[anigbrowl]

1000 words later...

She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies. [...] "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me."

Words fail me.

[philwelch]

If you're going to get a liberal arts degree, either have enough money to afford it, or be so intensely interested in the liberal arts that you're willing to pay back your damn loans. There's no human right to be educated in something useless at no expense to yourself, and I say that as someone with a BA in philosophy.

[dmor]

"There's no human right to be educated in something useless at no expense to yourself, and I say that as someone with a BA in philosophy."

Rock on, we need more philosophers like you.

[india]

Au contraire, I think if everyone with a demonstrable ability to learn and the demonstrated desire to do so was allowed to do so free of expense, society as a whole would be way better off.

[philwelch]

"Free of expense" doesn't exist. You're talking about transferring the expense onto people who do create wealth. Maybe it makes sense for people to have an inherent right to medical treatment or housing or something, but an inherent right to study feminism and religion at the $100,000 expense of others?

I mean, we already have subsidies for people who are actually good at the humanities--tenured professorships. Philosophy's probably worthwhile that society can afford to pay for philosophers--and at this rate, we're hiring more philosophers as a society than ever in history. But what's the gain for society in training far more philosophers than we can afford to employ, or in indulging the 80%+ of philosophy undergraduates who have little to no aptitude for the subject?

I won't even get into the bigger question, which is whether religious studies or women's studies are worthwhile for society to subsidize at all.

[potatolicious]

You have a good point - my question would be why the studies of feminism and religion carry a $100K price tag. My engineering degree cost about half as much (in Canada, mind you), but is understandably pricy due to the earning potential.

Sure, there is a minimum cost to a degree that may or may not line up with its earning potential... but $100K? How in the world do schools get away with charging that much for a degree whose earning potential is so low?

This whole problem would be a lot less of an issue if degrees cost proportionally (or at least roughly proportionally) to their market value. People who want to study "useless" degrees can do so, and their costs would be likewise much lower than people who want "useful" degrees for employment. Perhaps we'd all be better off as a society this way.

[philwelch]

100K was her total student debt, which is not entirely from tuition and fees but also from living expenses. Living expenses for 4 years in New York can easily exceed 100K on their own. If you skimp and live on campus (which in NYC is probably cheaper than living in town--not true for the rural college I go to) it's going to be less than otherwise, but then you add tuition on top of that.

[houseabsolute]

The charge is based on the cost to deliver. And an unsubsidized private school must naturally pass on a greater portion of this burden to its students.

[Daniel_Newby]

"How in the world do schools get away with charging that much for a degree whose earning potential is so low?"

They charge whatever the market will bear! Apparently there is a large intersection between "rich" and "willing to piss away four years on a nonproductive enterprise". Whodathunkit.

[dmor]

the ability to learn is not the standard, it is the demonstrable ability to generate value (monetary and otherwise) that matters

[speby]

No kidding. FTA: "They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason..."

Really, that is the justification in all this? I felt like I should get a loan (not "I truly need the loan because I've reasoned through all the details and risks involved") is now an excuse?

Who's fault is that exactly?

[lsb]

As a Latin major, I wholeheartedly agree. You can learn a lot from any major, and you can create something valuable from any major, and it's irresponsible to try to just give up because there's nothing immediately valuable to create.

Can't she try to educate kids about the job prospects of women's studies majors? Can't she make a job board for her unemployed peers? Can't she turn her photographic abilities into an art hobby too and sell prints of religious symbolism in urban or rural settings? There's so much she could do, but it sounds like she just wants to push Reset.

[speby]

Also FTA: "But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade."

Yep, I know how that feels. I'd love to call a do-over and make sure I invested in AAPL around 2001/2002 and maybe some more in a few other companies as well (even MSFT at the time). Alas, the real world doesn't offer time machines, at least yet.

[beambot]

Exactly!

My labmates and I (all PhD students in robotics) read through that _entire_ article up until that statement. We work like mad as paid engineering grad students, covered by grants and industrial partnerships. Because we serve a useful role to the University and our collaborators / partners, our grad school is _earned_ sans debt. We get an education chocked full of useful skills; they get cheap labor for 4-6 years.

It is ridiculous to expect handouts and/or government subsidies for a degree with so few (obviously) practical skills.

On a related note, I'm disappointed with the NYT shock-and-awe tactics. The degree sought should have been in the first paragraph!

[netcan]

Interesting thing is that it's possible for a degree to be a lot cheaper.

