http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109701/placing-the-blame-as-students-are-buried-in-debt?mod=edu-collegeprep

Blame the family? The lenders? The university? Scroll down for the answer.

Quote :

"Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it. Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments. This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up. Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn't ask borrowers to verify their incomes. Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn't have a lot of good options for digging out. It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners. For starters, it's a shared failure of parenting and loan underwriting. But perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process. And I would argue that they had an obligation to counsel students like Ms. Munna, who got in too far over their heads. How many people are like her? According to the College Board's Trends in Student Aid study, 10 percent of people who graduated in 2007-8 with student loans had borrowed $40,000 or more. The median debt for bachelor's degree recipients who borrowed while attending private, nonprofit colleges was $22,380. The Project on Student Debt, a research and advocacy organization in Oakland, Calif., used federal data to estimate that 206,000 people graduated from college (including many from for-profit universities) with more than $40,000 in student loan debt in that same period. That's a ninefold increase over the number of people in 1996, using 2008 dollars. The Family No one forces borrowers to take out these loans, and Ms. Munna and her mother, Cathryn, have spent the years since her graduation trying to understand where they went wrong. Ms. Munna's father died when she was 13, after a series of illnesses. She started college at age 17 and borrowed as much money as she could under the federal loan program. To make up the difference between her grants and work study money and the total cost of attending, her mother co-signed two private loans with Sallie Mae totaling about $20,000. When they applied for a third loan, however, Sallie Mae rejected the application, citing Cathryn's credit history. She had returned to college herself to finish her bachelor's degree and was also borrowing money. N.Y.U. suggested a federal Plus loan for parents, but that would have required immediate payments, something the mother couldn't afford. So before Cortney's junior year, N.Y.U. recommended that she apply for a private student loan on her own with Citibank. Over the course of the next two years, starting when she was still a teenager, she borrowed about $40,000 from Citibank without thinking much about how she would pay it back. How could her mother have let her run up that debt, and why didn't she try to make her daughter transfer to, say, the best school in the much cheaper state university system in New York? "All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her," Cathryn said. "All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part." But Cortney resists the idea that this is a tale of bad parenting. "To me, it would be an uncharitable reading," she said. "My mother has tried her best, and I don't blame her for anything in this." The Lender Sallie Mae gets a pass here, in my view. A responsible grownup co-signed for its loans to the Munnas, and the company eventually cut them off. But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a "no doc" or at least a "low doc" subprime mortgage loan. A Citi spokesman declined to comment, even though Ms. Munna was willing to sign a waiver giving Citi permission to talk about her loans. Perhaps the bank worried that once it approved one loan, cutting her off would have led her to drop out or transfer and have trouble paying back the loan. Today, someone like Ms. Munna might not qualify for the $40,000 she borrowed. But as the economy rebounds, there is little doubt that plenty of lenders will step forward to roll the dice on desperate students, especially because the students generally can't get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court. The University The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up abbgainst, because they see their families' financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn't N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she'd passed, say, $60,000 in total debt? "Had somebody called me and said, 'Do you have a clue where this is all headed?', it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed," said Cathryn Munna. "When financial aid told her that they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying 'You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.' " That's not a role that the university wants to take on, though. "I think that would be completely inappropriate," said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. "Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I'm not sure that's always the best decision, but it's one that they really have to make themselves." The Options The balance on Cortney Munna's loans is about $97,000, including all of her federal loans and her private debt from Sallie Mae and Citibank. What are her options for digging out? Her mother can't help without selling her bed and breakfast, and then she'd have no home. She could take her daughter in, but there aren't good ways for her to earn a living in Alexandria Bay, in upstate New York. Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma. 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. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren't being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over. She may finally be earning enough to barely scrape by while still making the payments for the first time since she graduated, at least until interest rates rise and the payments on her loans with variable rates spiral up. And while her job requires her to work nights and weekends sometimes, she probably should find a flexible second job to try to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month. Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. "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.""

6/2/2010 9:14:16 AM

From NYU, no less.

6/2/2010 9:16:51 AM

Teal, dear.

6/2/2010 9:18:56 AM

Quote :

" "It feels wrong to me."""

That is because you are an idiot.

