Want to work at TJ Maxx for $16 an hour? Get a Masters in Film from Ivy League Columbia

[tgull]

What a bunch of fucking dopes these people are. They rack up hundreds of thousands in college debt getting a film degree from arguably one of the most expensive schools in the world, then moan they are a barista. I mean how stupid do you have to be, do they not realize Hollywood is who you know, not some degree you are essentially purchasing? It's like going to bartender school, the other bartenders just laugh their ass off behind your back.

You know why 90% of people get masters in film? Because they are left wing lazy shit bags. I have seen them for years in NYC, sitting outside a coffee shop with their nose rings drinking $9 coffees reading their History of Film books highlighting shit. The guy at the bottom of the article is priceless, chases his passion for film, now is a cashier at the department store he worked at as a teenager.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/financi...test_headlines

[tgull]

By Melissa Korn and Andrea Fuller
July 8, 2021 9:59 am ET

Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.

Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.

The Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master’s degrees that don’t provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data.

Recent Columbia film alumni had the highest debt compared with earnings among graduates of any major university master’s program in the U.S., the Journal found. The New York City university is among the world’s most prestigious schools, and its $11.3 billion endowment ranks it the nation’s eighth wealthiest private school.

For years, faculty, staff and students have appealed unsuccessfully to administrators to tap that wealth to aid more graduate students, according to current and former faculty and administrators, and dozens of students. Taxpayers will be on the hook for whatever is left unpaid.

Lured by the aura of degrees from top-flight institutions, many master’s students at universities across the U.S. took on debt beyond what their pay would support, the Journal analysis of federal data on borrowers found. At Columbia, such students graduated from programs including history, social work and architecture.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said the Education Department data in the Journal analysis can’t fully assess salary prospects because it covers only earnings and loan repayments two years after graduation. “Nevertheless,” he said, “this is not what we want it to be.”

At New York University, graduates with a master’s degree in publishing borrowed a median $116,000 and had an annual median income of $42,000 two years after the program, the data on recent borrowers show. At Northwestern University, half of those who earned degrees in speech-language pathology borrowed $148,000 or more, and the graduates had a median income of $60,000 two years later. Graduates of the University of Southern California’s marriage and family counseling program borrowed a median $124,000 and half earned $50,000 or less over the same period.

“NYU is always focused on affordability, and an important part of that is, of course, to help prospective students make informed decisions,” said spokesman John Beckman. Northwestern spokeswoman Hilary Hurd Anyaso said the speech-language pathology program is among the best in the world, leading to a “gratifying career path that is in high demand.” USC spokeswoman Lauren Bartlett said providing students financial support and employment opportunities was a priority for the school.

Undergraduate students for years have faced ballooning loan balances. But now it is graduate students who are accruing the most onerous debt loads. Unlike undergraduate loans, the federal Grad Plus loan program has no fixed limit on how much grad students can borrow—money that can be used for tuition, fees and living expenses.

The no-limit loans make master’s degrees a gold mine for universities, which have expanded graduate-school offerings since Congress created Grad Plus in 2005. Graduate students are for the first time on track to have borrowed as much as undergraduates in the 2020-21 academic year, federal loan data show.


“There’s always those 2 a.m. panic attacks where you’re thinking, ‘How the hell am I ever going to pay this off?’ ” said 29-year-old Zack Morrison, of New Jersey, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia in 2018 and praised the quality of the program. His graduate school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest. He has been earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year from work as a Hollywood assistant and such side gigs as commercial video production and photography.

Highly selective universities have benefited from free-flowing federal loan money, and with demand for spots far exceeding supply, the schools have been able to raise tuition largely unchecked. The power of legacy branding lets prestigious universities say, in effect, that their degrees are worth whatever they charge.

“Students gravitate to Columbia because Columbia’s Columbia, right?” film professor and writer-director Katherine Dieckmann said in a 10-minute video about the program that the school posted on YouTube in 2019. “It’s a world-class, Ivy League institution with access to all kinds of other departments, other ideas. It’s a world-class university. And the next thing is it’s in New York City. And I think that combination of elements is pretty seductive.”

