(05-11-2014 07:44 AM)gobaseline Wrote: http://money.msn.com/debt-management/art...8c5f1faf2a
Tough to do in a culture that is buying oriented and not saving.
It goes way beyond the culture of consuming and not saving. Students should not be in that kind of student loan debt begin with. More than the culture of consuming and not saving, it goes to our national priorities.
1) Every state in the union directs far more money toward incarceration and criminal justice than they do toward education. As a consequence, fewer tax dollars go to education, which results in tuition increases. The industrial/prison complex is alive and growing.
2) the average rate of tuition increase is around 4 to 6% per year. This rate of tuition increase far outstrips the general rate of inflation. In addition to receiving fewer tax dollars, universities are among the most wasteful institutions imaginable. With fewer tax dollars going towards universities and the wastefulness of resources that universities exhibit, it's easy to recognize the unjustifiable tuition increases that most students cannot afford.
3) With the decrease in real wages for the middle class, there is less disposable income and more and more parents and students are forced to take out loans, which then becomes a burden on the economy.
4) Finally, there are more than a few unscrupulous colleges that take advantage of naïve or uninformed students. Most of these unscrupulous colleges are for-profit colleges and do not typically reflect universities like Western or Michigan State.
So, the dilemma that we are in far exceeds the culture of consuming and not saving.
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Shedding that college debt.
