Also idiot. Dems like me aint down with no student loan forgiveness so I will vote republican next time.
Fuck the pussy ass bullshit.
Fuck the pussy ass bullshit.
Should All Student Debt Be Cancelled?
- Thread starter Rembrandt Brown
- Start date
If you want to talk about college tuition being too high. That is a different topic. That I agree on.
But you talking about Student Loans.
If you cannot afford to get into a 30k college......
Go to a local university or a local community...or get a full scholarship.
That is life. Fuck you if you can't deal with the lemons you got and the decisions you made.
But you talking about Student Loans.
If you cannot afford to get into a 30k college......
Go to a local university or a local community...or get a full scholarship.
That is life. Fuck you if you can't deal with the lemons you got and the decisions you made.
"Dems like me"... Who are they? The broke and bitter ones? Who cares what relics like you think.
And if you let a issue like loan forgiveness drive you to the repub party than you're an even bigger clueless piece of shit than i thought you were.. Just what the repubs need... Another broke dumb black nigga voting against his interest. You belong over there wit the toothless hillbillies and jesus freaks.
Hey look here man... Imma say this and im done unless someone with a clue comes along and wants in on an informed basis.. You cats just be talking just to talk and largely sound like imbeciles.
You sincerely dont know what the fuck you're talking about. And im not saying that condescendingly .. I mean it sincerely. If you dont understand that skyrocketing tuition is DIRECTLY linked to student loan debt then you shouldnt be having this conversation.
Again, these kids are being scammed and saddled with life altering debt.
Go educate yourself bro.
Dems who aint with bullshit for these weak faggots who complain about nonsense.
Niggas like you borrowed money and were living in townhouses with jacuzzis and balconies.
Now it is time to pay that loan but you want a car and a house and a playstation every year.
So now you mad at the student loans cause THAT is what is keeping you from balling?
FOH jabroni.
Life will fuck your ass and make you humble!
Niggas like you borrowed money and were living in townhouses with jacuzzis and balconies.
Now it is time to pay that loan but you want a car and a house and a playstation every year.
So now you mad at the student loans cause THAT is what is keeping you from balling?
FOH jabroni.
Life will fuck your ass and make you humble!
"Dems like me"... Who are they? The broke and bitter ones? Who cares what relics like you think.
And if you let a issue like loan forgiveness drive you to the repub party than you're an even bigger clueless piece of shit than i thought you were.. Just what the repubs need... Another broke dumb black nigga voting against his interest. You belong over there wit the toothless hillbillies and jesus freaks.
I'm against it. It just doesn't make sense to me. I understand that the debt is a drain on the economy but people voluntarily went into that agreement. They've already received the service.
Where's the money going to come from? Don't tell me about how we waste money all the time, I want to know specifically where that money is going to come from. From a tax on Wall Street? Wouldn't that money be better applied to a New Deal like program to stimulate growth and create jobs so people can pay back their loans.
Maybe those people shouldn't have gone to college. We need to re-think what education is all about. Is it to create a wise knowledgeable electorate or is it to prepare people for the job market? I know college is too expensive right now and that's something that needs to be looked at. We need to stop telling people they need college for jobs that don't require it.
My problem with it isn't "I had to pay them so should they" but it doesn't seem like the best way to handle the situation.
Where's the money going to come from? Don't tell me about how we waste money all the time, I want to know specifically where that money is going to come from. From a tax on Wall Street? Wouldn't that money be better applied to a New Deal like program to stimulate growth and create jobs so people can pay back their loans.
Maybe those people shouldn't have gone to college. We need to re-think what education is all about. Is it to create a wise knowledgeable electorate or is it to prepare people for the job market? I know college is too expensive right now and that's something that needs to be looked at. We need to stop telling people they need college for jobs that don't require it.
My problem with it isn't "I had to pay them so should they" but it doesn't seem like the best way to handle the situation.
I haven't read the whole thread but, I don't understand the debate prioritizing the elimination student debt? When do we discuss eliminating home mortgage debt, or medical service debt? Why single out education debt for forgiveness?
Or credit card debt? The majority of Americans don't have student loan debt.
Probably because student loan debt is the only of the group that was accrued in the pursuit of seeking gainful employment which kinda helps fuel the American economy..
Oh, and its THE ONLY ONE YOU CANT DISCHARGE VIA BANKRUPTCY OR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS YOU IDIOTS!!
