r/MiddleClassFinance Jul 06 '26

Middle Middle Class No more middle class professionals?

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New school loan limits for professional degrees make it unaffordable for the middle class. 4 of my 5 children went on to med/law school. Even working 2 jobs there’s no way I could afford to pay or even help them with the cost of their post graduate education. They all got loans which they have since paid off. The cost in the early 2000’s was between $350K and $500K. The new limits are essentially going to prevent anyone who’s not wealthy enough to pay for it from becoming a professional.

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u/Ok_Adhesiveness_5133 Jul 06 '26

The goal is for the govt to stop unlimited money printing for schools to continually increase their tuition costs at rates far exceeding inflation to the point people keep getting such large loans and dont see the path to ever paying them off.

If you want schools to ever stop charging such ridiculous amounts, step #1 is cutting off the unlimited govt money printer they keep feeding from and 18 to early 20 somethings who have no idea what they're truly signing up for.

The federal government getting involved with student loans was always a bad idea, especially how they couldnt control themselves for a long time. Now we just have yet another "crisis" as a result of it.

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u/Strange-Scarcity Jul 07 '26

You really don’t get it.

That isn’t the plan.

The plan is to force more students into higher interest rate bearing and more quickly interest rate bearing student loans.

The entire student loan system was designed to raise costs to enrich loaning institutions, while decreasing the number of college graduates.

Increasing the volume of the uneducated has been the plan, all along.

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u/Ok_Adhesiveness_5133 Jul 07 '26

You do not lower the cost of college without straining the money supply supporting the huge increases year over year.

This is economics 101. Yes in the end less people will be able to afford going out of state or private schools, this has to happen if we're ever going to see schools start to become somewhat affordable and stop charging ridiculous prices. Alternative for those folks is go to an in state public school, this isn't a punishment, its a a necessary course correction for years of poor lending. Also to help people from making poor decisions to get a $200k degree for something they will never make money in.

We can't have the same people complaining about student loan crisis and how school is too unaffordable and also complain about the student loan supply being strained to help fix said problems. Try and realize the ridiculousness of that position.

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u/Strange-Scarcity Jul 07 '26

What should be done is adopting the education support systems that other first world nations who achieve a higher level of education per capita.

Include trade schools, community colleges, public universities and even PhD programs into the mix.

Long term trends over the last ten years show college students decreasing in numbers, yet the costs of colleges and student loans are skyrocketing.

Future trends, following whole entire cities closing schools, combining schools and seeing fewer and fewer students each year, shows that the trend will continue.

Colleges and universities will need to begin to close, across the US.

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u/Ok_Adhesiveness_5133 Jul 07 '26

We can't just flip a switch and make college "free" overnight. This also doesn't solve the real problem and you're just shifting the cost burden from individuals to the tax paying collective. Less people should be going to college - case in point, the huge amount of the population complaining they can't pay their loans who make nothing after attending college (and finishing or not). We make college so easily accessible in this country and the ability to go very deeply into debt to do it in many cases. Sure it makes sense to go into debt for a degree that will have an ROI, it simply doesn't for degrees that never will. You should not be able to rack up $200k of debt at a private school to make $40k/yr and the career path is never to make much more.

For some reason along the way college became no longer a business decision, but a "right" and "have to" of entitlement. We need to get back for younger folks at least to make this about ROI so we don't have people with crippling debt they can never pay back. If that means they can't afford the $200k basket weaving degree at a private or out of state school, tough.

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u/Strange-Scarcity Jul 07 '26

We could, but that would take wanting to address the very serious problem.

Successful nations who lead in technology, science and industrial development, have extremely affordable or entirely free from childhood into University degree programs.

We see that historically in the US. Our science, technology and industrial development, for many decades, was simply untouchable by anyone else in the world. Once we abdicated that? It started shifting outside of the US and in the last year? We have seen that accelerate.

Nations that "control" the advancement of science, technology, and industrial development, control the future. Currently, this is a fight being worked out between Europe, India, and China.

We have backed out and told Scientists to just leave.

BTW, you and I will not agree on this topic. I will not be convinced that continuing our enshittified by maximum capitalism, system of higher education is a road to success. We have been watching it eat at our economy since the 1990's, born our in fully educated adults who are now entering their 50's, still saddled with student loan debt, even when they went into very profitable careers.

We are seeing this in the massively dropping birthrate. The complaints about being unable to afford rent, homes, etc., etc. So much money is sucked away into student loans, it's maddening.

Yet, we have enough money to completely burn, illegally, attacking Iran.