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A college degree is a lousy investment

Yeah I have law school loans. Why would I pay off debt when I can keep the money and invest it, or even just earn interest? Especially when each month still counts as a month towards grad plus loan forgiveness. Seems like everyone else has made the same decision.
 
Hope other schools follow their lead.

A university in South Carolina is forgiving the student loans of over 2,500 students who stopped attending school because of financial hardship.
South Carolina State University, the state’s only public Historically Black College or University (HBCU), announced last week that the school was automatically clearing the loan accounts of students who have not registered for classes or who dropped out entirely because they could no longer afford college.
The school said it was canceling a total of $9.8m in loans using money from the Cares Act and American Rescue Plan stimulus packages designed to help America recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Conyers added: “No student should have to sit [at] home because they can’t afford to pay their past due debt after having experienced the financial devastation caused by a global pandemic.”
Known as the site of the Orangeburg Massacre, in which three students were killed by police after protesting against segregation in 1968, South Carolina State University is the second HBCU to announce debt cancellation. Wilberforce University, a private HBCU in Ohio, said in June that it would cancel $375,000 of student loans owed by students in the school’s most recent graduating classes.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jul/20/south-carolina-state-university-forgives-student-loans
 
Most law schools are a lousy investment, too.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-sc...rm6q8l3eng9&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

“Recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law who used federal loans borrowed a median of $163,000. Two years later, half were earning $59,000 or less. That’s the biggest gap between debt and earnings among the top 100 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found.”
 
Most law schools are a lousy investment, too.

Totally agree. And Miami is a good school. There are plenty of terrible ones out there where the statistics re bar passage, employment, income are a nightmare.

The amount owed is a little misleading. GradPlus loans allow you to make income-based payments for 20 years and the remainder is forgiven. Technically, the forgiven amount is taxable income, but I'm sure you could get a loan to cover a fraction of the debt that's being discharged under different terms. Actually, that might be a good business model.
 
Malcolm Gladwell delves into USNWR College Rankings
https://www.pushkin.fm/show/revisionist-history/

Season 6
Lord of the Rankings (pt 1)
Project Dillard (pt 2). How Dillard, a HBCU in New Orleans, can improve its rank. The rankings "perpetuate privilege."

Thanks for posting those. They were both excellent. I knew it was bad, but I hadn’t realized how incredibly absurd and deeply corrupting USNWR was to higher education.
 
Not a whole lot of meat to this article https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mu...-on-11630705055?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1 but this was a worthy quote:

“Academic major is significantly more important [than choice of institution] in determining starting salary, lifetime earnings, facilitating wealth creation and so forth,” he says. Employers are “hiring a skill set, not a label on a diploma,” he says.

In the same vein, he adds, studying a soft major at an expensive college is “weak value proposition.” The combination of a weak major and a school that is too expensive, forcing the student to borrow too much, can have long-lasting consequences. You can be paying student loans well into your 50s. “It can ruin your life,” Mr. Hill says.
 
Folks are either mad or having a good laugh at Forbes' college ranking
https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

Code:
RANK	NAME		STATE	TYPE	AV. GRANT AID	AV. DEBT	AV. EARLY CAREER SALARY
12.	Duke University	NC	Private	$50,719		$6,544		$135,000
28.	UNC		NC	Public	$16,394		$6,665		$99,900
57.	Davidson CollegeNC	Private	$40,880		$8,086		$118,900
74.	Wake Forest U	NC	Private	$46,779		$8,654		$124,400
79.	NCSU		NC	Public	$10,351		$6,834		$108,300
198.	Elon University	NC	Private	$14,109		$8,490		$95,300
269.	UNC-Wilmington	NC	Public	$6,205		$7,304		$82,000
315.	East Carolina U	NC	Public	$8,194		$7,254		$84,300
377.	Appalachian St	NC	Public	$9,033		$6,251		$84,200
388.	UNC-Charlotte	NC	Public	$7,317		$7,549		$93,400
400.	UNC-Greensboro	NC	Public	$9,341		$6,108		$75,000
483.	NC A&T		NC	Public	$8,900		$6,761		$91,800
509.	High Point U	NC	Private	$13,871		$10,698		$85,900
 
