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."
Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Canada is experiencing similar issues.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... [www.cbc.ca]
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
See America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth [monthlyreview.org]
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Meh, I'e had a successful career without college. It's a bitch finding that first professional job, but after that college really stops mattering.
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No, if you think it is a forced choice, then you're just an idiot. I graduate this May, and haven't accrued a single red cent in student debt, and the only work I've done is as a paid intern during one particular summer.
What's stupid is I've often had both the government and the university encourage me multiple times to pick up the student loans (which would have given me $9k in cash per year) and all I had to do to receive them was not uncheck a little box on an online form. Yes, they were quite literally
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
An overwhelming majority of students go to local state community colleges and universities, once again your argument basically boils down to the circular conclusion that if someone wasn't as lucky as you it MUST be some kind of personal failure. You're starting with a conclusion and working backwards to justify it.
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The FAFSA is a form where you declare your income, the income of the biological parent you're living with, and the income of whoever they're married to. If any of those aren't willing to declare their income and sign the form then you don't get financial aid until you're 25 or something like that (so treat your step-parent nicely!).
If the combined incomes are low enough that you basically fall below the poverty line and nobody owns any assets (rent house, or have it mortgaged to about 120% of its value, or
Re: Tell me again... (Score:4, Funny)
...In a country of 300 million people.
Maybe everyone should do the responsible thing and simply not go to college if they can't afford it without debt. Surely the genius of free market will figure out how to run a modern economy with population not educated beyond high school level. The rest of the world can watch and learn from the inevitable success, thus refuting the socialist notion of state-subsidized higher education once and for all.
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I spent 8 years working full time and going to school part time. Not a single cent of debt was incurred.
I spent four years going to school while working part time on a job related to my major, and receiving a military scholarship. When I graduated, I had a three year service commitment to the US Marine Corps, but was otherwise debt free. Nobody "has" to go into debt. There are plenty of other options, although none of them involve getting everything you want on a silver platter.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tell me again... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of other options, although none of them involve getting everything you want on a silver platter.
Yeah, you could sign up to kill brown people in the sand for the profit of US corporations. That would certainly save you some money, and it would only require you to live without rights for four or more years, maybe a lot more if you're subjected to a euphemistically-named "stop-loss" program (aka slavery.) You could then face the >90% chance of being sexually assaulted as a female, or the apparently also very high chance of it happening as a male, and you could get discharged with inadequate medical care for a condition developed while in the service. What a fantastic and moral deal!
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My daughter did four years at LSU without a single student loan. Graduated debt-free.
Back in the day, my wife and I went to college, worked our way through, graduated with no student debt.
Yes, it's certainly possible. You might have to skip Harvard/MIT/whatever Ivy League school tickles your f
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"Nobody forces you to take a student loan. You can very well skip graduation and start working earlier. Graduation is an investment. If you think it is worth it go for it, otherwise it is not really necessary for a person to live or prosper."
It's not like it probably was when you were a student. Depending on when that is, of course.
Compared to when I first went to college, there is less actual "grant" money available for financial aid. As for loans, less of them are direct loans, and lot higher percentage of the loan money is now through banks. The interest rates have gone way up -- in an economy with close to 0% prime interest rate! Repayment must be started sooner, accrued interest is higher, and the repayment terms are usually not as easy
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Let me rephrase it: "Higher education should be for the rich only".
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Ornamental subjects like dentistry? Please read the article before making such comments. Cheers.
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It's another bubble, and we shall see who is going to suffer when the education bubble bursts. I know students who would have to work half their lifetime to pay back the "student debt", but the same universities are attending have dramatically cut the number of tenured profs, while "part time" profs and TAs have to cover more and more of delivering the course load...and are purposely kept at "part time" status to the point they school will drop courses to make sure they don't work more than the number of ho
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding.
I was working at OSU (Oklahoma State University) about 4-5 years ago when the annual raises came out.[1]
The 'President', Hargis got a raise of a little over $150,000.00 a year. He was already making a 7 figure salary, while the faculty got a 2-3% raise, and the staff got none.(again, after not getting a raise for 3 years previously)
[1] I had been working there several years at this point, and still work there, but no longer(as of Feb. 09, 2014) as an OSU employee, they subcontracted out the dept. I work for(Custodial and Housekeeping) to save money, Pres. Hargis has recieved a minimum of 5% raise each year, while staff and most faculty salaries remain frozen, or 2% maximum.
