Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

All of the people here writing about how these people shouldn't have picked non-STEM majors are missing the point entirely.

These people in the article are the population we've got, not the population we want to have; Monday morning quarterbacking is completely useless, as the debt is already accrued. To state it again: this is the population we actually have. They are not technically skilled, but they are educated and heavily indebted. They were told "go to college, get any degree, and you will have success." This was not accurate, and now, we have an entire generation that is suffering.

Student loan debt is smashing the potential of the millenials and is now increasingly seen as a massive burden on their parents and (mostly uncreated, due to insufficient funds) children as well. Large-scale debt relief is mandatory at this point, as all of the money siphoned to debt maintenance is severely limiting the amount of demand that the economy's primary consumers are able to create. Millenials aren't buying homes, aren't having kids, aren't buying cars, aren't able to put their parents into nursing homes, etc.

The parents of the millenials typically have some wealth that can be extracted, and so, it's on the chopping block. This is why loans have cosigners-- so that their bank accounts can be emptied, too.

Debt slavery is the reality we live in, and predictably, debtors parents aren't thrilled that their retirement is being siphoned away by their children's debt.

As I said, this debt is a massive drag on the economy, and debt relief is mandatory. Unfortunately, there's not so much going on politically right now, so I think that a mass student debt boycott is a better decision. It's unlikely that the lenders will be bankrupted, but it'll send a message at least. Sure, they'll ruin everyone's credit and dock people's wages, but that can only be sustained until there's white riots due to poverty. And it'll probably take riots to end this debt slavery-- it takes riots to fix things in a broken country.

If you leave the US, you don't stop being a US Citizen unless you revoke your citizenship. And most nations won't allow you to become a citizen if you have foreign debts.

Also, expect to see more of these types of rules, since many student loans are backed by US Government entities: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/12/...

> A new enforcement provision passed by Congress and signed into law earlier this month allows the government to revoke the passports of seriously delinquent tax scofflaws — people who owe more than $50,000 to Uncle Sam.

Wow, living in Germany I graduated in CS with ~7k in loans. Just the idea that a government does not pay its childrens education is freakin me out and from my perspective seems to be a neo liberalism horror story.

> -Federally guaranteed student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy (it is just a different standard than other debts)

As a practical matter, it is not dischargeable. The standard is nearly impossible to meet.

There is already a lot of information available about the labor market in general, and colleges are also required to provide gainful employment statistics for graduates. Despite this, it seems that many students make poor decisions, probably for more subtle reasons (easy availability of loans, wanting to experience college, wanting a gap between school and work, etc).

Securitizing student loans by major and having a liquid market for the securities is an interesting idea, but its hard for me to imagine that the information provided would have any impact on this problem. If students, counselors, etc already ignore the plentiful labor market statistics available, a I'm sure they'll have no trouble ignoring a proxy for those statistics.