College is a scam.

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I'm not saying "don't go to college." For some jobs it's important. However, I wish I knew this beforehand. I would have made different choices and been better off.

The federal and state governments are the ones who determine financial aid, so they're the ones you can blame for this mess. Now, my parents are divorced and I live with my mom. Her job is good and pays decently well, but trying to support three kids on one salary is hard. We're not in poverty, but we're not solidly in the middle class either, so we're in that weird gap where we don't qualify for most federal aid but it would make our lives easier if we had some help. Usually, financial aid and student loans cover my tuition costs because I earned a few good scholarships. However, my mom just got a raise and they immediately deducted that exact amount from the financial aid we receive because they've determined that we can pay that much now. That money now cannot go toward better food, treatment for our sick dog, or house repairs. It has to go toward tuition. Mom has asked her boss to not give her any more raises, and she told me to not get a summer job. I don't need money to survive, but I wanted to start saving money so I don't graduate in a bad financial situation. With what little amount I'm making from odd jobs and photography commissions, I barely have enough for school supplies and laundry. And my laptop is going to need repairs soon, but I can't even save up for that. Luckily my grandmother has been helping out, but I hate having to depend on her. I'm stuck in a vicious cycle and the kicker is that I don't even necessarily need a degree to work in the job I want, but I was convinced I needed one because of what high school taught me.

I am now going to write letters to my local Congressmen to let them know how this system screws people over.

I'm not sharing this story for pity, I'm sharing it as a cautionary tale. If anybody has financial advice that would be helpful, though.

I apologize in advance if there's another thread that's similar to this one.

How does this make college a scam?

Oh I've known this for years and years and years on end. College is a fraudulent-scheme. Entire documentaries have even been produced about how college is a worthless time-wasting bubble. Why, some perceptive entrepreneurs from nearly a couple of decades ago saw how the mind-frame of college-students lacks the backing of any solid support-structure, resulting in all of these fresh college-grads taking positions of CEOs in companies as soon as they got out;

And that was what led to all of those Ch. 11 Bankruptcies left-and-right, for the dot-com-bubble had to burst at one point or another due to all of the fraud that was inherent in the college-systems of beliefs, because these fresh-grad CEO's used and piggy-backed from other peoples' money, not their own, thus they wasted unnecessary resources, followed the FALSE narratives that are taught in colleges, resulting in companies going belly-up and under or disappearing.

I would not be surprised if those college-educated... ahem... college-indoctrinated CEOs are now working at a job that involves either Flipping Burgers (nothing to be ashamed of actually) or are now minimum-wage Wal-Mart employees. You have to learn to discipline yourself to focus only on activities in your life that are designed to be able to generate revenue for you (and if you can set it up in such a way as to gain multiple income-streams, such as how Robert Kiyosaki teaches and describes in his Cash-Flow Quadrant book, your free-time to come up with even more designs and structures to be able to generate additional sources of revenue increases).

A LOT of you «Americans» live such life-styles that you're like a bunch of pack-rats, and you should be spending virtually ALL of your time putting up everything you do not need for on-line sale, sell, Sell, SELL all of that crap you don't need, and once you're done selling everything you do not need, then take whatever earnings you've made in order to go around your block offering to buy your neighbours' crap at a discount (so that you can turn around and sell it on-line for a profit), paying attention to which of your crap sold more consistently than others (because you want to mostly focus on selling the stuff that is selling out quickly, send everything else to a re-cycle centre or something or find some way to re-cycle it yourself, and if you amass/accumulate enough resources, you could even go the business-route and retail off brand new items of products that you obtain whole-sale from whole-salers or even manufacturer-direct at volume-discount prices, such as 1000 units of X to add to your product-line, etc).

Simply conditioning yourself to sell, Sell, SELL, and how to KEEP your customers (i.e..: keeping ALL of your customers happy/satisfied), will go a long way towards making you FAR more «successful» than ANY brainless college-grad, and don't forget to keep a data-base of your customers (with their permission) so that you can let them know in the future about products that you've decided to start selling and that, for being a loyal customer, you are willing to give them a good discount as part of your product-launch campaign (savvy business-minded types also know that it is easier to sell products to somebody who is or was already your customer than to try to spend new advertising dollars in order to find new customers). People who can condition themselves to consistently run their businesses responsibly will have HUGE advantage over those who rely SOLELY on the college-route method.

People with college educations do out earn their non college peers.

Again, I'm not saying that the solution is to not go to college but to be aware of how financial "aid" works and use that knowledge to plan better for the future. Like car dealerships, college is a necessary evil for most. I wouldn't say my college education is a complete waste of time so far. I am learning a lot and I've noticed a significant improvement in my ability to write, debate, and connect ideas. However, I haven't learned much practical knowledge and that's what I really need to know. I'm still teaching myself all the skills I need to continue improvement without the help of a workshop class, and that's an uphill battle.