That was the case for Columbia film MFA student Patrick Clement, who attended community college in California before transferring to the University of Kansas for his bachelor’s degree.

“As a poor kid and a high-school dropout, there was an attraction to getting an Ivy League master’s degree,” said Mr. Clement, 41. He graduated in 2020 from Columbia, borrowing more than $360,000 in federal loans for the degree. He is casting for an independent film, he said. To pay the bills, he teaches film at a community college and runs an antique shop.

Columbia grad students who borrowed money typically held loans that exceeded annual earnings two years after graduation in 14 of the school’s 32 master’s degree programs tracked by the Education Department, the Journal found. In about a dozen Columbia master’s programs, the majority of recent graduates weren’t repaying the principal on their loans or took forbearance, according to data released for the first time this year.

Julie Kornfeld, Columbia’s vice provost for academic programs, said master’s degrees “can and should be a revenue source” subsidizing other parts of the university. She also said grad students need more financial support.

In the past four years, Columbia School of the Arts said it has increased average scholarships by about a third to nearly $24,000. The length of the MFA film program also was reduced to a maximum of four years from five.

In April, Columbia announced a $1.4 billion fundraising campaign aimed at financial aid. Mr. Bollinger said administrators have yet to settle on how much will go to students in master’s degree programs.

Debt counselors recommend students not borrow more than they will earn right out of school. Yet about 38% of master’s programs at top-tier private universities in the U.S. failed that test, according to the Journal’s analysis of salary data for graduates from the 2015 and 2016 classes, the latest available.

At for-profit schools, a common target of regulators for high student debt and poor job prospects, 30% failed to meet the debt counselors’ advice.

Whether or not students should have better weighed the personal consequences of borrowing heavily to pursue lower-paying careers, the burden is far-reaching. After 20 to 25 years on an income-dependent payment plan, the balance on Grad Plus loans—roughly $11.2 billion issued in the school year that ended in 2020—can be forgiven. Taxpayers will bear any losses.

At least 43% of the people who recently took out loans for master’s degrees at elite private universities hadn’t paid down any of their original debt or were behind on payments roughly two years after graduation, the available data show.

Universities, which receive their tuition up front, have an economic incentive to expand graduate degree programs and face no consequences if students can’t afford to pay the federal loans after they leave.

“They’re not really held accountable for the myth they’re selling to students,” said Ozan Jaquette, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His doctoral dissertation was on the growth of master’s programs. “We should not be giving federal-aid dollars to these programs that systematically saddle students with high debt,” he said.

Matt Black graduated from Columbia in 2015 with an MFA in film and $233,000 in federal loans. He signed up for an income-based repayment plan that in leaner years requires no remittance from him. With interest, his balance stands at $331,000.

Mr. Black, a 36-year-old writer and producer in Los Angeles, said he grew up in a lower middle-class family in Oklahoma. He earns $60,000 in a good year and less than half that in dry stretches. The faculty at Columbia was stellar, he said, but he blamed the school for his “calamitous financial situation.”

“We were told by the establishment our whole lives this was the way to jump social classes,” he said of an Ivy League education. Instead, he said he feels such goals as marriage, children and owning a home are out of reach.

During a car ride last year with three friends from the film program, Mr. Black said, they calculated they collectively owed $1.5 million in loans to the federal government. “Financially hobbled for life,” he said. “That’s the joke.”

An offer to attend Columbia is hard for many to pass up. Founded in 1754, the school boasts graduates who became U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices and stars in the arts, medicine and business.

More than 800 people applied this year for roughly 72 spots in the film MFA program, which can total nearly $300,000 for tuition, fees and living expenses. Students aspire to join the lineage of successful alums who include Kathryn Bigelow, the director of “The Hurt Locker,” and Jennifer Lee, screenwriter and co-director of “Frozen.”

