The average Computer Engineering degree from my university was completed (at that time) in 5 years. I graduated in 5 years and worked, so it didn't take me any longer than average, and I switched majors from CS to CpE- costing me two terms.

So I didn't give up any potential salary earnings I didn't already give up by going in the first place.

My point is that college can still be a good option for lots of people, they just need to focus on the cost/ROI. The horrors stories that we hear about are typically from a dumb kid who went to an out of state or private school, got a a 'general' degree and had no job qualifications. Then they were shocked people were t just handing them money.

I've yet to hear a story about a kid that did two years at a community college, finished up their BS in engineering, and then had life crippling problems with their debt.

Not everyone is a computer scientist or computer engineer.

I took a full time class load and also worked part time through college. It wasn't that bad,(in fact it was good) and it was fairly commonplace at the school I went to.

Is this not the case anymore?

I went to college in Brazil, here the class load is fixed for most universities (ie: you don't choose what classes you will go, they will hand to you a list of the ones you are signed up for each semester).

Although the classes themselves took half a day (started at 7:30, finished at 13:00) the coursework we had to do was incredibly high, teachers never coordinated, they just assumed that you had all free time of the world.

In one semester I had to quit my job, and slept to little that I got incredibly sick, my apartment reeked sugar, because I was drinking coca-cola and energy drinks so fast that empty bottles were piling up near my computer, I slept on average 4 hours per day, and went from 110kg to 125kg

And mind you, this was to do coursework, NOT any kind of paying work, when I finished university my net worth was incredibly negative, right now it STILL is negative, I am living with my parents right now to dedicate 100% of my income to debt paying, and still don't see any perspective of actually paying it (specially because when I consider the past year or two, the average INTEREST I had to pay, was higher than my average income).

Geez that hardly sounds worth it. I thought folks in the states had it rough with the loans...

The raw loan amount is not high as in US (when you consider USD... for BRL it is comparable if you consider your own income, but even that some people get lower).

But in Brazil you can't ask for bankruptcy, ever... In US Student Loans can't be rid of with bankruptcy, but you CAN make another loan, pay the student loans, and THEN go bankrupt... in Brazil this loophole doesn't exist.

And Brazil has a incredibly high interest rate, credit card interest is 400% year, overdraft and personal credit interest in a bank is 300+% a year, special credit for business with government subsidies are still around 100% per year. (and I never saw anyone that qualified for it).

The effect is that if you are in debt, you are screwed... and if you HAVE money, investing in any business is stupid idea, specially with our high inflation (currently about 11% per year), it makes much more sense to loan to the government (that currently will happily absorb it, and pay interest that is usually at least 14.25% year + inflation), so noone invest in creating business anyway, so you never find jobs, startups are non-existing, creating a startup is bad idea, and so on...

It depends on the rigor of your institution, of the program you're in, and what constitutes "full time."

At the institution I attended, FT was 12-18 credit hours in a semester. You could take up to 21 with permission from the administration and your professors, and up to 24 with permission + paying additionally for the 3 credits.

The difference between 12 credits and 18 in terms of work load and scheduling hassles is astronomical yet both are full time. Our professions always said 1 hour in class = 3 hours outside of class. Assuming that held true (it rarely did on an individual class level but on a semester level it was pretty close), 12 credits = 48 hours a week and 18 = 72.

If you're only taking 12-15 credits you probably should have a 10-15 hour/week job. If you're taking 18 I wouldn't even do work study on campus for gas money, you just won't have the time unless you want no social life.

I pretty much always took 12-15 credits. My school was on semesters and I just went year round whereas most people took summer offer. Summer credits were cheaper and you could cram in a bunch of general ed stuff that didn't need a ton of study.

My engineering classes all preached 4 hours of study for every hour of class- I don't think I averaged two for most classes and graduated above a 3.2 GPA. Except EE courses and physics. I had to buckle down for those.

Yea to be fair I always took 12-15 hours with only 2 exceptions. But that's what I had to do to make it through and still pay bills/eat/etc.