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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Melanie Hunter
May 4, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – Many college students are not earning enough to pay back
their student loans, because they choose majors that pay too little upon
graduation, and 15 percent of college grads are still paying back student
loans at age 50, Peter Morici, University of Maryland Economics Professor,
said Thursday.
College graduates owe on average $25,000 when they finish school, Morici
said, and in some cases, graduates can rack up debt close to six figures.
“You know, if you go to a liberal arts college, and your family has
reasonably decent means, but not enough to qualify for really substantial
financial aid, you can get up close to six figures if you work at it, though
it’s unusual. The bottom line is though is that graduates are not earning
enough money to reasonably service their loans in many majors,” he said.
“You know there’s a great span across which graduates earn money. Some may
only earn say $25,000 a year. It’s very difficult to service a $25,000
loan on that and pay rent, get an automobile, get to work, and so forth,”
Morici said during an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”
Student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt and auto debt, according to
the Federal Reserve Bank. Americans 60 and over owe $36 million, and more
than 15 percent are still paying back student loans at age 50.
“Absolutely, more than 15 percent are still paying back student loans at
age 50. They should have long ago been retired. We have folks that are being
hounded by collection agencies in their 80s. We’ve got Social Security
checks being garnished. You know student loans aren’t dischargeable like
other debts, like many other debts, in bankruptcy,” Morici said.
Morici said schools like NYU, Columbia University, and Princeton have large
endowments so student tuition is “very heavily discounted” and their
earning potential is “quite substantial.”
“However, it’s the folks that go to these small liberal arts colleges
where there’s not a large endowment. They can rack up very heavy debt.
Often they don’t get a major that leads to something rather substantial on
the other end. So there the debt is outsized because there isn’t … as much
financial aid, and the student’s earning capacity is much lower,” he said.
For example, he said, a student that goes to a small liberal arts college in
Virginia, West Virginia, and western Maryland to become a reporter will
make $25,000 a year to start working for a small town newspaper in the area,
“but you’re not going to end up at the Wall Street Journal earning say, $
60,000, $70,000 a year to start.”
“And if you’re lucky, you’ll get up to $35,000 a year, if you survive,
because they go through people to keep salaries down. Those folks simply can
’t service their debt. We see lots of college graduates doing things like
selling cell phones. You don’t earn a lot of money doing that. They tend to
be folks that got a degree in psychology or something of that nature,”
Morici said.
“Often the more difficult path is the better path. If you like mathematics,
and you’re good at it, then moving in the direction of finance or
engineering makes some sense,” he said.
Someone who graduates in petroleum engineering can earn about $100,000 to $
120,000 a year, while someone with a psychology degree can get a job paying
$25,000 to $30,000, Morici wrote in a column published on Asia Times Online.
“What good is a degree in psychology, economics, sociology – any of the
social sciences - without additional graduate training?” he said on C-SPAN.
“The president says he wants more college graduates. I think that’s wrong.
We need more college graduates with specialized skills, but we probably don
’t need as many as we have right now, and we’re requiring college and a
diploma for many jobs that simply don’t need it, burdening people with too
much debt, and also frankly, herding a lot of people into my classroom that
don’t want to be there,” Morici added. |
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