“The top anything tends to be more expensive than something that isn’t quite as good,” said Keith Goggin, a private investor in New York who until June was chairman of the Columbia Alumni Association. “I’d like to think the outcomes coming out of Columbia justify the cost.”

Like many of its Ivy League peers, Columbia offers generous financial aid to undergraduates. The neediest students pay next to nothing. Low-income Columbia undergraduates who received loans borrowed a median $21,500, according to the latest federal data covering students who received federal Pell Grants. Yet 2015 and 2016 master’s graduates from low-income backgrounds borrowed more than double that amount in every Columbia master’s program for which the Education Department publishes data.

Mr. Bollinger said undergraduates have “the most moral claim” to financial aid: “They are the people among us who are most trying to begin their lives and to build a base of education.”

Since fall 2011, Columbia has increased published rates for most master’s programs by a greater margin than it did for its undergraduates. In the most recent academic year, it kept tuition flat for undergraduate students because of the pandemic but raised charges for nearly every master’s degree.

At least as far back as 2016, students said, they complained to top administrators about debt.

Mr. Morrison, who owes nearly $300,000, said he was invited to a fireside chat for graduate students at Mr. Bollinger’s Manhattan townhouse that year.

Mr. Bollinger asked for a show of hands by those who felt prepared to pay off their student loans and to succeed in the workplace, Mr. Morrison recalled. The grad student didn’t raise his hand, and Mr. Bollinger asked him why.

Mr. Morrison said the job market for aspiring screenwriters and directors looked bleak for someone with a six-figure debt load. He recalled Mr. Bollinger saying he understood the concern but that Columbia was a really good school.

“My immediate takeaway is that there’s a huge disconnect between the administration’s perception of the School of the Arts,” Mr. Morrison wrote to a faculty member a few days after the meeting, “and what’s actually happening for students.”

Mr. Bollinger said he recalled asking a question like that, and “I’m very much aware of what the School of the Arts needs in terms of financial aid support.”

That same year, more than 160 MFA film students petitioned Mr. Bollinger and School of the Arts Dean Carol Becker, lamenting how little financial support Columbia offered. They didn’t hear back from the president. Ms. Becker told them in meetings her hands were tied by the university administration, according to five students present.

Although the school created an emergency fund for international students, Americans “were just told to go and take more loans,” said Paul Carpenter, a 2018 film MFA graduate who joined the petition. Columbia said it also offset some student fees.

Scholarships cover only a small slice of Columbia master’s program costs.

Columbia MFA theater student Brigitte Thieme-Burdette, 31, negotiated up to $30,000 a year in scholarships but said the program remained a financial burden. She has so far borrowed $102,000 in federal loans. She said the school directed her to the federal loan application when she had financial questions, and didn’t say she could take out less than the maximum amount.

Columbia’s theater graduates who borrowed took on a median $135,000 in student loans, four times what they earned two years after graduation, the data show.

“There’s a virtual army of young people, most of whom may be naive about the financial obligations they’re undertaking,” said James Bundy, dean at Yale University’s drama school, which in June announced it would eliminate tuition. “I think there are some schools with debt loads that are indefensible.”

Christian Parker, a Columbia theater department faculty member and former department chair, said he and colleagues talked constantly about student debt. “I’ve never been to an all-school faculty meeting where it wasn’t brought up and where faculty were not advocating and agitating for this issue to remain at the front of the list of priorities for the dean’s leadership,” he said.

While Columbia is wealthy, it isn’t as wealthy as schools like Yale, limiting the funds available for scholarships, Mr. Bollinger, three Columbia deans and other top university administrators said.

Among the other priorities for Columbia, whose annual budget runs about $5 billion, is a 17-acre campus expansion in upper Manhattan that broke ground in 2008. Allocating school resources requires a complex set of judgments, and improving campus facilities can draw donors, Mr. Bollinger said.