When I was hired, they had to give me a raise within 2 months due to the minimum wage going up from $6.90/hr to $7.25/hr. As of the Feb. takeover, I was making $8.25/hr after almost 6 years there.(before everyone started leaving due to the 'takeover', I was only making $7.65/hr-my pay had only gone up $0.40/hr over 5+ years there. After a lot of people started leaving, they gave us remaining fools a substancial(compared to what we were used to) raise to encourage us to stay.(I got bumped from $7.65/hr to $8.25/hr then) We have been at %50 (or less) of req'd. manpower since mid-May 2013. We(OSU) just completed a several million dollar 'campus beuatification' upgrade, amid a lot of other new multi-million dollar construction projects, including the new Boone Pickens Stadium that made news(even front page on slashdot!) recently for being 'unfriendly' to scouts and media.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
The same reason health care costs so much: the more money that's made available, the higher the price that can be asked.
In supply and demand terms, prices rise to balance the supply of education services with the demand for those services until demand is restrained or supply is increases.
What's happened in education and health care tells us that supply isn't keeping up with demand and so we have rationing based on price to match supply with demand. High prices keep some out of school or out of the doctor's office so that the available services match those able to pay for them.
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So why isn't supply responding to the glut of money? It's had decades.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
In some ways, it is, with online courses and such. But universities have a very long tradition, and have a guildlike system of prestige and accreditation, so it's very hard to shake them up
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That is a very good question. I don't think I've ever seen a study that has explored this in any depth.
Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
So why isn't supply responding to the glut of money? It's had decades.
Accreditation is a legally-sanctioned cartel.
I followed a small startup school for a while in the mid 90's - they tried for years to get accreditation as college and ultimately folded because they could not get it. The education was fine, but they dared to allow students to take classes online (c.1996) which was seen as too much of a threat to the cartel.
A degree from a non-accredited school is maligned, so without a marketable service they had to go out of business.
So: "because the politicians want it that way" is the actual answer to your question.
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And that is why we have the obligation to regulate the costs. Doing away with accreditation isn't really an option since it was an anti-fraud measure whose purpose still exists.
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Re:Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because every time the price goes up some politician has the brilliant idea to either 1) make loans more available or 2) make more "free money" (i.e. grants and subsidies) available.
Since neither of those is "building new colleges" or "training new professors" the existing colleges snap up this money through higher fees. This eventually may result in some increased build-out, but it seems to go slowly enough that they can keep the prices rising faster than inflation.
Worse, one of the ways in which they have "made loans more available" was to legislate that student loan debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.
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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.
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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.
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Colleges have a guarenteed payment from the feds, they dont care if we graduate or not only if we enroll. They have no reason to shrink the costs when they know the gov will pay them whatever they want
Its more complected than just that but thats a good start. when you have the backing of the feds, you will buy the 500$ hammer instead of the 5$ one
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Because student loans are easy to get (Score:2)
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Tell me again why college in the US costs sooooo much?
It mainly boils down to the greed of corporate America. Just look at the salaries of football coaches at schools with large football programs. Then compare their salary to that of the folks in charge of the educational side of things. How is it that a glorified gym teacher makes more money, in what is supposed to be an institution of higher education? Or look at the scholarships that are given to the players. It all comes down to how much money the sports programs bring in, and nothing to do with educ
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Education isn't first reason for going to Harvard (Score:4, Insightful)
The education you get at Harvard or Yale isn't first on the list of reasons why people want to go to those schools (or maybe even second or third).
The big reasons are the cachet of a diploma from those schools opens doors at grad schools and employers, and maybe even more importantly it's the people you go to school with are the economic elite. You get to rub shoulders with the rich and make contacts with them.
Other schools may offer equal or even better educations, but they don't offer access to those people.
Out of Control Amenities? (Score:3)
Well, that 20,000 square foot gym and aquatic center with 2 Olympic sized lap and diving pools wasn't built for free you know, and all of those brand new buildings, designed by world class architects no less, also cost money to build. Then you have the brad new student center with the gourmet food court, luxury spa and other resort type amenities. All of this designed to appeal to the spoiled and narcissistic undergraduates who attend these 4 year vacation destinations, financed by taxpayer backed loans, a
Re: Tell me again... (Score:2, Insightful)
BS. A degree is not required for a job. College is a systematic theft of future wages. There were decent paying jobs that required no degree.
Re: Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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:5, Insightful)
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Why should people who don't go to college and work earlier and like beasts of burden pay for other people's graduations through taxes.