6/2/2010 9:26:09 AM

Wrong! Critical Media Literacy and Politics of Gender, biatch!

6/2/2010 9:27:27 AM

blame everyone but yourself, that's the ticket!

6/2/2010 9:27:49 AM

Quote :

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

:facepalm:

6/2/2010 9:30:18 AM

They fucked up.

The mother should have asked her daughter, "What the fuck are you going to do with that degree when you graduate? Will you be able to afford the student loan?"

I'm not saying that people shouldn't get degrees in History, religious studies, ect. But have a fucking plan to pay for it. If you can get a scholarship(s), grants, rich parents, ect, go for it. Otherwise, it might be best to go for a major that has much better odds at paying more when you graduate, or at least go to a cheaper school.

I'm not familiar with NYU, but from the sounds of it, it's a private school. I assume, like NC, a NY public college would be MUCH cheaper, and provide a comparable education to that of NYU, especially for her major.

6/2/2010 9:31:05 AM

OP is too much for me to read... i blame ADD. but i agree that student debt is a problem in the US.

6/2/2010 9:32:07 AM

I think it's a combination of problems. But the people where the blame rests are the people that took out the loan. They see the amount that they're taking out, and they see how much is going to be paid back.

and seriously, wtf kind of job did she expect to get with that degree?

6/2/2010 9:34:58 AM

It's largely a problem of baby-boomers and the way they've shaped society. When they were growing up, college was a privileged and difficult place to go to. They worked hard and succeeded, and college attendance rates increased dramatically. College has now become an "expected" thing for students to go to after high school, even when many of them aren't ready for it or would be better suited for other activities.

It's as if entering the work force or picking up a trade has become "beneath" the middle class of suburbia (and it has). Thus, everyone just expects to go to college with no plan for their life, and they end up majoring in philosophy or religious studies (or film studies).

6/2/2010 9:36:47 AM

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/more-on-cortney-munnas-student-loan-saga/


More

6/2/2010 9:36:55 AM

Quote :

"The balance on Cortney Munna's loans is about $97,000, including all of her federal loans and her private debt from Sallie Mae and Citibank. "

Quote :

"She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer."

W

T

F

?

I make that and I dropped out of college with no student loan debt.

6/2/2010 9:42:24 AM

Yeah there's no reason to go an out of state school unless you're really set on what you're doing.

6/2/2010 9:43:51 AM

Quote :

"To describe my degree as “women’s studies and religious studies” doesn’t really do it justice. I’m an alumna of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. I created my own interdisciplinary program in collaboration with an adviser. It involved courses from a variety of departments, including religious studies, gender studies, sociology, psychology plus several interdisciplinary and writing seminars. I had to defend my concentration in front of a panel of professors before graduating. "

good lord

6/2/2010 9:51:25 AM

underwater basketweaving

I'm AstralAdvent and i approved this message.

6/2/2010 9:54:22 AM

I love how these days the solution to not being able to find a job or pay back student loans is to go back to school, take out more loans, and defer your payments/interest even longer.

6/2/2010 9:54:23 AM

Quote :

"I'm not familiar with NYU, but from the sounds of it, it's a private school."

lolololol

6/2/2010 10:11:14 AM

how the hell can't you live on $800/month ? food isn't that expensive, and if you're commute isn't 50+ miles you shouldn't be spending much on petrol either....

6/2/2010 10:16:34 AM

Quote :

"It's largely a problem of baby-boomers and the way they've shaped society. When they were growing up, college was a privileged and difficult place to go to. They worked hard and succeeded, and college attendance rates increased dramatically. College has now become an "expected" thing for students to go to after high school, even when many of them aren't ready for it or would be better suited for other activities. "

OMG we agree!

don't forget about the GI bill too, making College more atainable.

6/2/2010 10:16:41 AM

this is a big problem in this country. not necessarily just b/c of the debt, but b/c someone like this is going to go to a very prestigious school and get a degree in NOTHING, and then feel slighted b/c they can't get a job. it's ridiculous. there is no entitlement to make a lot of money just b/c you have a degree in anything from somewhere. you don't have to go to college if you have no use for college.

also, NYU (or any school) would get killed in the media if they told a student that they were too poor to attend, so throw that option out completely.

