There's a common theme in many high school personal finance classes and that theme is the fear of student loan debt. With popular influencers like David Ramsey often speaking about how horrible any kind of debt is and putting much emphasis on student load debt I believe that these sort of "influencers" are having a negative affect on those with the potential to go to college and be successful.
I was speaking with a friend that will be graduating high school this May and she wants to go to college, she has good grades, over 1100 on the SAT, has passion for what she wants to do, and is an overall good student, but she's deathly afraid of student loans. For the college she wants to go to it would cost her $60000 to get the degree she wants and she's terribly scared of the loans she'll have to pay off that she was actually considering not going to college.
The job she wants is to be a practitioner which according to the BLS has an average yearly salary of almost $100,000 a year. I told her that if she believes she has the potential and is willing to stick with the degree than she can easily pay off that debt in a few years, yet, she's still very scared of simply having the debt at all.
I've also noticed more recently that some of my friends about to graduate from high school that also have the potential to do well in college and want to go to college are also very afraid of student debt even though all of them are planning on seeking high paying careers in STEM fields.
I feel like this stigma we have about student debt has gone too far since the last election with all the talk about the student debt crisis and I believe that it has persuaded students with the potential to easily pay off that debt after college decide not to go. What do you think about this biz?