To make a better world.
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Crap. There's a ton of evidence to show a well educated workforce is good for the entire economy. All you do by crating a high entry price is make it easier to keep those who are poor, whom you claim to care about, in their existing situation.
Easily available loans (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that anyone can get a loan, even people who definitely have no prospect of paying it back. With guarenteed loan money, schools can charge whatever they want and you'll just have to take out a bigger loan. And of course 18 year olds fresh out of high school don't understand the power of compound interest, they just know that they "have" to go to college to get a good job and they'll get a better job if they go to a fancy private school.
While you can't get a bachelors from our local community college, it only costs $2,500 a year in tuition and you're getting credits that can transfer to any state school. Why can a community college offer actual college classes for that little, but a 4 year school can charge $10,000, $20,000 or more for largely the same education? Its just insane.
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Re:Easily available loans (Score:5, Insightful)
Because their parents don't either. At 12 they might have understood. They forgot by 18. Just look at the number of adults with mortgages for 20+ years. Better yet, ask someone "how much interest are you paying on your mortgage". If you ask me, I'll say $12'000. It's a $450'000 purchase, a $230'000 mortgage, I'll pay an average of 3.5% interest per year, I'll have paid it off in 10 years.
But ask anyone else, and in my position they'll say 3.5%. They forget the "per year" part of that entirely. So they take 20 years, or 30 years, instead of my 10 years, and instead of paying $12'000 total interest on $230'000 total loan, they pay closer to $100'000 total interest, or 40%!
The most frustrating part is that I didn't make it up. Even at the bank, when I applied for or renew my mortgage, they give you the year-by-year breakdown of interest and absolute dollars. All you need to do is to look at the bottom line of the chart. On mine, it says $242'000 repaid. On their, it says $330'000 repaid.
They don't need to understand compound interest, and doing so isn't actually sufficient here. They need to understand the concept of units of measure. In a loan repayment, that unit isn't "percent". As my mother would ask: "percent of what?!". It's "dollars per year". If you understand units of measure, then you understand that dollars per year doesn't tell you how many dollars.
And if you understand marketing, then you understand that smaller bi-weekly doesn't make the dollar amount smaller than normal monthly payments.
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Just look at the number of adults with mortgages for 20+ years.
That is simply wrong.
1. If I lived in the US, I would have taken out the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage up to last year.
2. sometimes you have to understand the other interest rate, inflation.
How can you not take out a 4% mortgage where historical spikes of inflation are much above that? Unless you are betting that inflation will be kept in check for 30 years!
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I like that you think interest rates will never go down over thirty years. Keep up that gud thunking.
Here's a tip. You're confusing "interest rates" and "inflation". They are tied together in causation, but their values are not tied at all.
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Also, why in hell would I want to pay 4% today? I've beet paying 2.5% for the last 6 years. Right now, I'm paying 2.24%. If I were paying 4%, I'd be burning $2'500 per year, compounded! And because I'm paying down large chunks every year, now is the time that I really want to pay a lower rate. Later, when my mortgage is much much smaller, the rate matters less.
So again, welcome to compound interest. I'm paying a low rate on my currently high mortage. Later I'll be paying a high rate on a low mortgag
Re:Easily available loans (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think you understand this as well as you think you do. The person who gets a 30-year loan at a 3.5% rate is almost certainly doing much better than you, despite having to pay more total interest.
Let's look at some numbers. Your plan requires a monthly payment of $2274 every month for 10 years. Their plan requires a monthly payment of $1033 every month for 30 years. If they put the $1241 per month saved into an investment that gives 4% NOMINAL returns per year (which is quite a low rate of return historically speaking), then after 10 years, here is how their finances compare to yours:
You: No mortgage, no additional assets
Them: A debt of $178,082 and an investment worth $185,947.
As you can see, if they then pay off the principal, they end up almost $9000 ahead of you. If you factor in inflation, or assume annual returns better than 4%, the situation swings even further in favor of the 30-year mortgage. For example, using the 9.5% historical annual returns of the S&P 500, the person with the 30 year mortgage ends up $54,000 ahead of you after 10 years.
Note: In reality, banks charge a higher rate for the 30-year mortgage for exactly this reason.
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put your name to your argument, or it has no value. you can decide to what that pronoun refers.
