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College is supposed to be the one of the best times of your life, but a growing number of millennials are wishing they had never gone to school in the first place.
A new study found that one-third of university grads ages 18-35 wish they had never bothered going to college, while nearly half believe they would have achieved the same level of success they have now without a degree.
The reason everyone hates college these days? The overwhelming burden of student debt.
From Forbes:
The survey found that 37% of former students regretted going to college given the amount of debt they now have.
With tuition fees and living costs inexorably rising, this year’s U.S. college seniors graduated with an average debt of $37,172, while for their U.K. counterparts the picture is even bleaker, with debts in excess of $65,000.
Regret is as likely to hit older millennials (38%), those aged 25-35, as those in the 18-24 age bracket (37%), despite having had longer to experience the benefit of having a degree, according to the survey of 1,073 U.K. millennials carried out for FTSE100 insurance giant Aviva.
The study also found that 49% of millennials believed they would have reached the same level in terms of career progression had they not gone to college.
I get where a lot of these people are coming from. I graduated college exactly one year ago this week and I am still bouncing around from internship to internship. If you slap together a one-hour presentation about what the company does and order a couple pizzas, you can call it an educational experience and have your interns do full-time work for three months at a fraction of the cost. Then you can fire them and bring in fresh meat. Genius.
Luckily, I don’t have student loans to worry about. I did my best to lessen the burden on my parents by going to school in-state and living as cheaply as possible while still having a good time. Some of the other interns I work with — who went to uppity, northeastern liberal arts colleges like Vassar — are now completely fucked because they don’t have a steady income to pay off $85K worth of student loans.
I haven’t reached the point where I wish I hadn’t gone to college yet, and I doubt it will ever come to that. I loved my college experience and, if for no other reason, it was worth it just to go to all those college football games. Sometimes, when I view my tuition as payment method for college football season tickets, I feel a lot better about paying it.
But I don’t discount the fact that the current higher education system is kind of fucked if you can’t afford it.
One day, when I am sitting on the deck of my hover-yacht with my children, my wife and my father-in-law, Tom Brady, it will all make sense. Until then, I’m just working for the weekend..
[via Forbes]
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Respond
All those art history majors are regretting paying $200K for a degree that isn’t marketable? Weird.
Something tells me that the “art history and gender studies” strawman doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about over one third of graduates.
Throw Mass Comm majors in there and you should be good.
yes it does. Go ahead and expand it out a few more useless majors and it certainly does cut it.
They’re gonna be realllllly butt hurt when they find out what that money they pay in interest actually goes to. Most of the money goes to defense contractors and manufacturers through the government and only about 10-15% of the money goes back into the education system. To think relatively, the $1.1 trillion of total student debt could be paid off completely within 200 days (factoring the monthly costs of the wars in the Middle East) if we stopped bombing dudes in tents half the world away who have no navy, no airforce, and no true assets besides the ones they receive from contract building materials companies and black market money deals orchestrated by the very people we are set up to elect into office, then people wouldn’t be caught in this psychosis cycle of debt, over inflation, and death.
Dial it back Devin, they don’t wanna hear this horse shit.
If PGP won’t publish your articles, you should just email them out. I’d love to wake up to a daily dose of nihilism. A forum would be a great place to organize something like this…
I have a Tumblr where I’ve posted some of my columns. Username ri-ft
Currently work in defense, can confirm.
“Regret is as likely to hit older millennials (38%), those aged 25-35”
Being an “older” millennial. PGP.
I definitely don’t regret going to college at all, my only regret is switching from a better major to a less marketable one. I was so naive and wish I had the foresight to stick with my original choice.
I’ll absolutely encourage higher education for my children, but make sure they go to a big school with tons to do. I went to a tiny school in the middle of some corn fields and hated it.
I think we need to differentiate groups of people who go to college. There are the art history major types as mentioned by Cube, i.e. people who don’t have a marketable degree, people who paid a ton of money for National American University-type places, which isn’t really going to college in my mind, and those of us with valuable degrees.
A few suggestions here: I think EVERYONE should have to serve the country, in same way, for 1-2 years after high school. 17 or 18 is too fucking young to go to college and plan what career path you want. It doesn’t have to be the military…but you need to do something. Work at the dog pound, cut grass in parks, etc. I’m serious. I’m about to earn my third college degree and I wish I’d taken time off after high school. It would help kids mature AND think of all the free labor to rebuild the country? Kids today are even younger than they were, with so many being completely fucking babied their entire lives. How many freshman have never done a goddamn load of laundry?
If you go to a private school, you’d better have a scholarship. If not, go to a state school.
One yea removed from college and no job shouldn’t be considered eligible to be a post grad problems writer in my opinion.