth it..

&gt;&gt; “I have spent a great deal of time during the last decade shifting the blame for my debt. Whose fault was it?”<p>There is no one single person to point to, but I&#x27;ll take a whack at it:<p>1. The father, who should know better, for agreeing to co-sign a loan for a worthless degree. A 5 minute conversation with ANYONE related to the degree would have told him the facts.<p>I wanted to be a video game designer and my parents would not sign for a loan for a degree in that area. We compromised on Computer Science. BULLET. DODGED.<p>I&#x27;m a bit sorrowful I&#x27;m not working at my passion, but I&#x27;m pretty young and for all I know being a game designer would have made me miserable. Traveling the world, living comfortably, and putting away a lot of money as a computer programmer is not something I&#x27;m about to complain about.<p>2. The people giving these people toxic loans for degrees that have no chance of every paying off.<p>They have essentially created a servant class that has to pay a large % of their monthly take-home to a parasitic student loan company. Instead of taking risks, buying houses and cars, and getting more useful education, they are doing data entry.<p>The best minds of my generation are doing data entry and working at call centers.<p>3. The Universities themselves. How is it at all ethical to allow students to go through a 4 year program, charge them 100k for the effort, and then turn them out on the streets to suffer for years and years?<p>I remember in my non-major classes in college, the attitude of other students with worthless degrees and professors who teach them was: Don&#x27;t talk about it. Don&#x27;t think about it, just keep going. Which is bullshit. Talk about it. Tell the students what they are getting into.

&gt;.&gt; bad parenting letting their kid rack up 100k in debt.

As soon as I read that he graduated with a degree in &quot;English Literature&quot; I knew what the problem was - what did he expect? Where does he think the demand for that is? How did he justify 100k$ for such a degree ( or any degree for that part )?<p>There are so many jobs like welding, plumbing, etc that need to be done, pay very good money and require no ( or very small ) loans, and he studied something like English Literature ( for 100k$ !! ) complaining...<p>Hell, even studying something &quot;elite&quot; as he calls it like CS in his own time, on his own, doing projects to get some starting job in any CS-related industry would be preferrable.<p>People who study these bullshit degrees are in a mess of their own doing.