First, there is this:
My career in the fire department didn’t require college, and I was making a good living at it. I know many firefighters who were making over $100k a year, and that was more than a decade ago. That might not be much money in NY or southern Cali, but in Central Florida that was quite a good wage. I didn’t go to college until it was almost time to retire.
Then there is this gem:
How can you graduate from college and not understand how interest works? If you borrow $40,000 in a student loan at 8% per year before making payments of $250 per month, your loan balance at the end of the year will be higher than it was at the beginning of the year.
Math, it’s a thing.
So if I don’t go to college, I won’t find a wife and a career? I would rather not have a wife than marry one who is a gold digging moron. Trust me, I did that once. It sucked. I don’t recommend it.
23 Comments
Old Maine Farmer · May 8, 2025 at 6:40 am
College is, for many degrees, indoctrination. We have a daughter who has no debt, no piercings, no tattoos, whose idea of ‘going to the mall’ is splitting wood, as she splits all our 12 cord of wood by hand after I chain saw it. She was homeschooled. Oh yes and she is a virgin and will stay that way until marriage, as a Christian. She follows along in the Greek and Hebrew at our daily bible studies. I would not want her to EVER marry a man who went to college and got indoctrinated; an honest Christian man with no debt and a trade would be best.
EN2 SS · May 8, 2025 at 6:55 am
To which I tell my grandsons, learn a trade and you won’t have the debt and make good money.
High school student being recruited like athletes.
https://archive.is/mhFn0
ML Thomas · May 8, 2025 at 7:24 am
Who do you blame for her lack of basic knowledge?
Everybody she knows – Starting with her parents or whoever didn’t raised her.
J J · May 8, 2025 at 8:28 am
Her credit card balances probably go up every month as well, but she doesn’t make the correlation.
Taking out massive loans to be indoctrinated/brainwashed is dumb. Just stay home and watch CNN, MSNBC and other mainstream media to get the same results.
Trotsky's Pickaxe · May 8, 2025 at 9:20 am
Educated derelicts is what Calvin Coolidge called them.
Too many boat anchors sinks the ship or the Long March to burn it all down by any means necessary.
Woody · May 8, 2025 at 9:50 am
For the woman complaining about her loan, all I heard was “I never bothered to check my statements for 120 months”.
Cederq · May 8, 2025 at 10:00 am
I attended college to earn my nursing degree, I still called it trade school… I did it the old fashioned way, I payed my own way.
Botan · May 8, 2025 at 10:39 am
Please tell me where I can get a $40,000 loan at 8%?
Divemedic · May 8, 2025 at 11:21 am
Undergrad loans are 6.53% post graduate are 8.08%
https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates
Tanfj · May 8, 2025 at 1:05 pm
Harvard University endowment is large enough that they could make tuition free without it affecting the bottom line. It is a (((grift))).
MN Steel · May 8, 2025 at 1:37 pm
I just signed a $47K loan at 5.99% at the local credit union.
That translates into a 30×50 steel shop with heated concrete floor, assembly and dirt-work included.
Sailor Paul · May 9, 2025 at 6:43 am
When I was a young deckhand on ships, I got made fun of for having quit being a neuroscientist to chip rust and splice lines.
As a ship’s master, 25 years later I make about 3x in salary what any non-MD neuroscientist in academia can make, doing a job that doesn’t require a HS diploma, and can be learned through OJT and the occasional 1-2 week class.
The women who hold out for a well-educated man tend to collect the guys left over by women looking for a good man.
Notice the divorce/never married rates among women who linger in school too long… it’s these same unlikeable freemartins who keep trying to recruit women to be equally alone and unfulfilled in life.
SiG · May 8, 2025 at 11:15 am
There’s a guy you’ve seen on the news over the years, a lawyer and then congressman from South Carolina. Trey Gowdy. Trey has bragged about getting out of the mandatory math classes in his undergraduate degree, saying he was never any good at math, and went to argue his case to the department head that it was a waste of time to take those classes. He convinced them to allow him to substitute something else, I just don’t remember what. I suppose I was so overwhelmed by a grown man telling the story that the part where he explained that didn’t soak into my mind.
While I laugh at this young woman for not understanding the way her student loan works, I really see no practical difference between her and him. I’m going to go out on a limb and say whatever degree she got in college, she probably didn’t convince the department to let her skip math classes. It’s marginally worse to take the class, apparently pass that class to get her degree, and not be able to do the arithmetic. What if they made the terms more understandable, with some sort of statement about that will happen if you only make minimum payments?
Divemedic · May 8, 2025 at 11:27 am
It should be mandatory that the college put you through a mini orientation that explains this before closing on the loan
It's just Boris · May 8, 2025 at 12:47 pm
Even if you did provide such an orientation, how do you ensure they understood, and cared? And then, remember it long enough to act on the knowledge when they graduate?
Divemedic · May 8, 2025 at 9:10 pm
Then that is on them. You can lead a man to knowledge but you can’t make him think
SoCoRuss · May 8, 2025 at 2:03 pm
First comment, as a born and raised South Carolinian. Lindsey Graham and Trey Gowdy are prime examples of just how fucked SC politics due to morons being allowed to vote is and just how how much inbreeding is allowed in SC.
To me in our current country, Trades are the way to go. Plus you get the honor of paying for all loan forgiveness for the Studies Degree Grads.
