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I heard the most incredible thing yesterday. One of my co-workers has a son who’s about my age and the son has a girlfriend who has – I’m not making this up - $100,000 in student loan debt.

A hundred thousand bucks.

Apparently she went to law school, but didn’t pass the bar exam and was working as a legal assistant earning maybe $20,000 a year. Note I said was. She got canned from the job.

A hundred thousand bucks.

Luckily, if you can call it luck, she managed to get into a fixed 4%, 30 year loan to pay this off.

A hundred thousand bucks. A hundred freaking thousand dollars in student loans?! Thirty years to pay it off? Thirty years?  If she’s lucky, she’ll have this paid off in time to retire…

I didn’t go to a big bucks school so this just blows me away. I attended the local community college, got a great education, didn’t have to take out a student loan and my entire time at college cost my parents less than five grand. Of course, I lived at home and commuted but still…I just can’t fathom having that much in student loan debt. I mean, $100,000 to buy a house, sure. But…student loans? Good Lord. I hope that diploma had some gold leafing on it.

And why, I ask, is secondary education so damn expensive? Okay, she went to law school which is big bucks no matter what, but one of the reasons I went to the local community college instead of the state university is because I couldn’t afford the university. But does the bigger price tag really mean a better education? 

Hell. President Bush went to Yale. Lookit where that high price education has all of us now…