Some Americans Have Fled The Country To Escape Student Loan Debt (cnbc.com) 747
"Some student loan borrowers are packing their bags and fleeing from the U.S. to other countries, where the cost of living is often lower and debt collectors wield less power over them," reports CNBC:
Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said. Today he lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes never to set foot in a Walmart again. More than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don't feel real anymore. "It's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?" he said...
Although there is no national data on how many people have left the United States because of student debt, borrowers tell their stories of doing so in Facebook groups and Reddit channels and how-to advice is offered on personal finance websites. "It may be an issue we see an uptick in if the trends keep up," said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.... Struggling borrowers should enter into one of the government's income-based repayment plans instead, in which their monthly bill will be capped at a portion of their income, he said. Some payments wind up being as little as $0 a month.
But the fact that people are taking this drastic measure should bring scrutiny to the larger student loan system, said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice. "Any rational person who learns that people are fleeing the country as a result of their student loan debt will conclude that something has gone horribly awry with this lending system," Collinge said.
Haag tells CNBC that because of his student loan debt, "I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America." The average student now has around $30,000 in debt when they graduate, according to the article (which is nearly double the inflation-adjusted average of $16,000 in the early 1990s) -- while inflation-adjusted salaries "have remained almost flat over the last few decades."
One 39-year-old even tells CNBC, "I feel that college ruined my life." (He's been living overseas since 2011 -- first in China, then Ukraine -- and hasn't checked his student loan account in nearly eight years.) Another graduate teaching English in Japan told CNBC that they wanted to return to the U.S. -- but their student debt is now over $100,000.
"The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Although there is no national data on how many people have left the United States because of student debt, borrowers tell their stories of doing so in Facebook groups and Reddit channels and how-to advice is offered on personal finance websites. "It may be an issue we see an uptick in if the trends keep up," said Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.... Struggling borrowers should enter into one of the government's income-based repayment plans instead, in which their monthly bill will be capped at a portion of their income, he said. Some payments wind up being as little as $0 a month.
But the fact that people are taking this drastic measure should bring scrutiny to the larger student loan system, said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice. "Any rational person who learns that people are fleeing the country as a result of their student loan debt will conclude that something has gone horribly awry with this lending system," Collinge said.
Haag tells CNBC that because of his student loan debt, "I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America." The average student now has around $30,000 in debt when they graduate, according to the article (which is nearly double the inflation-adjusted average of $16,000 in the early 1990s) -- while inflation-adjusted salaries "have remained almost flat over the last few decades."
One 39-year-old even tells CNBC, "I feel that college ruined my life." (He's been living overseas since 2011 -- first in China, then Ukraine -- and hasn't checked his student loan account in nearly eight years.) Another graduate teaching English in Japan told CNBC that they wanted to return to the U.S. -- but their student debt is now over $100,000.
"The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
What? (Score:2)
"Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it."
Millenials make no sense.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They conveniently don't mention what these fools majored in. Apparently Haag even went back for a Masters in Comparative Literature. Who goes $30k in debt for worthless degrees?
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Yes, awful things like treating people with respect regardless of gender or skin color, not being a fucking asshole or sex creep to the women you work with, or writing memos on how being male just makes you biologically more capable of working in a STEM field. Terrible fate to be sure. Almost as bad as having to be literate before you enter college. So damned unfair.
Why so harsh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You could pay off USD 30k with teaching English in China.
You don't need a degree for that.
If the degree itself doesn't contribute to your earning potential, then you should not go into debt to get it.
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You don't need the degree to teach English, you need the degree to get the job.
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Fixing this would first of all require HR to actually know what they're supposed to be hiring. Or giving a shit about it.
As it is, by now I'm trying my best to circumvent HR in the hiring process as much as I possibly can. Many people here don't have a degree. Mostly because they're useless for what we're doing anyway. I have no use for people who proved they excel at rote learning. In all seriousness, your rank at sites like Hack the Box [hackthebox.eu] says more about whether you're useful to me than any diploma. It tell
Re: Why so harsh? (Score:5, Informative)
You need a degree to teach at any language school that is worth teaching at or attending.
You do not need a degree to teach English in China. Schools provide the curriculum and will coach you. You can also freelance.
These are the requirements:
1. White skin
2. Blonde hair. Not strictly required, but will definitely increase your hourly rate.
If you are a native English speaking Asian American, with black hair and brown eyes, no one will pay you one fen to teach them.
A surprisingly large percentage of English teachers in China are Australian. This can lead to some very interesting combinations of accents.
Re:Why so harsh? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the flip-side of that, I love working with my hands on my off-time. The house I own (with no mortgage) is a 10-15 year project at least, and I've taught myself how to do basic plumbing, electrics, building, carpentry and decoration because it's just damn difficult to find anyone worth their salt to do these jobs for you, properly. If my software jobs dried up tomorrow, I'd just start a renovation business and probably do just fine for myself.
