Why ScamBloggers Are Important: The Media Isn't Doing Its Job

Angus the English Bulldog knows to run away from student debt. (I love this photo!)

We let the other scambloggers respond to yesterday's NY Times' "news" that legal jobs are being outsourced to India. Angel and I are frankly too tired of being told "news" that we reported many times earlier this year. Just check out our list of links covering Indian outsourcing below:

Canary in the Legal Coal Mine: T14 Temp Jobs in India
Job Offers Galore in Bangalore
I'm Green With Envy
You Are Not Alone. England Suffers Tooooooooooooooooo!
I Borrowed This From Another Scamblogger
Stop Legal Outsourcing on Facebook. Join Now!

If things couldn't get worse, I came across the article, 7 Reasons To Go Back To School Now, at the San Francisco Chronicle website. Unless you are a rich retiree in the Bay area with nothing else to do with your millions other than go back to school, for goodness' sake do not listen to this type of advice. Just yesterday, Scammed Hard reported on another one of these types of articles on AOL that listed attorney/lawyer as the #2 job in their list of 10 jobs that paid $50 an hour. Are these writers simply clueless about the state of the nation or are they working for a loan company or for-profit website like Gina Pogol?

None of these articles mention a single thing about debt and the average amount of loans one must take out to get a graduate or professional degree. Do they realize that there aren't enough new jobs being created to match the thousands of new graduates each year or that Paul Krugman and serious journalists are worried about "Japanification" and a lost decade? Do you want to take the risk of taking out $150k in student loans when there aren't any jobs guaranteed by your school or our government when you graduate? A BIDER rule we use a lot here is to not buy things you can't afford because credit cards and student loans are akin to death. A $150k degree counts as something you can't afford without taking out loans for most people. Don't gamble with your future.

And shame on journalists who write shit like this.

Finally! A Money Back Guarantee, but Not for Law School

Lansing Community College is offering what we've all been asking for, a money-back guarantee--but on a 6 week program to become call-center specialists, pharmacy technicians, quality inspectors and computer machinists. The total cost of the program? $2,400. Still, I admire their intention to do right by students. You know that schools like SeTTTon Hall would never offer such a program, because they would never want to put their money where their stats are, in the TTTrash.

This article, which was forwarded to me by Tiger, offers other insight (i.e. the shit we've been harping on for the last 9 months) such as this:

The real question that families, institutions of higher learning, and lawmakers will need to confront soon is this: Have we as a society dramatically oversold the financial benefits of higher education? It's hard to argue that that's not the case. Back in February, it was reported that the $800,000 increase in lifetime earnings that The College Board and other institutions claimed was associated with a bachelor's degree had been quietly reduced to just $450,000 based on further research. Yeah, sorry about that -- and don't even think about asking for a refund.

Meanwhile, student debt loads are exploding upward along with default rates and, as I reported Thursday on DailyFinance, during the first four months of 2009, fewer than half of college graduates under 25 were working at jobs that required a degree -- and that doesn't include the huge percentage of students who drop out. Marty Nemko of US News & World Report has noted that "among college freshmen who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class, 76 of 100 won't earn a diploma, even if given 8 1/2 years."

And this is without even mentioning graduate school. Today, I was passing a girl and her friend on the street and I heard her say, "Law School." I did a 180 and chased her down. I spent about 40 minutes telling her not to go. She was shocked to hear that lawyers weren't earning what she is making now. Spread the news far and wide. If college didn't set you up financially, the way you think it should have, then MORE school (or a glorified extended college education offered by Law School) will definitely take you from zero equity, to negative equity. You will be worse off if you just "try it" so that you can say you're a lawyer at the end of the day. It's not glamorous. It doesn't pay well. And it will leave you up to your neck in late payment notices.

It's simple math, kids! Zero is better than -$120K. Or, if you took out loans for college, -$50K is better than -$170K. Especially if the chances of making more than $40K/year are slim to nil.

So, back to this money back thing. I think it's a great idea for this sort of program, but I really won't be happy until Law School close due to lowered enrollment. That will make me happy. They will never offer these programs because there is no way to predict or help your alumnae find jobs where there are none.

So, I'll just hit the streets and continue to spread the news until my dream becomes reality. Oh yah, and I love this line from the article, which epitomizes the scam we've all bought into:

Can you think of any other product that is marketed as an investment for which people will shell out six figures with no guarantee of anything -- and absolutely no recourse if the product (education) does produce the intended result (a well-paying job)?

Nope. I can't.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/college-offers-some-students-a-money-back-guarantee/19432813/?icid=sphere_copyright

(written by Angel, posted by HardKnocks)