How Much Debt Is Too Much?

cptofthehouse
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:59:27 +0000

There are a lot of factors that go into coming up with an answer to your question. My kids are barely making it even without student loans, and I am so grateful they didn’t take any. My one son who has a high paying job would have gotten it regardless of where he went to college. It was his degree and the courses he took, IT, computer modeling and math that made him an attractive candidate; where he went to school, not one bit of difference. He has colleagues, many recent grads from school that are unknown except in their locale, and they turn away literlly hundreds, maybe thousands fo candidates from the top schools if they don’t have the specific knowledge bast the company and jobs want. And a lot of jobs are that way. The ones that don’t have such tight requirements are so competitive, and a lot of times, who you know in the hiring circle can make the difference because there are just so many apps for those positions that personale cannot sift throught them all.

There have been a number of studies about how much of a difference it makes where one goes to school, and it seems that those actually accepted at selective schools but turned them down tend to do as well as those who went to them. Two top flight grads of a local college I know both turned down top 25 schools, one an ivy, to stay local due to personal and money issues, and it didn’t stop them one bit in their successes. One is a Rhodes Scholar, the first and only from that school, and the other now is quite successful in a spectacular way–wishes she went a way, as she never left the area, but I think that she stayed here gave her a jump on a number of opportunities.

So it’s hard to say. For those who don’t have parental backing at all , taking out more than the Stafford maxes is a high risk. It’s not as though a job will be waiting for most kids out of school but that interest just keeps right on chugging along. To take that monkey on parents and students’ back is a tough load. Even those who do well, find that a lot of loans make it tough.