It reminds me of something that one of my favourite university professors once told me: "Look for the degrees and jobs that are unpopular but necessary". If you don't mind learning and doing the important jobs other people don't like, you're always going to be able to make a living.
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This is what a degree is claimed to provide in the U.S.A., the ability to find a new job if you lose the one you have. The degree is considered to be the single hireable element. The fear of impending doom says that without a degree you are judged by your last failure. Lose your job and you are a loser.
Your university professor's exclaimation that jobs that are unpopular but necessary would not seem
Re:Why so harsh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said anything about gender studies? If you aren't well aquatinted with how entitled employers have become in regards to the qualifications they expect within the last 30 years - you must have had some nice, cushy, long term jobs in that time.
Re:Why so harsh? (Score:5, Interesting)
You could clear $30k USD by being a terminal truck driver in around 17 weeks with OT. Go long haul and O/O to another company hauling say jet engines or parts for port terminals? Or hauling dangerous goods? All pay very well. There's a whole pile of dirty jobs out there that can make you good to excellent money. The problem is there's a whole generation of people that look to go around a problem instead of dealing with it.
That guy, the one who ran off to live in a cave? He'd have been better becoming a park ranger, working for fish and wildlife, or something along those lines. It's weeks of bust your ass followed by months of tedium.
Re:Why so harsh? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but people like that want to earn 100K/annum by sitting behing large Apple-branded monitors while reducing the color contrast on web sites.
Re: Why so harsh? (Score:3)
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Most middle-class kids are not aware of dirty jobs.
Middle class kids have never seen a semi truck? Middle class kids have never seen a plumber come to their house? An electrician? They're fully aware of dirty jobs...they've just been told those jobs are "beneath them."
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Ding, we have a winner. "Get a degree or you'll be digging ditches."
Lucky for me I was just rebellious enough to ignore this advice, and I had a great run in IT despite it.
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Re:Why so harsh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why so harsh?
Well, by shitting on people who were lied to extensively as kids and then made the obvious bad decision as young adults, the GP can feel better about himself. It's much easier crapping on others than doing something actually worthwhile yourself.
Re:Why so harsh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why so harsh?
Well, by shitting on people who were lied to extensively as kids and then made the obvious bad decision as young adults, the GP can feel better about himself. It's much easier crapping on others than doing something actually worthwhile yourself.
A person sometimes finds themselves in a place, not of their own making, that is not all that good. Many modern young people were part of a perfect storm of mis-placed kindness Raised by parents who attempted to protect them from any and all adversity or pain, taught by teachers that they were the center of the universe in order to inculcate them with self esteem (but not the accomplishments that should be the base of it) then shuffled off to college after being told that you can be anything you want if you find your passion and go for it. And no cost is too high.
So we have a generation+ that is pretty messed up. Their through the roof high self esteem took a terrible beating once they got into the real world, they were woefully unprepared for life's problems because of being sheltered from any of them, and now many are in debt with worthless degrees.
So yeah, A person sometimes finds themselves in a place, not of their own making, that is not all that good.
There are choices the poor person who finds themselves in such a place has to make. Gonna suck it up and work with what you have? Or are you going to complain, give up and declare yourself defeated?
This will probably get downvoted to hell and back, even though it is probably the only useable advice on the problem.
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Maybe your assistant dean is an idiot. A PhD in psych (you need undergrad psych to get into the PhD program) is usually a clinical program. When you're done you can open a practice, or get a job in a hospital. It's one of the very few PhDs that's financially worth getting.
Re: Why so harsh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tom Cruise? Is that you?
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Re: Why so harsh? (Score:3)
So no, it'd be giving psychologists far more credit than due to call them "scientists "
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been pointing this out to every young person that is going into college.
"Get a damn degree in something that pays the bills first."
Then if you want to get a degree in basket weaving go back after you have something you can pay the bills with. My first degree was in Electrical Engineering and I hated every moment of it, but it payed well and financed my second time through college where I got my masters in CS.
Something a lot of people don't understand is you don't need a fucking degree in everything you want to take. You don't even need to get credits in. Most Universities will offer something called adult studies or something like that. It is where you pay a greatly reduced fee and just sit in the class. You don't get tested of course or credits for the class but if it just a class you are interested in its a good option. Over the years I have taken, well sat in, classes for philosophy, physics, history, and political science.
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I've been pointing this out to every young person that is going into college.
Have you actually though? what does this entail? Ranting on the internet or, say, doing outreach at schools?
If it's not the latter then why are you complaining?
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No body is complaining about anything. I'm not sure how you got anything out of that.
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Ahh, no it wasn't. I'm sorry that you took it that way but I wasn't ranting against anything. But it was 2 am when I posted it so I was a little more casual in my wording.
