"Master’s degree becomes more vital to careers" by Nick Anderson | Washington Post, June 02, 2013
Certain career$, anyway.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s colleges and universities are churning out master’s degrees in sharply rising numbers, responding to a surge in demand for advanced credentials from young professionals who want to stand out in the workforce and earn more....
And accumulate more debt!
Besides, I didn't know you needed a master's degree for babysitting.
It is a sign of a quiet but profound transformation underway at many prominent universities, which are pouring more energy into job training than ever before.
The master’s degree, often priced starting at $20,000 to $30,000, is seen by some universities as a moneymaker in a time of fiscal strain.
You know, the U.S. government that was so grateful to advance you that loan tied to rising market rates also $ees it that way.
Related: Heads of 4 colleges had sizable 2010 pay hikes; 3 other presidents earned over $1m
I'm going to stop the le$$on for a moment to tell you kids why I'm likely dumping a lot of education items. It's of no u$e writing about the AmeriKan educational $y$tem anymore since it is only another AmeriKan in$titution that has been invaded and occupied by money-addicted cretins. The evidence is all over the place, time and again (and again), and I'm sure I am missing dozens of posts from the past).
It is seen by students as a ticket to promotions or new careers. For them, potentially increasing their salary by many thousands of dollars a year outweighs the risk of taking on large tuition bills and possibly debt.
Doug Stone, 28, an analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, graduated last month from Georgetown University with a master’s in public relations and corporate communications, a degree that cost him about $27,000. He had decided that his bachelor’s degree in political science from Ohio State University was not quite enough....
Yeah, hacking for the government is big buSine$$. Meanwhile I'm stuck with a bs degree.
In generations past — with notable exceptions in such fields as education and business administration — the master’s often played a secondary role within universities. Sometimes it was considered a steppingstone on the way to a PhD, or a consolation prize for those who fell short of a doctorate.
Now it is a $tepping $tone for others.
Those views are fading.
‘‘The master’s degree has become a much more important part of the American mobility story,’’ said Katherine Newman, dean of arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins. ‘‘Once upon a time, American industry would have expected people to learn on the job. Increasingly, employers are looking to universities. We are becoming more of a training machine for American industry at the high-skill end.’’
Just a way of further sending potential workers in debt slavery before they get the job, ensuring obedient and compliant workers.
The workers quoted in the article? A kid at biotechnology company, the other kid a political journalist who felt a calling to go overseas to write, teach, and volunteer, and work on a master’s in global environmental policy.
I hope they don't visa you out of work with immigration reform.
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Now about those debt payments:
"Carefully consider taking on student debt" by Michelle Singletary | Washington Post, May 26, 2013
Many graduates can’t go in any direction they choose. They have to take any job they can get. They have to move back home. They can’t buy a house or a car. They don’t want to get married and merge with someone equally indebted with student loans....
But the future's so bright you gotta where shades.
There are congressional efforts to address the mounting student loan debt. The Republican-led House passed a bill that would tie the rates for subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans to the 10-year Treasury note plus 2.5 percentage points. The bill faces opposition in the Democratic-controlled Senate and a veto threat from the Obama administration. Whatever the rate, we need a long-term solution to the amount of debt families are taking on.
Go to the August town hall meeting to find out what happened.
Oh, I'm sorry, you have to babysit tonight?
In the Fidelity survey, half of 2013 graduates with student loans said their level of debt surprised them. They hadn’t realized how much they had borrowed. Thirty-nine percent said that had they been aware of how much they would owe, they would have made different choices in their college planning.
That's you kids all over, never planning for the future.
So I say to the high school graduates heading off to college and planning to go down the street of student loans, listen also to these words from Dr. Seuss: “You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care. About some you will say, ‘I don’t choose to go there.’ With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.”
Is that the bedtime story you will be reading tonight?
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Don't worry, there is ALWAYS the MILITARY to help PAY OFF THOSE STUDENT LOANS!
"Crippling debt defers graduates’ dreams; Thousands of recent college graduates with loans to pay off are putting their plans for better lives on hold" by Gail Waterhouse | Globe Correspondent, August 25, 2013
Karen Burger graduated from Northeastern University in 2012, not exactly sure of what postgraduate life would look like. A religious studies major with a minor in East Asian studies, she pictured theology school and working at a faith-based nonprofit.
Ooops, wrong choices.
Then reality — including $96,000 in student debt accumulated over five years of college — smacked her career plans. She moved back to her mother’s home near Philadelphia, took a teller’s job at TD Bank, and when the interest on her monthly payments increased, shifted her focus from the divine to the military, reaching out to an Army recruiter in the hope of finding some relief from her debt.
God Help Us All!
“I would never have considered it if it weren’t for the loans,” she said.
