Is going to college a means of keeping the poor, poor?

Question

adding @ 55min.

If I graduate from college I now have a 10,000+ student loan without even a guarantee that I will get a job.

Answer 1

If you took a job right out of high school earning about $7.00 per hour and you worked 40 hours per week, you would have earned about $15,000 per year. You could have worked your way up through that company over that four year period (if you had a good work ethic and took your job seriously) so that with raises and promotions your income would be close to $40,000 per year. You could have done that without a college degree. At $15,000 per year, you would have earned $60,000 instead of paying out all that money to college -- making the schools rich and helping to pay for illegal aliens and welfare recipients to get a "free education". Now, check on your friends who graduated from college. Where are they working? How much money are they making? Are they using everything they learned in college? Could they have learned the job and do it just as well without a college degree?

History has shown us that people with ambition, who are self starters, can become millionaires even if they don't have a high school education. Read "The world's greatest salesman" and some other biographical sketches for our millionaires.

Computer science people were making lots of money years ago. Today, the majority have been laid off and are making pennies. H1B VISAs are bringing foreigners in to take over the jobs that American Citizens are educated for. Additional jobs are leaving the country. So, is college worth the money you pay for it? If the jobs are not available, how can you boost your earning power with a college degree?

Promises that a college degree would give us great incomes caused us to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours of working, going to night school, and studying to achieve that dream. What we found was that we lined the pockets of others, our income didn't rise any faster than those who spent their time working instead of going to college, and what we learned in college isn't used daily anyway. So, what is the true cost of a college education? What is the true benefit of a college education? When a 25 year old drop out discovered DNA, and people with 8th grade educations are millionaires, what does that tell you about the need for college or even 12 years of school?

Answer 2

Though I don't think its a problem with student loans, i think yes. Though it is possible, its highly improbable to complete a degree in any reasonable amount of time working 40+ hours a week. Not only that, if your parents do not realease their tax information to you, you cannot receive student loans. All the FinAid department will do for you is call them and ask them politely. Even with that, most of the upper clas and private colleges ask you to live on campus which at WMU (where i attended/ not even that upper class) was $500-700 a month. A public education in an inner city cannot compete with that of a private school or an upper class public school. No, it defintely keeps the poor, poor but it is a symptom rather than a cause.

Answer 3

No, what it means by going to college is just another life decision. I know of people who took English degrees without a teaching certificate to back it up with and struggle. I know of others that went into the arts who have no guarantee of success. I also know of people who went business or engineering because of the potential. I watched first hand at my University the liberal arts professors vote in a union just because they did not like their payscale for a PhD in history or some other degree that is hard to get grants and bring in money to the University.

What I am trying to say is that if someone doesn't know the cost to earnings ratio and get too far over their heads than shame on them. For me, I was ever careful to keep my total student loan amount under the starting wages for my field. It is only the ignorant that tries to blame others for their problems.

Answer 4

I am a student working full time at KFC. I make about $14000 per year and if I graduate with $10000 in debt and I get a $24000 a year job I can pay back the loans in 1 year if I don't change my lifestyle.

Answer 5

Yes but you also will acquire the skills ,have the degree that opens economic doors where you will be able to repay the loan and assure a economic stable future for yourself and a future family. Do not go to college and your chances of being financially stable are far less. The loan is not given to keep you in debt but to open the door to Opportunities.Apply yourself and you also have the opportunities for scholarships-check into them too.

Answer 6

In a sense, yes.

A Bachelor of Arts degree is the new equivilent of a high school diploma. That diploma is fully funded by municipalities. A B.A is not. Does that reality contribute to the widening income gap - absolutely.

But if you consider the availability of state and federal tuition assistance, low cost and subsidized loans, and the surprising amounts of need-and-merit-based scholarships available to those below the poverty line (at both the federal and state levels) the effect is somewhat mitigated.

Answer 7

The greater percentage of to days poor are only to days poor by political design. 100 years ago they simply packed up and moved to an area offering more grass roots opportunity, they were called Homesteaders, Immigrants, Frontiersmen. All that land (still LOTS left) is now "no trespassing, government property". The few parcels left for settlement in the last 50 years bought up by big developers.... Viva Las Vegas.... Now???
Alms for the love of Allah???

Answer 8

Yeah, that's it. Getting more education is the way to keep the poor, poor. If that's the case, then the inner city should be filled with people with bachelor degrees instead of people who are truant and have difficulty reading past the fourth grade.

Answer 9

I can remember when I was young and my parents told me "a college degree doesn't guarantee you a job".

Answer 10

Nah. The poor will manage to stay poor no matter who goes to college. It's a life style for them.