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NJ has the HESAA program to pay student loans, which has competitive rates. www.hesaa.org

The benefit is that they are not at the whim of a private lender, and will work with borrowers.

We keep getting solicitations from private financial institutions, and those with college students know who they are. I cannot stress enough to go through a state or federal program and avoid those private lenders at all costs, not matter how sweet their invitations are. You give up a lot and place yourselves in risk of predatory actions.


* I forgot the $3K in Stafford Loans.
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at least as bad at ensuring eternal debt as the predatory private sector systems. They are easy to get, really hard to pay off for the vast majority. It's quite a racket protected by federal law.

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True, the system is rigged, mostly by republicans, but you must know who will actually be managing the loan.

While FedLoan Servicing is a contracted service, if you look into how it's managed, you can avoid the problems.

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and relied on as my situation demanded that I get loans for school, and I worked the whole time too. But so many are trapped with incredible payment demands, as was I, regardless of how well you manage it, without some special treatment or a pile of luck, it will stunt the ability of the former student's financial life for a very long time. If you can afford to pay them off quickly, you probably didn't need them in the first place.

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The first is accepting deferred loans. The FedLoan was the only one deferred, because I was not going sign loans for $30K for my one daughter for undergrad and another $25K for graduate school, as deferred. Many of the private lenders try to push that as the best option, and when cash strapped, it seems like a good idea. I got most loans, except FedLoan, where repayment started immediately.

The second is the choice of schools. I just had one complete her Masters and currently have two in undergrad. My oldest showed the way, she went to a Seven Sisters school and left there with just under $40K in debt. How did she do it? While she was class president, in Junior year of high school and was on an MSNBC host's show for her work, she chose the Massachusetts school that allowed her to take county college courses and courses at UMASS and elsewhere. Here's what she did:

1) She picked the school she wanted to, after verifying their Registrar's requirements for transfer and other college credits.

2) She applied to Rutgers New Brunswick & another NJ private college, knowing that the private college offers scholarships to students deciding between Rutgers and their school. She received an $18K scholarship.

3) She went to that school and showed them the scholarship letter and they said they would match it, which they did. That knocked the tuition, room and board down to $44K a year.

4) She selected Spring deferred admission.

5) She took 18 credits at our local county college, on classes she got pre-approval. She made sure she received that in writing, as they did challenge two of her classes in her final year. This was added to her 6 AP credits she transferred.

6) She went to school taking out a partial HESSA loans for each year, and used some money she saved and from us parents.

7) Each Summer she took county college classes, they would only allow 8 credits per Summer year. She took a couple Winter classes too.

8) She graduated with a double major in 2.5 years. This saved both extra tuition and room & board for 1.5 years.


Now, my two other kids are doing the same thing. One is in a county college to Rutgers transfer program. The other is in a Rutgers SEBS program and is taking Summer classes, as we asked during Open House if she can take county classes after matriculated. It was up to the Department Head, and when I asked her in front of a hundred people, she said she allows county college classes to be taken, with most courses, except for a select set of specialized ones.


Getting back to my oldest daughter-- She was laughed at in high school and at graduation because her first school was our county college, and it states that in the graduation brochure. It did not mention the Seven Sisters school she would attend in the Spring. After two years, she started getting texts and emails from other high school classmates saying they wish she did the same thing as she did. They were in college for two years and had between $60-80K in debt, versus my daughter's $15K. The cost for a tuition credit hour at the Seven Sister's school was $1,000 versus the county college price of $115.

For her graduate schooling, she went to one of the top schools in England (keeping identifiable into to a minimum). Let's just say she got an internship with a Lord and lived blocks away from Parliament. Her tuition was $25K US and another $14K for a studio apartment. When she got there, Brexit hit and the devalued Pound resulted in her getting am $8K refund. So she got a top notch Masters Degree for $31K, which she borrowed $25K though HESSA.


Too many kids just jump in to the high expense college or university while blindly taking on debt, which amounts to a home mortgage for most. And, these folks choose to defer their payments, which is a killer, no matter where you get your financing. They don't look at the options to cut costs by going to a county college. Heck, when she graduated from the Seven Sisters school, nowhere on the diploma does it mention county college. It's the same degree as the rest of her classmates.

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Too many students and parents don't look very closely at their options, and what is the real cost of different choices.

Many, maybe most, community college coursework is structured to be fully transferable, at least to the public schools in that state. I've attended a total of six different public colleges/universities, both two year and four year institutions. The quality of instruction at the two year schools, in my experience, was at least as good as that at the big universities, and often better. No grad students doing the teaching. Same person teaches the class, constructs the exams, then grades them.

