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Jewish World Review June 15, 2010 / 3 Tamuz 5770 Profiles in cowardice: Victims who aren't By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The New York Times, in its periodic efforts to describe as victims people who aren't, had a profile May 28 of the plight of Cortney Munna.
Ms. Munna, 26, took out nearly $100,000 in student loans to pay for the four years she spent at New York University earning an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies. Now she's having difficulty paying the loans back.
This ought not to be a surprise, since a degree in religious and women's studies is excellent preparation for a career in the fast food industry, or as a photographer's assistant making $22,000 a year, which is the best job Ms. Munna has had since her graduation in 2005.
"After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren't being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over," wrote business columnist Ron Lieber.
Ms. Munna acknowledges she could have gone to a less expensive school, or taken time off to work, but she, her mother (who encouraged her to take out the loans) and Mr. Lieber say the blame for her predicament rests chiefly with school officials and the banks which lent her the money.
"What was Citi(bank) thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who already had amassed debt well into five figures?" Mr. Lieber asked.
"When financial aid (at NYU) told her they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying, 'you are in deep doo-doo, little girl,'" Cathryn Munna said.
In a similar predicament is Samantha Hillstrom, 23, a production assistant at CNN who amassed $115,000 in student loans while attending a private college in New York City.
Both Ms. Munna and Ms. Hillstrom think they should be permitted to declare bankruptcy, or have their loans forgiven.
"I chose to go to a private school and I chose to work in a field where the starting salaries are low," Ms. Hillstrom said on Anderson Cooper's blog March 30. "Does that mean I chose to live a life of struggle, wondering how I am going to pay my rent, afford the basics of living and still stay in my chosen career field...all the while putting up with high interest rates and an amount of debt that brings me to tears?"
Why yes, Ms. Hillstrom, it does. You are an adult, responsible for the choices you make. You have no right to expect others to subsidize your preferences, or to bail you out from the consequences of your mistakes.
"In short, Hillstrom went to a college she couldn't afford, did not research her options, did not bother to learn the terms of her loan, got a degree that was not terribly useful (I'm guessing), and took a job that does not pay very well to pursue her 'lifelong dream of a career in television,'" wrote Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine. "Of course she wants a bailout; everyone else who has screwed up royally seems to be getting one."
I have little sympathy for the holes Ms. Munna and Ms. Hillstrom dug for themselves. But I do have some. Higher education is the greatest consumer fraud in America today.
According to a recent federal government report, the lifetime earnings of a college graduate are $900,000 more than someone who has a high school diploma only. If you have a master's degree, you should expect to earn $1.2 million more than a high school grad.
But the expectation is false.
The data on which the study was based are dated. It's mostly from a time when a college education cost a lot less, and delivered a lot more.
"The amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982," Money magazine noted. "Normal supply and demand can't begin to explain cost increases of this magnitude."
Some majors, such as medicine and engineering, add value to society and income to graduates. But with the explosion in college costs has come an explosion in garbage courses and garbage majors. Your degree in ethnic or women's studies gives you no economic advantage over a high school grad...unless you can get a job teaching ethnic or women's studies, and those gigs are getting harder to find.
College is also great for partying and social networking. But you can do that for substantially less than $50,000 a year.
Ms. Munna and Ms. Hillstrom didn't figure this out. But other young people are. Which is why Glenn Reynolds, who teaches law at the University of Tennessee, thinks higher education will be the next economic bubble to burst.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
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