Why is this story focusing on parents who took out hundreds of dollar in loans to send their kids to a popular/“prestigious” college, as though this is the face of student debt? Again and again College Debt Horror Stories focus on irresponsible parents who either cared too much about prestige, or couldn’t say “no” to little Timmy or Sue.
It really looks like there is a drive to demonize people with student debt. The fact that this story led with a story of parents who for no logical reason, decided that sending their kids to private schools which cost $70,000 a year makes sense, despite that the most basic arithmetic would have told them that they would end up with a student debt load of over $500,000. Of course, they will likely leave their kids with this debt, so their “brilliant” plan to keep their kids from graduating without debt will backfire horribly.
They also have a person with a $50,000 salary who somehow ended up with $194,000 in debt from three kids who will have the same situation with her kids. For somebody with $50,000 income and 4 kids, OSU costs $10,000-$12,000 a year. For 4 kids that would be $160,000 - $192,000. That is the Columbus campus, and OSU is far from the cheapest option in Ohio. There are many other colleges where her kids would have paid even less.
On the other hand we have parents and students who are taking loans so that they can actually attend a decent 4 year college with a decent graduation rate. Parents with so little money that they need to take $5,000 a year loan to pay for the cheapest option. People who “only” owe $20,000, but are finding it difficult to pay that back with a salary of $40,000 a year.
I really feel as though this article, which supposedly points to the evils of student debt, seems to be intent, instead, on reducing support for student loan forgiveness by painting people with student debt as being in debt due to their own irresponsibility and unwillingness to engage in basic financial calculations.