Quote: (08-27-2018 03:12 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:
When did taking out a big loan for college become a thing in America? During the golden age of 70s-90s did young people have to take out massive loans for a degree?
In the 60's state schools in California, including Berkeley, which was the top public university in the country, were free.
Mega-cheap in the 70's.
I graduated in '84. Went first year to Junior College, paid for easily, second year to a state University, parents paid for, last two and a half years at a different state university and paid for it with one student loan and working on the weekends.
Total debt: 2500 dollars.
I wouldn't even have had to borrow that, except my dad couldn't be bothered to fill out the financial aid paperwork.
But I will tell you this, my last year, tuition was doubling every semester. It was still dirt cheap, but you could see it wasn't headed somewhere good. I think my last semester, tuition was around 800 dollars, which seemed outrageous at the time.
Also, in the mid 80's I noticed the first strains of the arrested development of people my age, when a store opened up catering to nostalgia items, toys and that, for people my age! 85 was the first year some shameless kid who wasn't homeless came up and tried to panhandle from me.
Both of these things scandalized me to some degree, kids in their twenties already looking back to halcyon days of yesteryear and another one treating a stranger like he treated daddy when he asked for pocket money.
You also began to see the serious division of high school kids into separate cliques at this time, according to my younger sister. When I went to school you hung out with people in your group, but the membranes were permeable, and you could hang out with anybody.
First racist graffitto at my school was 3 years after I graduated.
So, a lot of the trends of today already existing in their embryonic form even back then.
In 1984 it was only the most elite universities that cost around 10,000 a year, places like Stanford for the rich kids.
Nowadays, in state yearly tuition, for a school you can get into with a B- high school average, is more expensive than that.
I know the loans themselves inflate prices but today's universities are in many ways unrecognizable as places of learning, and there is unarguably a high social engineering benefit to burden young people down with debts they can't get out of early in life so they become obedient wage slaves.
I would never encourage a kid to go to college now except for some stem fields.
It is like you are aborting the natural enthusiasm and risk taking of youth, and coercing their souls into timid complacent boxes.
I am extremely ashamed of my country for treating its young like this.