Several years ago I wrote about how I was preparing to start a Post-Master’s Certificate program in Curriculum Studies. I remember writing that entry and at the time the only phrase I kept hearing go through my head was Chris Rock on the Howard Stern Show saying, “You’re going back to Shawshank!?” after Stern announced he was getting married again. I had that same thought going through my head when I started the Post-Master’s Certificate a few years ago and, in some respects, I have the same thought now as I prepare for this doctoral program.

There is a slight difference between now and then, though. When I started the Post-Master’s Certificate I had that, “Here we go again,” feeling because I was putting myself back in the classroom setting as a student. This time around I don’t have that feeling because I’m going back to the classroom setting as a student, rather I have that feeling because I’m going back to using student loans to finance my education. If you haven’t read my student loan story, then you can get a full rundown of my life with student loans by clicking here. If you scroll through those posts, you’ll find the one where I announce that I’ve fully repaid my student loans.

Though I need to take out student loans to finance my doctoral education, I am in a much different personal and financial place than I was when I finished my Master’s Degree in 2006. For example, after I graduated in 2006 I began working at a company in an entry level-type position making an entry level-type salary. Now, almost 10 years later, I still work at the same company and I’ve obviously progressed in my career. Granted, I don’t have the regular financial capacity to make $2,500 per month payments like I was making at the end of the aggressive, self-imposed repayment plan for my previous student loans. However, I do have the capacity to make payments on my new student loans while I’m still enrolled as a student.

And that’s probably the biggest difference between me being a student in 2015 versus me being a college student from 1999 to 2003 or a graduate student from 2004 to 2006. Today, I can afford to pay down my student loans during the actual semesters when I take them out in the first place. Will I be able to pay down the entirety of each loan during the semester when I’m taking the classes that the loan paid for? Probably not, but I’m in a much better position to try to do that now than I was 10+ years ago.

There are two other differences that I think are worth mentioning outside of the student loan issue. First, this is the first time that I’ll be taking fully online classes. In the past, I’ve successfully completed hybrid courses that are partially online and partially in the classroom. And for the last several years I’ve actually instructed many fully online classes. However, this will be the first time that I am a student in such a class. Second, this is the first time since I completed my Master’s Degree in 2006 where I’ll be taking more than one class per semester. After I graduated with the Master’s Degree, I completed two additional graduate programs by taking one class each semester (outside of textbooks, I didn’t pay to take these classes or to earn these degrees as I was provided with tuition remission at the local college where I work as an Adjunct Professor). The last time I was enrolled in more than one class as a student was during the spring semester of 2006.

All of these comments aside, I’m really looking forward to being engaged in the classroom as a student again. I’m particularly interested in engaging with my new classmates in an all-online setting. And, of course, I’m excited at the prospects of completing the doctoral program and finishing up a lifetime of classroom activity.

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The impetus to write this entry comes from the fact that I often find myself ramping up my quality productivity as the day goes on. Sure, I hit the 3:00pm slump just like the rest of us (we’re actually biologically engineered to need a nap at 3:00pm – more on that in a coming entry). However, I find that as I begin to wind my day down from 9:30pm to 10:00pm, there are often times when I feel like I can really dig into a project and get something completed.

I’ve complained numerous times on this blog about how much I hate my commute. Not only is it physically draining and exhausting, but it eats up a large portion of each day. I think I’ve gotten to place now where I’m ready to pounce on certain action items at 10:00pm – once my body has recovered from the exhaustion of commuting and working all day. And while that might be good information for me to know, it is not necessarily something that I can act on when I have to get up again the next morning and get back to work!

I’ll figure something out. I think that an all-nighter (in my case, I’m talking about staying up until 2pm or 3pm) is necessary every once in a while, especially when you think you can knock out a bunch of tasks during that extra time frame.

Whenever this comes up in a conversation, it’s usually a pretty depressing point in the discussion because it shows a severe lack of understanding as to what a college degree actually does for a person. Obtaining a piece of paper that says “Bachelors of the Arts” or “Bachelor of Science” in any particular discipline does not make you a know-it-all genius on that topic. Yeah, you may know more facts and figures than the average person, but that would be expected, right?

The real benefit of getting that piece of paper is gaining access to an opportunity. That’s right – access to opportunities is what that college degree gets you in the real world. How many times have you looked at job descriptions and they say, “Bachelor’s Degree required?” Even if you’ve seen that requirement just once, you’ve seen how that piece of paper can grant you access to an opportunity that non college graduates cannot access. It’s just the way the business world is these days.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a multitude of excellent, high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. And many people from older generations would argue that the best way to gain better access to opportunities is to enter the military. I would probably agree with that for certain segments of the population today, too. But that doesn’t negate the fact that a college degree is a tremendous help in obtaining access to certain opportunities.

What many college graduates will tell you is that there are other benefits to going to college. In particular, they’d probably cite maturing socially and beginning to build a broad professional network as the top two non-academic benefits. These two benefits can be achieved in any number of ways including joining certain on-campus clubs, fraternities, sororities, student government, honor societies, etc. Those students that choose to engage in a meaningful dialogue with their professors outside of the classroom are probably the smartest students on campus. Why? Well, if you’re a young person starting out, why wouldn’t you want to connect with a professor who might have come from the business world and thus has a large network of seasoned professional contacts? Talk about an easy way to get an internship or a job out of college!