6/2/2010 10:18:38 AM

i don't understand the whole college education = money thing. plenty of tradespeople who own their own businesses (electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc.) make a lot more money than her. they don't have college educations, they just have some fucking work ethic.

work ethic = money

6/2/2010 10:22:46 AM

yeah...no shit...

i have a pretty good job but i could make a WHOLE LOT more cleaning houses than i do here if i wanted to work my ass off like that every day

6/2/2010 10:26:35 AM

Quote :

"also, NYU (or any school) would get killed in the media if they told a student that they were too poor to attend, so throw that option out completely."

Understandable, but maybe they should take a half hour out of all of their "open houses" to explain the loan situation to everyone. Maybe encourage out-of-state students to take a closer look at their in-state options.

Of course, they would never do that, but it would be a nice gesture and probably give them some good pub.

6/2/2010 10:29:48 AM

1) Blame lies with the mother and daughter for choosing an expensive private school. This would be fine if you are going to get a degree in something that would pay you a good salary. So...

2) Going with 1) above, blame also lies with the daughter for choosing the major that she did.


Wouldn't SUNY at Buffalo or SUNY at Binghamton not cut it, especially for a major like that?

Heck, she could have done a bachelor's in business from one of the SUNYs pretty much for free and she would be making at least $40,000 now AFTER TAXES, not the $27,000 she is making now.

That would make a net difference in her current assets of some $150,000.

6/2/2010 10:33:16 AM

yeah i remember a dude in my freshman English class who was at state for the meteorology program telling me about needing to sell his car so he'd his loan payments for school

i mean, wtf.. there's no way that's ever going to pay off. and there have to be better ways to go about it with doing the bs classes in state then going out of state for the last year or two.

6/2/2010 10:33:18 AM

Quote :

"i have a pretty good job but i could make a WHOLE LOT more cleaning houses than i do here if i wanted to work my ass off like that every day"

i'm pretty sure i could double my salary if i opened a lawncare and landscaping business

and i'd enjoy it more

idk why i don't do that....

6/2/2010 10:33:19 AM

^Heads up, that's a HARD business to make money in. Every year someone is going to come along willing to do it for a few dollars cheaper than you. Unless your jobs or your customer base are massive, you end up only making decent money doing that at best

6/2/2010 10:36:14 AM

Quote :

"adviser"

am i the only one that writes "advisor"? i'm getting mixed responses from teh intarwebs, but it seems like "adviser" is correct

6/2/2010 10:36:37 AM

^ i write advisor. shit is that wrong?

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 10:41 AM. Reason : quick internetting tells me no, it is not wrong. whew.]

6/2/2010 10:40:44 AM

^^i did it for two summers and like i said...

i'm pretty sure i could double my salary if i opened a lawncare and landscaping business

good customer service and professional work goes further than low prices with rich folks

6/2/2010 10:41:31 AM

Quote :

"I'm not familiar with NYU, but from the sounds of it, it's a private school. I assume, like NC, a NY public college would be MUCH cheaper, and provide a comparable education to that of NYU, especially for her major."

It is a private university, and is also one of the most expensives schools in the country to attend, especially once you factor in the ridiculously high living expenses of living in Lower Manhattan.

It seems like it was retarded stupid for this girl to attend this school (without even considering her worthless degree).

6/2/2010 10:48:00 AM

i've briefly considered the professional cleaning lady option...

but i would be an idiot to leave my job...

i like it pretty well...the pay is decent...the benefits are baller...

and i have job security like nobody's business

6/2/2010 10:48:20 AM

and you can post on tww!

6/2/2010 10:49:23 AM

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 11:26 AM. Reason : wrong thread lol]

6/2/2010 11:25:44 AM

Quote :

"interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies"

what a waste of 100+k


" what did you get your degree in?"

"religious and womens studies."

"orly what do you do with that degree?"

"im a photographers assistant"


seems totally worth it to me

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 11:51 AM. Reason : .]

6/2/2010 11:48:39 AM

Quote :

"underwater basketweaving"

6/2/2010 11:56:01 AM

6/2/2010 11:56:55 AM

I wonder if this girl gets a worse rap on this board because NC State is full of engineers and technology based majors that often put you straight into work out of college.

