One afternoon, I was shopping at your usual daily Supermarket trying to find the necessities needed to sustain my life. Lo and behold while walking through the aisle, I find a brightly red magazine on a rack. It was a ConsumerReports magazine warning readers about one of the many dangers out there in America, for it was titled “I Kind Of Ruined My Life By Going To College.” I can tell you one thing the book it spoke to me (not like literally spoke to me), but in a philosophical way. I can relate to the story. I am one of those millions of citizens that owe student loan debt.

The magazine showed how education and the big banks preyed on unsuspecting Americans, who went to college, and now have an outstanding burden of debt that may threaten their way of life. These people had plans for the future, but are now stagnant and unable to move forward. One person shown in the magazine says she owes about $152,000 dollars’ worth of student loan debt. She has a good job now, but is unable to penetrate the debt.

Education in my opinion, has no true soul and has become an industry only desiring profit. The Department of Education has made billions off the suffering of others. If I knew about this information prior to going to college, I would have never went. There are plenty of programs online, and outside that can teach you the necessary skills at free of cost. Skills you can learn for free, which is paid by the state, to help decrease unemployment. I even found programs that will teach you the skills that I learned in college for free. Colleges out there that can provide you free courses to help you gain technical skills. You just need to know where to look to get access to these skills.

Here is a small history about student loans. I think there was an earlier date into which student loans started, but this is what I know. It started with the Higher Education Act signed in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. The law was to help provide students with financial assistance. It increased the federal finances given to universities. Throughout the years federal and state money has been cut, so the big heads at the colleges had to increase tuition.

Students have to pay out of their own pockets a certain percentage to make up for the total educational cost. Private corporations have decided to take on some of the debt collection from the DOE (Department of Education). That is why we have vicious educational debt collectors, who do not care of the state of the borrower. It has been speculated that higher education costs will increase even further over the years.

Society has this mindset that everyone should go to college; however, there are no warnings of the repercussions of what mostly happens after you go to college. It feels as if college has become a privilege, and no longer a right. Statistics in the magazine showed of those who said college wasn’t worth the money there was about 45 percent of people with student loan debt that said college was not worth the cost. I am pretty sure that percentage of people will be increasing soon. I will agree that college is not worth the cost. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I also received no help from a parent on financial aid decisions. Plus, I have been unemployed for a very long time! I have nothing.

The sad part about all of this is that people, who worked hard to get their degree, will end up not receiving a job based upon the curriculum they have studied. People who went to college will be unemployed for a long time. People will end up having a useless degrees or a job that pays less. Plus, colleges that say degrees secure your future in getting a job that is not always the case. Education and degrees are created equal. Please do as much research as you can regarding College and Student Loans before rushing into college.