Warren, president of the private colleges’ group, calls the measure part of a “spreadsheet mentality” that reduces the value of a college education merely to a student’s initial paycheck.
“It is so wrongheaded and contrary to the best interest of the country that you would link learning, clearly, fundamentally and finally to earnings two years out,” he said.
Rubio, 41, disagrees. With detailed cost and debt information as a young man, he might have gone to a cheaper public law school, rather than the private University of Miami, he said.
That way, he would have avoided the lion’s share of his $125,000 in student loans, with $1,400-a-month-payments that exceeded his mortgage. That burden made him give up his dream of being a prosecutor because the salary was too low.
Citing privacy rules, the University of Miami said it couldn’t discuss Rubio’s debt. Patricia D. White, its law school dean, said she has warned students in writing about her program’s cost and the difficult job market. In the 2010 and 2011 school years, she said, the law school froze tuition, currently $42,000.
Loans Paid
A featured speaker at the Republican National Convention, Rubio saw his finances improve recently because of royalties from a memoir, enabling him to pay off his loans 16 years after law school.
Students “should know how much they’re going to make and how much they’re going to owe, so they can take that into account,” Rubio said. “Had I had it in front of me, I may have decided differently.”