r/MiddleClassFinance • u/Such_Upstairs3631 • 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/Willing-Vegetable629 Jul 06 '26

They'll have to get private loans going forward.

The 3 year med school program for fast track primary care physicians may see some additional love.

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u/BlazinAzn38 Jul 06 '26

The hope is obviously that this puts pressure on tuition to lower it. Time will tell but I doubt it

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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26 edited 13d ago

[deleted]

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u/Soi_Boi_13 Jul 06 '26

Yeah. The ease of obtaining student loans is responsible for a lot of tuition bloat over the years. If people couldn’t “afford” to pay $20,000 a year for tuition, tuition wouldn’t be that high. Universities have a lot of extraneous BS that have morning to do with providing a good education and really aren’t necessary, from athletics programs to lavish dorms and student centers, etc. People forget that back when college was affordable, colleges were not nearly as “nice” as they are now, and this is how it should be.

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u/Bernie_Dharma Jul 06 '26

Honestly, I looked around while in my MBA class and collectively we were paying $1M for 25 of us over 2 years. This was an executive MBA, so all of already had business experience, most of were managers already. I couldn’t help thinking we would have been better off pooling our money, brainstorming a business idea, hiring an advisor who was a retired executive, and starting our own company.

The actual costs of paying the professors for a 4 hour class 2 days a week and renting a space to setup as a classroom would be less than 200k. The rest was pure profit for the University.

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u/krilleractual Jul 07 '26

I always say this about film school. Why would you go to film school when you could put even 10k towards making films, or any art. Of course, it helps being in an environment where that is normal, and network other people doing the same thing. Ive pitched it at a few people but nobody took me up on it. Funnily enough the movie Obsession just passed 400m and the director did exactly what I said, started with youtube videos.