I said that to my daughters entire graduation class. I've been saying that to practically every member of my extended family for the last 30 years. I don't also say it in the same manner, with the same wording.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, might "sound" useful, but here's what the field actually focuses on (first few papers found by just Googling and grabbing the latest issue of a journal [jstor.org]):
Literary Praxis Beyond the Melodramas of Commitment: Edward Upward, Soviet Aesthetics, and Leftist Self-Fashioning - About how Edward Upward didn't get read enough during the cold war because he was a Communist in Britain.
ndigeneity and Mestizaje in Ana Castillo's "The Mixquiahuala Letters" and Leslie Marmon Silko's "Almanac of the Dead" - About mesti
Re: SATs are vanity things? (Score:3, Insightful)
My parents took a rather hands off approach to my education. When I took a test it was typically of my own volition, and thus taking the test was largely a matter of curiosity, a means of gauging my knowledge and understanding of a subject. There were no consequences for failure. Failing a test then became a desirable outcome, as it mean I would discover new things to learn, and I would have more information about what to research next. When I
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Are you confident of this?
The loans I paid went to Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia. Only one of those is a government entity.
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"Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it."
Millenials make no sense.
I think you meant to say Millenials make very few cents.
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Why not talk to team Obama. They were the ones who nationalized student loans(and are the largest holders of student debt), and the costs went right through the roof after that happened. Every bank in the US was out of student loans the second the government put in policy to make it happen.
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Re: Making America Great Again! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, this is very close to how America started- a trade war between New York and New Jersey, and people moving across state lines to escape debt, is what killed the original Confederate States of America. The Constitution, written in 1792, was specifically written to correct these abuses.
Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Informative)
"Were Student Loans Ever Dischargeable In Bankruptcy?
Yes. Prior to 1976, you could discharge your student loans in bankruptcy.
Congress then changed the law: student loans were dischargeable if they had been in repayment for five years. Subsequently, that period was extended to seven years.
In 1998, Congress removed dischargeablility except if a debtor could show that paying back the student loans would create an undue hardship. In 2005, Congress extended this protection to private student loans."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/z... [forbes.com]
They're the ruling class (Score:2)
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Because most of the student loan debt in the US isn't held by corporations. All of the student loans in the US since 2009ish have been done by the federal government - that's who owns the debt. That also makes them the largest debt holders of those loans, banks and lenders washed their hands of the entire thing. And when the government took over the loan business, tuition rates went right through the roof.
Collateral (Score:2)
A large multi-national corporation, as a rule, can't borrow money without any collateral. If student debt could be erased nobody would be willing to issue the loans. Which, IMO, would be an improvement over the status quo.
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Informative)
A large multi-national corporation can erase its pension liability by declaring bankrupcy, but a common person can't get out of paying a student debt. Why do we let corporations have MORE rights than a person?
Because you've been miseducated about who government works for and how your society works.
Former national security advisor of the United states on the thread of the global political awakening of the masses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Princeton study - Does the public have any say over their government or is it just the rich and corporations?
https://scholar.princeton.edu/... [princeton.edu]
Here are billions of dollars in energy subsidies, aka when politicians are saying social services need to be cut, they are speaking out both sides of their mouths because they know most people don't look at what companies are getting free handouts from subsidies.
https://www.imf.org/external/p... [imf.org]
Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Crisis of democracy
https://youtu.be/glHd_5-9PVs?t... [youtu.be]
Manufacturing consent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://vimeo.com/39566117 [vimeo.com]
US distribution of wealth
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb [imgur.com] http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa... [ucsc.edu]
The Centre for Investigative Journalism
http://www.tcij.org/ [tcij.org]
Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.
https://kurukshetra1.wordpress... [wordpress.com]
Autralian System (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not adopt the Australian System.
The government loans you the money, but you only have to pay it back once you start earning a decent income. The loan is interest free and only indexed to inflation.
Re:Autralian System (Score:5, Insightful)
What needs to happen is for the spigot to be tightened or turned off. Student loans needs to become harder to get. We're trying to subsidize education from the demand side (ability of students to pay for college) when clearly most of them are not capable of making sound financial decisions about the value of college. We should switch to subsidizing education from the supply side - build more state colleges and universities, expand the existing ones. Use money that used to go into government loans and scholarships, into discounting the tuition at these government-funded colleges. The increased competition in post-HS education combined with turning off the loan spigot will force tutions at private colleges to decrease. The reason we do this is because the right doesn't like the idea of subsidizing public colleges which are in competition with private colleges. And the left doesn't like the idea of a bright poor student's only choice being to go to a public university, when a loan program will let them go to Harvard. (Incidentally, Harvard has a big enough endowment [wikipedia.org] that technically it doesn't even need to charge tuition. $37 billion * 2.5% growth/yr = $925 million/yr. $925 million / 22,000 students = $42,000 per student.)