Sounds more like you are almost realizing you are wrong, so you are getting more irrational and starting to insult the posters pointing out your illogic, rather than considering the statements thoughtfully.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
Requiring degrees has lots of benefits for employers. You get a more desperate employee (they've got a tonne of debt after all). Odds are you don't have to spend a dime training an employee. If you don't get enough employees you can run to Congress and ask for more work Visas.
The real problem here is that the 1%
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No one ever obligated you to be an employee. Think harder boy. If you obligate yourself to be an employee -- and you're the only one who does -- no one said you need to go through HR to apply for a job. Think harder again.
For the record, I didn't go through HR to get my various employee-jobs. And I'm not an employee at all anymore.
What are the alternatives? (Score:3)
Re:Easily available loans (Score:4, Informative)
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But it is true that this isn't the whole story. There is the time-value of money to be considered, and the argument about living in a better house for longer is not necessarily the wrong choice. The extra interest bought you more time in a better house.
Or, if you bought the same price house, the extra interest left you with more cash on hand, which you could invest in other ways. This may or may not have been a better solution, though. If your money isn't working harder than the interest, you'd have bee
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Actually, you are totally and completely incorrect, you don't get to upgrade from a 450 house to a 900 house after 10 years. That's the major big huge mis-information spread to you and to everyone. In order to do what you've said, you'd need a time-travel machine.
After the 10 years, your house isn't worth 450, it's worth 900 -- and so is the next house you buy.
So, in 2024, my 2014-450 house is a 2024-900 house. The second house that I buy in 2024 is another 2024-900 house, which was a 2014-450 house.
Unle
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That's got nothing to do with the mortgage. The fact that you can compensate elsewhere is always true. By that logic, if I have a super-successful stock or business opportunity, then I can pay 90% interest on my mortgage too.
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Keep reading my other replies. I wouldn't agree. You've said what others have said -- that there are other investments that I'm not making. You've forgotten that I can borrow against my own home equity and invest that money. My equity grows faster than yours, and as it does, I have less interest.
You're simply paying more interest. You're losing money. But you're comparing your 30 years of interest with 10 years of investment against my 10 years of interest -- of course yours is going to be better. You
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It's one thing to intellectually understand it, quite another to have a feel for it.
Especially when confounded with deferred payments (but not necessarily interest) and having the value of the degree pounded into their heads since they were old enough to stand without assistance.
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You are right but the structural reason for that otherwise the loans would be totally unsecured; no collateral is put up and you can't repo and education for non payment.
Because most high school grands looking for college loans don't have anything of sufficient value to put up the loans must be unsecured in order to get lenders to the table they had to be given special rights that trump bankruptcy protections.
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Yeah, I'm guessing said Slashdot legal experts have no student debt attributable to law school, and not because they paid their own way through either.
Highest priority goes to taxes, but that's probably not an issue. Next, rent or mortgage, because if y
Re:Easily available loans (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can a community college offer actual college classes for that little, but a 4 year school can charge $10,000, $20,000 or more for largely the same education? Its just insane.
I agree with most of what you have to say, and its borne out by the massive increase in the price of undergraduate educate over the rate of inflation, during the last 40 years as more and more loan subsidies and grants have been created.
That said to some degree the community colleges can afford to what they do because the other schools exist. Lots of community college staff is part time, there academic involvement begins and ends with teaching. They are not creating the texts and such that get used. Professors at more traditional institutions usually also do things like conduct studies, author texts or articles etc. Some (although very little of) of the higher prices at the traditional schools goes to subsidize the costs of these other academic efforts, without which there would be little to talk about in the CC class room.
Not to say that Community College is not a really great option for lots of people, or that its role is not important or even that it should not be expanded.
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Also, community college professors are sometimes regular college professors who are teaching a few classes at the community college because they believe in education. Effectively this means that the even professors' wages are being subsidized by their regular college wages.
Re:Easily available loans (Score:4, Interesting)
Mixture of things:
1. In many states, the community-college system is still heavily subsidized, while the flagship schools have been moving towards a "user-pays" model. For example, the state of California has cut its per-student subsidy to the University of California system by about 60% in real terms over the past 30 years, but has cut their per-student subsidy to the community-college system by only about 20%.
2. Community colleges typically are looser in who they'll hire to teach classes: no PhD required, can teach part-time, no research expectations, etc. Like with any field, if you have lower requirements, you can get staff for lower salaries, e.g. hiring C++ programmers vs. web designers.
3. Prestigious universities have suffered more administrative bloat, I guess because it's where the prestige is, so attracts empire-builders. Community colleges don't pay their President $500k/yr, or have an army of Assistant Vice Chancellors.