This is my only problem with it! I support the idea but I don't like the Democratic party only taking bold action to benefit college-educated people. I think that is dumb electorally because it alienates the people the party should be courting and it is wrong morally, another indicator of how the party is only better than the alternative but consistently fails to be a people's party.
Thank you bro. These students knew how much shit cost but they deferred all the payments.
They didn't think about excelling and getting full scholarships or being smart and finding a more economical funding source.
Still then they didn't bust their asses when looking for a job and made sure they were gonna be PAID.
Shame on the niggas who went to Harvard for English and didn't follow up with a dope master plan.
But now you saying you want tax payers to pay for your 200k loan so you can go buy a house and a car and live your dream life?
Why? Why do you deserve it? Fuck off!
They didn't think about excelling and getting full scholarships or being smart and finding a more economical funding source.
Still then they didn't bust their asses when looking for a job and made sure they were gonna be PAID.
Shame on the niggas who went to Harvard for English and didn't follow up with a dope master plan.
But now you saying you want tax payers to pay for your 200k loan so you can go buy a house and a car and live your dream life?
Why? Why do you deserve it? Fuck off!
You'd be so much more effective if you dropped the insults. Blackpepper didn't do anything meriting being called an idiot. Just delete two words and you have a more productive exchange.
Medical Bills: The Leading Cause of Bankruptcy in the United States - Apex EDI | Apex EDI
Debt is a huge problem in the United States. Whether it is from paying for school or buying a home, a large portion of American citizens owe some amount of
www.apexedi.com
I don't think people should have to go bankrupt for medical debt. People not being sick or dying prematurely is probably good for the economy but it's an insult to the value of life and the pursuit of happiness to even argue it in those terms. It's just plain right.
And in both cases, eliminating the debt is not enough. The system that would put someone in debt in that circumstance has to be abolished.
Fuck you. I speak how i speak. This is my down time. You want the Queens english, catch me on the clock. The rates 300/hr. Be glad im even engaging wit you niggas for free. You deserve to be talked to even worse considering some of the stupid shit you clowns say.
You soft serv niggas offended by curse words.. Well im even more offended by stupidity.
Yeah while I am for it, I woulddnt be mad if they didn’t cancel it. As someone with student loan debt, if you know how to manage your money there are ways to pay.
My main issue is the interest rates. As someone who has a 800 credit score, why is the interest rate on my loans more than my car and mortgage. That’s where they can fix the problem. Why should someone who went to medical school with crazy amounts of debt have to pay like 8% interest on it.
Yeah you can go to a state school or community college but some careers you have to have a college degree or professional degree.
My main issue is the interest rates. As someone who has a 800 credit score, why is the interest rate on my loans more than my car and mortgage. That’s where they can fix the problem. Why should someone who went to medical school with crazy amounts of debt have to pay like 8% interest on it.
Yeah you can go to a state school or community college but some careers you have to have a college degree or professional degree.
First, was this necessary?
I'm setting up an intervention for him.
What is the stupidity because people do not agree with you?
What's the matter bubba? Do you have student loans?
How much are they? Did you get your degree? In What?
Let's get specific to see why you so mother fucking mad.
What's the matter bubba? Do you have student loans?
How much are they? Did you get your degree? In What?
Let's get specific to see why you so mother fucking mad.
because it benefits white the most.
And the thing about medical debt. We are the only country that capitalize off it's healthcare system. Yet, the quality of care in this country is the equivalent to someone getting care in a developing country.
Like in the US, getting care here is like buying a pinto, but paying the cost of a mercedes benz which doesn't make sense. The thing is we have the mechanisms to put in place to make it better but Big Pharm doesn't want that to happen.
I would argue that incurring mortgage dept does more for the economy than education debt. When people become home owners they tend to buy lots more crap and services that fuel the economy. In fact long before people started getting so deeply in debt for education home mortgage financing was a way better economic driver, and still is.
Large educational and financial institutions got together and manufactured the student debt crisis. The universities kept raising their prices and the banks said let me help you with that. It'll only cost you your first born, but people took the deal. The cost of education has risen much like the cost of health care, and the finance companies expanded their market to exploit young kids trying to get ahead. Banks eventually saw that loaning buckets of money to irresponsible kids could be a risky proposition if they all started to dip out on those loans. Even if the students graduated and got a nice job there was little leverage that could be brought to bear on them. You can't repo or foreclose on a degree or an education. So they needed a solution to keep those rats on the hook. The banks got the bright idea to slide some $$$ to our elected leaders to legislate an exemption for student dept being discharge through bankruptcy. The politicians took the money and did that. Then the for profit colleges and trade schools jumped in and it was a free for all. It didn't matter if the students graduated, got decent jobs, got hooked on drugs, became parents, were defrauded by their educational institution, etc. That debt dogged their ass every which way they turned.