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Bullshit. I am Australian, live in Australia, and received an education thanks to HECS which is the interest-free government loan that every Australian can get. You only pay it back when you earn more than 50k, and it's all automatic off your tax.
While you are a student, you also receive around $12000/year for living expenses. Everybody gets it as long as they are studying, no questions asked.
The way it is here, and the way it should be.
This bullshit about scam college is idiotic.
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While you are a student, you also receive around $12000/year for living expenses. Everybody gets it as long as they are studying, no questions asked.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. IF you can prove eligibility, you MAY qualify for youth allowance or Austudy to help with living expenses.
HECS is great though. It's a shame the govt keeps trying to break it by reducing the repayment threshold. And yes, some universities are definitely inflating the price of degrees to match.
We could also look more closely at the loopholes for foreign students (who pay full fees and often have entry requirements waived, as long as their cheque clears)
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In the UK Universities are audited to make sure that the courses they offer a of a good standard, before anyone can get loans to attend them.
That would solve the scam college problem and still allow people to get a decent education.
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Why not adopt the Australian System.
Does it involve massive, free profits for private companies?
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Interesting)
As the other reply mentioned, student loans used to be dischargeable in bankruptcy. The banks didn't care because they were usually guaranteed by the government. If the student failed to pay back the loan, the government would. When the government decided it would no longer guarantee the loans, the banks predictably said "welp, we'll have to stop making loans to students then unless they can pass a strict credit check." And the problem with loans has always been that the people who need them the most (the poor with no or poor credit history) have been unable to qualify for them. So in order to keep the loan money flowing from banks, Congress made it so you couldn't discharge student loans in a bankruptcy. (There are still ways you can do it [forbes.com], it's just a lot harder.)
It's a little counter-intuitive, but making it harder to get student loans is actually what needs to happen to reign in skyrocketing college tuitions. Loans are just time-shifting money from your future earnings to pay for things in the present. Unfortunately, making good financial decisions depends on having good information. And since nobody can predict the future, it's difficult for students to make accurate estimates of their future earnings. Decades of experience has shown that their estimates for how much they'll make after graduating tend to be too rosy, causing them to willingly pay the higher college tuitions rather than telling the college to get lost. The colleges have been exploiting this to push up tuitions as quickly as they can, far faster than the rate of inflation [inflationdata.com]. Make it harder to get student loans and schools can't raise tutions as quickly.
Instead, we should be putting the money into government-funded state colleges. Normally when demand for a product (college) goes up, additional supply is created, and the balance between the two keeps prices the same. But people want to go to the big-name colleges and universities, and that supply constraint impedes this natural price-leveling process. If you instead subsidize the supply by adding more government-funded colleges, the forced increased competition will drop the price of tuition Right now, most of the additional revenue from higher tuitions has gone into hiring non-teaching administrators [reason.com]. So colleges can easily cut those jobs in response to lower tuitions, without affecting the quality of education. (The same problem is what afflicts our healthcare system [twimg.com] - we've made the rules so complex and given the bean counters so much control over healthcare, that the cost of them deciding whether a medical procedure should be allowed or denied exceeds the cost of the procedure itself.)
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:4, Informative)
Not that I disagree, but it's not as one-sided as you're portraying it. A company declaring bankruptcy loses control in exchange for shedding its liabilities. In that respect, it's not so much erasing is pension liabilities as it is telling the pensioners, "Look, if we keep this up the company is going to cease existing and your pension will be zero.
It's not like that though, not in many cases.
In a bankruptcy there's an order in which payments are made and creditors take precedence over pensioners. This means that companies can essentially spend the pension fund by securing the loan on the pension stash. While they're busy "growing", they're paying immense executive salaries and hefty dividends to board members. then the chickens come home to roost and the creditors get paid out of the pension fund and the pensioners get screwed.
So yes you're right that's the intended purpose of the restructuring laws and they do get used to keep a company afloat which would simply have tanked putting a bunch of pensioners out of money and a bunch of people out of work. However like most reasonable things, it gets massively abused.
Re: (Score:2)
The citizen debt from college is a choice that may liberal arts students take on
Every year, we graduate 1.2-1.5 STEM students for every entry-level STEM job opening.
Getting a degree and not being able to find a job is not just for "liberal arts" degrees.
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
They are in no way responsible for you being able to utilize that education profitably. It's on the student to not be an idiot; they should've majored in something other than underwater basket weaving.
Every year, we graduate 1.2-1.5 STEM students for every entry-level STEM job opening.
It's not just people with degrees in things you don't like.
Re:Corporate vs citizen (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that distorts the market. Colleges can charge more because the bankers will loan more, because the students can't get away anyway. So tuition goes out of control and everyone loses except the bankers and the colleges.
