The university had the pay-off information available online, on their website: they even had a loan pay-off calculator that would have showed she needed to pay $1,000 a month for at least 15 years to pay off her loan. But did that $94,000 winner ever go there, ever put her numbers into that pay-off calculator to see what her immediate post-graduate future held? Heck no.

And here's the most sobering fact I came across: my own daughter will likely rack up the same amount in loans during her 4 years in college.

I thought that requiring all loan students to sign a loan fact sheet yearly, showing how high the monthly payments will be after graduation, would be one way to make them aware of the impending "doom-level" of personal debt.

But that wouldn't do it either.

Currently there is no way to avoid this level of debt for the average liberal arts student going to a private college. The only solution is garnering a good-paying job after graduation and the logical course for that is to be sure of your career goal before you become a sophomore. No more dilly-dallying with Shakespeare. No more pottery classes. Nothing for the fun of it anymore, you can't afford it after you graduate!

Imagine going to a college website and finding alumni profiles of recent grads who are successfully paying off their $94,000 in loans after finding a great job, not burdoned by that $1,000/month college loan payment.

Yes, ...just imagine.

-Tim Corwin
May 2009

* When I hit the job market after college, an historically tough one, the only job I could get with my selective college degree in English was as a baby photographer for K-Marts, Targets, Woolworth, Shopko, etc. I ended up taking that job all the way to Europe [foreign language requirement in college paid off right away!] and became a picaresque hero.