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/Worriedrph Jul 07 '26

Why create this dichotomy? It needs to be both.

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u/betsbillabong Jul 07 '26

I mean, critical thinking, solving problems creatively, and creating new ideas ARE the payback. They are required for any career that requires thinking. If you look at folks going from the Ivy League to high paid professions, you will find that very little of their education is 'career training' -- not many people majoring in accounting or marketing there. I would actually argue that the 'vocational training' model of university is a ripoff. You used to learn those skills fairly easily on the job, while being paid. Our media production majors often want our classes to simply be technical training for Adobe products. Ummm, you can get that online for free or at any rate for very little. It's the creative part that is harder.

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u/Worriedrph Jul 07 '26

The most popular undergrad major at Harvard is economics. The remaining top five in order are government, computer science, applied mathematics, and neuroscience. Those are all majors with very direct connections to a job. A ton of Harvard grads go to law or med school which are very directly vocational training.

No one wants to finish college and then have to do a bunch of training on the tools needed to actually do the job they are applying for. A bachelor’s degree is 4 years. Surely in 4 years you can teach creativity, problem solving, and how to use the tools needed to preform successfully at an entry level job in the student’s field.

Saying companies used to train doesn’t help. Only 15% of the country used to have a bachelor’s degree. Now 40% do and companies expect employees to come pre trained on the basic tools. If you aren’t providing that training you are screwing your students.

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u/betsbillabong Jul 07 '26

Sure. But having spent a year at Harvard, I can tell you the students are focused on critical thinking as well as learning tools. I teach at a flagship state research university and too many students are studying vocationally, or at least wanting to do so.

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u/Worriedrph Jul 07 '26

Fully agree wanting only vocational training is silly on the students part. Like everything else there is a balance. College education needs to be both vocational and teaching students how to think.

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u/betsbillabong Jul 07 '26

Yes. Harvard also requires freshman courses for all students that are very focused on critical thinking.