I suggest they start here. Why not modify the circumstances under which many more students may have some of their education debts discharged through bankruptcy. Factor in the age of the student when they took out the loan, because eighteen is way too young. Look at what institution and program were they enrolled in, because we know there were tons of diploma mills just fleecing people. Take into account their social economic situation prior to, during and after their educational program. Look at other things a well. I believe some people may deserve to get out of these debilitating loans, but not everyone. No way.
Perhaps. But my argument was never which was a better driver of the economy. My point was that those who sought advanced education did it for self improvement, the search for gainful employment, and that doing so is an economy driver. Gainfully employed people have more disposable income, pay more taxes, tend to have families, are bigger consumers, have higher percentage of home ownership.. etc. etc..
Correct.. I literally said all of this already. This is actually a great argument for debt forgiveness. You acknowledge the scam was run by the banksters and government on minors seeking the American dream they were steered toward by society at large. There needs to be a remedy in place to serve as corrective measure just as there is for EVERY other kind of debt accrued by citizens.
Fair enough. Im willing to start negotiations here.
I think we are mostly in agreement. I'll wrap, by saying the financial and educational institutions, like all the others in this country have been central to maintaining white supremacy through exploiting black people for the benefit of white people. Redlining, and many, many other discriminatory policies were propagated by the highly learned executives that came out of this countries most prestigious universities.
1. Massachusetts
Associate or higher: 50.4 percent
Massachusetts ranks as the state with the highest educational attainment, with more than half of its residents earning an associate degree or higher.
The state is well known for its many schools, totaling close to 80 colleges and universities. Among its top institutions are Williams College, Amherst College and Harvard University.
I can't see this $50K per person loan forgiveness ever happening. It would be perceived as only benefiting the educated elite that made poor decisions regarding their education choices. Some people took that money and bought a fixer-upper house instead of investing it in a english literature or theatrical drama degree from a lower tier state university. They would ask, where's their bail out?
These loans are guaranteed by the gov. Any irresponsible moron can qualify for one if your enrolled at school. You don't need collateral and credit history like you would for a house.
Would these people for forgiveness be ok with a future loan approval process similar to buying real estate (which obviously would affect us more)?
all tax debt should be forgiven!
I disagree with college debt cancellation but I'm adding it as part of the conversation. The article is by Roxanne Gay. She's for college debt cancellation. I think she is correct in a significant amount of the opposition is because they want others to suffer. I think part of the problem is telling everyone they should have a college degree for jobs that don't require it.
www.nytimes.com
I took out my first student loans more than 20 years ago. I had dropped out of college just before the start of my junior year. I took a couple of years off and when I went back, I had to pay for my final two years myself. I understood the responsibility I was assuming, but I was working minimum wage jobs at the time — retail, telemarketing, bartending. Repayment seemed like a vague, distant concept in large part because I could not fathom being able to repay such staggering amounts of money. I went to graduate school and got two more degrees and though those programs were funded, I took out student loans because it was impossible to live on the meager stipends we were given.
One of those jobs I had as an undergrad the second time around was at a student loan company, processing loan consolidations. I saw applications from people who owed $15,000 and people who owed $400,000 and everything in between. I learned how expensive chiropractic and dental schools are. I spoke with a young woman who attended Brown and was working at Walmart and had $300,000 in loans and was desperate for help. Her monthly payment was more than she earned from her full-time job. But mostly, I learned the intricacies of the student loan system, the ways to repay and defer or forbear them, what it takes to pay them off, and how the system is designed to extract as much money as possible from people simply trying to get an education, trying to get the necessary credentials to prosper.
Every month, I pay $1,000 to the federal government. My balance has hovered around $140,000 for the past 10 years because most of each payment goes toward the interest. This is a common story, but this is not a sad story because I can afford to pay my loans. In another 15 years, whatever remains on the balance will be discharged, though I will have to pay income tax on the discharged amount. And still, my loans are always looming on the periphery of my life, influencing every fiscal decision I make.
