- What is the burden of loan in front of a lucrative career?
- Posted By:
- Kathy H
- Posted On:
- 01-Jun-2010
-
Higher education or rather college education adds value to your resume. It lands you better opportunities and opens up many windows as well. Therefore, our parents and elders constantly push those who have the potential for higher education.
And more the population of such highly educated people only spells betterment for the economy of the country. But there is a slight or rather a huge glitch in this belief now. It so happens that when a student plans to go in for higher education, finances have to be arranged for immediately. And higher education is expensive.
True, that every parent wants their children to attend the best of the colleges and universities and in front of this dream, loans of crazy amounts seem nothing. Yes, they seem nothing for all those four years that your child attends college. But the expensive dream soon turns into a nightmare as soon as the child has to start paying for the loan.
Students end up taking loans in double digits which run into thousands of dollars. They have to start paying for it once they get to college. Hence these students take up odd jobs within and outside their universities. But sustaining this is not always easy. In fact, they have to take loan after to sustain their cost of studies in the universities.
This means that if the same financial institution refuses to give them a loan again, they end up taking loans from private banks whose interest rates are very high. For all these loans, something has to be kept as security and most of the times; it is the house that the parents mortgage when it comes to securing their child’s education.
But when argued, this decision loses hands down. It is because such decisions are taken purely on an emotional impulse. Frankly, such decisions need to be looked upon as practical because taking loans without thinking would mean that the family along with the child in question will have to continue to pay student loans for decades. If they are unable to do so, they might even loose their house in the process. It paints a grim picture completely.
Interest rates keep increasing and the interest starts to pile as soon as the loan is sanctioned. Students and parents should be well informed because there is no guarantee of what kind of job their child might land soon after college. Not everyone gets into a high paying firm, does he? No. Hence the troubles double up.
Sometimes the highly rated colleges and universities are to be blamed as well. They not really check the financial ability of a student but simply direct them to money lenders who have no problems signing checks. This needs further probe. And even the students later on file for bankruptcy; they cannot shake off the education loans. It is not what the law allows. Therefore, they will be cornered from all side.
Such issues need better probes and understanding. Students should be counselled along with their parents.