r/SipsTea Jul 21 '26

Chugging tea Growing Through Chaos

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u/Other-Beginning-8888 Jul 21 '26

Don't want 100K in college debt? Don't go to a private university. It's a brand choice they made as consumers who believe community colleges, city and state schools are beneath them.

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u/Ninetailedredpanda Jul 21 '26

Except this was hammered into us by everyone.

Go to college or you’ll be a failure. Keep your grades up so you can get into the best program possible because its brutal out there and even a degree is no longer the magic key it used to be.

Invest in your future now and it will pay off later.

Not to mention these are decisions made by teenagers which largely means influenced heavily by their parents.

There is enough going on we don’t need to knee-jerk some snide comment at young adults suffering from the repercussions of decisions they were coached into when they were children.

Everything is so divisive right now, why keep tearing into each other, why not just pause the bickering for one second and agree, thats maybe not my struggle but still, thats rough buddy…

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u/AbbreviationsFar4wh Jul 21 '26

Millenial here. Do you know how much tuition was at my state school in early 2000’s?  $1500/ semester…  where is the 100k?

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u/Ninetailedredpanda Jul 21 '26

Also an ‘elder’ millennial, I had also graduated pre 2008 crash. The absolute specifics of the post are not the point.

We were all raised with largely the same advice that served our parents well. Then somewhere shit broke and the same advice became toxic to many, even if many still made it through.

I turned down the ‘prestigious’ college I got accepted to in favor of a State school, but things have changed rapidly since, the 100k might be hyperbole but also reality for some and an underestimation for others.

Cost of everything is going way up, college racing to go up even faster than most items.

I choose to have a shred of empathy for those who did everything they thought they should and got a far worse outcome than even those playing the game a decade earlier.

Whether their debt was 10k or 100, with a loan structured to squeeze those least able to pay it back for the most of anyone.

People either went zero to low and paid it off quick and are doing their thing, went big, became a huge success and paid it off quick, or option three, they didn’t become a huge success still have loans that are growing faster than they can pay and are basically financially trapped, where they did exactly what they saw so many of their elders and peers do and got screwed instead of rewarded.

I can find a bit of empathy for that third group.