That aspect of the college experience has worked for me. I received my adjunct professor job through the recommendation of two former professors who I got to know outside of the classroom. One of them has also gotten me an online teaching position at a different university. I would have never been able to get these teaching gigs without the network that I built while in college.

There are a lot of aspects of college life that are beneficial to the eventual graduate (and even more benefits to the eventual masters degree graduate or doctoral graduate).

What I’ve been mentally debating is whether or not I want to go finish up a Certificate Program that I (sort of) began a few years ago. Here’s the story as briefly as I can tell it…

Right after I graduated with my undergraduate degree, I enrolled at the same college for a Masters Degree. I enrolled in three classes and was so turned off by the remedial way that some of the professors in the program treated their students that I withdrew from two classes and only finished one of them (with an A, thank you very much). After that decision, I started going to Rutgers and eventually enrolled in – and completed – their masters program in public policy.

Then I was hired at my job and I began to look into Doctoral programs as well as certificate programs. Lo and behold, the program that I was previously enrolled in where I only finished one class had a certificate available for being a Public Relations Specialist. At the same time, my company was looking to have me and some of my coworkers get trained on some other aspects of our business. Since the local college (where I was enrolled and only finished one class) was offering a fundraising course, I took the course and completed it. Well, as a part of my research prior to taking the course, it turns out that both the course I had previously completed and the fundraising course were two of the four courses needed for this certificate. But it gets better…

I researched when the other two courses were offered and they are being offered this fall and next spring. And since I’m teaching at the local college this fall and next spring, I can take these courses for no charge. In essence, I can received this certificate in public relations free of charge.

Jackpot!

Anyway, to sum this story up, now I’m in the process of filling out the application and gathering all of the required information to enter this program and complete the certificate requirements. I’m not entirely sure how (or if) this will help me in my current occupation, but you never know. The one thing that I learned from going to college and graduate school is that the benefit of graduating is not the knowledge (though that’s nice), the benefit is access and networking. Perhaps while I’m enrolled in these two courses I’ll make a connection that could lead me to a job with higher compensation. I love my current job, but given the amount of work that I perform, they certainly aren’t paying me what I’m worth.

Who knows what will happen? All I know is that since I loved going to school, I’ll probably enjoy my time in this program.

For those of you that don’t know, I started repaying my student loans about three years ago after I graduated from graduate school. In total, I racked up around $121,000 in student loan debt. That’s a pretty ridiculous number when you consider that the average student loan debt ranges between $15,000 and $35,000 (it depends on whether you get a bachelor’s degree or you go on for the masters and if you’re in-state vs. out-of-state). Anyway, my student loan debt is clearly head and shoulders above the averages.

But I’ve become pretty proficient with money and making money work for me in the last few years and, as a result, I’ve been able to overpay most of my monthly payments. So the big milestone that I hit is that my student loan debt is now “down” to $100,000! That’s some pretty impressive improvement when it was at $121,000 less than three years ago.

What’s frightening to think about is that if I didn’t have to pay rent since I graduated and if my old truck didn’t consistently breakdown before I donated it, I would have been able to overpay my student loans by another $30,000.. But hey, no reason to look back at that stuff when there is so much positive in the future.

Be on the lookout for another student loan milestone post coming soon when I break the six figure barrier and land in the five figure debt zone ($99,999 in debt). It’s coming quick!

Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

As one of the folks out there who graduated with a Masters Degree plus $121 thousand in student loan debt to boot, I absolutely relate to the last line of that sentence! But when I was a graduate student (and as I study whether or not I want to go back for a Doctorate), I can’t help but agree with the author’s idea here – that most Ph.D programs are designed for students who will do a lot of research on a particular issue in a particular subfield of a larger subfield of an even larger, but oftentimes irrelevant field of study. What’s the point in spending a ton of money, time, and effort on that?!

I believe that our university systems need to focus on creating Ph.D’s of value to an interdisciplinary curriculum. In other words, we need doctoral candidates who resemble the classic renaissance man (or woman). And don’t give me this bull about being a jack of all trades and a master of none. That’s a bunch of crap. Doctoral candidates should know a great deal about a great variety of topics. They should be up to date on current events and understand all sides of the topics relevant to their study. And it’s fine if they want to become a highly specialized expert in one area, but that should be in addition to a larger, general education.

In other words, the value of the new undergraduate education which focuses on greater understanding for a wider variety of topics should be translated, to some degree, to the advanced degree programs. And the big draw should be as the author states in his op-ed – to create Ph.D’s who are able to do more with the education that they’ve received.

