Leobardo Espinoza Jr. is a student at Topeka High School in Kansas, and I’ve been following his posts on The Choice Blog as he decides where he’ll go to college—especially after he posted that he received a full academic scholarship to one of his fallback schools back in January (The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas).

As he started hearing back from other schools, it became much more difficult for him to choose. It ultimately came down to Amherst and Yale, and when Amherst offered him more in financial aid than Yale, he appealed Yale’s offer and got them to match Amherst’s aid package. “With finances no longer a factor, I continued down my list of things to look for in a college,” he wrote. He chose Yale.

Jeffrey J. Selingo, an editor at large at The Chronicle of Higher Education, has a post in The Choice examining how much a college major matters for students after they graduate from college. Obviously, yes, if you want to go into a STEM field, you should probably major in one of the related majors, but as Selingo argues, “curiosity and the willingness to adapt are more important than what the degree is in.” And even more than what you choose to do, picking up the abilities to communicate well, problem solve and think critically will make graduates more attractive to employers.

Much of these skills, as Selingo points out, can be picked up by engaging in a large research project on campus. For me, that research project was my undergraduate thesis on feminist film theory, which I spent two years working on with three different professors who were all super talented and passionate about their work and in helping me succeed. I actually didn’t need to complete a thesis to graduate from college, but I wanted to conduct research and do something challenging. Obviously, researching and writing a 100-page thesis on feminist film theory has basically zilch to do with running a website about money, but the ability to do research, think critically and approach things with different perspectives have been invaluable to me as a writer and reporter.

In high school, I was a tiger cub, which meant I excelled in all subjects to the satisfaction of my tiger parents. I could have theoretically gone to college and picked a STEM major and done well. But I doubled in English and film and minored in political science and have no regrets about it. I have seen STEM majors become really amazing science reporters and English majors go on to run startups and political campaigns. Does the college major matter? The argument is often yes, stop paying tens of thousands of dollars for a liberal arts degree. But if you are doing good work and can point to that work after you graduate, the college major doesn’t matter so much.

Photo: velkr0

“I get four years at McGill for a year at a U.S. college.” More American students are applying to and attending colleges located in Canada as a way to rein in tuition costs.

Ms. O’Shaughnessy said she was trying to counsel a father in New Jersey who was on the verge of making a horrendous financial decision. His daughter had received a full scholarship to attend Rutgers University but her first choice was New York University, which, even with financial aid, would cost the family $32,000 a year. The father, an engineer who was also out of work, said he was going to send her to N.Y.U.

“I can’t even believe he’s considering it,” she said. “I was floored. It’s irrational.”

The Times debates: Choose the college with a more affordable sticker price, or pay top dollar for the one with a prestigious name? You know where I’d fall in this discussion—programs matter more than prestige, and I’d lean toward the one with the affordable sticker price (plus, if you really didn’t want to attend a college, you probably wouldn’t have applied to it in the first place). Also, I have an unemployed friend from Harvard you may be interested in talking to.

The Times’s Choice blog is answering a few questions this morning about choosing between colleges after students have been accepted into a handful of them, and it’s bringing back those memories from way back when (dream schools, safety schools, financial aid packages!). For me, I remembering it coming down between choosing between an expensive private school across the country that offered some aid and the much more affordable state school with a partial scholarship. The student debt crisis wasn’t a thing yet, but since I was paying my own way, I ran the numbers and quickly decided on the state school (UCI).

One of my favorite questions from the list is by “Water polo mom”:

This is both a philosophical and a practical question. My son is deciding between two out-of-state schools, both known for the major he wants to pursue, engineering. One is less expensive and is offering him a scholarship. The other isn’t offering him a penny, and that means he’ll come out with twice the debt. Of course, he likes that one more, despite us airing our concerns. As parents to an almost 18-year-old, do you say no or do you let him go where he wants and shoulder that financial burden for years to come?

