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By the Way, Make Sure Your Kids Go to Community Colleges for the First Two Years!

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

Here's the deal; I get to talk to kids every week who have $130,000 degrees from Prestige University (no, that's not really the name of the school).

They have nifty degrees in Woman's Studies, Environmental Finesse, and Pre-Cortez-Invasion Literature; or maybe Philosophy, like me (I got to dig ditches for Pancho Willis when I graduated with a degree in Philosophy, and it taught me a valuable lesson; I don't like to use a pick and shovel in the hot, hot sun).

Now, your kids had a passion for whatever they were studying, and you let them follow their passion!

I can't decide if you did a good thing by letting them feel good about themselves for four or six years or nine years, or whether you goofed up like no generation of parents before you.

Why didn't you tell 'em that they needed a degree with salable skills attached? Why didn't you really tell them? You're parents, not buddies!

Now, there are some jobs for folks with interesting degrees, and they are usually at the University itself; perhaps as a Professor!

Oh, that's right! There aren't any such jobs anymore! Because kids are smart, and some parents are smart. So fewer kids are going like lambs to the educational slaughter. It's a little too late for the kids with non-dischargeable student loans who are flipping burgers after their bankruptcy cases, and getting their tiny salaries hit whenever they are found by the lowlives who bought their student loans.

In the same way that the housing industry was distorted by goofy lending, the education industry has gone sideways, and will soon experience a horrific "correction". That means that schools will either close or ask for bailouts.

And the folks with the worst problems? How about kids with huge student loans and no degrees?

p.s. soon I'll post a couple of cases that set out standards to discharge student loans in a bankruptcy case; and it ain't pretty. 

 

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on February 04, 2011 (boomark / email).