I would say that, like many credit products, student loans are neither good nor bad in themselves and can be either depending on what debt one takes on and how one manages it. Until about two years ago, my spouse's student loan payments were far in excess of what they could afford monthly, and that debt was a huge stone around their neck that defined a lot of their life in a really negative way. They had to deal with collections harrassment, garnishment, denied rental applications, trashed credit reports, and a generally lower standard of living for about ten years, and even now we live two states away from our friends and family for a job that lets them pay them. So student debt can be very bad debt to carry if it's in excess of what you can afford, since there's no real way to wipe it in a BK like other consumer debt, but it's also the case that if it's taken out in the right amount and in the right way student loan debt can be a pretty powerful financial tool. My spouse left undergrad with debt about 4.5x their first-year pay, and about 2/3 of it in private loans, which has been a very steep hill to climb. If you can finance your degree for no more than 1x your expected first-year pay, if you can do so with only or mostly federal loans, and if the degree you're pursing will give you access to higher lifetime earnings than the education level that you had before, then I think student loans will usually make sense for you because 1) the cost will be manageable in the near term and 2) hugely offset by the gains in the long term. Your father may be looking at your pursuit of higher education through the lens of the costs a degree carried when he was college age which, depending on his age now, may have been at a time when working your way through college without debt was much more feasible. Iirc my dad paid for his 2 years community and 2 years university w/ summer and part-time jobs and didn't take on any student debt until grad school. College costs are much, much higher today and, while the easy availability of student loans in large amounts has probably been one of the drivers of that increase, they're still a necessity for most students now if they want access to the incomes that post-secondary education can provide.
@Anonymous wrote:Ask yourself this question. Have you ever seen or met a broke doctor? Have you ever heard of a doctor struggling with bills? I haven't. They drive nice cars. Live in nice houses and are in a career that the 200K was an INVESTMENT in themselves that will be made back 3 times or more.
My wife works in the medical field and my Fortune 500 company position had me working with doctors up until recently.
Doctors can ABSOLUTELY be broke. No different than any other profession that thinks that they are smarter than the system.
My wife works with a doctor, who is married to another doctor. They EACH make about $250k/yr. The husband needed the wife to co-sign for his $100k Tesla. Nice car. Nice house. They own a stable with horses. And they live paycheck to paycheck.
I worked with a doctor who admitted to me that her $300k student loans was "like their own 2nd mortgage" at $2k/month payments. And with the interest 6%, she had no idea how she was going to pay it off. Her credit shot, too. She makes triple my salary and I wouldn't even think about lending her any money.
If your income is X, and you constantly spend and/or borrow 2x, that's just simple math.
@jmw1 wrote:The vast majority of college degree programs are garbage as far as improving future salaries. If you can get the education for free, sure. The school is not a good source of advice as far as whether a degree program will lead to a better job because they want you to pay and enroll. Unless the degree in a patient facing health field, accounting, or computer science, I would be wary of spending money on a degree. Even business administration is not a great bet, but would be OK if tuition is really low.
Now onto the student loans. The big, big, huge minus is that they are not dischargable in bankruptcy. If folks were allowed to discharge student loans, there would be a line around the block to bankruptcy lawyers. Almost everything else can disappear in bankruptcy. Do not let the talk about student loan forgiveness make you think things are going to get better. It's been six over months and almost nothing has happened regarding campaign promises to deal with student loans. Assume you will die with student loans no matter how bad your situation gets or you will pay every last penny to get rid of it.
Between the two paragraphs above, I would be wary about going to school and getting into student loan debt. A car loan on a depreciating asset is still better than a student loan because you need transportation to make money at work. The education will probably not help you make any extra money unless it's one of the few majors I listed above.
From the other side of the fence... many many MANY jobs will not let you get a foot in the door without the "basic" box checked of a bachelor's degree. They don't care what type, what major, or where it came from. Just that you can check that box. Did you know you can't work at a rental car company, and rent people cars without a bachelor's degree (at least this was the case when I was job hunting in the mid 00's)? Found that out when I was burnt out from my first attempt at college, and it took me 10 years to go back and finish. And yeah, I took out loans. After I finished paying off loans from the FIRST time. It is what it is.
My parents were in the "put yourself through college waiting tables" generation. But they also commited to helping their kids with college (parents plus loans, in addition to us all getting scholarships and loans in our own names), and now I feel bad for them that they have the weight of student loans in their 70s that weren't even for themselves. But at least it allows them to empathize with the current situation as it stands, while being able to contrast it with how easily they were able to fund their own college educations.
The OP is not seeking a crazy useless degree, they are paying for the "basic" box you have to check in a large number of employment fields in the world today.
Biz - 
