Whats the point of going to college if you're going to be in debt half your life?

Valid point. School is for fools. You can get a good job without college simply by lying and claiming to have a degree. Employers rarely ask for transcripts to prove you graduated, depending on the field.

There's no need to go into that much debt to go to college. The fact that some people do doesn't mean that *most* people do. The average debt is $23k, paid off in 10 years. And you don't need to necessarily take out even that much in loans, if you make smart choices re: where you apply and etc.

Not everyone with a college education ends up in debt. Many people I know did not have a college loan and they are deeply in debt thanks to credit cards and buying stuff they could not afford. you know the things I mean faster cars and motorcycles and houses for example.

so that by using credit, u can earn some materialistic goods like clothes, make up, bags etc etc in the process of paying back your debt slowly. the only issue is how much u're spending and how much credit u've decided to loan from ur future.

People for the most part are always going to have some kind of 'debt' in their lives.....it's how you establish credit worthiness....the difference is you'll have debt with Oppurtunity.....rather than Just Debt....pick College if you can....

there are grants too, not just loans. You don't have to pay back loans. I have a grant, and my parents told me not to apply for a loan for that reason.

your other choice is that you could be broke your entire life, because you will not qualify for jobs that pay more than minimum wage

Whats the point of going to college if you can go into the porn industry and make more money

The vast majority of college students have manageable debt. The average debt load of a college graduate is right around $25,000, and 90% of students have debt loads of less than $54,000. Finaid.org estimates that you need a salary of about $34,000 to pay off debt that is $25,000, and most college graduates can expect to make at least that. Furthermore, you won't be in debt "half your life" with good planning. The standard repayment plan is 10 years long, and with prudent borrowing that's all you'll need to take. With the average lifespan being around 80 years, that's only 1/8 of your life. (Even if you only counted your adult post-college years - let's say 21 to 81 - that's still only 1/4 of that.) It's when you borrow too much and need to take extended repayment plans of 20-30 years that debt starts to take half of your adult life. The reason most people do it is because the return on investment is much greater than what you put in. Let's say your average, prudent student decides to commute from home to attend his local state college, and borrows $27,000 (the current federal loan limits) to do so. Let's say his first job pays $35,000 in the first year - but after 10 years, his salary has risen to $55,000. He's done paying his loans because he borrowed a manageable amount, but now he's only 31 years old. He still has at least 34 years of working life in front of him, and his salary will continue to rise over those 34 years. It started out higher, and will rise faster, than his age peers who didn't go to college. Not to mention that unemployment rates for people with college degrees are lower than those rates for people without them. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for high school graduates was 7.9% in April 2011. For college grads, it was 4.0% - about half. So to sum: -Your income will be higher, on average -Your chances of getting, and keeping, a job will be higher -Graduating from college confers some institutional privileges as well, that are sort of intangible and difficult to discuss -If you are planful about your debt, it should be manageable enough that you can pay it off in 10 years.