PlayerHader

I could be wrong, but I don't think "push trade schools" means directing individual students to something that they don't want to do. It's about, as you said, making sure students are aware that there are valuable and even lucrative options out there besides the 4-year degree. I see kids pass through every year who would be happy as welders/plumbers/electricians/carpenters/etc...but feel they are more of a "college type" person. That's fine, too, as long as they are aware of the options and costs of each. Regarding living at home for a few years after college...Do you think there should be some shame in that? If you word it as push kids towards trade school...yes, I think that means directing them to do it. Many people think college is dumb and not worth it (statistically wrong) and kids should go to trade school. Typically these people are in trades so they have bias, but when it is mentioned usually one is referring that kids should flat out go into a trade and not university...if you do you are dumb and wasting money. As far as living at home, no, I don't think there should be shame in that. Most people I know who are or have done it usually pay zero bills on top of it though. Their parents are still paying for their car, the car insurance, the phone, and the food. Now should there be shame in that? Well, seems like eventually you need to put on the big boy/girl pants and face reality. For the time I did it I gave money for food, had my own car at that point, and paid for my phone (I did stay on their plan to save money though). Basically I just lived rent free...I paid for my other necessities. It is a newer trend, but people have been doing the same before getting married to save money on the expense for quite a long time, so not much different. That being said I did not do it to pay off the loans faster. I was actually just compiling money for stuff when I moved out and to get a huge head start saving the 20%+ for the down payment on a house. The loan doesn't really bother me (about $255 a month). I valued avoiding mortgage insurance and the insane costs of not putting a lot down on a house (tens of thousands, much more than the few thousand the student loan costs). Plus it allows me to buy a house years before I would have otherwise. If you are talking about individual students, yes, "pushing trade schools" might imply that. When you are talking about hundreds of students passing through a high school... you are "pushing" the idea. Yes, numbers show that a four year degree leads to greater career earnings on average. That doesn't help the significant number of students who get a 4 (or 5) year degree in something they aren't all that apt to do (because they are supposed to get that BA/BS), graduate with debt, and can't find a job in a field without demand (which they may or may not really desire anyway). That's why you "push trade schools."

I could be wrong, but I don't think "push trade schools" means directing individual students to something that they don't want to do. It's about, as you said, making sure students are aware that there are valuable and even lucrative options out there besides the 4-year degree. I see kids pass through every year who would be happy as welders/plumbers/electricians/carpenters/etc...but feel they are more of a "college type" person. That's fine, too, as long as they are aware of the options and costs of each. Regarding living at home for a few years after college...Do you think there should be some shame in that?

I can definitively tell you that this was NOT the emphasis when I was in high school something like 15 years ago. It was "be what you want to be", which is how you end up with so many psychology and liberal arts majors. It was also a 100% college or bust mentality. There was never any push to look into becoming an electrician or welder or carpenter or anything like that. A bit refreshing to see that's being pushed a bit more. We seem to be close to the same age. I graduated HS in 2003 from a very small, rural public school in northcentral Wisconsin. I think there will naturally be a greater pull to the trades and workforce in that environment, but I can say that I agree with you that there was a push to 4 year universities. I think the tide is turning a bit on that.

The fact that you CAN is a part of the problem. I think Lawrence and the creditors should shoulder some responsibility for allowing that debt load.

Agree entirely with the push to direct students to trades and technical schools. Heck, I consider going into the trades at 35 sometimes (some disagree around here, but summers off doesn't alleviate the stress of working with other people's kids all day). I think this is happening quite a bit, at least in the rural schools that I am familiar with. The emphasis is to get students college and career ready. The second part is important, as well, and is certainly stressed.

