Prelude to the Problems: I am not against college. However, I do question the value for many families of spending over $120,000 for anyone to get a college degree. There must be a cost benefit analysis done before entering school and there should be considerable financial education required before tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans are issued to someone who cannot smoke or drink legally and whose brain is not finished developing.
After completing the prior podcast and discussing with the community, it became very apparent that not all parents can afford to help their children through college. Many parents struggle to pay rent and keep food on the table and often times families can lose housing benefits when a child turns 18, so for many families providing room and board for the student isn’t possible, even though I’ve yet to meet a parent that doesn’t want to help.
This week’s news from the WSJ tells us that students at historically black colleges (see The Student-Debt Crisis Hits Hardest at Historically Black Colleges) are graduating with disproportionately more debt than other students, who are also graduating with record levels of debt.