Burger, 24, is among thousands of recent college graduates whose career plans are getting dashed or delayed by crushing student debt — which many took on with the belief it would open opportunities.
Oh, like the pos agenda-pushing crap I opened this post with?
Student loan debt nationwide has surged 45 percent in the past three years alone, ballooning to $1.2 trillion from $826 billion in 2010, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Only mortgages account for more of the nation’s consumer debt....
Why weren't the kids bailed out with the banks?
President Obama has made college affordability a priority, and last week took a two-day bus tour to call more attention to the issue....
Pffft!
He never showed up to teach class, kids. It was just a lot of orientation talk to get your vote. And how many greenhouse gases did his million-dollar bus(?) belch? Him and his damn agenda-pushing propaganda tours!
James Ryan, who graduated from Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., two years ago, thought he might be on the management track or enrolling in an MBA program around now. But with $90,000 in debt accumulated to finance his bachelor’s degree in business, graduate school seems impossible.
After he graduated, the pressure to meet his loan payments led him to take two dead-end sales jobs that ultimately did not generate enough in commissions to service his $1,200 a month in student debt.
I had no idea the payments were that high!
He recently began selling software for a Burlington company, a job that seems promising. But Ryan, 25, still has to live with his parents in Stow, because he can’t afford an apartment and his loan payments.
Student debt, he said, “holds me back from any kind of freedom of what I want to do.”
Yeah, that is the BANKERS and their GOVERNMENT SLAVES doing that, not the "terrorists" -- who just happen to be one in the same.
Bryant University officials did not respond to requests for comment. Jane Brown, vice president of Northeastern’s enrollment management, said the school works to make its programs affordable, providing an average of $25,000 in grants to students, slightly less than half the annual cost.
Brown said the school also tries to make sure students are aware of the amount of their loans and their responsibilities to pay them. “We are continuing to ramp up our outreach to students to help them become more financially literate,” she said.
The impact of the huge and growing debt burden could reach beyond this generation of young workers....
Mackenzie Hunter graduated from Northeastern in May with a dual degree in international affairs and anthropology and $70,000 in debt. After working and studying in more than a half-dozen countries, the 23-year-old Pittsfield native had hoped to join the Peace Corps. But, she said, “Sallie Mae won’t defer my loans.”
Sallie Mae, of Newark, Del., is among the private financial services companies that make student loans, imposing much more restrictive conditions on repayment than federal loan programs. Unlike federal loans, private student debt cannot usually be consolidated or refinanced to lower payments.
I was under the impression that Sallie, like Fannie and Freddie and the Federal Reserve, was a government organization like you kids. WTF? And who benefits?
A Sallie Mae spokeswoman confirmed the company doesn’t consolidate or refinance loans, or defer payments if borrowers enter national service programs such as the Peace Corps. She noted that more than 90 percent of its customers make on-time payments.
Yeah, this article is just a few deadbeats complaining about repaying their generously-financed loans.
About $50,000 of Hunter’s loans come from private lenders, and she’s worried how she’ll make the $1,000 a month payments that begin in November when she earns just $1,300 at Flour Bakery in Boston. She’s looking for additional jobs, including nanny positions.
“I’m at the point where I’m ready to do anything that would pay more,” she said.
Burger, the Northeastern religion major, also has most of her loans from private financial companies....
Burger works as a customer service representative at the TD Bank near her childhood home near Philadelphia, making $11 an hour. Her loan payments eat up more than half her take-home pay, and she wonders when she’ll be able to move out of her mother’s home.
What if the answer is never?
That’s why she recently contacted the local recruiting office of the Army Reserve, which offers student loan forgiveness to those who serve six years....
That's why a kid I know joined the Guard!
But Burger has asthma. The Army turned her down.
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And it's not just the kids that are paying:
"Parents, too, are hit hard by student debt" by Tamar Lewin | New York Times, November 12, 2012
NEW YORK —
It has been six years since Fitzgerald — broke, unemployed, and in default on the $18,000 in loans she took out for Jenni’s college education — became a boomerang mom, moving into her daughter’s town house apartment in Hingham, Mass. Jenni pays the rent.
At least this should all bring families closer together, 'eh?
For Jenni, 35, the student loans and the education they bought have worked out: She has a good job in public relations and is paying down the loans in her name. But for her mother, 60, the parental debt has been disastrous.
‘‘It’s not easy,’’ Fitzgerald said. ‘‘Jenni feels the guilt and I feel the burden.’’
There are record numbers of student borrowers in financial distress, according to federal data. But millions of parents who have taken out loans to pay for their children’s college education make up a less visible Generation Debt. For the most part, these parents did well enough through midlife to take on sizable loans, but some have since fallen on tough times.
And unlike the angry students who have recently taken to the streets to protest their indebtedness, most of these parents are too ashamed to draw attention to themselves.