4. To be a "top school" there are higher expectations of the other resources provided besides the actual classes. A community college typically has a small or no library, while UC Berkeley is expected to have a full-coverage research library. UC Berkeley is also expected to provide good laboratory and computing facilities, dorms, security and healthcare for an on-campus resident population, etc.
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While you can't get a bachelors from our local community college, it only costs $2,500 a year in tuition and you're getting credits that can transfer to any state school.
not necessarily. I did that and some of my classes weren't transferable because there wasn't a compatible class at the state uni. -at that time. Also, there's a minimum grade ( usually) for transfer - 'C'. A 'D' will allow you to get your associates if your average stays above a certain level, but it won't transfer.
The problem is that anyone can get a loan, even people who definitely have no prospect of paying it back.
What I advise kids these days is that unless you're going for CS or Engineering (or medicine) AND you think you can keep your grades above 3.0, then don't bother with loans at all. Find some othe
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Certainly not. The for-profit schools are a response to the free money available, and part of the problem. But the cause isn't the schools, it's the free money. Even if you made all the for-profit schools go away, the problem would be the same size, just the price of the traditional schools would go up even more.
Finland (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finland (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Finland (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar in Norway - university is basically free (except the 100 USD/year mandatory student union member ship), and you get a subsidised (i.e. no interest before you graduate, (much) lower-than-market interest rate after that) loan for up to ~7 years. This loan works so that when you pass your exams for that semester, ~half of the loan is turned into a stipend. Don't pass your exams and you have to pay it back.
On top of this, you have access to subsidised housing in "student villages" - these are apartments where you get your own room, and share a kitchen/bathroom with ~4-10 people - accomodation standards depend on how much you want to pay, but it is in general affordable within the budget of student loans. You can use the apartment year round, i.e. if you have a summer job in the city or you are a last-year masters student working at the university over the summer, no-one will kick you out. It's like a normal apartment, just cheaper, and everyone else in the same block are also students. There are also possible to get two-person apartments, i.e. for people who want to move in with their S.O. - with no strings attached about marriage etc.
And on top of that, you do of as a citizen get access to healthcare (hospitals are free to use, normal doctors appointments and medicine are cheap up to a certain limit after which is it free, the dentist you pay out of pocket but it's usually not that expensive and there are often student discounts available) and disability insurance.
I like our system :)
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.
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The Bubble Behind the Mortgage Bubble (Score:5, Interesting)
My theory: This "student loan bubble" is actually the bubble that caused the mortgage bubble. For the past 30 years, college loan professionals have been convincing 18 year olds that 5-digit debt is ok. We were "broken" (as in horse context) by the time we borrowed for our first car, our eyes glazed when buying our first house. We were trained to be numb by rationalizations worthy of drug pushers. The first thing a young person does at 18 is sabotage any hope of compound interest savings accounts, as every penny that would have been put away is spent on compounding interest in the wrong direction.
Ok, my college experience turned out ok. But I circumvented work-study and doubled my working hours (food service). If you DO borrow to go to college, it may turn out ok, but be sure to work in a few economics and accounting classes.
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compound interest savings accounts
where can you get one of these?
That debt is solid gold! (Score:5, Informative)
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It can't be discharged by any bankruptcy proceedings. You are hooked for life once you take a loan in this form. We abolished debtors prisons sometime around 1800s, then indentured labor then fought a civil war to end slavery. Then created a debt that can survive even bankruptcy chaining the earnings of someone for life!
Curious statement! How are chaining the earnings of someone for life? You can't pay off your education loans? Aren't they put on a payment schedule that covers a 10 to 15 year period, meaning that you should have them paid off in your 30s? And theoretically it would be a benefit as the supposed income increase from the degree should offset the loans in the first place...
Education loans are backed by the Government using tax dollars. Back taxes are also exempt from bankruptcy. Most things the Governmen
Re: (Score:3)
Aren't they put on a payment schedule that covers a 10 to 15 year period, meaning that you should have them paid off in your 30s?
Unless you can't meet payments.
Re: (Score:3)
Then created a debt that can survive even bankruptcy chaining the earnings of someone for life!
Duh - why do you think student loans were nationalized in 2009? It's part of the push to create a very large underclass ruled by a few elites (i.e. a fascist plutocracy).
