25 years old and deep in debt

[CountDeMoney]

Yay.  In your face, Flanders.

[DontSayBanana]

I get that living on minimum wage is very difficult. But 40k? If you are a single mother with a family of four, yeah it is. If you are a single guy, it isn't hard at all.

Location makes a big difference, garbon probably pays that much in rent.

Yes.  Rent in NJ pretty much bottoms out at $12k a year, unless you've got an inside track on somebody who'll let you board on a room-rent basis.  The county I'm in is particularly bad because while the prices are more or less in line with most of the rest of the state, the infrastructure is so poor that forgoing a vehicle for public transportation is not an option.  So you can pretty much add another $2-5k just for vehicle ownership costs (not including vehicle payments themselves).

[Valmy]

The statement was "It's impossible to work your way through college nowadays." on calculations from minimum wage earnings.

18,000 a year for room and board and tuition and nothing else for an average state school.  And you are a full time student, that is a complication.  Let's see...presuming you are working part time and can instantly go full time for summer and winter break (which is almost LOL unlikely but I will go with it)...let's say about 15 weeks full time and 37 weeks part time.  So we are talking 1,340 hours of work a year.  Therefore you would need $13.43 an hour of take home pay just to cover these basic things.  Pretty tall order for somebody with no experience or qualifications. 

Granted you can do some cool things like write off a lot of that tuition for taxes and stuff.  The traditional college jobs of doing your time in the low paying service industries to work your way through school don't work anymore.  You would probably need a serious job to get those sorts of wages and good paying part time work is hard to find.  Hard, not impossible, so I bet there is some 18 year old out there going through with a $20.00 an hour job attending a state school.  Damn overachieving jerk.

We are talking pretty bottom level tuition that is subsidized by the government at a major state school.  If you attend a private school it probably is impossible.  Probably best to go get your associates at a community/junior college if you want to work through school, they also have a great hours for working people so you could possibly work full time.

[celedhring]

There's the matter of work affecting your academic performance, too.

When I was at Columbia, the faculty chair once told us that they intentionally set up the class schedule in a way to discourage people from working part-time.

[garbon]

There's the matter of work affecting your academic performance, too.

When I was at Columbia, the faculty chair once told us that they intentionally set up the class schedule in a way to discourage people from working part-time.

Any more specifics on that? Was that for a specific department?

Strikes me as odd given that there are always students on work study.

When I went to school, only a couple times (where department offered two needed courses but they took place at the same time) where there any issues for me creating the schedule I wanted. In fact, for two terms, I had my schedule setup that I only had class 3 days a week. I think I probably could fit some additional part time work (over my easy art dept gig) had such been necessary.

[celedhring]

There's the matter of work affecting your academic performance, too.

When I was at Columbia, the faculty chair once told us that they intentionally set up the class schedule in a way to discourage people from working part-time.

Any more specifics on that? Was that for a specific department?

Strikes me as odd given that there are always students on work study.

When I went to school, only a couple times (where department offered two needed courses but they took place at the same time) where there any issues for me creating the schedule I wanted. In fact, for two terms, I had my schedule setup that I only had class 3 days a week. I think I probably could fit some additional part time work (over my easy art dept gig) had such been necessary.

I was taking an MFA at their School of the Arts, and I think it was specific to that school. People weren't expected to do work-study until the thesis years (3rd onwards), although a few managed some hours here and there. I had a Spanish scholarship that covered tuition+allowance for living expenses, but most of my mates were either rich (limousine picks me up after class rich - no kidding here) or ran huge loans. One of my friends was running 250k by the third year, since filmmaking can make you run huge expenses in order to make short films and the like (I was a screenwriting candidate, so I didn't need to spend much in those).

The program had a big "you only live for this now" mentality - which imho made it great, as long as you could afford it.

[garbon]

Alright, yeah I wondered if it was a grad program like that.

[CountDeMoney]

I was taking an MFA at their School of the Arts,

Lulz.

The program had a big "you only live for this now" mentality - which imho made it great, as long as you could afford it.

"You only live for this now...because you sure as shit aren't going to be able to live on this later!"

[Jacob]

Seems like celedhring is doing alright from it.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm glad he's one of the lucky ones, as opposed to the ones left behind as tremendously overqualified barristas.

[celedhring]

I already had a career as writer before going to Columbia but that program helped me a lot in furthering it. A lot of my current jobs can be traced to me going there. And I did learn a lot, it really is a very good program.

Still, no way I would have enrolled in it if I didn't have a scholarship. No way to repay that money unless you make it really big or live on food stamps until age 60.

[Ideologue]

I should've gotten an MFA.

[Brazen]

I watched a re-run of Spendaholics the other day. A 21-year-old woman had run up £50,000 of debt. She and her boyfriend had a mortgage together. The experts persuaded then to sell their flat and rent it back, raising £25,000, and their debtors wrote of the rest of what they were owed.  They're not going to learn any lessons without a couple of years in debtors' prison.

[CountDeMoney]

I should've gotten an MFA.

  You want to talk about a debate as to whether something is worth it, the debate over law school's got nothing on an MFA.

[Jacob]

I should've gotten an MFA.

  You want to talk about a debate as to whether something is worth it, the debate over law school's got nothing on an MFA.

I know successful people with MFA degrees.

Of course, they were successful in their arts related field first and then got their MFA degrees as a side project...