Don't borrow money for school...it can hurt you and those close to you...

[sanantone]

I made a mistake, the price for my college was a lot less than $1500/semester. Online, it says it was $800/yr, but my scholarship covered tuition plus books and fees, plus I had to work at the school, and the amount I received was $1500 for the school YEAR, not per semester. Which would make it approximately $3000/year now if you looked at inflation. So it's 2 1/2 times the price that it would be if inflation was taken into account. I still maintain that if the government stayed out of the student loan business, the market would fix this problem. When money gets artificially dumped into an area by the government, prices go up. Look at the housing bubble. Right now we're in a college bubble.

I live in a predominantly hispanic community in San Diego county. I know a LOT of lower income people who qualify for Pell grants and other types of needs-based scholarships. So I don't think poor people can't go to college. I have a lot of kids I'm dealing with from my soccer club who are coming to me regarding college, and every single kid is poor, and qualifies for tons of aid. Way more than it actually costs to take their classes at the local cc (tuition and fees are about $1750 for the school year) and it would pay their way through state college if they worked part-time to pay the rest. They are ALL working to pay their way through by the way. None of them says "I can't go because I can't afford it", they say "with this aid and living at home and taking the bus, how much do I have to work at my job to be able to go to school? Do I need a second part-time job? How much can you earn refereeing on weekends? How can I become a high school referee and work weeknights as well?" That's what the poor kids I know are doing. None of them are asking about loans, they're asking about work.

But, you're contradicting yourself. Pell Grants are government intervention in college financing. Grants don't have to be paid back, but a $5,500 grant has the same effect on tuition as a $5,500 loan. $5,500 is the max a first-year, dependent student can borrow. $31,000 is currently the max a dependent student can borrow, in total, from the federal government. Students aren't getting into $100,000 of debt because of freely available loans from the government. The loans that are offered to parents require credit worthiness.

As for joining the military to go to college, this is not done by predominantly poor people. More kids join the military from middle to upper-middle income families than poor families. And if you look at former military families where I live, they aren't poor - the ones I know are all upper-middle income families. Because they joined the military and got skills and degrees and came out way ahead. My husband works with military and former military guys for a living, and many are very successful and make a lot of money. $100-$200k in annual salary, except the pilots who make a lot more than that. Obviously not everyone who comes out of the military does that, but to imply that only poor kids join the military and possibly die for their country just so they can afford go to college is not the case.

This is not what I meant at all. I know that poor people do not make up the majority of military recruits. I meant that the military is often recommended to poor kids. I, personally, believe that people should only join the military because they want to. I don't believe that people should join the military out of desperation, and I definitely do not believe it should be one of the only options to get out of poverty.

As for Starbucks (or UPS or any of the myriad companies that will help pay your way through college in exchange for lots of hard work), I think it's fantastic. If either of my kids said they wanted to do this (so that I didn't have to pay), I would tell them to go for it. I'm not seeing the downside of this.

There is nothing wrong with working at Starbucks for free tuition at ASU Online, but this is not a macro-level solution. ASU can only take so many students, and Starbucks only has so many job openings. There are also not enough entry-level jobs at companies that offer tuition assistance for every person who wants to attend college, but can't afford to pay for it out of pocket. Out of the many, many jobs I've had, only a few offered tuition assistance (in very small amounts) and only one could someone hypothetically get right out of high school (this organization rarely hires anyone under 21). It would be nice if people could just pick and choose where they want to work based on benefits, but life doesn't work that way. During the two recessions that occurred since I was 16, I had to take what I could get.