If you want people to go to college then do what the rest of the world does: give scholarships or subsidies that cover part or all of the (actual) cost.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people agree that schools should be funded by the government because it's of great benefit to the country and society for everyone to have a minimum level of education available to them. In fact in Europe education is considered a human right.
It used to be the same for universities in the UK. If you were good enough to get a degree the government would pay for it, because it was a benefit to everyone. But then the demand for graduates increased as the West in general moved away from manual labour and t
Now guess who has to pay for the debt (Score:2)
As always, GOVERNMENT is the source of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
* 13 years of explicit government education results in students who cannot understand the math behind their loan; they should be able to see immediately that it's a bad idea based on just the math!
* Governments push higher learning on unqualified people, rather than letting them get on with their lives in a marketable trade, where they will actually be happy and productive.
* Government subsidizes loans, and then forbids declaring bankruptcy on them. This is utterly anti-Capitalism, and explains why the price of education has become divorced from reality.
As always, the solution is Capitalism: The entity making the loan must take the risk that the student will default. This will force people back to reality; it will drive students towards productive work that society actually needs—corporations should be sponsoring education (e.g., making the loans) for the workers that they explicitly need, and then offer those students internships and jobs as part of the learning process. They used to call this an apprenticeship.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:As always, GOVERNMENT is the source of the prob (Score:5, Insightful)
* 13 years of explicit government education results in students who cannot understand the math behind their loan; they should be able to see immediately that it's a bad idea based on just the math!
And you should bother doing the math on their alternative. It's either get a student loan or work retail-level jobs forever.
Employers are demanding degrees even when they are not necessary, because they can and still fill their jobs. Apprenticeships have long waiting lists. Trade schools aren't free either.
We've created a system to fuck over students so that banks, school administrators and bondholders can make a shitload of money. You're blaming the students for that....the people who literally had no say in how this system was built.
As always, the solution is Capitalism: The entity making the loan must take the risk that the student will default
And as always, the free marketeers are utterly ignorant of history.
'Cause we had your system for decades. It meant that the bottom 30-40% of the income distribution could never afford college. Because they were too big of a credit risk. It also meant middle-income kids were paying credit-card-like interest rates on their loans.
When we've constructed a system where college is required for roughly 80% of the population, and then made only 20% be able to afford it, with the following 40% paying usurious rates, it's not a good thing.
The pseudo-free-market solution we went with to avoid "spending tax dollars" while actually spending tax dollars is shitty....but it's still better than what came before unless you think you can convince employers to lower standards.
Re:As always, GOVERNMENT is the source of the prob (Score:4, Insightful)
So, how many years of college do they need to be able to spell "glass", "through", and "college"?
Works for any kind of debt (Score:4, Interesting)
Step 1: Borrow $100,000 in your wealthy home country
Step 2: Move to a developing country where your expenses are low
Step 3: Profit by living off your loan for the rest of your life without ever repaying it
The more ethical version of this is retired people taking their fixed income to countries where the income goes a lot further. That, of course, has been going on for a long time. A loan that can't be enforced across borders allows people to skip the whole 40 years of working step and just start their retirement young.
Using a student loan is just a miscalculation that leads to a somewhat less optimal situation. You still flee the debt, but may not have much seed money, so may need to have a part time online job or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Just make sure you never, ever travel to a country which extradites back to your home country, as fraud is a crime regardless of whether the loan itself can or cannot be enforced across borders - it still exists, and the intention to enter into it without repayment is slam dunk fraud.
Re: (Score:3)
Just wait until they start revoking passports because of debt.
There won't be any travel.
Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing they prevent is the ability for the Fed to garnish their wages. They also prevent participation in receiving anything but the possibility of a receiving the minimum social security payment and medicare. Not to mention 401k or health plans while working.
Whereas, I can agree any intelligent person can have a significantly better lifestyle in a third world country (in some live like a rockstar), the time to do that is AFTER you've secured sufficient resources and retired. What happens when you have a significant health emergency?
They agreed, participated and benefited from a contract. That, by inference included that they participate in "the game" or "rat race".
I understand the feeling of burden, my debt was significantly less than today's graduate. I was in such a panic that I joined the military and satisfied the debt. I hindsight it was stupid, considering the fraction of debt I had then, compared to today. I traded two years of my life being controlled by people not qualified to flip hamburgers and paid the debt.
I'll be spending my retirement on some beach in South America where my "participation in the game" will grant me 8X the avg local salary monthly without touching the reserve. I'll be worrying about assuring there's sufficient reserves of cold beer, nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll be spending my retirement on some beach in South America where my "participation in the game" will grant me 8X the avg local salary monthly without touching the reserve. I'll be worrying about assuring there's sufficient reserves of cold beer, nothing else.
