For some odd reason, the education debt story is still one which is obviously selling. Otherwise, brandname media outlets like BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK wouldn't keep covering them, in great detail.
The latest from BBW focuses on one of the media's favorite angles: those who had accumulated loan debt not only from college but also law school and earn peanuts or nothing. That person in the current issue is Christina Mills. She is 30 years old, working at a non-profit where she doesn't even earn a month the $1400 monthly payment due. This time it does include someone with a bit more promise in earning power. It's Thomas Smith, 25, a medical student. He already owes $310,000 in student loans. However, eventually he could probably pay them off from his earnings by time he's middle aged.
This is a very stale story. Since everyone in the loop in planning for an education has been hammered with these realities they should have absorbed them and made appropriate decisions about what to invest in higher education. Yes, buyer beware.
Those, such as the JDs since the Crash of 2007, who got caught in the shift from a high paying profession to a Darwinian business deserve compassion. They probably aren't getting it, though. We doctoral students in the early 70s who were finishing up our degrees when the market crashed for humanities college teachers were questioned by employers in non-academic fields, family, and friends why in the world we had wasted our youth sitting in the library. Capitalist America is unforgiving about professional choices which don't monetize.
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