The university said recent increases in grad-student aid weren’t reflected in the federal data the Journal analyzed. For example, the School of Social Work increased the number of full-tuition awards for new master’s students to 12 from two a few years ago.

The fall 2020 entering class had around 560 students.

One foreign student said he notified School of the Arts officials in 2016 that he may need to drop out of the film program because he could no longer afford tuition and living expenses. International students aren’t eligible for federal loans. He received an email that August from an administrator.

“I was informed that you might be interested in additional on-campus work opportunities,” said the message, viewed by the Journal. “We were contacted by the Office of President Bollinger who hires students for dog caretaking.”

Mr. Bollinger said he didn’t know about or condone officials making the offer in response to the student’s situation. He said the job of caring for his yellow Labradors, Arthur and Lucy, while he traveled was intended to give students pocket money and wasn’t meant to address serious financial need.

In 2018, a group of almost 130 film students and alumni detailed their financial concerns in a letter to a faculty committee conducting a scheduled program review. The review criticized the School of the Arts for leaving students mired in debt, said a film professor who read the report. Columbia said the results of such reviews were confidential.

Ms. Becker said she was working to secure more donor support.

Around two-thirds of domestic students in the MFA film program take federal loans. The median debt for 2017 and 2018 graduates of Columbia’s film program who borrowed fell 5% from two years earlier but still topped $171,000, according to the latest federal debt figures, which combine the MFA and Master of Arts degrees.

Grant Bromley, 28, accumulated $115,000 in federal loans while getting his Master of Arts in film and media studies at Columbia. He had hoped to advance into academia after graduating in 2018. Instead, he moved back home with his parents in Knoxville, Tenn., for a year, taking a job at the TJ Maxx where he had worked as a teenager. He now works at a TJ Maxx near Chattanooga.

He is working on his third feature film in his spare time and credited Columbia for giving him the chance to pursue his passion.

For now, Mr. Bromley earns around $16 an hour and can’t afford to pay down his loan balance, which is $156,000, including undergraduate debt and interest. “It’s a number so large that it doesn’t necessarily feel real,” he said.

[Daly]

Of course they are federal loans. No bank would be stupid enough to loan out this money.

“We are going to make sure if anyone wants a degree that they can get one” - US politician

This line of thinking is what has caused price inflation on a scale unseen by any other industry (other than Medicine which is another government boondoggle). Colleges and Universities have had a government backed blank check to expand with an accompanying cost.

If 30 years ago we made the decision to not back college loans there would be no 300K basketweaving degrees. You wouldn’t have some 20 year old being unproductive for 4 years and charging $7 Starbucks. Used to be you worked your ass off in the summer and then lived hand to mouth. It was “part of the experience”.

Government pulls the loans and colleges wouldn’t build a 100M dorm wired for sound, a new football stadium and new facilities. Tuition would need to be competitive. 100K film degrees would crater to a much more reasonable level.

[tgull]

Of course they are federal loans. No bank would be stupid enough to loan out this money.

“We are going to make sure if anyone wants a degree that they can get one” - US politician

This line of thinking is what has caused price inflation on a scale unseen by any other industry (other than Medicine which is another government boondoggle). Colleges and Universities have had a government backed blank check to expand with an accompanying cost.

If 30 years ago we made the decision to not back college loans there would be no 300K basketweaving degrees. You wouldn’t have some 20 year old being unproductive for 4 years and charging $7 Starbucks. Used to be you worked your ass off in the summer and then lived hand to mouth. It was “part of the experience”.

Government pulls the loans and colleges wouldn’t build a 100M dorm wired for sound, a new football stadium and new facilities. Tuition would need to be competitive. 100K film degrees would crater to a much more reasonable level.