Well, at least until the bandits raid your expatriate retirement community...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
If you're poor in America (Score:2, Insightful)
This isn't a "feeling" anymore. The people in the article hit the job market during the worst of the great recession. That's permanently wrecked their careers. They now have a history of bad jobs. It makes them look, on paper, like damaged goods. And with the hyper competitive job market they will probably never recover baring a major shift in our politics and economy.
Most of them were living with parents. That's a pretty heavy burden for nor
Elitist (Score:3)
Yet you blame the victim rather than blaming the system. If workers want more than burger flipper wages, they are sneered at that they need to make themselves more valuable as employees if they want to make more money, Then, if they take student loans to get an education to make more money - but are stuck with student loans they can never pay back - they are sneered at a second time for borrowing money they couldn't kno
These kids are especially screwed (Score:3)
$0 a month (Score:3)
Work? (Score:3)
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This is what I did for my second time through school. I held down a 40 hour a week job and attended school at night. I didn't have much of a social life but I came out of it with $5,000 in student debit. Which I paid off in a year.
Where does the money go? (Score:4, Interesting)
People talk about student loans, but not so much about the main problem: the rising cost of college. To lower the cost of college, we need to know where the money currently goes, and what the trend is (where the money went 10 years ago vs. where it goes today).
Betsy DeVos should hire a CPA, a lawyer who specializes in finance, and someone who is familiar with college spending. This last person would know where money really goes, not where it's supposed to go. He/she would say, "If you want to know where a college's money goes, ask the following questions."
Then the CPA, lawyer, and college spending expert get together, and write 20 or 30 questions, to find out where college money goes. It's the same set of questions for each college. How many dollars? How many full-time students?, etc. (Let the CPA and lawyer figure out how to handle differences, such as quarter vs. semester-based colleges.)
DeVos provides a list of all colleges and universities that get money from the US government (directly through grants, or indirectly through student loans).
Then researchers find out the answers to each of the questions, for each of these colleges, for each of the last 25 years.
Then the researchers send their collected data to the colleges, confirming that the numbers are right. If a college says the numbers are wrong, then it has to give some kind of evidence to prove that the college's numbers, not the researchers' numbers, are correct.
If a college wants to make a statement like "We plan to be more frugal in the future", fine. But I still want to see those numbers.
Once the numbers are collected, they are posted on the internet for everyone to see. If a college is spending more on sports than on academics, or is spending more on retirement than on current teachers, then congress and individual donors might want to re-consider their contributions.
Besides individual colleges, also find out where the money goes in each state-wide university system. For example, here's a gem regarding the University of California [wikipedia.org] system:
Besides substantial six-figure incomes, the UC President and all UC chancellors enjoy controversial perks such as free housing in the form of university-maintained mansions.[58] In 1962, Anson Blake's will donated his 10-acre (40,000 m2) estate (Blake Garden) and mansion (Blake House) in Kensington to the University of California's Department of Landscape Architecture. In 1968, the Regents decided to make Blake House the official residence of the UC President. As of 2005, it cost around $300,000 per year to maintain Blake Garden and Blake House; the latter, built in 1926, is a 13,239-square-foot (1,229.9 m2) mansion with a view of San Francisco Bay.[58]
All UC chancellors traditionally live for free in a mansion on or near campus that is usually known as University House, where they host social functions attended by guests and donors.[59] UC San Diego's University House was closed from 2004 to 2014 for $10.5 million in renovations paid for by private donors, which were so expensive because the 12,000-square-foot structure sits on top of a sacred Native American cemetery and next to an unstable coastal bluff.[60][61]
Collect the numbers for the state-wide bureaucracies, for each of the last 25 years, and put those numbers on the internet, besides the numbers for individual colleges.
Bottomless account for weapons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Garbage (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubbish (Score:3, Interesting)
Also Graduate A: Buys a car for 40k and a house for 600k.
Also if you drink daily Starbucks milkshakes or have a $900 phone, you have forfeited your rights to complain.
Back over in "socialist" Europe... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no (or very low, in the hundreds) student fees. What that means is that everyone and their dog tries to get an advanced degree. Universities are flooded with students. At least in the beginning, until people noticed that it's dog-eat-dog. That's also where the socialism ends. You're on your own. Nobody holding your hand. It's too hard? You can't organize yourself? Suck it up or get out of the way, there's at least 10 others wanting your slot in the lab.
It's also no problem for profs to put the screws on and test with the explicit goal of elimination. They don't get more money if they have more students. All they get is more work that distracts from what they perceive as their actual job: Research. You think they want you there? They want you out. What they want is someone who can aid them in their research, and for that they just need those that are good enough for that. The rest can, as far as they're concerned, crawl into a hole and die.
Can't find the lecture? Sucks to be you. Can't figure out how to solve the task? You probably don't belong here. Sucking up doesn't work, bribery doesn't work. The only thing that does work is being good. Really, really good. Because nobody gives half a shit about whether you graduate or drop out after the first semester.