Student loans are the kind of debt from which there is often no escape. They generally cannot be discharged by claiming bankruptcy. Deferment and forbearance periods are finite. If you default, the stain of it will follow you for quite a long time. The consequences can be devastating — wage garnishments, no tax refunds, whatever the government needs to do to get their money back — and your credit score can be destroyed.
Many progressive politicians feature student loan forgiveness as one of their key policy ideas because they understand how big of a problem the student debt crisis is and what it will become without intervention. With Joe Biden as president, there is a distinct possibility that some form of student loan forgiveness might become a reality.
But the debate about the issue is contentious. It’s either a great idea or a terrible one. It’s a way of evening the playing field or it’s unfair to people who have paid off their student loans or who never borrowed or attended college. A great many Americans are only concerned with fairness when they think someone else might get something they won’t get. And they are seething with resentment as they imagine a country in which we help one another. It’s appalling, that this is where we are … that this is who we are.
No one benefits from everything our government does. I don’t have children, but some of the money I pay in taxes goes toward education. This serves the greater good and indirectly benefits me. We’re all paying for infrastructure we don’t personally need or use. It’s part of the social contract, but that contract only holds up when we are all willing to abide by its terms.
Much of the political division about student loan forgiveness can be explained by the fact that people want to benefit from the social contract without adhering to its terms. Or they only care about the social contract as it applies to the right kinds of people. And, of course, there is the bootstrap mentality — If I have achieved success, surely you can too — which is delusional at best. Then there are those who worship at the altar of personal responsibility: If you assume a debt, you must repay it. And worst of all, there’s the sufferance doctrine: If I have experienced hardship, you must experience hardship, too.
Damon Linker, a columnist for The Week, tweeted, “I think Dems are wildly underestimating the intensity of anger college loan cancellation is going to provoke. Those with college debt will be thrilled, of course. But lots and lots of people who didn’t go to college or who worked to pay off their debts? Gonna be bad.” This is what passes for political thinking these days — empty statements rising out of the notion that we have to govern from a place of fear about what might anger “lots and lots of people.”
Conventional wisdom seems to be that we must not trigger people by discussing radical ideas like universal health care, civil rights for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, reckoning with police violence and the carceral system, protecting women’s bodily autonomy, and of course, student debt forgiveness. Somehow, compromise has come to mean not doing anything to upset anyone who is completely fine with ignoring the most urgent problems of our day.
Here’s the thing about anger. We only seem to prioritize one kind — anger in reaction to progress. And we never seem to acknowledge the anger rising out of oppression, marginalization, and under representation. The end of slavery and desegregation angered lots and lots of people, and so did taxation, suffrage, marriage equality. Progress angers people, but change is not the problem. The rage and resentment are.
People are struggling. The $1,200 stimulus checks have been spent. The additional $600 a week of unemployment funding has run its course. The Paycheck Protection Program has shut its doors. The economy continues to falter because we lack coherent federal leadership, and conditions will only worsen. We are on a precipice, as we have been before and will be again. A lot of political thinkers believe now is the time for moderation, that we are in a boat that must not be rocked.
But now is not the time for half-measures. Now is the time for grand gestures and innovative thinking. Now is the time for remembering the social contract and recommitting to the idea of a unified country where we understand how intimately we are all connected. Now is the time for understanding that empathy is infinite if we allow it to be.
This country has to rise out of the bitter ashes of Donald Trump’s presidency. Student loan forgiveness won’t solve all the problems we are facing, but it will ease a significant burden for tens of millions of people. It will stimulate the lagging economy. And though not everyone will directly benefit, the country as a whole will improve. As a public, we owe a debt to one another — the debt of belonging to a community. It’s time that debt was paid.
Opinion | Is This Where We Are, America? (Published 2020)
Some people oppose student loan forgiveness because they want others to suffer, too.
I took out my first student loans more than 20 years ago. I had dropped out of college just before the start of my junior year. I took a couple of years off and when I went back, I had to pay for my final two years myself. I understood the responsibility I was assuming, but I was working minimum wage jobs at the time — retail, telemarketing, bartending. Repayment seemed like a vague, distant concept in large part because I could not fathom being able to repay such staggering amounts of money. I went to graduate school and got two more degrees and though those programs were funded, I took out student loans because it was impossible to live on the meager stipends we were given.