I’d have the kid read our student debt series and have him think about it more, but would also be a little bit relieved that he’s pursuing engineering. The college admission officers provide the parent with a solid answer.

This comes from Nicole, one of our readers:

“The Sallie Mae article yesterday reminded me that there is a comment period open at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for student loans! They want to hear how student loans, particularly private student loans, have affected lives. You can email them or fill out an online form and have your experience officially entered onto the public record. All the banks and the many many associations that they belong to will be commenting. I hope enough real people see this comment period and drown out those interests.”

The link to email the CFPB or submit your ideas can be found here.

Also servicey is this CFPB post on how students can protect themselves.

I think it’s underreported how incredibly nice the customer service agents at Sallie Mae can be about you not paying back your loan.

Like a lot of people, I took out loans for college, and after graduation, spent my early twenties not making enough money to pay down my debts.

Eventually I took a job at an internet-y, start-up-y, new media, digital-type company where I was nicely compensated, and I started making payments on my loans. I was laid off after 18 months.

When I called Sallie Mae to break the bad news, the customer service agent sighed and told me it was OK, pumpkin—I could put the loan into deferment.

I asked how long I could do that, and I don’t remember what she said, but she certainly didn’t seem to be sweating it, so I figured I wouldn’t either. Pay it back. Don’t pay it back. Pay a little on it. Defer it. Whatever.

I hung up the phone feeling like a fucking champion. I had faced a major financial fear, and it had been resolved thanks to a mutual agreement to not worry about it.

Two years passed, and the loan collected about $15,000 in interest. I got more full-time work and started paying my Sallie Mae bill again, but it looked kinda ugly, and I began to consider deferring it again. They’d let me do it so many times before. I once deferred paying back the loan for a year simply because it was the only way I could afford to deal with the amount of late-charges I’d racked up.

Go to the website, click a few buttons, watch the amount due that month fade to zero, and chuck those payment slips in the recycling bin.

Pondering that option, the other day I logged into Salliemae.com and asked to reset my password—just how I do on the 26th of every month to pay the bill that is due on the 25th.

Right now I can pay a bill. And yet I cannot pay a bill. Paying a bill makes me upset. I get upset because seeing money that I have earned go toward something that will never go away feels futile. I looked at my outstanding balance and was struck by cold terror.

For about three months I’d been ignoring the $20 late charges and just paying the $247 due every month, thinking that the growing past-due balance would either disappear or get so big that it disappeared or… Obama? That $247, by the way, was only going to interest; it wasn’t even touching the principal.

So I called Sallie Mae to figure out what I’d done and what I could do. I started the call by telling the INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL agent that I’d been through periods when I couldn’t pay, but now I was ready to pay aggressively for however long it took to pay this thing down (hopefully not forever).

The agent told me I had set up a plan where I paid about as little as I could, but because of that, what I was paying was only going to interest, which was continuing to accrue. I could change the plan and pay more and some amount of it would go to the principal. This sounded good to me. This is what I wanted. I want to pay more, not less. But the agent kept bringing it back to paying less—so many times that it began to seem illogical to increase the monthly payment plan. I don’t think he was doing so for any other reason than he must get five billion calls every day from people who are like, oh my god, I cannot pay this bill. That’s gotta take a toll on a person.

In fairness, that’s been me for most of my relationship with Sallie Mae. But if a guy is telling you that you can lower your bill, and he seems really cool about it—shouldn’t you do that? Isn’t having a lower bill the point of life?

If I really dig in, maybe I can get the student loan bill lower than the cable bill.

It has taken me wa-a-a-ay too long to realize the difference between a loan payment and a cable bill. If you pay too much for your cable package you can cut back and get the plan that doesn’t include HBO, or you can cancel the whole thing. Don’t pay, and they cut your cable off. There’s no giant number that Time Warner has attached to your social security number that you need to pay down every month.

Loans, on the other hand, are a big number attached to your social security number, and you have to pay them back or the number gets bigger until you give them enough money to make it smaller. Buy some scratch-off tickets. Pack up your shit and disappear.

