As someone who has degrees from both an Ivy League school and a CUNY school, my advice is this: Save your money and go to a top-tier CUNY school. I don't have time to elaborate now...maybe later.
My own children went to SUNY because that was what we could afford. They are both doing very well and have wonderful careers. I don't understand how parents can allow their children to go into such debt.
I will never regret going to the small, "best-kept-secret" school that offered me a 4/5s scholarship to go there. I graduated with very little debt, and not a day goes by that I don't think fondly of someone I knew there. I'm not at any disadvantage because I didn't go to NYU--where I could have gone, but where I would probably be $60,000+ in debt.
Although there are cheaper places to live than right across the street from the Brooklyn Museum, too.
Cry me a river. Schools is expensive, but the banks don't set tuition. It's simple, you borrow money, you pay it back. Do folks make bad choices? Yup. Do schools always do what is in the student's best interest? Nope. I feel for Fennoy, but come on! Borrowing 95K for interior design? Gee-Whiz.
I agree that Fennoy made mistakes, Chris. But before you completely place the blame on her, let's remember that the Pratt financial aid department was involved in the student lender kickback scandal - meaning people in that department and/or the school itself was receiving kickbacks and perks to steer kids toward certain private student loan lenders, even if those lenders were charging higher rates and/or higher fees.
Did you know when students called Pace University's financial aid dept. and asked for advice on loans, they were transferred directly to Sallie Mae where a Sallie Mae employee answered the phone and identified himself/herself as a Pace University employee?
It's not like college students aren't being manipulated by the colleges, the lenders and the banks. They are.
Does that mean Fennoy shouldn't live within her means? Nope - she should. She needs to stop eating out, cut down on her partying (or cut it out completely), bring her lunch to work for a few years and get those loans paid down, not to mention stop adding to her debt w/ her credit card use.
But let's be open about this - we live in a society that now says "Why save for later what you can buy on credit today?" Fennoy has gotten the message along w/ so many other Americans - which is why credit card debt in America is now 100% of GDP and total credit market debt is 350% of GDP.
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