One of those jobs I had as an undergrad the second time around was at a student loan company, processing loan consolidations. I saw applications from people who owed $15,000 and people who owed $400,000 and everything in between. I learned how expensive chiropractic and dental schools are. I spoke with a young woman who attended Brown and was working at Walmart and had $300,000 in loans and was desperate for help. Her monthly payment was more than she earned from her full-time job. But mostly, I learned the intricacies of the student loan system, the ways to repay and defer or forbear them, what it takes to pay them off, and how the system is designed to extract as much money as possible from people simply trying to get an education, trying to get the necessary credentials to prosper.
Every month, I pay $1,000 to the federal government. My balance has hovered around $140,000 for the past 10 years because most of each payment goes toward the interest. This is a common story, but this is not a sad story because I can afford to pay my loans. In another 15 years, whatever remains on the balance will be discharged, though I will have to pay income tax on the discharged amount. And still, my loans are always looming on the periphery of my life, influencing every fiscal decision I make.
Student loans are the kind of debt from which there is often no escape. They generally cannot be discharged by claiming bankruptcy. Deferment and forbearance periods are finite. If you default, the stain of it will follow you for quite a long time. The consequences can be devastating — wage garnishments, no tax refunds, whatever the government needs to do to get their money back — and your credit score can be destroyed.
Many progressive politicians feature student loan forgiveness as one of their key policy ideas because they understand how big of a problem the student debt crisis is and what it will become without intervention. With Joe Biden as president, there is a distinct possibility that some form of student loan forgiveness might become a reality.
But the debate about the issue is contentious. It’s either a great idea or a terrible one. It’s a way of evening the playing field or it’s unfair to people who have paid off their student loans or who never borrowed or attended college. A great many Americans are only concerned with fairness when they think someone else might get something they won’t get. And they are seething with resentment as they imagine a country in which we help one another. It’s appalling, that this is where we are … that this is who we are.
No one benefits from everything our government does. I don’t have children, but some of the money I pay in taxes goes toward education. This serves the greater good and indirectly benefits me. We’re all paying for infrastructure we don’t personally need or use. It’s part of the social contract, but that contract only holds up when we are all willing to abide by its terms.
Much of the political division about student loan forgiveness can be explained by the fact that people want to benefit from the social contract without adhering to its terms. Or they only care about the social contract as it applies to the right kinds of people. And, of course, there is the bootstrap mentality — If I have achieved success, surely you can too — which is delusional at best. Then there are those who worship at the altar of personal responsibility: If you assume a debt, you must repay it. And worst of all, there’s the sufferance doctrine: If I have experienced hardship, you must experience hardship, too.
Damon Linker, a columnist for The Week, tweeted, “I think Dems are wildly underestimating the intensity of anger college loan cancellation is going to provoke. Those with college debt will be thrilled, of course. But lots and lots of people who didn’t go to college or who worked to pay off their debts? Gonna be bad.” This is what passes for political thinking these days — empty statements rising out of the notion that we have to govern from a place of fear about what might anger “lots and lots of people.”
Conventional wisdom seems to be that we must not trigger people by discussing radical ideas like universal health care, civil rights for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, reckoning with police violence and the carceral system, protecting women’s bodily autonomy, and of course, student debt forgiveness. Somehow, compromise has come to mean not doing anything to upset anyone who is completely fine with ignoring the most urgent problems of our day.
Here’s the thing about anger. We only seem to prioritize one kind — anger in reaction to progress. And we never seem to acknowledge the anger rising out of oppression, marginalization, and under representation. The end of slavery and desegregation angered lots and lots of people, and so did taxation, suffrage, marriage equality. Progress angers people, but change is not the problem. The rage and resentment are.
People are struggling. The $1,200 stimulus checks have been spent. The additional $600 a week of unemployment funding has run its course. The Paycheck Protection Program has shut its doors. The economy continues to falter because we lack coherent federal leadership, and conditions will only worsen. We are on a precipice, as we have been before and will be again. A lot of political thinkers believe now is the time for moderation, that we are in a boat that must not be rocked.
But now is not the time for half-measures. Now is the time for grand gestures and innovative thinking. Now is the time for remembering the social contract and recommitting to the idea of a unified country where we understand how intimately we are all connected. Now is the time for understanding that empathy is infinite if we allow it to be.
This country has to rise out of the bitter ashes of Donald Trump’s presidency. Student loan forgiveness won’t solve all the problems we are facing, but it will ease a significant burden for tens of millions of people. It will stimulate the lagging economy. And though not everyone will directly benefit, the country as a whole will improve. As a public, we owe a debt to one another — the debt of belonging to a community. It’s time that debt was paid.
