Ryan and I have been talking quite a bit lately about how we want the rest of our lives to look. How do we want to live? What do we want to teach our kids? What means the most to us in life? And in the process, we've also done quite a bit of financial forecasting. I have a good job, Ryan has a second job in addition to shepherding, but economic times are tough across the nation, and money isn't exactly falling from the sky for most of us. In this process of planning we've been looking at our student loans. We've crunched the numbers, we've moved loans around (and watched as loan companies move them around among themselves)... and we've come to this conclusion: If we make only minimum payments on our loans, we will have put our own children through college before we pay off our own student loans. In fact: I will have put enough years in at my job to retire before our loans are paid off! Now don't get me wrong, we have every intention of paying off our student loans long before then by making more than just minimum payments. But the fact remains that there are surely other people in this situation, and it begs the question: WHY?!?!?!?
If I correctly understand the teachings of our current society, we should go to college to get a good paying job, so that we can spend 40+ hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 35+ years of our lives paying off the debt we accumulated while going to college to get the degree to get the job to pay off the loans to go to college to get the job to pay off the loans... oh sorry, got caught up in that circle of 'insanely idiotic' there for a minute.
Now let me clarify: college in itself isn't idiotic. Going to college isn't idiotic... for some people. I think college can open a lot of doors for certain people. And I think those individuals who need a college degree to pursue their dreams should go. But let's be honest. According to a study by Northeastern University, 40% of college grads are working a job that doesn't require a degree. And another survey found that 80% of college grads move back in with their parents after college because they don't have the kind of job they were expecting/hoping for. And no one can accurately give a stat on how many graduates aren't working in their field of study, but estimates are: it's low. Why? Because at 18 years old every high school kid is told: go to college. And that's it. They aren't given the opportunity to explore employment opportunities, to find out what kind of jobs there are out there. When I left high school I thought you went to college to be a lawyer, doctor, or teacher. That was it. Pick one. At 18 years old few people know how they want to spend the rest of their lives. So they go to college (because, well gee, that's just what you do!), amass debt, get a degree in something arbitrary, and then they go out and explore employment options. And then, oh wait, they are either working a job that doesn't require a degree, or they find out what it is they want to do, and have to go back to school to get another degree, this time one that actually applies to the field in which they want to work!
The system is broken. And it is breaking the backs of college graduates everywhere. Laden with thousands of dollars in debt, and no "dream job" that makes them six figures a year, they work 30 years of their lives paying off the money owed for a degree that does them little or no good. And because they are so oppressed with their financial burdens, there is no hope of them saving money in their children's college funds. And so, our next generation... my children.... will be faced with the same cyclic problem: go to college, amass debt, work my life away to pay off debt that I accrued while going to college so that I could get a job so that I could pay off my debt. Let's hope we can learn from our experiences, and maybe, just MAYBE, encourage our kids to put college off for a couple years. Explore the world... find out what you want to do with your life. Maybe it requires a college degree. But then again.... if it's sheep you're interested in.... maybe it doesn't.