You have to admit, 95% of degrees such as Film, History, Literature and degrees like that are chased by left wing lunatics. I saw one of those 10 minute interviews outside Georgetown the other day where they are interviewing students passing by, about Social Justice. Probably 80% of those being interviewed will be waiting tables 10 years from now hating the world. Yet, they are going to one of the most expensive schools in the North East. You are correct, the demand for degrees in driven by the Federal Government and these ridiculous loans they give out. I mean how the fuck does one get a Masters in History? What is there to master, its calling reading a book. I know more about the Civil War than most of those fuckers, not because I paid attention in college, I just watched the Ken Burns miniseries like 5 times over the years.

[dwai]

I got my degree in underwater basket weaving and I can't get muh job!

[Sanlmar]

Loan? Wasn’t the government simply gonna hand out free tuition?

Ive lost track but weren’t we going to see student loan forgiveness of perhaps $50k? There must of been some discussion of the whole nut. Is that buried in the new infrastructure bill?

Everyone has their hot button issue and this is such an affront to what used to be described as the Puritan Work Ethic (sorry Druff). Kids did work summers and eat peanut butter for dinner. Parents worked two jobs or pulled out their retirement savings for their child’s future at the expense of their own. What we are declaring is that their sacrifice was a mistake. If you have no balance cause you paid it off you lose.

Absolute bullshit.

The average college degree is worth little more than what a high school degree was worth 30 years ago in my experience hiring and firing. ….. and it’s trending down.

The tuition inflation for the reasons cited above is all true. There IS a place for a liberal arts degree in society. It is useful for society but not at today’s insane prices.

[JoeD]

“There’s always those 2 a.m. panic attacks where you’re thinking, ‘How the hell am I ever going to pay this off?’ ” said 29-year-old Zack Morrison, of New Jersey, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia in 2018 and praised the quality of the program. His graduate school loan balance now stands at nearly $300,000, including accrued interest. He has been earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year from work as a Hollywood assistant and such side gigs as commercial video production and photography.

[Daly]

Loan? Wasn’t the government simply gonna hand out free tuition?

Ive lost track but weren’t we going to see student loan forgiveness of perhaps $50k? There must of been some discussion of the whole nut. Is that buried in the new infrastructure bill?

Everyone has their hot button issue and this is such an affront to what used to be described as the Puritan Work Ethic (sorry Druff). Kids did work summers and eat peanut butter for dinner. Parents worked two jobs or pulled out their retirement savings for their child’s future at the expense of their own. What we are declaring is that their sacrifice was a mistake. If you have no balance cause you paid it off you lose.

Absolute bullshit.

The average college degree is worth little more than what a high school degree was worth 30 years ago in my experience hiring and firing. ….. and it’s trending down.

The tuition inflation for the reasons cited above is all true. There IS a place for a liberal arts degree in society. It is useful for society but not at today’s insane prices.

A 24 year old having “wasted” 5 full time years and 1-2 part time years working as a plumber/electrician/carpenter - with an aptitude for business and a license to practice is the most likely person in the world to retire a millionaire right now.

Have the world by the absolute balls.

[garrett]

At 42 a Gen-X myself I think our generation was a bit misled. Into College as a whole, and that it was the only and best way mentality. Which meant college loans and Debt of course. Which of course mostly benefitted big lenders/Banks. Especially if your education didn't amount too much for you. I understand both sides of it, and since im a firm believer in that (and maybe bias), that Gen-X is the most important Generation alive today, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to help the Genx-r in general be more debt free.

That sum total will benefit our whole Economy for sure imo, ease up on the important College indebted Generation X mostly

[TheXFactor]

Do you need a college degree to get a job in Hollywood?

Or do you just need your YouTube/TikTok video to go viral?

[GambleBotsChafedPenis]

Loan? Wasn’t the government simply gonna hand out free tuition?

Ive lost track but weren’t we going to see student loan forgiveness of perhaps $50k? There must of been some discussion of the whole nut. Is that buried in the new infrastructure bill?

Everyone has their hot button issue and this is such an affront to what used to be described as the Puritan Work Ethic (sorry Druff). Kids did work summers and eat peanut butter for dinner. Parents worked two jobs or pulled out their retirement savings for their child’s future at the expense of their own. What we are declaring is that their sacrifice was a mistake. If you have no balance cause you paid it off you lose.

