Student Debt in America
Ajanlekoko, an electrical engineer, is a Senior Manager in one of the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He earlier made same post on Nairaland.com
I was reading this article in the London Guardian this morning. It deals with the issue of student debt in the US, and how borrowers are having to make lifestyle (and lifetime) adjustments in order to deal with the debt.
Apparently owing $100k and up in student debt is a common occurence in the USA. Generally people have to pay for school outside these shores, but it seems the US is the top dog in this respect. An organization called American Student Assistance says there are around 1.1 million students in the US who owe $100k and above in student loans. To me, that sounds scary.
There’s no doubt that American education is quality, compared to almost everywhere else. But in the face of the global recession, how sensible is it really to incur such costs on education. For the 1.1m people, are they guaranteed jobs that can cover their expenses? Simply put, is the ROI on such expensive education guaranteed?
Another interesting stat you can garner from the ASA site is that 96% of people who attended private for-profit institutions (like maybe Stanford or Harvard) borrowed to pay for their tuition. So it’s an almost-guaranteed fact that you will borrow money, a lot of it, if you want to go to a really good school in the US.
It would be interesting to hear from the peeps who have borrowed money to pay for their US education. Is it paying off in terms of jobs? Also, are these loans calculated on commercial compounded rates? E.g. if you borrowed $120k to pay for an MBA, what do you actually pay over time, $200k +?
Let’s hear from y’all 
[b]THEY ARE THOSE THAT WENT TO CHEAPER COLLEGES AND ARE MAKING TOO…………………… AND NOT EVERY HARVARD GRADUATE GETS EMPLOYED ASAP…………….THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM RACING FOR JOBS ALONGSIDE ME[/b]
Michael LeBeouf said it in his book “The Millionaires mind” that one of the reasons he was able to retire young, was because he did not over pay for his education. He attended public Universities and he was able to outperform some of his contemporaries that attended the expensive so called prestigious schools.