Fox & Friends Guest On Student Debt: Ignore ‘Instagram Culture’ And Don’t Go To Grad School
Fox & Friends started a new series on Monday morning about ‘post-college prep’, beginning with the important issue of student debt. Fox News’ flagship morning show has decided to cover the issue of college students and graduates with enormous loans in a surprising move. College debt is an issue that animates young people and has become a key campaign area for Democrats in recent years.
On Fox News, there was no criticism of the cost of college, or the cost of loans to attend college. Instead, Professor Brian Brenberg, Business Chair at the King’s College in New York, urged students to just find jobs and avoid frivolous spending.
“Number one, you’ve gotta prioritize paying them off,” Brenberg said. “It’s hard in the culture we live in. We live in Instagram culture where you see your friends doing all sorts of great things. Traveling around the world, brunch with friends, the great apartment in hip part of town. You’ve got to stay away from that fear of missing out when it comes to your budget and you’ve got to prioritize paying your debt. And you’ve got to start on it now and not let that interest build up because if it does, it will sink you.”
“And many of us know that from our own prior experience in life, that can really sink you. So you’ve got to start now with the right habits. Budgeting is really important. Budget around your real priorities. Don’t budget around your imagined priorities or what you see happening with your friends on Instagram.”
Host Jedediah Bila, who admitted attending grad school, then asked Brenberg for his views further education following an undergraduate degree.
“So many people get done with undergraduate degree and they say, I don’t know what to do in the world, and so the path of least resistance for them is go back to school and do more grad school,” Brenberg said. “Well that’s a recipe for disaster for couple of reasons.”
“One is you’re going to spend more money going to school. And number two get out there after grad school and a lot of employers are going to look at you and say, I think you might be overqualified for an entry level job. You still might not know what you want to do. It’s much better, especially in this economy, I mean this economy is so full of jobs. Wages are rising. The best thing you can do is go out and work, build a resume, build some experience, that’s going to help you pay down the loans you had from undergrad and give you a better sense of what you should do in the world.”
Bila asked about the cost of living, particularly in expensive cities like New York, but Brenberg returned to popular criticism of Millennnials’ spending habits.
“Number one, you’ve got to get creative and number two, you’ve got to get honest,” Brenberg said. “What I find with a lot of students is they’ll say well I’m living right at the edge of my means. There is nothing I can do. When you ask them, have you really sat down and done a line by line audit of where your money goes? What happens is you find out, oh my goodness, I am spending so much money on breakfast out or coffee out and I didn’t know that. You’ve got to get that under control. That’s how you actually start to get out of that debt hole. But get serious about it.”
Watch the video above, via Fox News.