Disclaimer: I graduated 10 years ago, and until recent years, costs continued to skyrocket after my graduation. My point isn't to say that ANYBODY can get a college degree without taking on crippling debt. I do think that the vast majority can, though. But 26K, while not cripling, is a ton of debt. I graduated from UW in 1996 with $2300 in debt and that was without hardly any parental help. Like I posted earlier if tuition simply rose with inflation a semester at Madison would be like $2150 now. It's $5350. I do think a lot of people get degrees that should probably be going to tech school. The trades are in dire need of new blood. Heck the ironworkers union here in Illinois will pay you $22 an hour to go to school to become an ironworker. If we'd talk in depth, we probably share a common ground regarding most of the nuance of this topic. $26k is nothing to scoff at, but it's not a bad "investment" for the career field that I chose. Keeping your college debt around your first year's salary isn't crippling at all. If you get out without debt (and I have friends who've done this either through parents paying for everything or them busting their butt and showing tremendous discipline), financial freedom early in life is at your fingertips.

Loans were actually paid off about 4 years ago. Learned a lot about debt and management afterward and made it a priority...and sold a home with a little profit. I'm not opposed to some sort of forgiveness program, but it has to be accompanied by changes that will rein in costs going forward. Government subsidized student loans and the inability to default on student loans make for a horrible situation. Debt responsibility should be shared between students, the school that says it is giving them a career path, and the financial institutions that are so happily giving out loans that they know are guaranteed and can't be defaulted on. I agree with much of what you say. I've decided not to look at this as a "boomer" vs us issue. I've long been annoyed by folks ripping on Millennial, and I find this "ok boomer" thing to be equally useless and counterproductive.

I was able to live with family and commute for 2 of my 6 years. It was a positive financially, and I'll admit that isn't an option for everybody. I think I understand there is a lot of nuance. My point wasn't that everybody could get a degree with little or no debt. I don't consider my $26k to be crippling debt in any way. I wasn't going to a lucrative field, but I knew I'd make more than that in salary in year 1. Had I been wiser at the time, I could have probably graduated with the same degree with half that debt. I can see how debt can easily spiral out of control for someone committed to a career path. My point was more to the idea that there are choices we all make that could help blow that final debt number up OR keep it more reasonable.

I took 6.5 years go get a 4 year degree. I went to the most expensive state school just because I wanted to for a year. I only worked 2 out of 13 semesters. My point wasn't that I did SO many things correctly. I did work hard in the summer, I'll give you that. I was OK with going to the local 2-year first rather than Madison right away. That decision alone probably saved me $20k. I don't think exiting college $26k in debt is outrageous, particularly since it got me into a career field that required it.

Ok boomer. Very counterproductive post. Way to contribute. I'm 34 years old. Not a boomer in the least. Technically I'm a millennial. My path to college graduation was probably in the bottom quartile when it came to efficiency. I entered college out of high school, and it took me 6.5 years and 3 schools to graduate with a BS in English and Education. Even with my extended stay, I managed to get out with "only" about $26,000 in student loans, mostly because I also stumbled into a few "correct" choices along the way. I spent my first two years at one of the UW colleges. One renting out a cheap apartment, and one commuting from home. My 3rd year I went to UW-Madison, mostly because I always wanted to, not because my desired field dictated it. I actually did not even have a clear path yet at this point, narrowing my options down to journalism and education. A somewhat directionless student isn't likely to get into the education program at Madison, and I didn't. I ended up going to UWSP after that. A surprising number of courses at UW didn't transfer directly to requirements at SP, so I spent 3 years there. Two paying rent with some guys at an off campus apartment and one living with my brother in Wausau and commuting. Fall of 2009 was my student-teaching semester (which I had to pay tuition for). How'd I keep my debt down to a reasonable amount? Well, I probably had $1500-2000 scholarship money out of high school. That helped pay for a decent chunk of tuition/books my first semester at UWMC. I worked construction every summer. I wasn't a great saver, but I'd still finish the summer with at least a few thousand dollars to put toward school in the fall. A few years I worked construction over winter break if hours were available. I worked at Eastbay one semester in Wausau and Fleet Farm one semester in Point. I "donated" plasma, but that ended up going to bars and pizza places in SP. I ran out the clock long enough that I actually received some Pell Grant money at the end, so that knocked about $3000 off what the final number would have been. I also had a couple thousand dollars of CC debt upon graduating, much of that probably having been spent on pizza, burgers and Chinese food in Madison and SP. I never went on a Spring Break trip. I didn't study abroad. To be fair, at the time I had no interest in either really, so I won't say I sacrificed. Disclaimer: I graduated 10 years ago, and until recent years, costs continued to skyrocket after my graduation. My point isn't to say that ANYBODY can get a college degree without taking on crippling debt. I do think that the vast majority can, though.

