Morehouse 2019 Commencement Speaker Pays off Class Student Loans

The gift has been estimated at $40 million.

While I am amazed at his donation, it shows what just 1 class of 400 students owe after graduating with a degree. No way in hell is this right. Education needs to be cheaper. No one should owe a freaking house after a 4 year degree.

An average of 100,000 per student. Ouch.

 

Its not just tuition, its cost of living... and not just housing but everything else (food, gas, bills, etc.)

 

People should resign to living at home more during college (or share rooms with multiple roommate).

 

Where's he live? Texas.

 

Great gift. Hopefully they all take advantage of this. Imagine the interest they are saving.

 

Don't most college students have at least one roommate? Or sharing an apartment? Maybe professional schools (medical, law, business) lead to one living on their own, but pretty scarce in undergrad.

Even then, gotta pay bills... buy food... pay for gas... maintain yourself... etc.

 

That's the first thing I did when I read that last night. Got a calculator and what?!?!?

 

This is why Juco makes sense the first two years. If my son didn't have a full scholarship, that's where he would be.

 

Still outrageous.

We make money off of our own students while jeopardizing their future, when we should be making it easier for them to have access to cheap but good education.

I find it sad and alarming that as a superpower nation we cant provide good education and healthcare to everyone in this country.

Shame on us.

Greed is ruining this country.

 

Just my experience yes for dorms but some people want their own room if they go off campus. My view is you can do 2 ppl per BR pretty easily (we fit 4 in our 2 BR). We were middle class, i think if I was more broke I would push for 6 ppl (2 more in the living room).

I'm sympathetic, we should invest more in kids education. But I've also met a lot of people that went to school for the "experience".

This is gonna get preachy.....And I know it's an outlier budget and not everyone should be expected to follow. I've been working on not being a tight wad too much ( marriage, adulthood, and disposable income will do that to you....) but this is me reminiscing my mindset back in college. I was actually stressing about my student debt before accumulating it.

I was near militant when it came to my living budget.

Food isn't that expensive if you're frugal. I was actually a lot less healthy while being cheap (read cheapest store brand hot dog wrapped in tortilla cuz it's cheaper than buns every day).

But if I'm trying to be a little healthier, breakfast can be banana (<20 cents). Lunch and dinner 2 eggs each and .25 lbs each of what ever greens (spinach, kale, etc) is on sale at the local super market. Cook it in vegetable oil with some salt. That's like $1.50 with of food max.

I had a normal daily food budget of ~average $3 when I was in college (Wendy's 99 cent value meal Jr. Cheeseburger was a treat for myself, you can live on 2 burgers and a banana per day).

I got annoyed when I was trying to minimize post college debt and see some people paying $2 for house coffee and hang out at coffee shops to study thinking that's bring frugal because they're not doing starbucks. Yes there's free refill, but doing the math, a 10 cup of decent coffee you can make at home is like 40 cents of coffee grounds (I buy mine looking for the red price stickers at at TJ Maxx). Make alot, put in fridge, and spread it over a few days.

Deodorant and soap bar is $1.50 per month. Laundry is about $10 bucks.

I will admit, my parents did buy me a car senior year (but only after I got jobs to pay for maintenance and stuff). First 3 years, ive made trips to HEB on bus or bum rides. I also had vices like World of Warcraft (which I felt guilty paying for every month). I also went out with friends on weekends, and yes every time I ran my card "that's actually two weeks worth of food for 1.5 hour of entertainment from a movie" ran through my head

I do think we should make it easier for college kids to get on campus work experience in college. I felt I didn't have enough opportunity to work even for minimum wage. Most people have 16 hours of class per week, you study for the other 14, sleep for 56, if I can squeeze in 20 hours at $6 per hour, that's another $480 per month I don't have to take loans out for. I wasnt really able to find consistent part time gigs until I got a car which not every student can get, so an improvement of public transportation is something I support.

That schedule above still leaves about 60 hours of recreation and personal time per week with typically less responsibility(stress) than an adult.

Now I know there are people where the above doesn't work (single parents, disabled etc.). But I believe there's also enough of the student population that are not looking at college as 4 years of prepping for real responsibility and schedule.

I still enjoyed college, i still had student debt, but I also felt like I did as much as could to lower my financial stress leaving college.


Just saw that hot pockets are still 2.25 for a 2 pack. 1.125 per meal ain't bad

 

Generally speaking, I have found people who take advantage of free education excel much better than those who demand it to be spoon fed to them. If one has an internet connection, there is no excuse to a good education. Yes, I understand some need that 100k piece of paper.

At work, some of us older guy have tried to mentor these kids coming right out collage. They generally dont know their ass from a hole in the ground. We try to encourage them to go home, study various topics but always end up with an excuse why they never did it. They spent their 10's of thousands of dollars on a 'good education' and now they are entitled to a job that pays enough to have a nice car, new house and toys.

 

I agree that school prices are getting outrageous, but I also saw a lot of people on "refund day" once their loans paid the tuition, talking about going out to spend it or using that loan to get a car. So I don't have 100% sympathy for everyone. You can choose between private and public schools, Juco, etc.

Focusing on tuition is probably key, but need some people teaching these kids that loans actually have to be paid back and aren't free money. Having $100K in student loans is not a good decision for some people (IE, most).

 

A single semester with a full course load is over 15K. It ain't the food and shelter that's bankrupting people.

 

15 hours at UH for an under graduate seeking a business degree is around $6200...

 

I lived in an APT by myself during college.

Of course I was working two jobs and going to night school...

 

College and tuition costs are a tricky situation.

The democrats pressed hard for student loans being available for anyone that wanted to go to college. It seemed like a good proposition. It allowed access for the poor to go to college and a more educated population. It would allow for social mobility and a large pool of potentially educated workers.

The problem is that the schools also knew that they could raise costs and that there would be a large pool of students willing to pay increased costs. So some of the schools began competing against one another to see who could provide better facilities and recreation centers, all to attract students. In many cases since students were not paying back the loans right away, they were not concerned about their student loans. Students in many cases would pay out of state prices, or go to private colleges that were not worth their costs.

Credit card companies would also push and spam at colleges. So you have a group heard mentality where the maximum loans would be taken out and it would be for room and board in many situations where it wasn't necessary. Cars would be bought or partying. Kids that in the past would have jobs would not feel the pressure to get jobs.

I can see taking out massive loans to go to a school like Harvard or Yale or Stanford or even Rice. However, not for schools like ASU or Tulane or Scripps. Students would be better to stay in state and pay in state costs.

I am not sure what the solution is. I do believe that loans should be available. However I do believe that there should be some level of risk on the loan providers and I also believe that there should be some sort of freeze on tuition increases if the university wants to have federal or state aid.

Schools do not need massive recreation centers and do not need new facilities all the time. In the current environment it is smart for schools like UH to increase their planning based on the current climate.

A university does not need to have the finest and most convenient facilities to provide a good education..... which is the purpose of college. It isn't supposed to be a resort.

 

right now it sucks to be the Morehouse parents who scrimped and saved and paid for their kids' tuition to keep their kids out of student loan debt

 

Also sucks that I bought a car when Oprah was giving them away