How much was/is your student debt/loans when you graduated?

Combine under & grad school. I was shocked my friend of 40 years told me her daughter had $100K loans from under & law school. I went to a state college and I had no loans, 35 years ago!

My parents worked sewing in factory tailor shops and could pay for my college. No loans or debt of any kind. A whole different era for sure.

Lots of scholarships and the low costs of the past made me debt free.

However the cost of collee has gone up at twice the rate of inflation for 20 years now.

Someone who works at a college, please try to explain this to us. Why has college gone up twice as fast as everything else for tw decades now? It is pricing itself out of middle class families' abilities to pay for it.

Took off 20% of the balance every year I taught in a low income school. So I basically went for free.

But my payments - if I had not taught - were only $15 a month! I don't remember the balance but my tuition was around $200 a semester so it couldn't have been too high.

My student loans totaled $87,000.

Ugggh.

How long do you have to pay it off? What interest rate?

We pay more than $1100 per month, so we can pay it off in less than 10 years.

There were several payment options available. We chose the most difficult one. There was a 30-year option and the payement was like $300 per month.

However, who wants to be paying off their student loans while they are collecting Social Security? ;)

The interest rate is 5.25.

$10,500.

i bot pot with it and some books about pot

Still worth it, though. Sacrificed much during the "Roaring 90s" to pay in full, because once I stopped fawning over Clinton, and rationally examined the foundation of our economy, I just knew a shitstorm was coming sooner or later.

Currently debt-free.

Never got a loan. Family couldn't help much either. The only "scholarship" I got was two years at the Coast Guard Academy in New London. After that ... Worked my ever-lovin' ass off and ran like hell. Did graduate school on the GI Bill after Viet Nam ... part-time student, full-time wage-slave.

You should be proud of what you did on your own. Congratulations.

... going to a military academy (seamanship, navigation, etc.), a small southern Jesuit college (theology, philosophy, etc.), and a northern urban commuter university. I went from semesters, to trimesters, to quarters. My "major" changed from engineering to physics to mathematics (no papers or labs), with graduate work in computer science. I didn't learn about dropping courses where my prerequisites didn't prepare me until the end of my junior year and even then we were warned that if we dropped a course (going below a full-time load) we'd be exposed to the Viet Nam draft. You wouldn't believe how tough it was to "catch up" in a quarter-long course where the prerequisites didn't match. You wouldn't believe how tough it was to carry a full-time load and work enough to pay for it. (I have occasional nightmares even 40 years later - both about the pressures of college and Viet Nam.)

I was a National Merit Scholarship finalist in high school and I hadn't the foggiest idea what the scholarship offers I got meant. (Since I was planning on the Academy, I didn't follow up on them.) God!! Those were crazy days -- my "sixties experience" was a series of clusterfucks (the love generation).

That's an impressive amount of stuff to have handled. Kudos to you, dude. Sorry about the nightmares :hug:

... the reichbots who coasted through on Daddy's money and arrogantly talk about "entitlement liberals" and how they themselves "worked for it." No college student should have to go through the crap I went through. If there were ever a time in education that a student should have the time to really study while keeping in touch with the real world without panic, it's college. We've got to make that possible for every capable, motivated student! I was lucky - born with a very high IQ. That made the difference, I think - stupid as I am. But if only a small fractional percentage of students are lucky enough to be mentally-equipped to grasp some studies with about one-third the mental effort in order to squeak through, that's not enough to make a humane world. At the same time, we just can't "dumb down" (for mere regurgitation of rote crap) the courses any more!

"aid" these days means loans for most students - not scholarships.

$180K????

paying most of the undergrad.

50,000 per year borrowed in Med School adds up quickly

Went to a state medical school, still had it. Some of that is due to the problem that as a resident, you make enough to pay the bills, but not enough to pay even the interest on the med school loans, so it goes up and up. I think I had at one time something like 7 Staffords, 4 Perkins, money to family, and revolving introductory credit card rates.

In all fairness, my loan to income ratio was about the same as someone getting a bachelors or liberal-arts masters. It gets paid down quickly, even in a low-income specialty and an academic/government position..

... for my final semester. Long time ago.

Grad school was part-time and costs were paid at registration. Long time ago.

I worked and paid tuition from my salary as I went along plus I had a scholarship. Those were lean and frugal days

25 years ago.