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Folks are either mad or having a good laugh at Forbes' college ranking
https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

Code:
RANK	NAME		STATE	TYPE	AV. GRANT AID	AV. DEBT	AV. EARLY CAREER SALARY
12.	Duke University	NC	Private	$50,719		$6,544		$135,000
28.	UNC		NC	Public	$16,394		$6,665		$99,900
57.	Davidson CollegeNC	Private	$40,880		$8,086		$118,900
74.	Wake Forest U	NC	Private	$46,779		$8,654		$124,400
79.	NCSU		NC	Public	$10,351		$6,834		$108,300
198.	Elon University	NC	Private	$14,109		$8,490		$95,300
269.	UNC-Wilmington	NC	Public	$6,205		$7,304		$82,000
315.	East Carolina U	NC	Public	$8,194		$7,254		$84,300
377.	Appalachian St	NC	Public	$9,033		$6,251		$84,200
388.	UNC-Charlotte	NC	Public	$7,317		$7,549		$93,400
400.	UNC-Greensboro	NC	Public	$9,341		$6,108		$75,000
483.	NC A&T		NC	Public	$8,900		$6,761		$91,800
509.	High Point U	NC	Private	$13,871		$10,698		$85,900

Also, go Stoneybrook. Seems better than the US News rankings, that Gladwell completely eviscerated. (I think Gladwell also commented on Stoneybrook?) Still, the rankings are all a joke.
 
Folks are either mad or having a good laugh at Forbes' college ranking
https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/

Code:
RANKNAMESTATETYPEAV. GRANT AIDAV. DEBTAV. EARLY CAREER SALARY
12.Duke UniversityNCPrivate$50,719$6,544$135,000
28.UNCNCPublic$16,394$6,665$99,900
57.Davidson CollegeNCPrivate$40,880$8,086$118,900
74.Wake Forest UNCPrivate$46,779$8,654$124,400
79.NCSUNCPublic$10,351$6,834$108,300
198.Elon UniversityNCPrivate$14,109$8,490$95,300
269.UNC-WilmingtonNCPublic$6,205$7,304$82,000
315.East Carolina UNCPublic$8,194$7,254$84,300
377.Appalachian StNCPublic$9,033$6,251$84,200
388.UNC-CharlotteNCPublic$7,317$7,549$93,400
400.UNC-GreensboroNCPublic$9,341$6,108$75,000
483.NC A&TNCPublic$8,900$6,761$91,800
509.High Point UNCPrivate$13,871$10,698$85,900

If you can’t go to college, go to Wake?
 
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/baylor...ans-11634138239?mod=searchresults_pos2&page=1

Some of the wealthiest U.S. colleges are steering parents into no-limit federal loans to cover rising tuition, leaving many poor and middle-class families with debt they can’t repay.

Parents at Baylor University had the worst repayment rate for a type of federal loan called Parent Plus among private schools with at least a $1 billion endowment, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of available Education Department data. Only about a quarter of Baylor parents paid down any of what they originally borrowed after two years.

. . .

Baylor increased its tuition sharply to transform itself from a regionally known Baptist college into a national brand that now has a $1.8 billion endowment. The central Texas school has added facilities, built a sports powerhouse and climbed college-ranking lists in a push to become a world-class research institution.
 
So much for the STEM road to success: https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-p...-11638354602?mod=hp_trending_now_article_pos5


Professional degrees like dentistry and veterinary medicine are leaving many students with immense college debt, threatening the outlook for fields that provide essential public services, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data.

. . .

For recent graduates of dentistry programs, the gap between debt and income was especially large for alumni of two elite private universities: the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and New York University in New York City. In each case, the median debt was more than four times as much as median earnings.

NYU, which says it educates nearly 10% of the nation’s dentists, tells current students they should expect to spend more than $572,000 for its four-year program, including living expenses. Federal data showed NYU dentistry students who graduated in the 2015 and 2016 classes had median debt of about $349,000 and, two years later, median earnings of about $82,000.
 
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