30% of Millennials Regret Going to College (AKA Student Loan Hell)

It seems that Millennials are getting buyers remorse when it comes to college.

Here’s an indication of how burdensome student loans have become : About one-third of millennials say they would have been better off working, instead of going to college and paying tuition.

That’s a according to a new Wells Fargo WFC -1.43% study which surveyed 1,414 millennials between the ages of 22 and 32. More than half of them financed their education through student loans, and many say the if they had $10,000 the “first thing” they’d do is pay down their student loan or credit card debt.

Wow if $10K fell out of the sky Millennials would rush to pay off debt first. Well for some of them that debt will follow them around for decades and act as a wall to buying a car, a house, or getting married. More people have to realize that debt is acid that eats away at your future buying power. The less debt you have the more money you have to spend later on. It's that simple.

I bet quite a few of them are now regretting the vast majority of majors since they don't lead to jobs outside of academia in many cases. So all those ethnic studies or medieval literature majors are ruing the fact that they went into debt for $100K at some private college and there will never be a job waiting for them. That job is currently being held by some baby boomer that has tenure and will never give it up as long as the gravy train (which means tuition hikes) keeps running.

At least some of them are understanding that they got the shaft way back in high school.

The Wells Fargo survey found that 79% of millennials think personal finance should be taught in high school; basic investing, how to save for retirement and how loans work were the top three topics they “wished” they’d learned more about.

You would be surprised on how many college graduates could not tell you what the S&P500 or the NASDAQ is or name one stock in either Index. I'm sure if they ever get a job they will end up taking the minimum 401K match because they have to pay off their stupid college loan debt. So that may eat away at 10 years or more of retirement savings.

What sucks even more is that most of the crap that they were taught in high school has absolutely no practical purpose in the real world. I'm pretty sure that many of them would trade every bit of whatever their Trigonometry or Calculus knowledge still remains for a simple business math course. Introduction to personal finance should be a required course that every high school kid needs to pass.

In any case I hope it makes these kids anti-debt and anti-conspicuous consumption. They can't afford a ton of credit cards when their college loan debt is dogging their path.