People need to withdraw their consent for this system *before* they find themselves destitute. Instead they walk into a voting booth saying, "I'll vote for the lesser evil!" and then get a sticker for doing so, like a kindergartener.
Where all that money went (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You might be assuming that this is an unintended consequence.
Why could it not be lassoing in the next generation of statist voters by offering them loan forgiveness (paid of course by taxpayers).
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.
Need to drop the college for all idea and have mor (Score:3)
Need to drop the college for all idea and replace it with more trades / tech schools / apprenticeship and get rid of the 4+ year idea as well.
Saw this one a mile off (Score:3)
University Industrial Complex is Ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Very.
I have worked with CS degre'ed people and industrially educated people in I.T.
I have been trying to understand whyt here is such a huge difference between CS Degree;ed people, with BS/MS degrees and Industrially educated people.
I have come to the conclusion that:
1) Industry educated people love their work far more than CS degree'ed people. Daddy didn't pat for their education, they come to work everyday because they want to, not because they have loans to pay off.
2) Industry educated people are far more motivated than CS Degree'ed people. The reason why this fits my observations is the typical CS degree'ed person wants someone to teach them, which is why they went to school anyway. Industrially educated people see education more as their responsibility.
Carefully looking at resume's, I found industrially educated people who do nat have CS degree'es statistically have more independant/free lance work on their resumes. (i.e. They know how the technology works to the extent that, they do not need someone to hand them a check every 2 weeks. They really can develop solutions themselves and sell them.)
But, that may be due to the fact that some jobs require CS degrees and industrial educated people find that if they want to eat, they have to do it all themselves.
So they are much more resourceful and typically better business people.
3) Personally, looking at the education of a typical CS graduate, I am not convinced a university degree in the age of the internet is worth $120K.
My house for example, is worth $150k. I don't have a degree, but I own a house. I think it was a much better investment.
I still am employed in the I.T. world though, so in my opinion if you are doing hardware or software in the engineering department, or selling solutions, you can do a University program for 4 years, but you are at an EXTREME disadvantage compared to a person like me, that leverages a internet connection, does a few free lance jobs to get your career going.
Plus you typically get to stay at home rent free while you figure this stuff out.
By the time compare a 4 year tour through a university, you will most likely already have references, no debt and may even be employed.
However, Universities do have their place in education, but not at the $120K level for years anymore.
I could go back to school and would, but I would probably pay about $15K for a university degree for 4 years.
I don't think it is worth more than that, in my opinion as both a 25 year veteran working in the computer industry, and hiring and firing many of you out there with CS degrees.
This is this generations fight (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Bust your tail and do well in college.
3) Be unable to find any job coming out of college.
4) Be unable to work a minimum wage job because it won't even pay off interest on your loans.
5) Now what?
Re:Lessons Learned (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It's not the borrowers who get bailouts -- it's the lenders.
Re:Post Bush (Score:5, Insightful)
But in 2005, Congress and the Bush Administration clamped down on bankruptcy filings, placing hurdles in the path of Americans trying to file and making it more difficult to discharge debts. In particular, the 2005 law made private student loan debt, like federal student loans, impossible to discharge in bankruptcy except under a difficult to meet hardship exemption. Today, bankruptcy allows for the discharge of credit card debt and auto loans but not student loan obligations. At the same time, the law permits judges to modify loans used for commercial real estate, vacation homes, and even yachts, but not a family’s primary residence. Two of the largest investments Americans make in order to enter the middle class – in their homes and their educations – are thus excluded from the relief offered to other debtors.
If Evil exists, this is it.
Re:Post Bush (Score:5, Interesting)
But in 2005, Congress and the Bush Administration clamped down on bankruptcy filings, placing hurdles in the path of Americans trying to file and making it more difficult to discharge debts. In particular, the 2005 law made private student loan debt, like federal student loans, impossible to discharge in bankruptcy except under a difficult to meet hardship exemption.
The lead-in for this, which made it possible in the first place, was the 1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, signed by Bill Clinton, which is what allowed the merger that led to the legislation. This effectively turned credit card debt for students who shouldn't have been offered credit cards in the first place to be non-dischargable by bankruptcy (effectively turning uncollateralized loans into collateralized ones).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]–Leach–Bliley_Act
Frankly, there's no difference between the parties; they both work for the banks.
Credit cards to the rescue (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't there a five-year lookback on bankruptcy?
Anyway, lets suppose there isn't. You still need to convince a bankruptcy judge that you didn't enter into this amount of credit card debt with the intention of committing fraud.