One Way to Get Rid of Student Loan Debt

Submitted by jvholloman on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 01:45

I saw this on the NBC New York website the other day and knew I needed to post about it. It's got all the elements we need to turn something ridiculous into a teachable moment.

You can read the full story here. In a nut shell, 27 year old Trina Thompson graduated from Monroe College, a private business school in the Bronx, with a degree in IT and can't find a job so she is suing the college for her money back.

As if that wasn't crazy enough, she only graduated in April and filed the lawsuit in June. She lives with her mom who supports them both as she is the only one working. Trina's student loans worth some $70,000 will start coming due in a few months and they will be in big trouble.

A few thoughts here.

There's a recession on. Unemployment is around 10%. People with experience are unemployed and willing to work for much less than just a couple of years ago. Why hire someone fresh out of school when you can get someone with experience for the same price?

Even without the recession, she was only looking for two months or so from the time in April that she graduated until the time in June when she filed the lawsuit. That's just not enough time to say you can't find a job. The hiring process at many companies can take several months.

I'm guessing just solely based on the idiocy of filing the lawsuit that there may have been some other reasons that she wasn't offered a job. Call me crazy, but that level of whackiness had to show through in interviews.

And I'm guessing no one is going to hire her now. She'd probably sue if she didn't get a promotion in three days.

What we can learn from it.

Don't waste your money on fancy private schools. For most degrees, IT included, they aren't worth the money.

Let me put it another way, if you are going to pursue a commodity degree (a degree with mass employment in relatively low paying fields such as education, journalism, social work, mass comm, criminal justice (not lawyering) and the like) GO TO A STATE COLLEGE AND LIVE AT HOME.

You will not be able to easily, if at all, afford the student loan. Let's face it, even a doctor or lawyer starting out can afford to repay student loans. Most teachers who amass tens of thousands of dollars in debt from private schools cannot.

If you must live on campus, get a job. Do anything you can to avoid student loans. They are evil. Paying them back on a limited budget will do strange things to you, just look at Trina.