Absolute bullshit.

The average college degree is worth little more than what a high school degree was worth 30 years ago in my experience hiring and firing. ….. and it’s trending down.

The tuition inflation for the reasons cited above is all true. There IS a place for a liberal arts degree in society. It is useful for society but not at today’s insane prices.

never ever never ever never ever gonna happen...didnt happen in the first 100 days ain't gonna happen now...

[BCR]

Loan? Wasn’t the government simply gonna hand out free tuition?

Ive lost track but weren’t we going to see student loan forgiveness of perhaps $50k? There must of been some discussion of the whole nut. Is that buried in the new infrastructure bill?

Everyone has their hot button issue and this is such an affront to what used to be described as the Puritan Work Ethic (sorry Druff). Kids did work summers and eat peanut butter for dinner. Parents worked two jobs or pulled out their retirement savings for their child’s future at the expense of their own. What we are declaring is that their sacrifice was a mistake. If you have no balance cause you paid it off you lose.

Absolute bullshit.

The average college degree is worth little more than what a high school degree was worth 30 years ago in my experience hiring and firing. ….. and it’s trending down.

The tuition inflation for the reasons cited above is all true. There IS a place for a liberal arts degree in society. It is useful for society but not at today’s insane prices.

A 24 year old having “wasted” 5 full time years and 1-2 part time years working as a plumber/electrician/carpenter - with an aptitude for business and a license to practice is the most likely person in the world to retire a millionaire right now.

Have the world by the absolute balls.

I don’t know what some people I grew up with are worth, some are quite wealthy, but the two wealthiest guys I talk to fairly frequently are my best friends brother who has been a plumber for probably 35 years now. For the last decade, he’s over seven figures pure profit after all expenses every year. He’s had his own company as long as I can remember and now has probably 50 guys working for him and is that DC/VA/MD money pot area. The other guy is some combination of all those trades and started as a general contractor who now has over 1k employees and his company just did a billion in a year in 2019. It’s a family business, so it’s among brothers, but expanding rapidly. Neither went to college a single day.

One of my oldest friends since childhood invented Truvada and all its predecessors and Desocvy or whatever that newer prep drug is called. He’s on every patent with his team of a few others, but Gilead owns that. He left Gilead after like 20 years and has his own company in the Bay Area where he’s like an advisor to getting through trials and the whole process. I’m not exactly sure what’s all involved. I know he’s really well off, but those other guys are wealthier than all the doctors and lawyers I know. Not many hedge fund managers roll out of the rust belt. Lots of pro athletes, but not worth discussing as that isn’t a career path without elite genetics.

If you aren’t going hard science, engineering, tech, or investment banking/lawyer turned banker, almost everything else at this point seems a bad deal.

[GambleBotsChafedPenis]

If you aren’t going hard science, engineering, tech, or investment banking/lawyer turned banker, almost everything else at this point seems a bad deal.

so much fucking



and it's not even close

[tgull]

At 42 a Gen-X myself I think our generation was a bit misled. Into College as a whole, and that it was the only and best way mentality. Which meant college loans and Debt of course. Which of course mostly benefitted big lenders/Banks. Especially if your education didn't amount too much for you. I understand both sides of it, and since im a firm believer in that (and maybe bias), that Gen-X is the most important Generation alive today, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to help the Genx-r in general be more debt free.

That sum total will benefit our whole Economy for sure imo, ease up on the important College indebted Generation X mostly

LOL, head injury/settlement guy acting like he is an expert again. You know why college debt forgiveness is just about dead? Do you? Because it benefits 99% of nose ringed lily white SJW sipping $8 coffees at the age of 25. Think before you type head injury guy.

