PLEASE NOTE THAT I FIRST WROTE THIS IN 2011
The hullabaloo over student loans is falling on deaf ears in my household. A student makes a commitment based on the fantasy that all will be fine as soon as he or she has sheepskin in hand, but in the four or five years that student has spent matriculating at the university of choice, the world has changed. All of a sudden recent grads are finding the job market drastically reduced, but it didn't happen the moment they walked across the stage to receive a diploma.
There was an article in an edition of Time Magazine that told the stories of several 2011 graduates and their loans. One graduated from Fordham University and had a $30,000 student loan to pay off. That's nearly the price of that Lexus she thought she would buy with that salary she was going to earn with her degree. Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 when she was a freshman, the same year that Circuit City folded. But she kept right on pouring money into Fordham University, assured that her degree in English would take care of her for life. By the way, Fordham University is expensive, charging over $1300 per credit. Nearby Baruch College charges $215 per credit, but a degree from Fordham is, well, just another degree, but with prestige.
This graduate was featured in a national magazine because the job she landed doesn't pay enough to enable her paying off her student loan. Another student featured in the article worked a 9-5 full time job then part time 3½ hours each evening doing software telephone support. She told Time that she was so "burned out" from the lab hours that she quit her day job. Her degree in documentary filmmaking from NYU apparently didn't require a semester in "Introduction to Common Sense" and certainly none in "Accepting Responsibility."
In 1964, I was an A2C in the US Air Force, married, with one child and another on the way. Uncle Sam's pay barely covered our basic needs, the steering box broke on our 13 year old car and we borrowed my wife's grandparents 7 year old car. My job in the Air Force was as a Launch and Checkout Specialist on Titan I Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. To make sure we had enough money, I took a second job as a dishwasher in a bowling alley restaurant. I soon took on the task of short order cook, grilling steaks and burgers, dishing out bowls of chili, working the counter and stocking the bar. I worked my buns off, not because I thought I'd get ahead, but because I was part of the operation. The manager noticed and promoted me a couple of times. I'd get up in the morning and go to the base, spend the day performing maintenance on missiles with atomic bombs for a warhead, often traveling up to 60 miles out to a missile site to make repairs, then when my day was over, changing out of my uniform and heading out to the bowling alley. The restaurant would stay open until midnight, so it was often nearly 1 AM before I'd get home and crawl into bed.
Sure I got tired, but my wife and kids (my second child was born during these times) ate and were clothed. I didn't go looking for Time Magazine to write about my plight, I just kept on working two jobs. Eventually, I got promoted by the Air Force, so after putting a few dollars away, I quit that second job.
One of the students mentioned by Time passed up a free education at the University of Texas to go to the considerably more prestigious Tulane University and is now $90,000 in debt and using a degree in anthropology and history to work in a hotel at $9.50 an hour. I'm going to suggest to that student that a second job on the wait staff in a quality restaurant might pay enough to help decrease the enormous amount of money you spent in New Orleans.
How about this? Go down to your nearest recruiting station and sign up. You'll have four years of modest pay, free (or at least subsidized) room and board, and an opportunity to serve your country. If you enlist, your base salary will be around $19,000 a year ($23000 in 2023) and at the end of a four year hitch, you could be making over $28,000 ($38,000 in 2023), plus a comfortable room and three substantial meals. Should your degree be enough to get you commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, you'll begin with a base salary of around $35,000 ($43,600 in 2023) and after four years as an officer, your salary will be around $50,000 ($77,600 now). If you can manage not to spend your money frivolously on stylish clothing, neat automobiles, and partying, you could probably have a great chunk of that student loan paid off. As an added benefit, the branch of service you choose will see to it that you have a marketable skill and will probably teach you responsibility and common sense.
One more thing. If you spent your spring break partying more than a few miles from campus or home during any of your college years, you should not expect one iota of assistance from any government agency. Ditto if you had a car during your college days.
