I was just reading an article about Cortney Munna. She has $97,000 in college debt and is struggling to pay it back and is questioning her decision to amass the debt in the first place. The article talks a lot about who is responsible. At one point in the article the author questions New York University’s actions and wonders why they didn’t tell Cortney to transfer to a cheaper school. Huh?
This article screams “personal responsibilityâ€. Whether it be Cortney, or her mother. They both should have had the basic knowledge to know that 1) amassing $97K in school debt is not a good plan and 2) the burden this debt will cause her for many years because, even in bankruptcy, there will be no way to shed it. I feel bad for them, but at the same time, I think they should have thought a lot harder about what they were getting themselves in to. It appears that the mother doesn’t have a lot of personal finance knowledge which probably contributed to the overall situation. My parents weren’t financially savvy but, even at the age of 19, I knew amassing a large amount of debt wasn’t a good idea. I posted about the value of a “high cost college†years ago with the general view that attending a high cost college to obtain a low value degree was a bad idea. In this case, Cortney spent all that money getting a religious/women’s studies degree. If that’s her passion, great, but my estimation is that she could have learned much of the same information at a lower cost state university. I don’t believe she got a good return on her investment because her earning potential with that degree from NYU is most likely not enough to justify the high cost of the degree.
Anyway, it’s worth reading. Go check it out.