<story><title>US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/business/dealbook/household-debt-united-states.html?_r=0&amp;hn=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know, maybe it&amp;#x27;s different now, but my generation (went to school in the mid 90s) was not told to &amp;quot;just go to the best college no matter what&amp;quot;: We were also advised to consider the cost and carefully choose a major so as to produce a positive expected ROI. Obviously nobody has a crystal ball and you can never tell when huge, industry-wrecking changes are coming, but it was well understood that majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view. Have we forgotten this lesson?</text></item><item><author>austenallred</author><text>It sure feels like a bubble to me. I don&amp;#x27;t know how many friends I have with six figures of student loans and no career, but it&amp;#x27;s a lot. Considering that those loans don&amp;#x27;t even go away with bankruptcy, it&amp;#x27;s waaaay too many.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that younger students are starting to realize how much risk there is in something like that and shy away when my generation didn&amp;#x27;t. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s that I grew up in a &amp;quot;striving&amp;quot; middle class, but a lot of my friends were told &amp;quot;just go to the best college no matter what and don&amp;#x27;t think about cost you&amp;#x27;ll make tons later,&amp;quot; which ended up to be only partially true, and only for some people.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hoping that &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lambdauniversity.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lambdauniversity.com&lt;/a&gt; will help overcome some of those things and extend opportunities to folks who can&amp;#x27;t afford that kind of risk. It&amp;#x27;s full-time computer science training for free up front, paid back as a percentage of income for a couple years after you graduate. If you don&amp;#x27;t make more than $50k&amp;#x2F;yr you never pay back.</text></item><item><author>manacit</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;bubble&amp;quot; (I am not qualified to say that), but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that the current trend with student loans will continue. Looking at the numbers for someone entering college in 2017, it feels nearly predatory what a good portion of private and out of state colleges are charging. Even with financial aid, $30-40k a year for 4-5 years is insane.&lt;p&gt;I was fortunate enough to have parents who made saving for my college a priority, but watching them go through the same dance with my younger brother makes me wonder how most people get it done.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a huge value in going to higher education, but the ever increasing cost and amount of debt people are taking on is setting everyone but the top 10% of graduates up for a life of being in debt, which is kind of horrifying. Especially since they are debts that are impossible to shed through bankruptcy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crdb</author><text>&amp;gt; not told to &amp;quot;just go to the best college no matter what&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve met many people in places like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs (i.e. &amp;quot;elite&amp;quot; high paying jobs) with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge in Philosophy, English, Arch &amp;amp; Ant or Theology (in &amp;quot;decreasing usefulness&amp;quot;). Many more than, say, graduates in accounting or business administration from Manchester University, although a few might make it. Hell, I know a Harvard philosophy major who co-authored a very useful Haskell library.&lt;p&gt;My conclusions from anecdotal evidence:&lt;p&gt;- these universities, regardless of degree, encourage very 
 hard, focused work, and teach and encourage critical thinking; both critical thinking and hard focused work are useful in all jobs;&lt;p&gt;- people overestimate the &amp;quot;technical&amp;quot; portion of most jobs, and how easily it can be taught (a law conversion course takes a mere few months in the UK, and banks routinely train thousands of fresh unqualified graduates every year);&lt;p&gt;- people overestimate the marketability of skills taught in most &amp;quot;useful&amp;quot; degrees especially outside its area of specialisation (e.g. is a medical major more qualified a strategy consultant than a philosophy major?);&lt;p&gt;- you gain access to a vast alumni network and its reputation (which includes world leaders, the CEO of the companies you apply to, etc.);&lt;p&gt;- the selective nature of admissions sends the market a signal about your &amp;quot;intrinsic&amp;quot; quality.&lt;p&gt;(edited to be more readable on mobile)&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you want to become a specialist and you are sure of it, it is a better idea to study that field in the best place you gain admission to. But that has not been true of the vast majority of my former classmates.&lt;p&gt;In fact I watched a strange inversion whereby those who were certain they wanted to be engineers are now at McKinsey or banks and those who were certain they wanted to make tons of money in business are now working in &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; engineering jobs (structural engineering, fluid dynamics for car companies, etc.).</text></comment>
<story><title>US Household Debt Surpasses 2008 High</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/business/dealbook/household-debt-united-states.html?_r=0&amp;hn=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know, maybe it&amp;#x27;s different now, but my generation (went to school in the mid 90s) was not told to &amp;quot;just go to the best college no matter what&amp;quot;: We were also advised to consider the cost and carefully choose a major so as to produce a positive expected ROI. Obviously nobody has a crystal ball and you can never tell when huge, industry-wrecking changes are coming, but it was well understood that majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view. Have we forgotten this lesson?</text></item><item><author>austenallred</author><text>It sure feels like a bubble to me. I don&amp;#x27;t know how many friends I have with six figures of student loans and no career, but it&amp;#x27;s a lot. Considering that those loans don&amp;#x27;t even go away with bankruptcy, it&amp;#x27;s waaaay too many.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve noticed that younger students are starting to realize how much risk there is in something like that and shy away when my generation didn&amp;#x27;t. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s that I grew up in a &amp;quot;striving&amp;quot; middle class, but a lot of my friends were told &amp;quot;just go to the best college no matter what and don&amp;#x27;t think about cost you&amp;#x27;ll make tons later,&amp;quot; which ended up to be only partially true, and only for some people.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m hoping that &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lambdauniversity.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lambdauniversity.com&lt;/a&gt; will help overcome some of those things and extend opportunities to folks who can&amp;#x27;t afford that kind of risk. It&amp;#x27;s full-time computer science training for free up front, paid back as a percentage of income for a couple years after you graduate. If you don&amp;#x27;t make more than $50k&amp;#x2F;yr you never pay back.</text></item><item><author>manacit</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;bubble&amp;quot; (I am not qualified to say that), but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that the current trend with student loans will continue. Looking at the numbers for someone entering college in 2017, it feels nearly predatory what a good portion of private and out of state colleges are charging. Even with financial aid, $30-40k a year for 4-5 years is insane.&lt;p&gt;I was fortunate enough to have parents who made saving for my college a priority, but watching them go through the same dance with my younger brother makes me wonder how most people get it done.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a huge value in going to higher education, but the ever increasing cost and amount of debt people are taking on is setting everyone but the top 10% of graduates up for a life of being in debt, which is kind of horrifying. Especially since they are debts that are impossible to shed through bankruptcy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Meekro</author><text>My experience was similar to yours. I immigrated from Russia at a young age so we had very little money. I attended a great college mostly on scholarship. My mom had always taught me to work hard and pick a major carefully, taking into account ROI.&lt;p&gt;Thanks to merit-based scholarships and need-based aid, I graduated with minimal debt, despite attending a private college with a $45k per year sticker price. Thanks to a proper choice of majors, I made good money right out of school.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m always puzzled when people claim that one needs to come from money to succeed.</text></comment>