When people take a job that' "something they love" a lot of them will be prepared to earn less. Couldn't a similar principle apply where people studying "something they love" do it some place cheap and possibly less prestigious?

[dmor]

what's really disgusting is that she spent $100,000 on such a useless degree

maybe she should suck up her pride and take a night job at Fedex, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. to pay that off.

[patio11]

Colleges are sort of, shall we say, circumspect about the value of the degrees they issue. They charge the same no matter what your major is, and most do not publish per-major salary studies. That is part of the mystique -- "clearly an education in English is worth as much as a degree in anything else, look, the English professors even say so!" (Substitute your favorite or least favorite degree for English.)

A few of the departments in the engineering school at WashU published their own starting salary study -- using the Internets to get in touch with recent grads -- which did not endear them to other departments at the university. That was an amazingly useful piece of information for me when graduating, and helped me to avoid an offer of employment at substantially below the "going rate". (Then I became a salaryman. Education can't save everyone. sigh ;) )

[houseabsolute]

> circumspect about the value of the degrees they issue

Students are not so naive as to not realize how much their education will be worth when they exit. It is (or was in 2006 at my school) a topic of constant discussion among undergrads. But that knowledge is for some reason not connected with action . . . maybe because these "adults" have never been responsible for or on the hook for anything in their entire lives leading up to this decision.

(Interestingly, I went to the same school as you.)

[robryan]

Occasionally articles of this kind evoke some sympathy with a tough position, but more often than not it appears the person up for the loans made some really bad choices.

[dlytle]

Unfortunately, most college students have been misled for years about their degrees. I know 3 people with degrees in drama and theater who were told by every professor, advisor, and student loan officer that what mattered was having any 4 year degree, regardless of what it was in.

I think that's a relic from the time when just having a degree did matter, but those days are over, and people are just starting to realize it. That being said, there's still a big problem with the ridiculous amount you have to pay for a degree these days.

Part of that has to do with the enormous fixed costs of running a college. For example; every walking path at a Maryland college I attended must be kept clear of snow and ice at all times. Including in the middle of a blizzard. This results in a friend of mine (and his whole department) working 16 hours a day during all snowstorms to keep the paths clear. During a blizzard, he makes hazard pay the first 8, then overtime hazard pay the second eight, and sleeps on campus. He paid his mortgage this year with just snow crew money.

So clearly cutting costs and unnecessary "services" would help. Cutting executive salaries would help too. But until student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy (thus forcing lenders and schools to actually cut tuition to match the value of a degree) nothing is likely to force schools to make the hard decisions.

[stretchwithme]

What it feels is inconvenient.

God, the nerve of some people.

[tkahn6]

This woman has some major balls to blame her shitty choice in a major and subsequent debt on other people.

She made a poor choice and she needs to pay for it. This is a systemic problem and the only way to cure it is to enforce personal responsibility.

[DilipJ]

She was young when she made this choice. To suggest that she should be liable for the rest of her life for this decision is crazy. Student loans should be dischargeable under bankruptcy, or should be debt that one can negotiate with the lender. There's something wrong with allowing mortgage and credit card debt to be discharged by people who buy McMansions or go on vacations, but not to some poor girl wanting to get a college education. If the law were changed to allow student loans to be discharged, then it would have the effect of lenders having to verify that the borrower would have a reasonable chance of paying the loan back. This would involve looking at the tuition costs and the expected salary that the degree in question would provide. If that were the case, there would be no way any lender would allow this girl (and the thousands of others like her) from pursuing such a degree at such a high cost. As a result, she (and others) would not have been able to attend college, thus decreasing enrollment nationwide, resulting in universities decreasing tuition in order attract sufficient students.

Supply and demand should be what determines the cost of any degree program. As long as the demand side is subsidized by the government through loans and debt that cannot be negotiated/discharged later on, then tuition costs will continue to rise and young lives will continue to be ruined.

[younata]

or, they could choose less expensive colleges. Like a state college. CSU Stanislaus is $5,000 / year or so last I checked (September 2009). $20,000 probably wouldn't have required a loan at all. Because she's paid at least $100,000 or so of it. 50k / year * 4 years is 200k, and she owes 97k, so most likely she got some scholarships that helped a lot.

[herdrick]

For how long do you think she should be paying for that poor choice?

[noonespecial]

The question you are actually asking is when should we start paying for her poor choice.

[dmor]

I'm sure the regulators in this country will see to it that those of us creating wealth and value start paying off the debts of those who don't in no time.