Evo said:
My problem is that the OWS are bungling things. I am for Social Security, I am for student grants, I am for medicare. But these people are doing no good because they are not organized effectively. I actually feel that they are doing more harm than good.
Yours is an interesting opinion, Evo. I, too, support SS, especially having had no choice but to pay into it, so I do expect the program to make good on it's promises. I used a couple of grants to help me through college, but they went dry after less than 15% of the bills were paid. Most of the funds were split about 50-50 between what I earned and what my folks supplied, and graduation was delayed until after I could come up with more funds. Try working two jobs for a while. Sort of puts things into perspective.
I still wound up with a little bit of debt when I graduated, but I was able to pay it off in less than a year, and remain debt-free to this day.
My opinion is that the Wall-Streeters suffer not from a lack of organization, but from an acute misunderstanding of both the nature and benefits of hard work, as well as an acute lack of understanding of "caveat emptor." No one forced them to take such extravagant student loans, and cheaper options have always existed, including the option of not attending college at all. Most schools offer work-study programs. I know many people my age who've been successful despite a lack of education beyond high school, or opting for the cheaper route of Jr. College or vocational school. One of my friend's sons is a successful programmer, working for Texas Instruments right out of high school, and at roughly the same pay I made, adjusted for inflation, about 10 years into my own career path with my degrees.
It should be a long-term financial assessment, done by the students themselves, their parents, and their high school counselors. I fear we've allowed the marketers of private colleges, roughly twice as expensive as public institutions, to convince our youth of two things, both of which are not true: 1) One must have a college education to thrive in this world. 2) Sheepskins from private institutions are more marketable than those from public institutions.
Both may have some truth to them. I contend what little truth they contain is minimal, and base my experience on the fact that when I earned my own sheepskin, fully two-thirds of my contemporaries from high school did not, yet they're doing just fine. I've kept in touch with them over the years, from letters, to e-mails, and Facebook, numbering more than 200 out of a graduating class of more than 600. Most of them have found their niche in life. Some own their own businesses, most are out of debt, a few own their homes outright. Yes, some are struggling, but they're few. Most have encountered the usual hardships in life. Lots of divorces, some medical issues, a few have lost children or spouses to disease or accident.
What they are doing is either working or looking for work. What they're not doing is clamoring on the streets demanding everyone else bail them out of the situations in which they find themselves at the hands of their own bad decisions. Quite frankly, I am as amazed they made it through any institution of higher learning as I am that any institution of higher learning handed them a sheepskin.
I see the OWS movement as an indictment on the education "industry." Well, at least in part. They have other beefs, most of which are falling on the deaf ears of those of us who've scraped our way through life, some successfully, some not so much. Still, we've tried.
Given what I've gone through over the years, I have very little sympathy for these folks.