I’m slightly wrong. The state doesn’t require a course to graduate, but it does require each district to have a K12 financial literacy curriculum in place. The district I currently work for does require a semester in high school, and the school I graduated from in 2003 has a required course (which I didn’t pay much attention to because I was a dumb teenager). My personal experience lead me to assume, I suppose.

Not to go too far off topic, but this is exactly why every high school should require students to take a personal finance course or 3. This is such a big decision for such a large percentage of the student population, these kids should be thoroughly aware of how much debt they'll have at the end...what their payment will be...what kind of salary they can expect...what that means for take-home pay...income to debt ratios for buying a house. I believe I was way ahead of the curve(for my age) with understanding the finance side of things at age 17 when I had to make these decisions(currently a CPA)...but looking back I probably understood about 10% of what I needed to understand to make an informed decision. That said, you make a choice and you have to live with the consequences. Literally everyone can do more to live a more frugal lifestyle to improve their long-term outlook...and in many cases that includes cutting back on some things to pay back student loans faster. There's plenty that can be done going forward to prevent the next generation from encountering a similar issue. I hear the bolded often, but with the VAST majority of high school students, personal finance is an abstract idea. I have a younger family member who LOVES to put posts on social media wishing schools would have taught about investing/paying taxes/balancing a checkbook/etc...rather than quadratic equations and narrative structure. Here's the thing: Wisconsin has required all high schoolers to have taken a personal finance course in order to graduate long before she graduated high school. She absolutely was taught those things, unless her HS business/math instructor was not doing his/her job. Kids ARE being taught foundational concepts of personal finance, including the power of compound interest, investing, budgeting, debt management, etc... but those things are of zero concern to you when you are 16 years old.

Thanks. I was just looking for an explanation. I went to put in a response about my personal experience as a student and now as a teacher, and I was surprised to see it was locked.

It was pretty civil and interesting? What's up?

Nope. She's all about it. Thanks for the heads up, though.

Will it be cheaper to buy tickets ahead of time or wait and pick them up at a kiosk on the strip? We will probably check out a show Sunday night, but Saturday is also a possibility. I've heard all good things about Absinthe. If my wife is on board, I'm leaning that way.

This is good to know. Thanks.

This is all great information. Thanks. The Book sounds intriguing. I'll have to take it easy on my drink consumption, though, at $8 a pop.

Good help. I'm staying at the Flamingo. I'm open to going anywhere. Again, only my 2nd time going, and I'm hardly a high roller, but do like to gamble. What kind of cost are we looking at if we settle into a sportsbar and eat and drink during the game? Absinthe was one that came up. My wife mentioned O and Zumanity as ones she'd heard were good and would be interested in.

Heading there frost for a few days. 2nd time going. 2 questions: 1) Looking to watch the Badgers game at a sports book and place a few bets. Is this going to be fun? I’ve never spent a moment inside a book. 2) My wife wants to see a show. Recommendations?

Yup. My refund posted yesterday and went through today.

Bought tickets to NLDS game 3 and I haven't received a refund yet. Should I be overly concerned?

Not sure why people are hot to give Moose a 3 year deal. It always depends on the number, but he seems like a prime candidate to break down. This year was the outlier of the past 3 offensively. If his SLG ends up being a one year surge, his .310 career (.329 in this BIG past year) isn't very appetizing.

In my mind Arcia’s future hinges on C and/or 3b. If we sign Grandal and Moose, Arcia may be back. If we sign one of the two it gets foggy. If we sign neither, we have to upgrade SS offensively since we will likely be taking major steps back in those two spots offensively. C for sure anyway.

So, about that new contract for Yelich... Freak injuries have to make players a bit more risk aware. There's definitely upside for CY to sign a "team friendly" (read: fair) deal before becoming a FA. That deal is probably $25 million+ per year, though. Do the Brewers tie that money up into a guy who'll be in his mid/late 30s by the end of the deal?