I see you’re catching lots of flak in the comments, and a lot of it is about subjective points you made regarding things like “worth” and “consent” and judgement calls you’re making when it comes to your debt and how it relates to your experience.

On the surface, it seems that I had a very similar educational experience to you. I was bait & switched, as far as my university goes. And I’m not exaggerating. My school has repeatedly come under fire (legally and otherwise) for actively misrepresenting the resources it had and benefits it claimed to offer to prospective students. My school’s accreditation was put in suspension for over 80% of my time there. Since their reputation was so damaged, they began to close my campus, stripping us of staff and resources (which were limited in the first place).

I paid about 45% of what it costs to attend an Ivy League university, and I received (in my very angry opinion) far less than 45% of Ivy League type services and quality.

Even though my school was “caught,” many other schools are not caught. And we are all on the hook for those thousands and thousands of dollars.

I did not get a reduction in my tuition as my school was failing to deliver what I was meant to be paying for. The cost and return didn’t match up. So, in that respect, I understand and sympathize with much of what you said.

However one goes about dealing with their student loans (ethics and morality aside), the core issue is that our higher education system is, indeed, broken. No other industry that I know of has increased price tags by over 500% in less than 30 years, while simultaneously becoming a standard that all teenagers must consider and move forward with if they want to “make something” of themselves. They sell us college by instilling fear, and little else.

I went to college, like everyone told me to. The badly needed information that I could have used before pulling the trigger didn’t exist when I was 17. That’s important to remember, when people tell me I should have “done research” to figure out if I should have gone. I would have been hard pressed to find data that suggested I should run in the other direction when it was only available in the future.

People also like to say, “You shouldn’t have gone if you couldn’t pay for it.” Do you know many 17-year-olds with $20k-$80k (or more) in their bank account? Do you know any adults with that kind of cash? If we operate on this logic, this makes higher ed only for the economically elite, which is exactly the opposite of what they preach to you in high school when you shop for college. “It’s for everybody, and everyone can make something of themselves!” It’s also the opposite of how you build a strong and stable economy/society.

I went to school. Then, I became a sex worker.

I am furious about my educational experience, and how badly it hinders me today. In all of that, I identify. I hope that people can see that so many components of this type of story are valid and important, and they can set aside comments about your morals in order to see what the real social issues are.