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10 votes
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Higher ed: Enough already
17 votes -
I just made my last ever student loan payment!
I'm throwing myself a little party here -- digital drinks on me! Yes, I know my loans weren't accruing interest on account of COVID-19, but long before that all started I'd been aggressively...
I'm throwing myself a little party here -- digital drinks on me!
Yes, I know my loans weren't accruing interest on account of COVID-19, but long before that all started I'd been aggressively paying them down because I wanted them GONE. And now they ARE! (Or, they will be once the payment clears, which for some unknown reason takes my loan servicer like two full weeks).
The quarantine actually helped me accelerate payments. I rolled over what I was saving in gas money and not eating out into my loan payments. Also, as a teacher I only get paid during the school year, but I have the option to reduce my regular paychecks and roll the difference into a lump sum that gets paid out at the beginning of the summer. I choose this option so that my budgeting is consistent year-round (rather than me having to squirrel away my own nest egg for the summer from my other paychecks). The payoff amount on my loan would have been done around August had I kept with my regular schedule of payments, so I went ahead and treated myself to making the final payment in full, now, as I had the money for it upfront.
I cannot tell you how good it feels to finally be free of them. I paid off my undergrad loans in under 10 years and felt super proud of myself, only to immediately have to turn around and start the process all over again for grad school. Months after I finished my undergrad loan payments I was again accepting tens of thousands of dollars in debt so that I could get a master's degree to qualify myself for a job that I'd already been doing for years. It was not a great feeling, nor something I was very happy about, but you do what you have to do, right?
BUT NOW IT'S OVER. NO MORE STUDENT LOANS. I'VE WON THAT AMERICAN MILLENNIAL BOSS FIGHT.
It honestly feels like I just got a big raise, as, come August, once my timeline for paying the loans is done, all the money that I was putting towards them is now mine to do whatever I want with. I'm not saying this to gloat (and I know that I'm financially very privileged even in light of my debt), but simply because I'm reveling in the feeling of being out from under the suffocating thumb of a difficult financial pressure, and it feels wonderful.
EDIT: If anyone's wanting to join in my festivities remotely, participating is easy! All you need to do is pour yourself a tasty drink of your choosing, grab a delicious snack you love, and throw Carly Rae Jepsen's discography on shuffle.
43 votes -
Colleges face student lawsuits seeking refunds after coronavirus closures
12 votes -
Education without loans
5 votes -
The coming disruption - Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite universities and tech companies will soon monopolize higher education
6 votes -
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sues Betsy DeVos over “reprehensible” new sexual assault rules
5 votes -
California police used military surveillance tech at grad student strike
11 votes -
How a leftist cartoonist’s college campus drawing nearly became a far-right meme
6 votes -
Michigan Governor Whitmer announces plan for free college tuition for front-line workers battling coronavirus
13 votes -
Why do so few people major in computer science?
15 votes -
Biden’s free-college plan is a solution in search of a problem
6 votes -
Small colleges were already on the brink. Now, coronavirus threatens their existence.
4 votes -
Joe Biden adopts part of a tuition-free public college proposal as a nod to US progressives
10 votes -
Coronavirus prompts Harvard, MIT to send students home
5 votes -
Cost matters: Why Lambda School should have a lower success rate than college
3 votes -
Professor loses landmark legal battle after claiming it’s ‘free speech’ to deliberately misgender trans students
23 votes -
Demoted and placed on probation
5 votes -
Judge rules that student loan debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy
18 votes -
FTC settlement with for-profit University of Phoenix over deceptive advertising will require them to cancel $141M in student debt and pay $50M to former students
14 votes -
ICE creates fake US university, lures international students, collects money, arrests them
21 votes -
Scandinavia is famous for its liveable cities, but a new university course in Nordic urban planning has raised questions about replicating the region's approach elsewhere
8 votes -
One in five University of Otago, New Zealand medical students to be denied graduation after falsifying overseas placement records
6 votes -
In China, surge in students informing on professors
8 votes -
Are liberal arts colleges doomed? The cautionary tale of Hampshire College and the broken business model of American higher education
8 votes -
Student tracking, secret scores: How college admissions offices rank prospects before they apply
15 votes -
An unseen victim of the college admissions scandal: The high school tennis champion aced out by a billionaire family
9 votes -
The hedge fund billionaire’s guide to buying your kids a better shot at not just one elite college, but lots of them
11 votes -
University of Alabama uses location-tracking phone app to know who leaves football games early
8 votes -
What college admissions offices really want - Elite schools say they’re looking for academic excellence and diversity. But their thirst for tuition revenue means that wealth trumps all
10 votes -
It’s time for Black athletes to leave White colleges
7 votes -
Jerry Falwell’s aides break their silence - Current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world
10 votes -
Flawed algorithms are grading millions of students’ essays
13 votes -
Meet Timothy Leary, the 1960s Harvard professor who became the ‘high priest of LSD’
6 votes -
A transgender man in Tennessee was suspended from his Christian college just hours after getting top surgery
11 votes -
China orders halt to history tests for students seeking credits for US university courses
9 votes -
Alaska defunds scholarships for thousands of university students ahead of fall semester
18 votes -
College financial-aid loophole: Wealthy US parents transfer guardianship of their teens to get aid
15 votes -
The UA Regents were wrong to think help was on the way—and this weekend proved it
6 votes -
Alaska fears 'brain drain' after forty-one percent proposed cut to university system
12 votes -
University of Chicago undergraduate physics bibliography
7 votes -
Med students are doing vaginal exams on unconscious, non-consenting patients
17 votes -
How Oxford university shaped Brexit — and Britain’s next prime minister
13 votes -
The revenge of the poverty-stricken college professors is underway in Florida. And it's big.
20 votes -
Former Stanford sailing coach gets one day in prison, six months house arrest, two years probation, and a $10,000 fine in college cheating scandal
14 votes -
Combined BA + MA degrees
Have any of you done these degrees? I'm switching disciplines for my MA, and I want to collect information on this alternative method should I fail that this summer. I'd have a more complete grasp...
Have any of you done these degrees? I'm switching disciplines for my MA, and I want to collect information on this alternative method should I fail that this summer. I'd have a more complete grasp of the field and proceed to a PhD equipped with better knowledge. The price to pay being some time, but I'll probably already have to do my MA---if I manage---in three years b/c the school might want me to take an extra preparatory year going through some undergrad classes.
So, any experiences, any comments, any links highly appreciated!
P.S.: EU information appreciated, that's been significantly harder to get at.
7 votes -
The disadvantages of an elite education: Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers
16 votes -
A union fight at Marquette University
6 votes -
Schools are using software to help pick who gets in. What could go wrong?
7 votes -
The University of Maryland waited eighteen days to inform students of a virus on campus. That decision left vulnerable students like Olivia Paregol in the dark
14 votes