It was an empty pit for me since it took my hard earned dough and most of my time thereafter recovering from it and trying to understand what I had built my life up toward, sometimes I wonder if I had managed to navigate it if I'd have ended up happy and successful and I doubt it very much, the times I managed to immerse myself in it, it didn't seem to be the castle in the clouds I'd pegged it as nor would it have offered all that much regarding the wider picture of life beyond the gates, I learned a lot more than I would have learned staying on course by falling out the bottom of the whole deal.

I'm not saying "don't go to college." For some jobs it's important. However, I wish I knew this beforehand. I would have made different choices and been better off.

The federal and state governments are the ones who determine financial aid, so they're the ones you can blame for this mess. Now, my parents are divorced and I live with my mom. Her job is good and pays decently well, but trying to support three kids on one salary is hard. We're not in poverty, but we're not solidly in the middle class either, so we're in that weird gap where we don't qualify for most federal aid but it would make our lives easier if we had some help. Usually, financial aid and student loans cover my tuition costs because I earned a few good scholarships. However, my mom just got a raise and they immediately deducted that exact amount from the financial aid we receive because they've determined that we can pay that much now. That money now cannot go toward better food, treatment for our sick dog, or house repairs. It has to go toward tuition. Mom has asked her boss to not give her any more raises, and she told me to not get a summer job. I don't need money to survive, but I wanted to start saving money so I don't graduate in a bad financial situation. With what little amount I'm making from odd jobs and photography commissions, I barely have enough for school supplies and laundry. And my laptop is going to need repairs soon, but I can't even save up for that. Luckily my grandmother has been helping out, but I hate having to depend on her. I'm stuck in a vicious cycle and the kicker is that I don't even necessarily need a degree to work in the job I want, but I was convinced I needed one because of what high school taught me.

I am now going to write letters to my local Congressmen to let them know how this system screws people over.

I'm not sharing this story for pity, I'm sharing it as a cautionary tale. If anybody has financial advice that would be helpful, though.

I apologize in advance if there's another thread that's similar to this one.

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some jobs require a degree. STEM jobs. but social sciences and humanities. seriously.

there just are not enough jobs in social sciences and humanities, for all the students that get those degrees.

nowadays, some articles claim half of bachelor degree holders work at jobs that do not require a degree. stereotypical music major working as a barista at Starbucks.

maybe you could apply for government benefits.

for food, you have food pantries and soup kitchens. colleges hold a lot of events with free food.

look up "Steve and Annette Economides". (pun) they are called the cheapest family. they wrote a book about how to save money more.

can you go to a cheaper school?

if the tuition goes per semester/quarter, can you take more units and graduate faster?

take community college units and transfer.

work at jobs that pay in cash. not good for your resume. i know. but better than nothing.

use the computer @ school. not convenient, i know.

seriously doubt writing the congressman a letter will do anything. tales of student loan horror stories are all over the Internet.

but if you want to write a letter, do not let anyone stop you. you feel like you might have some effect.

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someone told me that he got a Masters in Math. then he was a tenured community college math instructor. lower division calculus. then he worked as a Software Engineer at Oracle. 17 years. then he told me his whole division got laid off. then he told me he worked Trader Joes stocking shelves. one full year. after that Sylvan learning center. 14 dollars an hour. and 15 dollars and hour.

his son flunked 10th grade public school. he made no fuss. he sent his son to community college.

while my precious lil "mom" went to community college and state university. my precious lil "dad" went to community college. AA early childhood development, BA liberal arts. AA history.

and they told me that if i went to a state university then that would make me stupider. they told me if i went to a community college, i would not be academically prepared to transfer to a UC. (that could be correct).

it's weird.

and then someone told me that his dad was a tenured accounting university professor. and his mom was also a university professor. his family was jewish, but they purposely sent him and his brother to a Catholic high school. when he was 13 he begged his parents to let him take community college classes. they refused.

he graduated high school one and a half years early. then he went to the university his dad taught at. he got free tuition. he went for one month. majored in physics. then he told his parents it "sucked". and they told him "then don't go". and they made no scene whatsoever.

professor parents did not care if their son did not even go to undergrad.

and then he went to work at a sushi restaurant.

and now he is 21 and he still has no college education.

it's weird.

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The problem with higher education is that it's become too commercialised in the name of opening up education for the masses. There are too many academic institutions that take students on with bare pass grades or no grades at all because the money is all they care about. Another problem is the progressive "everyone is an adult" ethos they have which in the minds of the foolish means "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" and the classes are full of insolent and obstinate people who refuse to be educated. See the following article for an example:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... een-state/

IMO the only way for higher education to improve is to reintroduce old standards i.e. people don't go to university unless they get good grades and students cease to be on first name terms with teaching staff (the lines have become blurred and they need to be redrawn; students won't learn anything if they don't respect their tutors).