Why are we telling everybody they need a college degree for jobs that really don't require it. When I went through the Academy about half my class had college degrees and that was more than 25 years ago. Of course, none of them had degrees in STEM or the harder social studies.
I was just telling my son, today a college degree is like buying a lottery ticket. You can't play unless you buy a ticket and then there's only a small chance that you'll win.
SCARBOROUGH, Maine — Putting on hazmat gear for the first time turns out to be a drawn-out process, so the trainees who are practicing this new skill make the time go faster with a little clowning around.
“Smile! Work it! Work it!” one shouts at a classmate as she jokingly strikes glamour poses for photos in a heavy vapor suit with rubber boots, two layers of gloves, a respirator and a 26-pound breathing tank. Another compares the get-up to the uniforms worn by the child-detection agents in the movie “Monsters, Inc.”
Spread out in a parking lot beside a fire station, these congenial 20- and 30-somethings are enrolled in a community college program to become firefighters.
Four of the five in this group have something else in common: They previously earned bachelor’s degrees, even though they’ve now returned to school to prepare for a job that doesn’t require one.
“I was part of that generation that was told to go to college, so that’s what I did,” Michael Kelly said with a shrug. “That’s what we were supposed to do.”
But after getting a bachelor’s degree in political science — for which he’s still paying off his student loans — Kelly realized that what he actually wanted to do was become a firefighter. After all, he said, unlike a politician, no one is ever angry to see a firefighter show up.
“I spent a lot of money to end up doing . . . this,” said Kelly, who is now 28, as his colleagues stowed the equipment before they filed back into a classroom.
A lot of other people also have invested time and money getting four-year degrees only to return for career and technical education in fields ranging from firefighting to automation to nursing, in which jobs are relatively plentiful and salaries and benefits comparatively good, but which require faster and far less costly certificates and associate degrees.
One in 12 students now at community colleges — or more than 940,000 — previously earned a bachelor’s degree, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. And even as college and university enrollment overall declines, some career and technical education programs are reporting growth, and anticipating more of it.
“I thought I was the only one following this road, but apparently a lot of people are,” said Noor Al-Hamdani, 26, who is getting an associate degree in nursing at Fresno City College, a community college, after having already earned a bachelor’s degree in public health from California State University at Fresno.
In some cases, bachelor’s degree-holders are obtaining supplementary skills — computer science majors adding certificates in cloud technology, for example.
But the trend is also exposing how many high school graduates almost reflexively go to college without entirely knowing why, pushed by parents and counselors, only to be disappointed with the way things turn out — and then having to start over.
“Somewhere along the line it became ingrained that in order to succeed, whether your children wanted to go to college or not, they had to go to college,” said Jane Oates, who was assistant secretary in the Obama administration’s Labor Department and now heads WorkingNation, a nonprofit that tries to better match workers with jobs.
When they do start on the route to bachelor’s degrees, a third of students change their majors at least once and more than half take longer than four years to graduate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Some of the rest drop out.
Even among those who manage to finish, more than 40 percent of recent graduates aged 22 to 27 are underemployed, meaning that they’re working in jobs that don’t require their degree, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports.
That makes four-year universities and colleges “a really expensive career exploration program,” quipped Amy Loyd, vice president at the education and employment policy organization Jobs for the Future.
Shana Tinkle, who has a bachelor's degree from Brown University, is also studying fire science in Maine. (Molly Haley for The Hechinger Report)
When Shana Tinkle was finishing high school, it was more or less “a rite of passage” to go on and get a bachelor’s degree, she said — in her case, in creative writing from Brown University.
“‘You’re supposed to do this. You’ll get a job later,’ ” Tinkle, now 32, remembered being told. “It wasn’t a particularly career-oriented approach.”
Now she’s also here at Southern Maine Community College with the tentative goal of becoming a wildland firefighter, an occupation she points out is in extremely high demand.
Advocates for career and technical education say that, for many people, it makes more sense to start with those kinds of programs, reserving the option of continuing on to more time-consuming and expensive bachelor’s degrees later, instead of vice versa.
“They’re doing college backwards,” said Dave DesRochers, a former offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks and now vice president of PATH2, which helps students figure out what they want to do with their lives — before they finish high school — and choose their educations accordingly.