[BCR]

The craziest dude in that story was the 41 year old who graduated last year, and clearly had to finance 100% of the cost as he’s nearly $400k in debt. Having I’m going to be the next Spielberg pipe dream at 22 is one thing, but graduating at 40 and thinking that degree is going to jumpstart your career? He’s casting for an indy, which I’m sure means trolling Instagram for teenage girls with nose rings who will work for free. Giving that loan is a government funded mid life crisis.

[BartHanson]

The craziest dude in that story was the 41 year old who graduated last year, and clearly had to finance 100% of the cost as he’s nearly $400k in debt. Having I’m going to be the next Spielberg pipe dream at 22 is one thing, but graduating at 40 and thinking that degree is going to jumpstart your career? He’s casting for an indy, which I’m sure means trolling Instagram for teenage girls with nose rings who will work for free. Giving that loan is a government funded mid life crisis.

Anyone that would ever consider sending their kids to a private undergrad outside maybe some top Ivys like Harvard or Yale and a few others like Stanford is out of their minds. The bachelor's degree means absolutely nothing these days as everything is specialized at the graduate level. GTO approach today is to go to community college for first two years to get prerequisites out of the way and then transfer to best public school in the state. Every state has programs to do this as most are even set up in this manner. Result is a bachelor's degree from that school at half the public price.

Cost of tuition and room and board at a "mid tier" private school such as Pepperdine? How about $78,000 a year. Cost of in state tuition plus room and board at UCLA--$36,300. So GTO graduation track would cost $72,600 public vs $312,000 private. It absolutely will be UT or A&M for my future son and it looks like I may even be able to lock in today's tuition rates if I prepay through a Texas 529 account.

[gut]

Of course they are federal loans. No bank would be stupid enough to loan out this money.

“We are going to make sure if anyone wants a degree that they can get one” - US politician

This line of thinking is what has caused price inflation on a scale unseen by any other industry (other than Medicine which is another government boondoggle). Colleges and Universities have had a government backed blank check to expand with an accompanying cost.

If 30 years ago we made the decision to not back college loans there would be no 300K basketweaving degrees. You wouldn’t have some 20 year old being unproductive for 4 years and charging $7 Starbucks. Used to be you worked your ass off in the summer and then lived hand to mouth. It was “part of the experience”.

Government pulls the loans and colleges wouldn’t build a 100M dorm wired for sound, a new football stadium and new facilities. Tuition would need to be competitive. 100K film degrees would crater to a much more reasonable level.

I feel like I made a post elsewhere on here that was basically this, but yes fully agree. Don't forget George W's bankruptcy bill that made student debt unforgivable.

Boondoggle is probably the correct term, but sure reads like a long-term scam when you think about it. Government enables an industry to rape its customers, then pulls the carpet out from the dumb customers who couldn't make smart choices. Now they, like those Columbia kids, are essentially slaves to the gvmnt for life.

I worked full-time throughout my college years, with the exception of my frosh year when I had a partial scholarship and just worked a work-study job that came with it. After that, it was my 32-35 hour a week job had first priority, then fit in whatever classes I could. Only took 2 loans ever, totaling about $6k. Long paid off. Obviously, I am against the forgiveness ideas the nutjobs are pushing in DC.

[tgull]

The craziest dude in that story was the 41 year old who graduated last year, and clearly had to finance 100% of the cost as he’s nearly $400k in debt. Having I’m going to be the next Spielberg pipe dream at 22 is one thing, but graduating at 40 and thinking that degree is going to jumpstart your career? He’s casting for an indy, which I’m sure means trolling Instagram for teenage girls with nose rings who will work for free. Giving that loan is a government funded mid life crisis.

40 years old and going to Columbia? Yeah they will take you for sure, I had an opportunity to go to one of these Master Mills in my 20s, and thankfully I was talked out of it, of course I took a nosedive into poker which was worse but different story.

The story posted is tragic. It's not the debt, $200K can be paid off relatively easily. With a decent paying job things get easier, issue is these nose ringers will be baristas and default and blame Trump or the next Republican.

