Hey students, you stressed yet? Let me pile it on.

[AZhitman]

Might I recommend:



p.s. You CAN go to college w/o a scholarship or grants. You just have to work. I worked F/T throughout my college career, and I'm nowhere near MENSA material.

[yoozef]

theres an easy solution to that (in theory)... do your parents own a house? if they do, see if they can take out an equity loan on a house and pay of your school with that... then pay off your parents loan, and the interest is tax deductible, so they save on paying tax (essentially making it interest free)

Bad idea.

I'm not risking losing my home on the behavior and judgment of a 20-something kid. Nope.

I prefer bigbadberry's plan.

it all depends on what kind of person your child is and what they major in... in my case i hope once i get my BA in accounting in a few months and AFTER i get a (hopefully) steady job, my parents will allow me to do this, i don't want to fork over any more money than i have to...

[MinisterofDOOM]

I worked F/T throughout my college career, and I'm nowhere near MENSA material.

It's not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of sanity. Mine's clearly less sound than yours. Not that this is news.

I worked full time and went to school part time for a year or two total, while living on my own. My job AND school performance suffered because of it. You also need a pretty ideal setup for it to work. I had a job that let me do homework on the clock, which helped school success a lot. But I was ALWAYS tired, never could think straight, and was never EVER free of stress. I also had to fight both sides to keep the schedules compatible and that impacted my choice of professors and classes. f***. That. s***. Just an all around s*** arrangement. And if you're paying for your schooling out of pocket, that also means all your money is going right back out the door and into that gigantic misery machine. Wonderful.

My solution is not to put myself through school OR to get loans. It's to give school the double deuce. Sure, I make less money. I also smile more.

[IBCoupe]

Might I recommend:



p.s. You CAN go to college w/o a scholarship or grants. You just have to work. I worked F/T throughout my college career, and I'm nowhere near MENSA material.

I work full time right now, too, and my college tuition is only $14k right now. I don't know what your circumstances were at the time, Greg, so I'm not gonna debate those with you.

But I am going to say: I could not afford to go to Law School were it not for student loans going straight into my pocket. It's probably the extra 450 miles I drive per week while I'm in school. And the books. Maybe I don't need as much as they've given me, but I do know that if it was only going to tuition, as you and others have advocated, I'd have to drop out, or, alternatively, sell my car, stop seeing my wife, quit my job, move to Hartford, and work right up to the ABA-mandated maximum of 20 hours per week for full-time law students.

It's not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of sanity. Mine's clearly less sound than yours. Not that this is news.

I worked full time and went to school part time for a year or two total, while living on my own. My job AND school performance suffered because of it. You also need a pretty ideal setup for it to work. I had a job that let me do homework on the clock, which helped school success a lot. But I was ALWAYS tired, never could think straight, and was never EVER free of stress. I also had to fight both sides to keep the schedules compatible and that impacted my choice of professors and classes. f***. That. s***. Just an all around s*** arrangement. And if you're paying for your schooling out of pocket, that also means all your money is going right back out the door and into that gigantic misery machine. Wonderful.

My solution is not to put myself through school OR to get loans. It's to give school the double deuce. Sure, I make less money. I also smile more.

I agree 100%. Yesterday, I got enough studying to cover me for half of next week's classes and I plan to get the rest done today. I slept last night for almost 13 hours, and that was the first time since the semester started that I got more than 5 hours of real sleep. For many people, five hours is plenty. But I get up, go to work, devote my brainpower to designing submarines for the Navy, then go home, feed the cat, and drive up to Hartford, where I study for anywhere between a half hour and an hour and a half, then I go to class for two or three hours, then I go home, go to bed, and start it all over.

But the downside for me being able to sleep for thirteen hours and still get all my studying done in advance of next week is that the wife's pissed at me for not making it down this weekend to see her - weekends are the only times I can. But I'm going to give school as much of me as there is to give, in the hopes that all the crap I'm going through and all the loans I'm taking out will be worth it for a fantastic career in law and policy.

And, as I wrote above, I couldn't do it without the extra cash from student loans. Maybe some people have the circumstances that support going to school, but I'm not going to bash on student loans or on giving cash directly to students, because I want it to be the student's abilities, not his or her circumstances, that determine whether college is right.

If "equal opportunity" means anything, it must mean that you don't need to be rich in order to get rich.

[Jesda]

But I am going to say: I could not afford to go to Law School were it not for student loans going straight into my pocket. It's probably the extra 450 miles I drive per week while I'm in school. And the books. Maybe I don't need as much as they've given me, but I do know that if it was only going to tuition, as you and others have advocated, I'd have to drop out, or, alternatively, sell my car, stop seeing my wife, quit my job, move to Hartford, and work right up to the ABA-mandated maximum of 20 hours per week for full-time law students.

If "equal opportunity" means anything, it must mean that you don't need to be rich in order to get rich.

Sounds like a personal problem, broski. Some people have to sacrifice more to get what they want.

[IBCoupe]

Some people do. But that sacrifice should be a direct result of how bad you want it, not about how bad you have it.

How we practically implement a way of telling the difference is not something I've come up with yet. But I think this is the right place to start.

[Jesda]

Some people do. But that sacrifice should be a direct result of how bad you want it, not about how bad you have it.

How we practically implement a way of telling the difference is not something I've come up with yet. But I think this is the right place to start.

Nor is handing out easy money the solution. I don't have the answer either.

[IBCoupe]

Well, I suppose one way to make the money harder to get is to make it easier for students to ditch their debt if a job doesn't pan out - that'll make banks actually look at a kid's major before giving him fifty grand.

I don't think that cracking down on students on the other end will have as much of an effect. I think we can count on a lender to be a bit more reasonable than an eighteen-year-old, even if he or she has two parents who know only slightly more about finance behind him or her.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I know the answer:

Stop basing everything on meaningless pieces of paper. Stop making the SCHOOLING the lynchpin and start making KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING the crucial hiring point. With everyone and their dog having a degree in something, it's about damn time practical skill started taking back its place at the top of the employment qualification food chain.

After that, school pricing won't matter, because it won't be school that gets you into a job, it'll be YOU. Like it should always have been.

Prices will adjust accordingly from there.