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Chris Drumm went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He worked in hospitality for a while, then as a paralegal, and now is in the firefighter training course at SMCC. “I wish I knew about this program when I was coming out of high school,” said Drumm, now 25.
Drumm’s fellow trainee Matt Duhaime attended the prestigious Boston Latin School, from which almost everyone in his class went on to four-year colleges and universities. Duhaime chose Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, largely because “I knew I wanted to get better at snowboarding,” he said.
What he didn’t know was what to do with the bachelor’s degree in marketing he ended up with. So Duhaime worked at restaurants until, now 27, he has also found himself in the firefighter training program.
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“Coming out of high school there’s social pressure on you: ‘Where are you going to college?’ ” he said. “But the hardest thing is making such a finite decision about what you want to do at 18 years old.”
The push to help students make more informed career decisions while they’re still in high school is coinciding with frustration over the high cost of college and increased awareness of the potential for jobs at good pay in the skilled trades.
In Virginia, Colorado and Texas, where earnings are tracked, students with certain technically oriented credentials short of bachelor’s degrees earn an average of from $2,000 to $11,000 a year more than bachelor’s degree-holders, the American Institutes for Research reports.
An analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found first-year nurses with associate degrees making $80,200 a year and up and first-year electrical and power transmission installers, who also need associate degrees, $80,400 — more than some graduates with not just bachelor’s, but master’s degrees.
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Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still generally make more than people with lesser credentials — about $19,000 a year more than associate degree recipients when they’re at the peak of their respective careers, according to the Hamilton Project.
Completing career and technical education is almost always faster and less expensive than studying toward a bachelor’s degree, however, and trainees can earn while they learn. That’s the case for several of these future firefighters, who are already working in fire stations and getting paid to go on calls.
All of this is helping to change perceptions of long-disparaged career and technical — previously called vocational — education.
Maine’s community colleges report that the number of people signing on to short-term job training quadrupled over the last two years. El Paso Community College in Texas is expanding those kinds of programs; its president, William Serrata — who chairs the American Association of Community Colleges — told education journalists in September that his counterparts are also preparing for an increase in demand.
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Tinkle, the aspiring wildlands firefighter with the Brown degree, said people often react to her story by expressing envy for her less conventional route to a job.
“A lot of people I’ve met have said to me, ‘I wish I’d done what you were doing when I was your age,’ ” she said. “And I tell them: ‘Well, you should have.’ ”
I was just telling my son, today a college degree is like buying a lottery ticket. You can't play unless you buy a ticket and then there's only a small chance that you'll win.
SCARBOROUGH, Maine — Putting on hazmat gear for the first time turns out to be a drawn-out process, so the trainees who are practicing this new skill make the time go faster with a little clowning around.
“Smile! Work it! Work it!” one shouts at a classmate as she jokingly strikes glamour poses for photos in a heavy vapor suit with rubber boots, two layers of gloves, a respirator and a 26-pound breathing tank. Another compares the get-up to the uniforms worn by the child-detection agents in the movie “Monsters, Inc.”
Spread out in a parking lot beside a fire station, these congenial 20- and 30-somethings are enrolled in a community college program to become firefighters.
Four of the five in this group have something else in common: They previously earned bachelor’s degrees, even though they’ve now returned to school to prepare for a job that doesn’t require one.
“I was part of that generation that was told to go to college, so that’s what I did,” Michael Kelly said with a shrug. “That’s what we were supposed to do.”
But after getting a bachelor’s degree in political science — for which he’s still paying off his student loans — Kelly realized that what he actually wanted to do was become a firefighter. After all, he said, unlike a politician, no one is ever angry to see a firefighter show up.
“I spent a lot of money to end up doing . . . this,” said Kelly, who is now 28, as his colleagues stowed the equipment before they filed back into a classroom.
A lot of other people also have invested time and money getting four-year degrees only to return for career and technical education in fields ranging from firefighting to automation to nursing, in which jobs are relatively plentiful and salaries and benefits comparatively good, but which require faster and far less costly certificates and associate degrees.
One in 12 students now at community colleges — or more than 940,000 — previously earned a bachelor’s degree, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. And even as college and university enrollment overall declines, some career and technical education programs are reporting growth, and anticipating more of it.
“I thought I was the only one following this road, but apparently a lot of people are,” said Noor Al-Hamdani, 26, who is getting an associate degree in nursing at Fresno City College, a community college, after having already earned a bachelor’s degree in public health from California State University at Fresno.