And those protests were smashed by the State. You know, the ones trying to help you kids.
“You don’t want your children, much less your neighbors and friends, knowing that even though you’re living in a nice house, and you’ve been able to hold onto your job, your retirement money’s gone, you can’t pay your debts,’’ said a woman in Connecticut who took out $57,000 in federal loans. Between tough times at work and a divorce, she is teetering on default....
After borrowing money for Jenni, Fitzgerald divorced and lost her corporate job. She worked part time and got food stamps and other assistance.
Get used to the temporary work because that is where Obamacare is driving everything. I better off staying out of work and sponging off friends and relatives. No premiums.
‘‘I don’t really feel guilt, but I do know that this is all because of a loan taken out on my behalf,’’ said Jenni, who spoke only if her last name was not disclosed. ‘‘I asked my mother to move in with me, because I couldn’t stand it that she was living in a place with no heat.”
Related: Boston Globe is a Banker's Mouthpiece
I'm feeling woozy; must be the lack of heat.
--more--"
It has been six years since Fitzgerald — broke, unemployed, and in default on the $18,000 in loans she took out for Jenni’s college education — became a boomerang mom, moving into her daughter’s town house apartment in Hingham, Mass. Jenni pays the rent.
At least this should all bring families closer together, 'eh?
For Jenni, 35, the student loans and the education they bought have worked out: She has a good job in public relations and is paying down the loans in her name. But for her mother, 60, the parental debt has been disastrous.
‘‘It’s not easy,’’ Fitzgerald said. ‘‘Jenni feels the guilt and I feel the burden.’’
There are record numbers of student borrowers in financial distress, according to federal data. But millions of parents who have taken out loans to pay for their children’s college education make up a less visible Generation Debt. For the most part, these parents did well enough through midlife to take on sizable loans, but some have since fallen on tough times.
And unlike the angry students who have recently taken to the streets to protest their indebtedness, most of these parents are too ashamed to draw attention to themselves.
And those protests were smashed by the State. You know, the ones trying to help you kids.
“You don’t want your children, much less your neighbors and friends, knowing that even though you’re living in a nice house, and you’ve been able to hold onto your job, your retirement money’s gone, you can’t pay your debts,’’ said a woman in Connecticut who took out $57,000 in federal loans. Between tough times at work and a divorce, she is teetering on default....
After borrowing money for Jenni, Fitzgerald divorced and lost her corporate job. She worked part time and got food stamps and other assistance.
Get used to the temporary work because that is where Obamacare is driving everything. I better off staying out of work and sponging off friends and relatives. No premiums.
‘‘I don’t really feel guilt, but I do know that this is all because of a loan taken out on my behalf,’’ said Jenni, who spoke only if her last name was not disclosed. ‘‘I asked my mother to move in with me, because I couldn’t stand it that she was living in a place with no heat.”
Related: Boston Globe is a Banker's Mouthpiece
I'm feeling woozy; must be the lack of heat.
--more--"
I'll bet Obama can help with that:
"Obama seeks new system for rating colleges" by Julie Pace and Philip Elliott | AP White House Correspondent, August 22, 2013
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Targeting the soaring cost of higher education, President Barack Obama on Thursday unveiled a broad new government rating system for colleges that would judge schools on their affordability and perhaps be used to allocate federal financial aid.
But the proposed overhaul faced immediate skepticism from college leaders who worry the rankings could cost their institutions millions of dollars, as well as from congressional Republicans wary of deepening the government’s role in higher education.
The president, speaking to a student-heavy crowd of 7,000 at the University at Buffalo, said he expected pushback from those who have profited from the ballooning cost of college....
Did you what pandering is at school, kids?
From Buffalo, Obama climbed aboard his armored black bus for a road trip that was to take him through western and central New York as well as northeastern Pennsylvania over two days. The education-focused trip underscores the degree to which the White House is seeking to keep the president’s public agenda focused on domestic issues, even as international crises flair in Egypt and Syria.
Another failed public relations push!
Also see: Hot Over Obama's Hypocrisy
Yeah, frack this!
‘‘As we’re weighing these domestic policy positions and foreign policy decisions, the president puts the interests of the United States of America first,’’ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. ‘‘The fact that we are doing this bus tour is an indication that the president has his priorities straight.’’
Then why does he want to bomb Syria over a false flag that the insurgents he supports carried out?
The education proposals are part of the broader economic agenda Obama has been pitching across the country this summer. The tour is aimed at building public support for his economic policies ahead of fiscal fights with Congress this fall.
I'm sure Syria will be coming first when they return.
The rising cost of college has increasingly become a burden for many Americans....
So has his presidency.
For Obama, who has made no secret of his desire to get out of Washington when he can, the bus tours have become a favorite method for reconnecting with the public. Beyond his official events, the president often makes unscheduled stops at local restaurants and businesses, and sometimes pulls off on the side of the road to greet cheering crowds.