I have 2 degrees some how, from my High School grades, you would have thought i was destine to flip burgers. But since they aligned with my military and DOD job need I worked my ass off to get them, to me me are both trades degrees. From my experience in the various people republics classrooms, a big part of the cost and problems with College is there is a crap ton of useless classes to justify professors positions who are truly morons and fees for every thing but paying every time you took a dump in the bathroom that you have to take so the university can justify the money they are stealing from you. God forbid you knew more on a subject than the professor. I had a couple professors tell me how they truly hated me in class due to when I went I was also on active duty and when they spouted off about geopolitics or world events and evil whitey and the glory of Communism and Islam, I had been there and cut their bullshit off real quick. Most of those fools had never even been outside the US. Maybe a few took the required grad summer vacay trip thru Europe that seemed to be a requirement for professor/Aide slots.
Once .GOV got into student loans the cost went straight up and the quality went down and bullshit degrees multiplied. Downtown banks don’t give loans for degrees that have no monetary return future.
Bear Claw · May 8, 2025 at 2:56 pm
Maff is hard, for them. They also can’t finish reading a book, I have no sympathy and they will miss the last line in “Unintended Consequences” with a gorillion pages which rates as an all time best line. I’ve read it twice
Dan D. · May 8, 2025 at 3:34 pm
Mike Rowe has recently resumed the spotlight over the instrinsic value of The Trades after talking about – and doing them – for 20 years. My answer to the question often asked about trade school vs. college is “do both, why not?” Worked out well for me: biophysics during the day, minister, couple 12-ers of patents and can run a machine/welding shop at night.
I’m an average schlub, with average ideas but a drive to be better next week than I am today. So if I can do it then most others certainly can.
hh475 · May 8, 2025 at 5:58 pm
People who don’t know math simply can’t think rationally. They can only think intuitively. There’s nothing wrong with intuitive thinking — and it is often valid. But intuitive thinking is like neural networks. The math is there, but it’s hidden from view. Since it’s hidden, it can’t be examined critically, and all you’re left with are your feelings.
There’s a thing about mathematics that it a lot like religious conversion. As you study mathematics, even if you are not a great mathematician, most people hit an “Aha!” point where they start viewing everything through a mathematical lens. You can’t look at cream in a cup of coffee or limbs on a tree or the shape of a seashell or the fins on a fish without thinking of the mathematics that drive what is going on. Once that happens, a million things start to make more sense in the world — even human behavior.
There’s a debate between those who think that math is “constructed” and thus political and those who think that math is “discovered” and is the fundamental language of the rules of the universe. The difference in those attitudes is profound. There’s a wonderful video by James Lindsay in which he has a guy ask a young grad student how to tell whether or not there are an odd or even number of beans in a box. The answer, of course, is to count them. However, the college student says that it’s not that simple, because “odd” and “even” are culturally defined. Thus, counting them is insufficient. Instead one must go to someone who has “authority” to say whether or not there are an odd or even number — it’s not a property independent of power. The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjVmm1IAii0&t=6780s . It’s a long video and note that it’s queued to 1:53:05 (6780s), which is where this discussion is. The payoff is at 2:13:35 where she says it’s up to the “Authenticator of Facts” to determin whether something is even or odd.
The Progressive disdain for mathematics lies in this idea that it’s white supremacy to believe that 2+2=4 independent of authority. The “right” answer in math is a function of political power. This is what has been taught for the past decade or two, and it’s seeped out into the culture at large. It’s tempting even for Conservatives who don’t want to do the work to become proficient or who want to excuse away their deficiency. Americans are being turned into Eloi to wander mindlessly in their managed world, while we import Morlocks from other nations to run the world and control us
Henry · May 8, 2025 at 7:51 pm
Fortunately for our country, trade schools and apprentice programs have seen considerable growth in recent years. Countless news stories and commentaries have pointed out that so many trades provide an excellent middle class living without requiring a degree. Some years back, we had a young plumber who was actually amazingly talented and when asked about his background he said that he had a college degree from a very prestigious school. He was a music major and studied cello, if I recall correctly. So why did he become a plumber? He said that he couldn’t afford to raise a family as a classical musician but plumbing paid very well.
Steve · May 9, 2025 at 9:58 am
“Tell me you got a worthless degree without telling me you got a worthless degree.”
“The job this degree qualified me for doesn’t add enough value to make a $200 per month payment, even with 10 years experience.”
Elrod · May 11, 2025 at 8:06 am
“good fckn luck trying find a good match of wife & career otherwise,”
I question the wisdom of selecting a lifelong mate from the available pool of thoroughly leftist indoctrinated and overeducated but ungrounded women. Such portends the possibility of repeated >50% offerings to the gods of divorce and child support, as well as suffering the accompanying anguish and frustation.
As for employment, there a plethora of opportunities available, some, indeed, many, of which could benefit from selective use of educational resources. As example, one need not seek a standard four-year degree in Computer Science to become phenomenally good at database creation and management, or designing, creating and operating complex networks; two to four semesters of very concentrated study and a couple years’ apprenticeship, for those with the ability and ambition, would earn a place well into the six figures.
Similar, but somewhat more limited, opportunities exist in the higher skilled manual trades; “somewhat more limited” does mean there’s a top, but that top to earning potential is pretty damn high, although accompanied by the possibility of age limiting strenuous efforts: price what a 25-year-old nuclear-certified welder costs, but do note how few such people continue into their 60s (the smarter of those are running their own fabrication companies well before that, and that does not have a “top salary”).