I’d figured this out with credit cards. Unlike Sallie Mae, credit card people are not very nice when you call them and ask for a lower monthly payment. Unless you can start throwing money at your credit card company in lump sums, you’re basically trapped in a cycle where your minimum payment goes only to interest forever and the amount you owe increases every month. They won’t help you. And so early on in my career as debtor, I paid off my credit cards.

But my experience with Salle Mae has been different. You can pay more to bring the debt down, but you could also pay less and bring the debt up, and they’re cool beans either way. You can also fill out a form and not pay it at all for a while.

Of course, I appreciate how nice the Sallie Mae customer service people have been to me.

I imagine they field a lot of rough calls.

I’ve definitely called them in rough times.

It’s just that there’s an institutional crack, a systemic fuck-up when no one—not even the people at Sallie Mae—acts like they expect these loans to be repaid. They’re just trying to figure out how to help you pay something toward your debt so you don’t get thrown out of a moving boxcar.

I am a person who has a lot of anxiety, embarrassment, and fear tied up in the debt that I owe. I will also admit to being kinda sorta clueless. So carrying all that baggage means that every few years when I experience a moment of clarity or something horrible happens to my ability to draw an income, I call up the owner of my student loan—and I get hosed.

You can’t get rid of student loans, not through bankruptcy or ever. If I’m allowed to grow a loan for YEARS after my education is complete, then who is the one making a living from my education? It’s not me.

Anyway, I visited the cold and logical Salliemae.com after this latest call and figured out a way to not just make payments, but to start paying the thing off. My loan will probably be paid off in ten years. At that point I will have been out of school for 23 years, which is how old I was when I had to make my first payment to Sallie Mae.

Frank Smith lives in Brooklyn.

And here she found — across all types of four-year institutions — the greater parental contributions were, the lower the student grades were.

This finding backs the idea that parental financial support can act as a “moral hazard” in that students make decisions about how seriously to take their studies without having personally made the investment of cash in their educations.

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschik reports about a study showing that college students who have their parents generously pay for their educations get lower grades than those who pay for their own educations. Caveat: Students who have to pay for their own educations have lower graduation rates (because those who can’t afford to pay for college are forced to drop out). So.

Highly distinguished universities, such as the University of Florida and Florida State University, could charge more than others. Tuition would be lower for students pursuing degrees most needed for Florida’s job market, including ones in science, technology, engineering and math, collectively known as the STEM fields.

The committee is recommending no tuition increases for them in the next three years.

But to pay for that, students in fields such as psychology, political science, anthropology, and performing arts could pay more because they have fewer job prospects in the state.

A task force in Florida put together by Gov. Rick Scott has suggested that colleges in the state should require students to pay different tuition depending on what degree they pursue. Basically, the more practical degrees in science and engineering would be cheaper than an arts or humanities degree. You can instantly see the problems with this.

Students who pursue arts degrees will graduate with higher debt loads and enter a job market that won’t pay them the money they need to pay off their education loans. Science and engineering programs are more expensive to run because they must keep up to date with technology, yet students will be paying less for these programs, so these programs will require subsidies. Tuition (and tuition subsidies) will be tied to the Florida job market, but not all students who attend college in Florida stay in Florida after college.

I understand that there are practical reasons for the task force to want to revamp the higher education system according to the market, but it seems very unfair that if you are a good musician, or dancer, or writer, or anthropologist, or whatever else isn’t in high demand, that you have to pay much more to get your degree. There’s something here to consider, but they need to work out some more kinks on this idea to convince me that this is the best idea ever. [via]

Earlier this month, I looked at what I paid as a freshman in college, and compared it to what college freshman at my alma mater are paying today. I had to dig into my college’s archives to see what tuition and fees were when I was 18, but thanks to WNYC’s widget, you can just plug in your school and whatever year you’d like to look at. Who’s looking forward to having a kid and calculating what college will cost him or her?