The other thing a lot of kids do is choose a major based only on their enjoyment of the subject matter, without remembering that they're going to have to get a job at the end of all that. Then there are the kids who change majors, often multiple times, and take six or more years to graduate. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Then when they can't find a job in a field that simply doesn't have very many jobs, they move back home and parents support them. Parents need to make it crystal clear that they will do their financial part for four years and four years only of college, and after that the kid supports himself.

Something else to be aware of, and another reason to push STEM, is that after the bachelor's degree, a student in the hard sciences won't have to pay for any more school. My son is currently in a PhD program at a pretty good university on the east coast. His tuition would be about $30k per year, but is completely forgiven, plus he gets a stipend as a research associate that covers the rent on his apartment near school. All he has to pay for is books which actually are mostly digital and pretty much free in that format for him. Then there are his day-to-day living expenses, which simply aren't very high for him. His apartment is close enough to the campus that the school runs a shuttle bus to and from the school and his complex, as well as several other nearby apartment complexes.

I was told by his high school physics teacher that once he got his undergraduate degree, the rest of his schooling should be paid for. The teacher was right. He even gets sent to international conferences in his field on the school's dime. Last July he went to Cambridge, England, this March he'll be going to somewhere in Switzerland. Very cool.

How much of that strategy did a high school counselor map out for your children?
Did you get any advice from the college admissions folks?

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This was all research she did on her own, since she knew I'm a single parent with four kids and they would be all coming to college age within a 6 year span. She was trying to optimize her strategy to go to school without incurring a lot of debt for herself, me and her siblings. The high school offers nothing really in the way of support. Just links to financial planning seminars that are held by for-profit firms.


I'm at that income level where I do not get any benefits at all. . . nothing. But can't swing it by myself.

Dual-income No Kids, get twice the tax breaks than a Single-Income Four Kid family. Evangelicals push for families, they want more children, but pressure the tax code so it punishes families if one of the spouses divorces or dies.


This is why we had to take out loans. I make over the threshold for any assistance, so filling out the FAFSA is a complete waste of time for me. The only thing I get is a $1,500 max Stafford Loan option. So, my daughter engineered this means to go to school on the cheap. And not just a community college degree, but a degree in a Top 60 US college and a masters in a Top 20 global one.

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Sounds like you've done a great job. Very cool!

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She didn't take after her dad in that respect.

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I was working a variety of near minimum wage jobs in the mid 80's when I decided to return to school to complete an Engineering degree at a private 4 year university. Being barely able to afford basic living expenses at the time, it was necessary for me to take out student loans and my only option was private lenders back then.

I attended in the evenings after working during the day and while it took me several years, I was finally able to graduate with a BSME degree. After graduation, I obtained a job and spent the next 10 years paying off the loan. While not wealthy by any means, that opportunity allowed me to earn a decent living for decades.

I can't imagine where I would be today without having the student loans available. It was easily the best investment I ever made

Many folks today benefit from those loans as well. I had loans also but I went to school in the '70s. As I graduated I started see more of the private lender sourced and serviced loans. My loans totaled about $1200. They were under the federal program and accrued no interest at all (at least from me) until 6 months after graduation. Those were the days. My school's tuition is now 8 times what I paid 40 years ago. By comparison a new car equivalent to the one I bought in 1980 is now a bit more than double.

Professor's salaries have about tripled. Other than my school spending to build more buildings and take over most of the neighborhood, I don't see why it's now 8 times more than it was.

My daughter dated a guy who majored in finance and had about $80,000 in loans. That was 6 years ago and he was making about $40,000 a year.

Today, about 13% (by dollar amount) of all private debt is in student loans. These loans are outside bankruptcy and if parents have cosigned they are stuck with them as well even if their child dies.

I know the loans were a good debt back in the day, but now, not so much.

It seems like it doesn't matter how much schools raise tuition because people willingly keep borrowing more and more. Not sure I blame the institutions of higher education ; if you keep raising prices and people keep paying them, what incentive do you have to stop?

If you ever see people refuse to pay that much and enrollment starts dropping, you will see the costs start going down instead of up.

...that a tenured professor with 10+ years experience teach Math in my area makes $106k. That's seems like good money especially if it comes with benefits.

The rest of Congress ignored her.

I think the cap should be 0, no interest.

It is an investment in our future.

...I just think the government should be paying the interest not the student.

If a person tries to get a business loan, they have to at least come up with a plan, however imaginary, as to how income will be generated to repay that loan. We don't require that of student loans, no matter what course of study is pursued.

...is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
How does debt equal freedom?

Thanks for making another good point.