In some cases, bachelor’s degree-holders are obtaining supplementary skills — computer science majors adding certificates in cloud technology, for example.
But the trend is also exposing how many high school graduates almost reflexively go to college without entirely knowing why, pushed by parents and counselors, only to be disappointed with the way things turn out — and then having to start over.
“Somewhere along the line it became ingrained that in order to succeed, whether your children wanted to go to college or not, they had to go to college,” said Jane Oates, who was assistant secretary in the Obama administration’s Labor Department and now heads WorkingNation, a nonprofit that tries to better match workers with jobs.
When they do start on the route to bachelor’s degrees, a third of students change their majors at least once and more than half take longer than four years to graduate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Some of the rest drop out.
Even among those who manage to finish, more than 40 percent of recent graduates aged 22 to 27 are underemployed, meaning that they’re working in jobs that don’t require their degree, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports.
That makes four-year universities and colleges “a really expensive career exploration program,” quipped Amy Loyd, vice president at the education and employment policy organization Jobs for the Future.
Shana Tinkle, who has a bachelor's degree from Brown University, is also studying fire science in Maine. (Molly Haley for The Hechinger Report)
When Shana Tinkle was finishing high school, it was more or less “a rite of passage” to go on and get a bachelor’s degree, she said — in her case, in creative writing from Brown University.
“‘You’re supposed to do this. You’ll get a job later,’ ” Tinkle, now 32, remembered being told. “It wasn’t a particularly career-oriented approach.”
Now she’s also here at Southern Maine Community College with the tentative goal of becoming a wildland firefighter, an occupation she points out is in extremely high demand.
Advocates for career and technical education say that, for many people, it makes more sense to start with those kinds of programs, reserving the option of continuing on to more time-consuming and expensive bachelor’s degrees later, instead of vice versa.
“They’re doing college backwards,” said Dave DesRochers, a former offensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks and now vice president of PATH2, which helps students figure out what they want to do with their lives — before they finish high school — and choose their educations accordingly.
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Chris Drumm went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He worked in hospitality for a while, then as a paralegal, and now is in the firefighter training course at SMCC. “I wish I knew about this program when I was coming out of high school,” said Drumm, now 25.
Drumm’s fellow trainee Matt Duhaime attended the prestigious Boston Latin School, from which almost everyone in his class went on to four-year colleges and universities. Duhaime chose Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, largely because “I knew I wanted to get better at snowboarding,” he said.
What he didn’t know was what to do with the bachelor’s degree in marketing he ended up with. So Duhaime worked at restaurants until, now 27, he has also found himself in the firefighter training program.
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“Coming out of high school there’s social pressure on you: ‘Where are you going to college?’ ” he said. “But the hardest thing is making such a finite decision about what you want to do at 18 years old.”
The push to help students make more informed career decisions while they’re still in high school is coinciding with frustration over the high cost of college and increased awareness of the potential for jobs at good pay in the skilled trades.
In Virginia, Colorado and Texas, where earnings are tracked, students with certain technically oriented credentials short of bachelor’s degrees earn an average of from $2,000 to $11,000 a year more than bachelor’s degree-holders, the American Institutes for Research reports.
An analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found first-year nurses with associate degrees making $80,200 a year and up and first-year electrical and power transmission installers, who also need associate degrees, $80,400 — more than some graduates with not just bachelor’s, but master’s degrees.
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Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still generally make more than people with lesser credentials — about $19,000 a year more than associate degree recipients when they’re at the peak of their respective careers, according to the Hamilton Project.
Completing career and technical education is almost always faster and less expensive than studying toward a bachelor’s degree, however, and trainees can earn while they learn. That’s the case for several of these future firefighters, who are already working in fire stations and getting paid to go on calls.
All of this is helping to change perceptions of long-disparaged career and technical — previously called vocational — education.
Maine’s community colleges report that the number of people signing on to short-term job training quadrupled over the last two years. El Paso Community College in Texas is expanding those kinds of programs; its president, William Serrata — who chairs the American Association of Community Colleges — told education journalists in September that his counterparts are also preparing for an increase in demand.
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Tinkle, the aspiring wildlands firefighter with the Brown degree, said people often react to her story by expressing envy for her less conventional route to a job.
“A lot of people I’ve met have said to me, ‘I wish I’d done what you were doing when I was your age,’ ” she said. “And I tell them: ‘Well, you should have.’ ”