Anyway, some things about this loan just make me (and thousands of others, I’m sure) mad:

• Interest Rate: I’m paying some 7.33% interest on my NJCLASS loan. That’s just too high of an interest rate for a borrower like me, who has an 800 credit rating. For comparison’s sake, my Direct Loan from the federal government has a 4.25% interest rate – much more acceptable.
• No Online Payment: I’m not sure how, in the year 2009, NJHESAA does not have an online repayment option. That’s crazy. When I graduated from Rutgers with my Masters Degree I had three student loans. One of them was to CitiBank. I was able to pay back the entire CitiBank loan (which was probably $8,000+) in less than a year because of the online payment options. NJHESAA is really missing out on getting an extra $50 here or $250 there in online payments. Either that, or they’ve strategically opted to not have an online payment gateway.
• Balance Inquiries: In a related point, the NJHESAA has no active online resources for borrowers in repayment. In other words, I can’t log-on to their website and check my balance or see my previous payment history. All of this is available with the federal government’s Direct Loans program.
• You’re Stuck: However, one of the most aggravating parts of the NJCLASS repayment is that you’re stuck with NJHESAA. I can go out and find better repayment terms from another lender, but I would not be able to pursue the improved terms without NJHESAA approving me taking out their entire loan. Let me rephrase that so everyone understands… I can go to Bank of America and get approved for a 4.5% loan specifically to repay my NJHESAA loan. However, I cannot repay my NJHESAA loan in full by switching to Bank of America without NJHESAA’s approval to do so. Talk about dealing in a fair marketplace…

One of the things that really irks me about this loan, though, is more of a historical aggravation in that NJHESAA once reported me to the credit bureaus as having paid 30 or 60 days late…while the loan was still being deferred because I was still in school! Talk about complete insanity!? And when I called them up to complain, they said that while they agreed that the report to the credit bureaus was an error on their part, there was nothing they could do about it. This negatively affected both my credit score and my Mother’s credit score since she was a co-signer at the time. Bear in mind that both my Mom and I have never made a late payment on any account at any point in time ever. Thankfully, I’ve disputed NJHESAA’s erroneous report with all three credit bureaus and they’ve removed the late payment error.

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While the entire student loan industry needs a vast amount of reform, at this point I’d settle for a company like NJHESAA getting itself into the 21st Century with an online payment and loan balance/information portal!

Monmouth University is offering a course that falls directly in line with what I do for a living (it’s about various approaches to fundraising). My company and I felt that it would be good for my “professional development” and that since it was so close to home, I should pursue the course. I agreed and this ultimately led to a huge hassle with the Monmouth University administration (who managed to not only get a $35 application fee out of me, but also to double-charge me for a parking ticket that I apparently received as an undergraduate and would have to have paid already in order to graduate). For those out there in the working world, I can sum up my experiences trying to take this course very simply – Monmouth University is not prepared or ready to offer professional development courses.

Not only was I treated like an 18 year-old kid who was just starting college, but even after establishing that I was an alumnus of the university, a part-time employee of the university, and that I had a Masters Degree and thus was not interested in applying for a Masters Degree program – the folks on the phone still couldn’t fathom what I was trying to do. What was I trying to do? Audit a course for professional development. Simple. Unfortunately, until their professional development admittance procedure is more “professional,” I will not be able to recommend to any of my professional colleagues that they attend MU to learn more about their trades.

Class started this past Monday night and I immediately remembered why I left Monmouth’s Masters Program after one semester a few years ago. The atmosphere in the classroom was uniquely Monmouth. The teacher treated the students as though they were incoming Freshmen and the requirements for the course look almost exactly like what one would expect out of a Freshman Seminar class. There are four 3-page papers, three 3-minute presentations, and a group project all due in the semester. We were lectured for about 20 minutes on the importance of not having a cell phone ring during class time. We were reprimanded in advance for missing any scheduled classes and scolded about how our final grade would be effected. I’m auditing the course, so I’m getting an “AU” as a grade no matter what I do.

But what shocked me the most on the first night was how the course description was changed before our eyes. It’s a little bit hard to explain, but the course description that sold me on the course was changed to include this course as a subsection of a larger study, which wasn’t what I was sold. The thing is, I’ve been through the Monmouth system before I and I realize there is no use in complaining because it gets no where; the system is specifically set up to be hard to navigate and tedious. This is why I loved going to Rutgers so much (in my view, Rutgers handled problems before they even popped up).

But I’m smart enough to realize that the pre-class administrative nightmare should have no bearing on my perception of the course and the first night of class should have little influence on my overall recommendation of the course itself, so I will reserve a final judgment until the course ends. I will say, however, that so far I’ve gotten exactly what I expected out of Monmouth…

It’s a great feeling – it’s like the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders. And another odd thing has happened…I have a ton of free time. It’s weird.

I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself. I’ll probably spend more time building my web design business. Of course, starting June 1st I’ll be working full-time (I’m 90% sure about that) for my current employer.

I also have a lot of random things that I need to get done like transferring most of my control of my fraternity’s alumni club over to one of our new alumni, starting an entirely new workout program (I like to switch it up every once in a while), begin planning for becoming my fraternity’s Province Archon in the fall, READ MORE BOOKS, set up a better internal infrastructure for my small business accounting (that’s a real bitch, let me tell you), etc, etc.

So much to do, so…much time. Ha! I win.

I don’t know why I’m so happy. I’m going back for a doctorate in a few years…