Yeah, we all love him.
As his motorcade made its way from Buffalo to Syracuse, N.Y. , on Thursday, Obama stopped off in Rochester to have lunch at a restaurant with a small group of college students, recent graduates and their parents. He then made another pitch for his college affordability proposals to a crowd of high school students, parents and educators at Syracuse’s Henninger High School.
Did anyone ask him about all the global-warming gasses his bus and motorcade are spewing?
On Friday, Obama plans to hold a town hall meeting at Binghamton University, then travel to Scranton, Pa., for an event at Lackawanna College....
The president’s highly secure bus was purchased by the Secret Service in 2011 for $1.1 million. The bus — unofficially known as ‘‘Ground Force One’’ — has dark tinted windows and flashing red and blue lights.
Couldn't he have foregone the bus and paid off your loans instead?
--more--"
He sure does have a nice smile, though!
"Obama targets high cost of college; Would link federal aid to school performance; N.E. educators wary of a rating system" by Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, August 23, 2013
WASHINGTON — President Obama unveiled a plan Thursday to rein in exploding college costs, drawing skepticism from some New England college presidents concerned about tying federal funding to a new performance rating system.
No Child Left Behind, the College Version!
Under Obama’s plan, the federal government would develop a report card by 2015 for all public and private colleges that would measure tuition increases, graduation rates, student debt, and even graduates’ earnings to help students pick schools that offer the best value.
The White House hopes that by 2018, two years after Obama’s term ends, Congress will pass legislation that would link the ratings to how much schools will receive in federal financial aid — the controversial sticking point for some lawmakers and college leaders.
“Colleges that keep their tuition down and are providing high-quality education are the ones that are going to see their taxpayer funding go up. It is time to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results,” Obama said in a speech at the State University of New York Buffalo.
Looks like extortion to me. Did you kids learn about that in school?
The plan rewards schools that come up with innovative ways to keep costs down while helping more students graduate, and, if Congress approves, would help assure that graduates don’t have to spend more than 10 percent of their income on loan repayment.
But some college leaders, while applauding the premise behind Obama’s proposals, worry that the ratings could become an overly simplistic measure of a school’s value.
If it's good enough for secondary and elementary schools....
“I don’t have a problem with looking at data. It’s how you use it that becomes a problem,” said Robert Caret, president of the University of Massachusetts. “The Obama plan wants to look at income potential as an outcome to measure success by. But we don’t want people to stop being social workers and teachers. We’re not creating little widgets to fit into a certain workforce.”
Can there be anymore doubt that this is a money admini$tration despite the Democrat clothing?
In fact, the five-campus UMass system is embarking on its own grading system, with the first performance reports to be released next spring....
Related: Caret's Report Card
Some higher education lobbyists also urged caution in creating the federal rating system. They feared it would be akin to the federal No Child Left Behind law, under which elementary and secondary schools with persistently low test scores — mostly schools enrolling a high number of low-income, minority students — have been labeled failures....
Obama also put the onus on students....
What an a$$hole!
It remains to be seen whether Obama’s plan will go far enough in addressing the multiple reasons college costs have risen so dramatically, a problem schools, students, and parents, as well as the government, are complicit in, said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire university.
Not only complicit, they are MAKING MONEY of the STUDENT LOAN DEBT and are USING IT to PAY DOWN the DEBT!
Some Republican critics expressed discomfort at the federal government taking on such a large role in the higher education system. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, called the plan a “slippery slope” that “ends with the private sector inevitably giving up more of its freedom to innovate and take risks.”
“President Obama needs to realize that not every problem can be solved by giving more power to Washington bureaucrats,” said Rubio, who has proposed his own plan for schools to publicize graduates’ salaries.
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Maybe the college can get you some aid:
"College aid offers fail to grow with economy; Even some elite schools find cost of idealistic policy unsustainable" by Marcella Bombardieri | Globe Staff, August 25, 2013
MEDFORD — It was a goal that former Tufts University president Lawrence S. Bacow highlighted in his inaugural address more than a decade ago: make admissions decisions without considering a student’s ability to pay.
Need-blind admissions, as it is known, was a central element of Tufts’ last capital campaign, and with that funding boost the university — long committed to meeting the financial needs of all the students it admits — was able to swing two need-blind admissions cycles.
But after the national financial crisis hit, taking many college endowments down with it, Tufts put that ambition on the shelf, where it remains. And it has plenty of company among elite colleges. The economy is improving and endowments are rebounding, but the generosity of many schools’ financial aid policies is not.
Related: Mendillo Made Money For Harvard
In fact, colleges continue to cut back....
How can that be in this age of the Great American Economic Recovery?
You know what?
Class dismissed!
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Yeah, tell the kids something they don't already know, Globe.
