I can't imagine graduating college owing $900 a month

[magical thyme]

3. They never really tell you what the loans will cost

Even Federal stafford loans, they leave up to you to figure out what the payments will be.

As an adult with experience in having paid off a mortgage, I was able to appropriately "guestimate" my loan costs. I pegged it at approximately $100/month per $10K in loans, and rounded up to the next hundred dollar figure, and turned out to be pretty accurate.

Thank freakin' dawg for the Income Based Repayment program that Obama instituted for recent grads into the jobless market, because it never dawned on me that the HR department of the local hospital would blatantly lie about the salary range in my field, increasing it by a full 25%, because the difference was how I *expected* to be able to pay off the student loans in 10 years and return to a slight savings so that maybe when I was 70 I could retire without living on what I could grow or forage for.

Instead, I am barely treading water and, barring the lottery, will carry this effing debt load until I'm in my 80s, after which it will be forgiven and I will owe taxes on the forgiven amount, which will be astronomical since I can't even pay off the interest on the loan, so I will end up thrown out in the street. Unless I die first, which is my current plan.

Everything, everything these days is a scam and a bald-faced lie. You can trust no figures or claims from anybody. In my field, the government *still* claims 14% growth, even while hospitals everywhere are downsizing. The government also claims roughly 50/50 male/female, but everywhere I've been it's more like 90% female (i.e. pink ghetto). The university claims 100% employment (although they don't actually say 'in your field'), yet I had classmates who applied all over the country and couldn't get interviews, and the same situation exists for this year's class.