I'm not completely defending this girl, but I think she's getting more flak than she deserves. I think what we're going through now with college students and loan debts isn't something that's happened too often in the past because the economy has treated college grads quite well with decent paying jobs right off the bat. So it's kind of hard to think about something like this when we've never seen it before. That's not a cop-out for this girl and her mom, but its not like they had a lot of warning (at this girl's age, the economy was doing quite well when she entered).

And not everyone is cut-out to be an engineer, computer systems, etc. major. I skipped two maths in junior high and had a teacher travel from the high school to teach me and three other kids geometry while we were in 8th grade. Yet I would look at my roommate's lower math classes for his engineering degree, and it might as well have been sanscrit to me. People who say she should have picked a more practical degree don't realize that not everyone is cut out for those degrees and would have a good probability of failing out if they went that route.

What should this girl have majored in?? Sociology? Communications?? English?? Public Relations?? They might have been slightly better than her womens/religious studies major, but marginally by ya'lls standards...and she'd most likely still be jobless (or a photographer's assistant). Most people here still laugh at Business management majors....but if you can't handle the science and math that are required for engineering and related degrees, what exactly are you suppose to major in that's going to guarantee you a job when you get out??

I feel like this is only going to get worse in the years to come unless this economy makes a ridiculous, unexpected U-turn. It will also get worse with the people going into grad programs because they can't find a job and/or pay their undergrad debt. I lose count of all my fellow law school classmates who added $120K debt to their sometimes current $100K debt from undergrad. My last roommate was paying over $1,100 a month in school loan payments an my current roommate is paying $900.

Kids are just going to have to realize that they can't go out of state for college. And if you can't afford to make payments on your undergrad loan, don't fucking go to grad school.

6/2/2010 12:06:09 PM

Quote :

"It will also get worse with the people going into grad programs because they can't find a job and/or pay their undergrad debt."

i had a really rough time finding a job for a while after graduating last year, and my parents kept telling me i needed to look into grad school. i was like "uhhhh, who exactly is going to pay for that?" lucky for me i recently landed a job that will pay for all my graduate studies whenever i decide to go back to school. huzzah.

6/2/2010 12:15:28 PM

college degrees today are worth the same as a high school degrees 40 years ago. 40 years ago, it was hard to graduate highschool without dropping out to work on the family farm (or something). and today you graduate college with stupid amounts of debt. working class is just redefining itself, and it's hard to accept that moving up the social ladder is really fucking hard and takes a bit of good fortune.

but seriously, one of the advisors or panel members should have pushed to add some classes that would give her the flexibility needed when job hunting (or maybe they did and she just isn't applying herself). it looks bad for the prestigious universities when they allow their students to graduate without a clue. i feel bad for the girl, because it's really hard to tell an aspiring 17-18 year old that he/she is too poor to pursue his/her dreams, but that's the fucking reality.

6/2/2010 12:24:52 PM

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/06/03/the-10-most-worthless-college-majors/

6/2/2010 12:28:34 PM

^

Quote :

"2. Film"

YESssssssssssssss

6/2/2010 12:30:48 PM

^^ communication is on there but doesn't like everyone major and that and end up w/ a job? it seems like it.

i never even knew what majoring in communication was all about - is it like journalism jr.?

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 12:38 PM. Reason : .]

6/2/2010 12:38:17 PM

Pretty much, or the television industry, or production based, etc.

6/2/2010 12:39:14 PM

Action News reporter, IMO.

6/2/2010 12:39:21 PM

Anecdotal evidence incoming. But my brother in law was a Film major (he also got a graduate degree in film) and he is making great money and has an awesome job. You have to be SUPER talented though to succeed in that field and he actually won a few awards for a short at Sundance right out of school. He works in the Viacom Building in Times Square and produces some of their specials like the Storytellers series.

Glad to see my worthless Political Science degree isn't on the list -- though I did go and get my MBA after realizing Law School wasn't for me and working for a few years.

6/2/2010 12:43:21 PM

Jbrick

I was gonna say i dont think everyone in this thread is jumping on this girl just based on what she majored in, but then you said this and I agree with you.

