Of course for many the parents were present! They were being told the same thing by the education system. They were told that unless their kid got a college education their kid would not be successful. And while I wasn’t parent then but am now, I’m positive their peer group was pressuring them into helping kiddo out by co-signing on crazy large loans for degrees that their kid might never really use. I’ve seen it happen.
I get that there is a lot of societal bias toward blaming the person who got the loan for being a pile of shit deadbeat who was stupid enough to get a $70,000 “art history” degree… but dude. These people are basically kids. Or at best adults with very, very little life experience being given strong thumbs up by “the elders” who are supposed to know better…
The student does take some responsibility but society at large should take most of it.
I mean for Christ sake you had 18 year olds getting into huge amounts of debt that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy. There are very few financial tools in life that are so “iron clad” as a student loan and we handed them out like candy to the least experienced adults out there. What a shit thing to hand to somebody who just started out in the real world. Feed them lies and convince them to saddle up with a lifetime of debt that has absolutely no undo button besides death. We let total deadbeats rack up tons of unsecured debt and let them discharge it but somehow an 18 year old is allowed to basically take on perma-debt. It’s complete bullshit that makes the rich richer and the poor worse off.
I get that there is a lot of societal bias toward blaming the person who got the loan for being a pile of shit deadbeat who was stupid enough to get a $70,000 “art history” degree… but dude. These people are basically kids. Or at best adults with very, very little life experience being given strong thumbs up by “the elders” who are supposed to know better…
The student does take some responsibility but society at large should take most of it.
I mean for Christ sake you had 18 year olds getting into huge amounts of debt that you cannot discharge in bankruptcy. There are very few financial tools in life that are so “iron clad” as a student loan and we handed them out like candy to the least experienced adults out there. What a shit thing to hand to somebody who just started out in the real world. Feed them lies and convince them to saddle up with a lifetime of debt that has absolutely no undo button besides death. We let total deadbeats rack up tons of unsecured debt and let them discharge it but somehow an 18 year old is allowed to basically take on perma-debt. It’s complete bullshit that makes the rich richer and the poor worse off.