U.S. Students/Grads Carrying Over $1 Trillion In Debt 538
An anonymous reader writes "Time reports that American students and grads were carrying $1.08 trillion in student loan debt at the end of 2013. This compares to just $253 billion a decade earlier. Aggregate debt grew 10% in the past year alone. 'By comparison, overall debt grew just 43% in the last decade and 1.6% over the past year.' About 70% of students graduate with some amount of debt, and the average amount owed is $29,400. 'Delinquencies on student loans have risen dramatically over the past decade: 11.5 percent of graduates were at least 90 days late on paying back their loans at the end of 2013, compared with 6.2 percent delinquencies on student loans in 2003. Moreover, the Fed's figures on delinquencies hide more stark data: nearly half of all students with debt aren't currently in repayment thanks to deferments and forbearances and the fact that students are not expected to pay while they're in school.' An attached graph shows an alarming spike in delinquent loans that looks a bit like mortgage delinquencies did at the beginning of the sub-prime crisis."
Finland (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finland (Score:5, Informative)
What a joke (Score:3, Informative)
I delt with the delinquencies department when I was stuck living in the middle of the countryside with my mother, a fake leg and depression and no self confidence. They threatened me at home until I moved into a gay friend (uncomfortable sometimes) in another city where I started work I couldn't physically in retail. When my fake leg broke, they more or less said it was my fault for taking the only work that was around and for being handicapped. I should have died from cancer when I was 12 at that rate. I was close to hanging myself in Seattle in front of a bunch of children to protect them from a similar fate because of them.
The department of education cares for no-one. They are only full of threats. The kind where if you tell a person in a wheelchair every day, they will eventually kill themselves.
That debt is solid gold! (Score:5, Informative)
Cap the amount of the loans (Score:4, Informative)
About 10% of the debtors owe more than $40,000. There is no reason to take on that much debt unless you are going to medical school.
Re:Easily available loans (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Informative)
Tell me again why college in the US costs sooooo much?
Colleges need to adapt so that university education doesn't become too expensive for all. [usatoday.com]
. In his book on administrative bloat, The Fall Of The Faculty, Johns Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg reports that although student-faculty ratios fell slightly between 1975 and 2005, from 16-to-1 to 15-to-1, the student-to-administrator ratio fell from 84-to-1 to 68-to-1, and the student-to-professional-staff ratio fell from 50-to-1 to 21-to-1. Ginsberg concludes: "Apparently, when colleges and universities had more money to spend, they chose not to spend it on expanding their instructional resources, i.e. faculty. They chose, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources."
And when they had less money to spend, they did the same thing.
Administrator Hiring Drove 28% Boom in Higher-Ed Work Force, Report Says [chronicle.com]
University Administrative Glut Worse Than We Thought [the-americ...terest.com]
Over the last 25 years the number of administrative employees at U.S. colleges and universities more than doubled, according to a joint study by the New England Center of Investigative Reporting and the American Institutes for Research. The ratio of nonacademic positions to faculty positions doubled at both public and private institutions. Overall, the industry has added an average of 87 administrative positions per day, a rate has scarcely slowed since the economic downturn, despite tuition increases. Even more surprising, academic institutions have added more administrative employees despite part-time faculty taking on more teaching duties than full-time professors.
Re: Tell me again... (Score:4, Informative)
There still are. North dakota is having trouble filling high paying jobs as we speak
That and the highest rent in the nation. Unless you're living in company housing the cost of living in the Bakken is higher than NYC or San Francisco. And there's the fact that to have live IN North Dakota to work those jobs. The AMBIENT temp was -22F at my house last night. Yeah you'll make $80k-$100k a year, but you'll earn it.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:2, Informative)
It costs so much because people have been conditioned to be willing to pay anything for it, believing it is essential for future success. And if they can't afford it the government ensures that they can borrow for it. There's no way tuition can possibly go but up until this scenario changes.
In the 1960s and 1970s a university degree (BA or BS) guaranteed a graduate life-time employment beginning the day after graduation in many cases. By the 1980s the university degree was no longer a guarantee of employment especially in the midst of a recession which lasted from mid-decade into the early 1990s. Then towards the end of the 1990s a university degree became the equivalent of a high school diploma in terms of minimum qualifications for almost every job across every sector of the work force. Now as we live through the 2000s the value of a university degree is nothing more than a way for human resources departments to disqualify applicants. Employers expect schools to teach job skills because these same employers refuse to provide on-the-job training (OJT) unlike prior decades. Flooding the marketplace with foreign labour has further diminished wages to the point of economic stagnation and even decline in some countries.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:2, Informative)
I got through college debt free the hard way, working after school in highschool, working a full time job and a part time job in college, graduated in six years, now I'm 35 have a great job with great pay and haven't had a date since senior homecoming and haven't got a fucking clue on social skills not relevant for dealing with bosses or customers.
Your way sounds better. At my age I'll probably marry into kids, but I'll treat them as my own and I'll tell them this is the way to get through college.