Quote :

"Kids are just going to have to realize that they can't go out of state for college. And if you can't afford to make payments on your undergrad loan, don't fucking go to grad school. "

This is where I think she deserves criticism and rightfully so. NYU is nuts and would be fun as hell for undergrad but in the end most of the people who major in shit like this girl did are just fucking themselves in the long run. I dont feel sorry for them.

[Edited on June 2, 2010 at 12:50 PM. Reason : tag]

6/2/2010 12:49:49 PM

Quote :

"I wonder if this girl gets a worse rap on this board because NC State is full of engineers and technology based majors that often put you straight into work out of college. I'm not completely defending this girl, but I think she's getting more flak than she deserves. I think what we're going through now with college students and loan debts isn't something that's happened too often in the past because the economy has treated college grads quite well with decent paying jobs right off the bat. So it's kind of hard to think about something like this when we've never seen it before. That's not a cop-out for this girl and her mom, but its not like they had a lot of warning (at this girl's age, the economy was doing quite well when she entered). And not everyone is cut-out to be an engineer, computer systems, etc. major. I skipped two maths in junior high and had a teacher travel from the high school to teach me and three other kids geometry while we were in 8th grade. Yet I would look at my roommate's lower math classes for his engineering degree, and it might as well have been sanscrit to me. People who say she should have picked a more practical degree don't realize that not everyone is cut out for those degrees and would have a good probability of failing out if they went that route. What should this girl have majored in?? Sociology? Communications?? English?? Public Relations?? They might have been slightly better than her womens/religious studies major, but marginally by ya'lls standards...and she'd most likely still be jobless (or a photographer's assistant). Most people here still laugh at Business management majors....but if you can't handle the science and math that are required for engineering and related degrees, what exactly are you suppose to major in that's going to guarantee you a job when you get out?? I feel like this is only going to get worse in the years to come unless this economy makes a ridiculous, unexpected U-turn. It will also get worse with the people going into grad programs because they can't find a job and/or pay their undergrad debt. I lose count of all my fellow law school classmates who added $120K debt to their sometimes current $100K debt from undergrad. My last roommate was paying over $1,100 a month in school loan payments an my current roommate is paying $900. Kids are just going to have to realize that they can't go out of state for college. And if you can't afford to make payments on your undergrad loan, don't fucking go to grad school."

Well said, it seems like people on NC State message boards often look down on CHASS and Management majors, but not everyone is cut out to be a chemistry, or engineering major. I myself was a History major. Had I passed a test for the DDS then I could probably have a job right now, but I didn't. The funny thing is that a lady more qualified than me at the career fair who didn't have a 4 year degree was turned away because it requires any 4 year degree to apply for the job. If you get any 4 year degree then you will find that you have a small advantage over other people sometimes. There is nothing wrong with that.

As for the cost, I am just thankful that I had to go to Wake Tech to start. It saved me over $20,000 dollars. I left with 77 hours before I went to NC State. There was no need to pay the NC State price for sociology, and philosophy even after I got an associates degree. It is pretty much pointless to take your first 2 years of classes at a 4 year university.

6/2/2010 1:42:00 PM

Quote :

"Beyond my education itself, I learned how to survive in New York City. To describe my degree as “women’s studies and religious studies” doesn’t really do it justice. I’m an alumna of the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. I created my own interdisciplinary program in collaboration with an adviser. It involved courses from a variety of departments, including religious studies, gender studies, sociology, psychology plus several interdisciplinary and writing seminars. I had to defend my concentration in front of a panel of professors before graduating."

Ok, fine, now how about you use those skills to get yourself a job that pays you more money? Religious studies, gender studies, sociology, really any liberal arts degree is all what you make of it. She needs to find a way to demonstrate her ability and potential to employers. I mean, she is in San Francisco. If there is any place where people are going to be open minded, give people a chance, not care as much about titles versus results, that is the place.

To me it look like she has a vast sense of entitlement to me. When life doesn't go her way at 26, she is looking for people to blame - the school, the banks, her own mom - even suggesting bankruptcy laws should be changed so she can get a free pass. Suck it up bitch.

6/2/2010 1:56:55 PM