The issue with someone with a Film or Literature degree is they are going to likely hate everyone. I used to know a Yale graduate. She married a guy who mowed lawns and yelled at him all the times while she smoked pot researching her book. I lived in an apartment at the time, she was fat and had a hideous mole on her ear, but she sure flaunted that Yale degree around.

[Daly]

Of course they are federal loans. No bank would be stupid enough to loan out this money.

“We are going to make sure if anyone wants a degree that they can get one” - US politician

This line of thinking is what has caused price inflation on a scale unseen by any other industry (other than Medicine which is another government boondoggle). Colleges and Universities have had a government backed blank check to expand with an accompanying cost.

If 30 years ago we made the decision to not back college loans there would be no 300K basketweaving degrees. You wouldn’t have some 20 year old being unproductive for 4 years and charging $7 Starbucks. Used to be you worked your ass off in the summer and then lived hand to mouth. It was “part of the experience”.

Government pulls the loans and colleges wouldn’t build a 100M dorm wired for sound, a new football stadium and new facilities. Tuition would need to be competitive. 100K film degrees would crater to a much more reasonable level.

I feel like I made a post elsewhere on here that was basically this, but yes fully agree. Don't forget George W's bankruptcy bill that made student debt unforgivable.

Boondoggle is probably the correct term, but sure reads like a long-term scam when you think about it. Government enables an industry to rape its customers, then pulls the carpet out from the dumb customers who couldn't make smart choices. Now they, like those Columbia kids, are essentially slaves to the gvmnt for life.

I worked full-time throughout my college years, with the exception of my frosh year when I had a partial scholarship and just worked a work-study job that came with it. After that, it was my 32-35 hour a week job had first priority, then fit in whatever classes I could. Only took 2 loans ever, totaling about $6k. Long paid off. Obviously, I am against the forgiveness ideas the nutjobs are pushing in DC.

It’s bullshit. I’m a state school kid and I’m proud to say it. Worked 5 years as a bank teller on Saturdays and a petroleum transfer agent at night all through college. Lived at home the whole time. Had a bigger credit card bill when I was done than school debt.

The journey was the lesson. I learned more about business working as a gas station attendant then I did in most of the classes I took. Getting your ass out of bed and on to the next commitment you made while also carving out time for fun showed you could handle what life throws at you. There are more important lessons than what’s in the textbooks.

Putting an experience on credit sipping $10 coffees living in “luxurious” town houses with no job or hustle while
Majoring in some subject that absolutely nobody gives a fuck about is a recipe to waste 4 years of your life.

I’d bet on a kid working as a assistant manager at mcdonalds who lives in his parents basement so long as all his free time was watching movies and reading who begs borrows and steals from his friends to put a film together over some pretentious asshole who went to Columbia for “film study”. Imagine walking into James Camerons office with a masters in film from Columbia? He would laugh you out if his office. Guy was practically homeless and learned everything by spending countless hours in libraries.

I got a chip on my shoulder. I worked along side a lot of Ivy kids along the way. Most of them were fired and let go in the post Lehman years. I’m still standing. Fuck them all.

[Walter Sobchak]

What a bunch of fucking dopes these people are. They rack up hundreds of thousands in college debt getting a film degree from arguably one of the most expensive schools in the world, then moan they are a barista. I mean how stupid do you have to be, do they not realize Hollywood is who you know, not some degree you are essentially purchasing? It's like going to bartender school, the other bartenders just laugh their ass off behind your back.

You know why 90% of people get masters in film? Because they are left wing lazy shit bags. I have seen them for years in NYC, sitting outside a coffee shop with their nose rings drinking $9 coffees reading their History of Film books highlighting shit. The guy at the bottom of the article is priceless, chases his passion for film, now is a cashier at the department store he worked at as a teenager.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/financi...test_headlines

I guess someone didn't actually get a chance to attend that "fancy NE school" he keeps bragging about, and is now resentful.

Go back to wading through diarrhea.