“Avoid Costly Colleges to Graduate Debt-Free” |
| Avoid Costly Colleges to Graduate Debt-Free Posted: 21 Jul 2010 03:44 PM PDT
STUDY HALL: Sure, your kid is gonna rack up an enormous amount of debt over the next four years. But isn't that just the price your coed, or maybe you, has to pay for a good college education these days? Not so, says Zac Bissonnette, a student at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, blogger and author of the recently published book "Debt-Free U." Having a prestigious university's name on a diploma or sweatshirt will never outweigh the burden of student loans, he said. "If you look at sending your kid to an expensive elite school in terms of an investment, it just doesn't make sense," said Bissonnette, who writes regularly for AOL Money & Finance. "It's simply an emotional appeal, and looking at the facts, you would never make a similiar deal that involves taking a mortgage on your house." Students weighing schools should be especially wary of college rankings and unreliable financial aid advice from guidance counselors and recruiters, Bissonnette says. Meanwhile, parents should consider whether student loans are really necessary. One of the biggest myths about college performance, Bissonnette says, is that working to pay for school will hurt grades. A report in the Journal of Student Financial Aid shows that students who work between 1 and 20 hours per week have a higher average grade point average than students who don't work at all. "The biggest complaint coming from employers is that recent college graduates in the work force are entitled, lack good communication skills and are looking for instant gratification," Bissonnette said. "There's no better way to disprove all of those things than to march into a job interview and say that you worked off your student expenses to graduate debt-free." Worried that a part-time job might interfere with studying? The average full-time student at a U.S. four-year college only hits the books about 14 hours per week, according to recent research — down from 24 hours four decades ago, and less than half as much as universities claim to require. Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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