I had a well-paying software internship for most of my time in college, and still left college with ~$30k of debt. Even while making $600/week, it wasn't possible to manage living expenses and tuition payments without taking loans.
It's certainly something to be complaining about. It may enable a career, but not always, and the career may be enough to pay off a loan, but not always. At the very least, $30K of debt is a lot to have hanging over one's head for years.
Consider also those who are 3 years into the degree and decide that field isn't for them, and they want to leave school - that's nearly $20k down the toilet which will be hard to pay back.
BTW, your logic applies equally well to indentured servants. (Years of labor enables free passage to the US and the chance for one's own farm at the end.) Since I don't like the concept of debt bondage, I distrust logic which supports it.
This is true, but I honestly felt towards the end that I was discovering more on my own, or through my internship, than I was at school. The only justification I got for spending out-of-state-tuition types of money in the last year, was the opportunity to learn from one great professor.
I'm definitely not complaining about $30k, I just wish there was some way I could directly pay one brilliant person like the one great professor, so they could speak at me in an intelligent way and give me new perspective on things that I read in a textbook.
Exactly, I just found out that a friend is finishing her studies with 100k in debt. I'm not saying that it's the worst scenario out there, but it makes you feel grateful for incurring a relatively lower amount.
Yeah, double major (CS and math) and an internship. It was crazy and really takes a toll on your sleep cycle. I kept sane through a combination of pranayama (yogic breathing exercises) and longboarding everywhere (great cardio).
I still had a great social life- interestingly, most of my roommates and friends in college didn't care for theoretical math and didn't know the first thing about CS.
