[skewart]

I know a lot of people who are in a similar situation to the Sociology major you described (well, not quite that bad a ratio, but not far off). They all have opted for the income-based repayment plan and are basically resigned to the fact that they'll be paying several hundred dollars a month towards the loans for basically the rest of their lives. It feels kind of like an education tax that gets used really inefficiently. Actually, since most people I know in this situation are getting a little help from their parents it's effectively an inheritance tax.

[epalmer]

Parents are not as involved in the decisions as much as they should be and they have bought into the notion that private liberal art universities are much better than public. But that is not uniformly true and outcome data shows earning power is not that much greater for many liberal art majors from private schools. (full disclosure: I work for a private liberal arts university)

[jonesb6]

I'm a perfect example of the problem you just described, parents basically let me handle all applications, pick my school, my major, and I ended up choosing an out of state school that was vastly beyond my means (~45k/yr). Parents who payed tuition ran out of money (after mortgaging the house to get my older brother through, and covering ~2 years of my education where I secretly took fewer credits to lessen the burden on my family).

So I dropped out and am now working for a recently funded start-up, making a decent amount of money with promises of more if I can work at a level that can elevate the company itself. I intend to finish a different degree over the next ~3 years (CS -> Philosophy). Needless to say none of this would've been possible had I not spent thousands of hours learning software development in my free time, such that the degree I ultimately get, or if I even have one at all, is much less important.

However I don't blame my parents at all for my poor decisions. I think today's youth need to be taught financial responsibility.. some how. Maybe mandatory minimum-wage work during high school? I don't know. This is all so ridiculous you would think it could only happen in theory. Financial institutions finding a way to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from the adult population using their children as a proxy and the parents being grateful to do it..

[malnourish]

The problem with IBR plans is they are generally only for federal loans. In my experience, private loans offer no alternative payment plans up front.

[jonesb6]

Worst still a large number of companies are springing up offering refinancing on private loads that offer absurd terms and drag debtors further into the hole. These refi companies are to debtors what for-profit schools are to blue-collard workers.