If you're considering going back to school to learn a trade, like cooking or cosmetology, consider carefully how you'll pay for it. If a California lawsuit succeeds, it may become harder to acquire federal student aid for these kinds of programs.
From NPR.org:
"Many former students say that with [their expected starting] income, it's virtually impossible to keep up with their student loan payments. Newbies may spend years as a line cook; the average salary, according to the online industry magazine Star Chefs, is less than $29,000 a year.
Attorney Michael Louis Kelly represents California students suing the parent company of Cordon Blue, Career Education Corp. His clients say the school promised something it cannot deliver.
'The model doesn't work,' Kelly says. 'You can't go to school, accumulate $30- or $40- or $50,000 in debt, and then go into an industry where you're going to have to start out at $8 or $12 an hour anyway.'"
Now the Department of Education is looking into ways to regulate cooking and other for-profit schools to make sure the students aren't being taken for a ride. But the schools are worried that enrollment will drop precipitously if federal funds for trade schools evaporate.
What do you think? Should culinary and other trade schools be held accountable for the disparity between tuition costs and expected post-grad pay rates? Or should the students, knowing industry pay rates when they enroll, be allowed risk taking out loans that they may ultimately not be able to pay back? Let us know in the comments.
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