With college grads facing at least $25,000 in debt after graduation, some prospective students are opting to turn down expensive, prestigious institutions. For instance, there's Daniel Schwartz, who was accepted to Cornell but decided to go to CUNY's Macaulay Honors College: The Wall Street Journal reports, "Mr. Schwartz says his family could have afforded Cornell's tuition, with help from scholarships and loans. But he wants to be a doctor and thinks medical school, which could easily cost upward of $45,000 a year for a private institution, is a more important investment. It wasn't 'worth it to spend $50,000-plus a year for a bachelor's degree,' he says." But isn't it worth $50,000/year to see Vinny at Columbia or to name drop Cornell like the Nard Dog? more ›

Students graduating from college in 2010 had an average debt load of $25,250, up five percent from 2009. And unless they're lucky enough to score a highly-coveted job at a collection agency, chances are these students are unemployed or underemployed. It's bleak! How bleak is it? It's so bleak that college graduates today face the highest unemployment rate in recent history: 9.1%. Good thing a college education is about intellectual enrichment and not just some institutionalized bourgeois method for joining the middle class. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] Student loans will account for more than $1 trillion worth of debt this year, amazingly set to surpass credit card debt. But there is a presidential candidate who is brave enough to free you from all this debt by never allowing you to get federal assistance to go to school in the first place: Dr. Ron Paul. "Just think of all this willingness to want to help every student get a college education," Paul said on NBC's Meet the Press. more ›

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has made misleading practices in the student loan industry one of his major issues (see the AG's info on student lending), and yesterday he announced seven companies will follow a "code of conduct for their marketing". Campus Door, EduGap, GMAC Bank, Graduate Loan Associates, Nelnet, Nextstudent and Xanthus were found to have questionable practices--mailing fake checks or false rebates, offering gifts (iPods) to distract from "sometimes onerous" loan terms, and making false representations about private loans being better than lower-cost federal loans. Cuomo said, "I commend the eight lenders who have today signed the code... It is unconscionable for lenders to entice students into loans that are not best for them.” more ›