August 31, 2009 – 1:12 pm
If you’ve got $50k to spend, the smart mouthed writers at the NY Post who probably never went to NYU themselves, suggest you invest it in enrolling your kids in the Psychology prof Gary Marcus course called “Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video Games and the Nature of Human Cognition.” Way cool. Or you could [...]
August 30, 2009 – 2:08 pm
Gene Trainor at the Star-Telegram has another sob story for us about 13 students who are suing Everest College, the Dallas-Ft Worth area for-profit college that promised to teach them about the magic of puffed up medical billing. Alas, there’s no honor among puffery-makers because the students never found the jobs they said were promised to them [...]
August 29, 2009 – 11:35 am
The professors at Robert Morris college should be embarrassed about this new story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Tim Grant. One of their esteemed graduates, Marjorie Dillon, graduated with a degree in business administration and $120,000 in debt. Now she works in a bowling alley making $7.50 a hour “serving beer”. Whoo hoo! Would an able business administrator [...]
August 28, 2009 – 1:43 pm
The Project on Student Debt, a great group, has a new report detailing the surge of private debt taken by students. The interest rates are higher, more variable, and the penalties for not paying are more onerous. Yet the students are turning there more often? I wish the report had more explanations why. Are the Federal [...]
August 27, 2009 – 12:39 pm
Wow, there’s more bitterness in this CNN piece by Moni Basu than in one of my typical rants. It’s a handful of bad stories of students who took out big loans for fancy degrees and now can’t even begin to pay them off. To make matters worse, they can’t discharge them in bankruptcy and so they’re [...]
August 26, 2009 – 5:22 pm
Michael Dannenberg, a former Kennedy aide, has a provocative suggestion that is so obvious I wonder why it hasn’t been acted upon already. He suggests making colleges pay for lenders that default. If someone fails to pay back a loan to a bank or the taxpayers, why not make the colleges cough up some or even all [...]
August 26, 2009 – 5:16 pm
Last year the law firms cut back by asking some new graduates to take some paid time off. Some even offered $60k+ to take a year off between law school and reporting for work. Now the year is up and they’re coming back to take the jobs and that’s bad news for new graduates who [...]
August 25, 2009 – 12:26 pm
If the students can be talked in taking out big loans, why not trick them into accepting high fees for moving their money? That’s the plan with these new convenience cards that have charges of as high as $10 per month. The Baltimore Sun’s Eileen Ambrose digs up the story today.
August 24, 2009 – 4:32 pm
Here’s a scary story from Joseph DiStefano. He notes that Pennsylvania is tweaking the terms of their 529 college savings program by adding more fees. Somehow they’re not going to be able to pay out what they’ve promised. Part of the problem is the market crash, something that affected everyone, but much of the problem is caused [...]
August 24, 2009 – 4:28 pm
Kara McGuire from McClatchy news services, tells the story of Sarah Lukemire. She saved for a long time, worked hard, and lived at home. Sarah also lived at home instead of in the dorms at the University of Northern Colorado. Her friends in the dorm would say, “It’s so much fun, you’re missing out on your whole [...]
August 3, 2009 – 12:24 pm
We don’t know how to take sides here. Jennifer Millman tells us the story of Trina Thompson, a young graduate who is suing her alma mater, Monroe College, for a refund. The $70,000 didn’t get her a nicer job. Ms. Thompson is not alone because colleges have fleeced many more over the years. Many more. [...]
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