To be honest, this feels a lot more "capitalist" than the US model. In capitalism, the best products prevail while the inferior ones perish. Or did I get something wrong here?
Win-Win (Score:3, Interesting)
And they've also fled the US, so it's win-win for them.
Minimum payments are stupid (Score:5, Informative)
When I got out of school in the very late 1990s, I had a fair bit of student debt at a reasonable interest rate. Being, you know, educated, I realized pretty quickly that the minimum payment plans that seem to always get the press were highly unattractive because they only just covered the interest and barely made a dent in the principle. That's just a stupid, stupid way of repaying debt because it means you'll be carrying it forever. Far better to forego a daily $4 coffee (yes, you can make coffee yourself and bring it along in a thermos; I did for a few years to save about $100/month that went to debt repayment), and a $10 lunch (bring your own again, saving about $8 per day). I got just basic cable and phone service. I shared an apartment. I went out socially only night per week. In other words, since I was in debt, I minimized my expenses so I could get out of debt as quickly as possible. Using a 20 or 30 year repayment plan means, guess what?, you are in debt for 20 or 30 years. That's inadvisable for student-loan levels of debt that are easy to pay off quickly if you're making a decent, college-graduate wage.
The massive bonus was that once my student loan was paid off, my credit score went up. Be smart: don't take the minimum payment plan, and get yourself out of debt quickly.
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I graduated from college at about the same time. During and after college, I lived with my parents (which saved a HUGE amount of money), spent my after-tuition student loans on my phone bill and a hamburger at school every day, and graduated with about $18,500 in student debt (thank you, Pell grant).
Back then, repayment was on a 10-year schedule. After I got my degree, I paid back as much as I could every month, until I paid it all off 7 years later. Of course, I majored in something with earning potenti
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University is a cult that makes Scientology look like a bunch of amateurs.
Correction: Government forces you to take on debt. (Score:2, Insightful)
The government was forcing you into debt before you were born.
* They take out loans in your name, against your will, because, you know, "muh democracy" or something.
* They print money, and thereby transfer purchasing power from you to themselves and their cronies.
* They squander your wealth on just about everything they touch.
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I take it you've never survived a divorce? The amount of debt your wife (usually a wife) can burden you with before the divorce is stunning, and includes the lawyer fees during the divorce to add insult to injury.
It was some time ago, and it wasn't pleasant.
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While you may have gotten lucky (or more likely, they had, or were in the case of your one ex, bad or overworked lawyers), most judges see
Re:Choice (Score:5, Informative)
Lol. As someone who just went through a divorce, let me say that this strategy is comically flawed. If you quit your job to avoid paying alimony or child support, the court will hit you with imputed income [divorcesource.com], which is based on what you could be making instead of what you actually are making. Being unemployed doesn't get you off the hook for jack shit.
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Wow, youâ(TM)re a True American Hero. Your kids must be so proud.
Of course I am - maintaining your kids and forcing your ex to work for a living is what every divorced person should be aspiring to.
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If you go to college to 'try to get a better job' you don't get a worthless Liberal Arts degree. I don't consider said degrees completely 'worthless' but they are certainly not the key to a 'better job.'
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Allow student loans to be dischargable in bankruptcy and the problem will solve itself. No more loans will be given for majors that have no hope of being paid back and then tuition prices will decrease.
We used to do that (Score:2)
Re: We used to do that (Score:2)
So treat it like credit cards. No federal guarantees. If you can't build decent credit, you can't borrow to go to school. Prove you're financially responsible before we start throwing money at you.
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We had that, and it resulted in credit-card-like interest rates for student loans. Even for "financially responsible" people with fantastic FICO scores.
Which meant the wealthy got to go to school, and the poor didn't. Which made more and more poor since bachelor's degrees are now required for an enormous number of jobs where they're not really needed (eg. Administrative Assistant, aka Secretary, now requires a bachelor's in something like "Communications")
Student loans are a moronic attempt to fund univer
banks and schools need to have skin in the game (Score:2)
banks and schools need to have skin in the game so we need to make so people can use chapter 11 and 7 to get out of them.
Skin in the game is a red herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile we've slashed [educationnext.org] funding [fivethirtyeight.com] to higher education.
People say the banks are the problem, but that's only true for diploma mills preying on the desperate. My kid's college had 400+ qualified kids (GPA 3.8+) and only 200 slots for her nursing program. If it was just about money the school would solve that problem by raising tuition until they had 200 qualified applicants (e.g. prices go up to match demand). They didn't. Instead there was a lengthy interview process and a variety of weights applied to determine who gets in because they want to teach, not get rich. Yeah, there are those diploma mills, but we had those under control when Obama issued rules saying schools needed X amount of grads employed in their field, rules the current administration rescinded...
