I wouldn't call myself a victim of the college-loan scandal. I would however call myself an unwilling participant. I see plenty of opining in this thread so far. Might as well jump in :)

One big recurring element in many of these comments is this idea that the private schools are a rip-off, while the cuddly old state schools are the choice of the smart, frugal, cost-conscious twentysomething. There's just one problem: state tuition has been rising faster than inflation and real wages for quite a while now. Certainly not as quickly Ivy League institutions of course. And no doubt State U will be cheaper than Ivy U. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that State U is the panacea to the cost problem. While it might have made sense at one point to live at home and work part time --or full time but only during the summer-- now it doesn't matter what you do for work because it couldn't possibly pay off the tuition and fees for the semester and leave you with something left over to coast on. And that's assuming of course that you're still with Mom and Dad who've got room and board covered for you.

Consider my own anecdotal case. At 18 I was accepted to Colorado School of Mines. Nearly a full ride. I still had to come up with about 3k over the summer. After 8 weeks of stocking shelves on the night shift at the local Wal-Mart, I was close enough. Academically I crashed and burned my first semester. Thankfully I still retained aid while on probation. But then sophomore year came. My old aid remained while prices jumped by 4.5 percent on out of state tuition. I crunched the numbers and figured that if such a trend continued, I could be looking at tens of thousands in loan obligations. Combined with a depression of most epic proportions, I dropped out and returned to Texas shortly before finals my third semester. I then spent three semesters at home doing the Austin Community College grind, picking up as many credits as I could, trying desperately to get into UT Austin --where I had previously been admitted at 18-- before resigning myself to Texas State. ACC was a wonderful cost to benefit ratio despite its size at least. At Texas State, not so much. I'm nearly entirely on the hook for 4.5k in tuition/fees every semester for an Electrical Engineering degree that I still had at least five semesters to go in finishing. And of course that 4.5k doesn't factor in a grueling Austin-San Marcos commute that of course implies not just gas but maintenance as well. Really, I'm looking at about 30k in loan obligations anyway by the time graduation comes around this Spring.

My transcript is a lost cause, no doubt. I'm sure UT Austin feels they dodged a bullet when they reviewed my records from Colorado and mailed off their form rejection letters that I still keep in a box somewhere next to the old admission packet. I wouldn't expect anyone to give me free money in exchange for the straight A's they consider to pass for academic rigor, because my track record provides ample evidence that I simply won't pull that off. I am intimately aware that my own personal disregard for grades, the only even half-reliable indicator for universities to gauge potential (half-reliable), leaves me cut off in ways that are my own doing.

But for fuck's sake, I'd really like to be able to pay my own way without taking out tens of thousands in loans to do it or otherwise take a decade of time getting a 4-year degree. I'd like to have the experience of my aunts and uncles whose tuition bills were lucky to reach 4 figures in a given semester. Really, if I was obligated to spend 4 years educating myself, I feel I could have done a right sight better on my own rather than spending the first two years dicking around getting the "well rounded" education that I had already spent 12 years prior attaining in grade school. But an employer will absolutely require that four year degree to even consider me --before they then spend another year or two bringing me up to speed on the state of the art before I can really be productive on the team, of course.

I keep hearing about all these choices I made. Quite frankly, there weren't that many options to begin with if your goal was to be anything other than a working class wage slave for the rest of your life.