I had an NDEA loan. Most of it was for art supplies and living expenses.

much from LACC and UCLA in the late '60's

$16,000 after interest... I just consolidated them thru the dept of education though, so now my payments are income-based...which for me comes out to $0 (I'm under the fed. poverty level for my family size)

When I 'left' (have yet to graduate) 3 years ago. I'm paying those off slowly, plus pay-as-you-go on classes right now...

I have more than $40,000 in loans, and have a BA. I haven't managed to land a "real" job yet; I'm making $9.00/hour part time at a phone bank.

Statistically speaking, I have less than a 50% chance of still being alive in 20 years, going on the oral cancer stats alone. Chances are I will still owe on my student loans when I die.

Tucker

Denmark for one.

Those places pay high taxes, but they have medical and they don't have to save for their childrens education. Nor do their children have to pay for their education. They just have to make the grade.

I went to private schools for most of my formal education past the 5th grade.

Middle School was 3 years @ $10,000 per year. $30,000
High School was 4 years @ $25,000 per year. $100,000
College is 4 years @ $30,000 per year. $120,000


My parent's income is too high to get any substantial federal aid so we usually pay the tuition, minus any grants and scholarships, out-of-pocket every year. I'm a senior now, and have about a $4,000 balance with the school.

Law school will add an additional $120,000.

(but I was an out-of-state student)

$25,000

I have about half of it paid off and should be out of debt by this time next year.

Having to work 20-30 hours a week and stressing about debt were two of the primary reasons I didn't finish grad school.

I had a grant for one wonderful year when Carter was President, but after Reagan took office it disappeared, so I had to take out loans. I also worked 30 hours a week doing research in a law firm.

I finished paying off the loan the month before I moved to the UK. Since then, I've done another degree (graduated in 2003) and now owe about £7,000 in student loans once more.

Edited for typo.

I worked the whole way through my studies too.
It is in New Zealand Dollars though, so I am in England trying to pay it off in pounds (exchange rate is about 1:2.4).
It is really stopping me going on to do my maters and Phd which I would love to do.

I was lucky because my parents could afford it. However, I'll have to work at my current job for a few more years in order to recoup the expenses. :mad:

which will give me just enough of a pay raise to cover my loan payments.

heh.

about 30,000 from Cornell undergrad....and 180,000 from U Mich dental.

I had assistantships for grad school. So zero there, too.

The CUNY was still open admissions with free tuition when I attended. I also lived at home, since I couldn't afford to go to school and pay for my own place at the same time.

Public undergrad and private law school (w/75% tuition scholarship). Makes me sick to think about it. I will be paying on these loans for the rest of my life.

After I graduated from high school, I worked 2 jobs and saved my money. I started college a year after high school. I worked the entire time that I was in college. I didn't want to walk out of college with a diploma and a lot of debt.

I guess they'll send me to debtor's prison someday.

$24,000 after BA from University of Texas (worked 20 hours a week the whole time and had some private scholarships!)

additional $19,000 after doing one-year MA in the UK.

I finished my MA in 2002 - I now owe about $41,500. I will be paying it off until I am 50. I also cannot save anything.

I'm totally a product of public education from kindergarten on through, save for the first three months of my college career (started at a private school and transferred to a public - though it had nothing to do with the money).

Finished school in 2001...debt is now down to around $18,000 I think. I pay roughly $300/mo. on it...wish I could pay more but the cost of living here in the NYC area is just absurd. Hoping to pay it all off in five to six years...for that reason I'll probably have to put off buying a house or apt for longer than I'd hoped.

My sister attended an elite private school for college and is now in graduate school at another elite private school. Her debt will be well into the six figures when all is said and done.

So I'd say my education was a bargain.

Completed the first 2 years while in the Army getting 75% tuition assistance, then worked my ass off while getting GI Bill for the last 3 years. Ended up with 2 degrees and no bills.

Grants paid for the rest of it. I went to college 1987-1990. I worked 40+ hours a week the whole time. I dunno how I managed it all.

university (no loans), a masters degree (no loans), and a doctorate from Hopkins (the $15k).

All of it from my PhD. I worked extra jobs all through my undergrad and my masters to avoid them. When I got into my Ph.D. program I decided studying and research were more important than the 2nd and 3rd part time jobs. But I also had to supplement my TA to make it through 4 summers with no appointment.