What I'm getting at is that the banks will just raise interest rates because higher education has become a necessity. For the same reason a bottle of insulin goes for $300 in America instead of the $30 it goes for in Canada just leaving the market up to it won't work. Some things just don't work when you leave them to markets [youtube.com].
I thought I was pretty darn clear (Score:5, Interesting)
Short of getting out the puppets I don't know how much clearer I could be.
Re:I thought I was pretty darn clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Some will tell me that, because I come from a poor background, I do not deserve the same opportunities as others. Those people are clearly morons, and I will always support egalitarian policies while those wankers incoherently foam at the mouth about socialism. I don't care about some ideologue's small government dogma, I care about what works and makes a better & fairer society, and equal access to education works.
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Remove the Gov't subsidies and tuition will decrease
It will not decrease to the point where it can be afforded by the bottom ~40% of the income distribution.
Supply and Demand only work when both sides have approximately equal bargaining power. A poor but smart kid with a high school diploma has virtually no bargaining power, and we've constructed a society where you need a degree for anything but the lowest-tier jobs.
Your system is how you actually get a math genius who spends his life working as a janitor.
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That loan was probably theft in the first place.
The US student debt system is a deep, dark place where serious fuckery occurs.
I've personally known two people whose debts:
- Were repaid to the government by the school without their knowledge during the whole loan-obtention process
- Were then replaced by a predatory loan by the school itself and given to them disguised as what they thought they'd applied for, with interest both higher and beginning to accrue (with no documentation or information showing this
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> This is theft.
There's no theft when it was given willingly.
> You took money from someone else, and now don't want to pay it back
Let's say, for the sake of argument that the borrower holds some responsibility. At a point, you mean CANT pay it back. With the interest, there is no way to recover from debts of say 75k. Regardless of how an individual ended up with no useful skills/skills for a profession which you have no diploma/no aptitude/no available jobs, you're never paying back that interest or p
Re:Theft (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that's not the flaw. The flaw is that high school is no longer a diverse feeder program with lots of different electives so young people can figure out what they're passionate about. Instead, you basically get slightly more than one elective per year, and every other class is one of a long list of courses required for college admission. It should come as no surprise, then, that students end up having to figure it out in college, to the tune of $$$$$ for every year it takes them to figure it out, and usually end up doing it very badly.
High school coursework is way, way, way too rigid, and that doesn't serve ANYONE well. Probably 90% of what you learn in high school, you end up having to take again in college anyway, and half of it is just a repeat of classes you took in junior high. The whole mandatory high school curriculum is a giant, steaming pile of crap, and always has been. We really should throw nearly all of it out and start over. Instead of teaching higher-level math, save that for college, and instead teach a "statistics for real people" class that teaches how to understand how statistics are used in our everyday lives, how people lie with statistics, what sampling error really means in practice, and so on. Teach a "math for real people" class that explains the economics of compound interest, and how to understand when your school loans are screwing you. Teach a "science for real people" class that eschews nearly ALL of the theory in favor of non-stop real-world experimentation that will get kids interested in and excited about everything from chemistry to physics to robotics. Then ease your way into the gory details for people who truly take an interest in it, because then they'll be motivated to actually take the time to understand it.
Where are the high school classes that give students real exposure to fields that pay well? Where are the classes that can make young people passionate about those fields? Even in California, fewer than 2% of high school students take a CS course in any given year. That number should be 100% by the end of high school. You don't have to teach a full CS course, just enough of a taste to get them interested. Heck, do that in junior high, or even elementary, back when their brains are malleable enough to actually learn those sorts of skills. How about teaching a year of LOGO or BASIC to every second-grader?
And so on.
Besides, the desire to push students towards fields that pay money completely ignores the fact that the purpose of education is not to teach kids a bunch of information. Rather, the purpose of education is to instill in young people a love of learning that they will carry with them through their lives. The soul-sucking disaster that is our public and private education system in this country has no prayer of actually doing that. Why? Because everybody is talking about trying to prepare kids of careers. What the actual f**k? Kids aren't supposed to be getting ready for careers. That's something for adults to worry about. You'll never prepare kids for the real world by trying to make them ready for specific careers. That's a recipe for total failure before you even get out of the gate.
To make matters worse, when kids are young, we have no idea what will pay well when they finish college almost 20 years later. Medicine? Doctors are already being replaced by tech these days, so don't count on it. Law? Half of what lawyers do is preparing basic documents that people could probably generate themselves via a website today, much less 20 years from now. Even at the college level, picking a field of study is like playing the lottery. In t
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There are also some areas of employment where you need to be passionate about the subject in order to do well. I've interviewed countless people for IT jobs and those who do it as a hobby are far better than those who've studied solely to get a job. The former people are able to adapt and embrace as technology changes (which it does, often), while the latter try to stick to what they were taught and refuse to learn anything new.