Accruing Debts:
Accruing debts in college is easy. You apply for financial aid through a FAFSA form, you are guaranteed (practically) approval, now you either get or do not get your degree. When you are young that 30,000, 50,000, or even 150,000 sounds like nothing, but the force of it all hits you in the face like a banana peel 6 months after you graduate. Now you understand that you have entered decades of financial slavery to the banks. Was your degree worth it?
Getting A Useless Degree:
A study found that many colleges as of 2018 willingly continue programs in fields with extreme rates of unemployment. Was your degree on the list of the degrees with the highest unemployment rates?
Here is a list of the top 25 useless degrees for 2018 form MoneyWatch:
- Clinical psychology 19.5%
- Miscellaneous fine arts 16.2%
- United States history 15.1%
- Library science 15.0%
- (tie) Military technologies; educational psychology 10.9%
- Architecture 10.6%
- Industrial & organizational psychology 10.4%
- Miscellaneous psychology 10.3%
- Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%
- (tie) Visual & performing arts; engineering & industrial management 9.2%
- Engineering & industrial management 9.2%
- Social psychology 8.8%
- International business 8.5%
- Humanities 8.4%
- General social sciences 8.2%
- Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%
- Studio art 8.0%
- Pre-law & legal studies 7.9%
- Materials engineering and materials science and composition & speech (tie) 7.7%
- Liberal arts 7.6%
- (tie) Fine arts and genetics 7.4%
- Film video & photography arts and cosmetology services & culinary arts (tie) 7.3%
- Philosophy & religious studies and neuroscience (tie) 7.2%
- Biochemical sciences 7.1%
- (tie) Journalism and sociology 7.0%
If you have a degree in any of these fields, you are likely screwed and must work some mediocre non-career position just to stay afloat. Did you get f***ed? Is it hard for you to pay your loan minimums? Do you feel like life is going nowhere?
You are certainly not alone. There are legions and legions of college students that went to college and are in the same situation as you. Chances are, you know more people in this situation than you have fingers on both of your hands. So, don't feel too bad about it. In fact, the United States student debt index just hit 1.5 trillion dollars. But that doesn't make you feel better now does it?
Should You Get A Refund?
This is a question we all ask ourselves out of frustration with the system. If we were scammed into getting a degree in a field with no opportunity, do we deserve our money back? Do we really have to settle with doing? Absurd side-jobs such as moving furniture and driving for uber to make a chip on our debt? Are we in financial slavery because of a decision we made when we first got out of our secondary schools?
Should the government do anything to help push us in the right direction then? Since they are the financial backer of the money we borrowed. If this is all a scam, how come nobody has acted against it? Should students be informed of the employment rates of a field prior to majoring in it? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves and future generations of Americans from falling into the same trap?
Let us start a conversation below. It might save you from throwing your only golden pennies to the landlord.