Some other options your sister may want to consider is studying in another country. Australian universities are about 1/3-1/2 the cost of universities in America for tuition, plus the programs are 3 years opposed to 4 years. In Finland universities are free even for foreigners, and yes it is possible to take classes in English there. In addition to foreign universities being cheaper, it would be a great experience.

The job situation in America is going to be depressed for a few years to come. Don’t borrow a lot of money expecting to find a dream job when you graduate. You may find yourself owing money you can’t afford to pay back.

The problem is the government is involved. It’s not an accident. They want the debt. Debt means obligation. An obligation that goes away only by death.

If we wanted to fix this, we should get back to the concept where the student would have to sell the loan to the lender. Present a business plan. If this would happen, we wouldn’t have people with 80k debt for a humanities degree. Because a humanities degree isn’t worth that on the market. The tuition to get a humanities degree would be lower, set by what the market sets it at. It all makes too much sense, but it isn’t an accident.

it is views like this that perpetuate the problem – a college education is becoming increasingly out of reach for the lower class, thus farther spreading the gap between the classes.

i went to a fairly low-priced state university, and now work at a similar one. i can tell you honestly that the tuition is raised because of ridiculously inflated salaries and poor departmental budgeting. our university is throwing money around left and right for no reason, and instead of cracking down on those responsible, they raised the student fees last year to almost double the previous amount. rob the poor to feed the inept, irresponsible rich.

between university administration and lending companies, everybody is equally greedy and irresponsible.

Now that more and more K-12 schools are losing funding and shutting down, is it safe to assume there will be less high school graduates, thus less students going to college in the future?

With this in mind, colleges are going to shrink in attendance, which means one of two things will happen:

1. College tuition will increase as attendance decreases to subsidize their continuing growing costs.

2. College tuition will shrink as colleges tighten budgets, cut out excess spending and fight to attract more students with lower tuition.

I think the possibility for going to college is still very strong in this country. There are problems I see that you haven’t addressed:

1. How much did your parents save to pay for you and your sister’s tuition? My parents are blue collar, without college educations and worked very hard to save for mine and my brother’s tuition. By the time we went off to college, Mom and Dad had saved enough to pay for half our tuition at a very expensive school. These days, it seems people are living way beyond their means and surviving pay check to pay check instead of thinking about the future.

2. How well did you perform in high school? My brother and I went to a private liberal arts college and tuition over the 6 years the two of us were there went from $26K/yr – $32K/yr. Him and I worked very hard in high school for good grades and as a result the college gave us money to attend.

3. How much money did you and your sister make yourselves to pay for your tuition? My brother and I both had jobs in high school and saved for our tuition. Not only did we work through high school to pay for our high education, but we had part-time jobs on campus to help cut costs and in the summer we worked very hard full time to help pay for tuition. One summer, I worked 3 jobs at a total of 72 hours a week so I could have enough money to pay for my senior year.

Now, this doesn’t mean we didn’t have loans. My brother, who graduated high school with honors, received much more money in grants from our college than I did. He managed to graduate with about $10K of student loan debt out of the $120K tuition. I on the other walked away with $17.5K in student loan debt out of my $104K tuition. My parents told us at 13 years old that they would pay for half of our tuition. The rest was up to us to come up with. We both effectively paid for half our tuition out of our own pockets with some minor student loans to help us out.

My point is this: Students loans should be your last resort for paying for college. Your parents had 18+ years to plan for you and your sister’s tuition costs. If they didn’t save for you, that’s their fault. If you graduated with mediocre high school grades and can’t get scholarships or grants, I don’t think you should deserve to live the “college dream” or get the “college experience” because you didn’t strive for a good education before getting to college. Last, if you and your sister didn’t save yourselves, shame on you. This isn’t a country of hand outs, it’s a country built on hard work. It’s not called Mediocre Education, it’s called Higher Education. It’s for the elite who strive for greatness.

Now, maybe you and your family did everything I just described. You didn’t explain at all the work you did in your little article so I can only guess and throw these things out there. Although, your article really reads as if a young person with a sense of entitlement to higher education is complaining about borrowing money. Let me be very clear. You are not entitled to Higher Education. You have to earn it. If this is not the case and you and your family did everything they could before seeking out student loans, then I will insert my foot into my mouth.

I’m sorry for your sister’s tuition troubles.