It's not like people are forced to take student loans.

[magical thyme]

147. ok. calculus actually is a requirement for many degrees

my more advanced degree requires it, along with any of the sciences. I guestimated the student loan payments to within $20 of what they actually turned out to be.

"I fully agree that the university administrations lie to incoming students about the future value of their investment. They are essentially investment salesmen who work on a commission."

The same can be said of the HR person who deliberately lied about the salary range, overstating the starting salary by 25%, to lure in more students, thus increase competition for jobs and drive salaries down. Which appears to have actually been going on in my situation, since 2 of us were told the inflated starting salary and both of us did our financial planning based on that starting range.

One of us is young, handsome, and has his whole life ahead of him to work through it. He's smart enough to be a doctor, he grew up in a health care family, and I think this is his longer-range plan, using this job as a stepping stone while he gets his more advanced degrees.

The other of us was mid-50s at the start of the program, too young to retire and too old to be desired and hired, and entered the program due to being good in science and math, and the 100% employment with projected growth rate.

Personally, I have been financially ruined by this. To make it worse, I already had a halfway-decent part time job that paid almost as much as the true starting salary for my new job, I took on additional student loans and left the paying job to stay in a program I absolutely loathed because the existing job wouldn't pay the student loans.

Had I been told the correct salary range, I would never have entered the program. Had I learned of the income based repayment program in time, I never would have finished it.