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Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

money.cnn.com

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Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#91

Post by DrScump »

brador wrote: post #73

What would it take to completely wipe out all student debt? In theory, could a Presidents pen stroke do it?

Obama has already done such a giveaway, writing off student loans for certain schools that were paper mills and shut down once they got any scrutiny. The loser? Taxpayers.

Instead of discharging that debt, he could have offered to apply that balance to genuine, accredited programs (e.g. if the student had $80K in debt principal, she could get the first $80K taken from that balance instead of new debt). In other words, they made that money commitment in search of a degree -- they shouldn't just dump all that on the taxpayers with no societal gain from it.

Another parallel taxpayer-funded debt reduction done by the current administration was to change such windfalls to non-taxable (as regular income, as it always had been), again at the expense of other taxpayers.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#92

Post by kamaal »

smet56 wrote: post #90
kamaal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>once you get your first job, nobody cares where you got your undergrad degree (if even then). Sorry, but the whole point of college today is resume padding. So yes your college name matters. Almost every big web company if you belong to their Ivy league alumni. In India, there are small companies which explicitly state if you aren't from the IIT's you shouldn't even bother applying. So yes from where you get your d…

Thankfully, most hackernews users don't live in India where that applies due to the large diploma mill churning problems they have as well as cheating at the university level. Sure, it'll help if your parents were rich enough to give you a good chance of going to the Ivies in the states but you can easily do well in the states without purchasing a brand name for your resume. Might be mildly more difficult (more inter…

>>most hackernews users don't live in India where that applies due to the large diploma mill churning problems they have as well as cheating at the university level.

Sorry to let you know but you don't have 'large diploma mill churning' or 'cheating at the university level' in India. In general, the situation is same as in US.

Alumni connections will take you places your hardwork won't take you in the next 7 lives. Same in India, same in the US. I hope we could all graduate from coursera and be considered the same as people from Stanford. In reality, University education has very little to do with 'education', its a membership to a club that takes care of you all your life.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#93

Post by swalsh »

It's amazing that someone with virtually no life experience (12 years in grade school?) has to make this huge life decision on what they want to go to school for. Do they want to be an artist, maybe an engineer? They then get thousands of dollars in loans to go pursue it.

It's probably the second biggest monetary investment in their life (if they buy a house), but probably the least educated investment.

Now, some people get amazing help in high school while making this decision. They have extremely intelligent parents, a very supportive school counselor/teachers etc.

But a lot, and I know this from experience have zero help. I know today that if i'm going to invest a hundred thousand dollars in a college education I should probably try to know what the market 5+ years from now will be (good luck with that) maybe I should know what the ROI is on that degree... maybe I should know how competitive the labor market is/will be.

When i was 18 graduating from school I had zero help with this process. Zero. I was told "pursue what you love". How do you expect an (average) 18 year old to make this evaluation?

In my perfect world, we would increase business taxes to pay for higher education, those taxes would then be given directly to programs. Programming industry needs more programmers? easy give more money to computer science education. Students of course will still apply to programs they're most interested in, but in a competitive industry they'll get rejected BEFORE they make the major investment. If it takes a congressional act to change industry taxes, you can be assured someone is going to do some studies on how much each program will need. It's better to have a professional do that, than to hope the student maybe looks into it.

Finally how many jobs ask for a bachelors that just don't need it? If you start asking companies to pay for that education, they might make a better evaluation if its necessary.

Things just get more efficient, perhaps less "fair", but I don't life crippling debt is fair either.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#94

Post by otterley »

will_brown wrote: post #65
otterley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -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.

>The standard is nearly impossible to meet. Not really, the standard is "undue hardship". The problem is the myth...Of ~900,000 bankruptcy filings in 2014 only ~700 listed student loans as a debt to be discharged, of that number do you know how many were successfully discharged? The truth is of ~900,000 bankruptcies vastly more were eligible to have student loans discharged but didn't because they didn't even try. As…

Did the lender contest? Was the bankruptcy actually adjudicated? Your client may well have just gotten lucky. The Brunner test is a tough one to pass.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#95

Post by randycupertino »

Throwaway12141 wrote: post #47
n0us wrote: post #23

"Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." Smart move. Maybe he will pay it all down some day. In this thread there are a lot of people saying you shouldn't take out a lot of loans to get a degree like journalism, and you shou…

> "Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." ... or he could have just driven 40 minutes north and gotten a CS degree at George Mason University, which is a far, far better program than Mary Washington. OR if out of state tuit…

"One wonders if the problem is the parents." Agreed- no reason the starving artist underemployed son couldn't come home and go back to school for something he could actually get a job in, like nursing. There are 1 year accelerated BSN programs for people with bachelors in other subjects.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#96

Post by dragonwriter »

Throwaway12141 wrote: post #47
n0us wrote: post #23

"Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." Smart move. Maybe he will pay it all down some day. In this thread there are a lot of people saying you shouldn't take out a lot of loans to get a degree like journalism, and you shou…

> "Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." ... or he could have just driven 40 minutes north and gotten a CS degree at George Mason University, which is a far, far better program than Mary Washington. OR if out of state tuit…

> So one son decided to blow $200K on a journalism degree

$129,000, not $200K. $189K is the combined amount of the two sons.

(And "blow" largely because he got a journalism degree, apparently, for what appears to be a goal of an acting career, which is just mind-bogglingly weird, and not particularly because of the $ amount.)

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#97

Post by will_brown »

otterley wrote: post #94
will_brown wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The standard is nearly impossible to meet. Not really, the standard is "undue hardship". The problem is the myth...Of ~900,000 bankruptcy filings in 2014 only ~700 listed student loans as a debt to be discharged, of that number do you know how many were successfully discharged? The truth is of ~900,000 bankruptcies vastly more were eligible to have student loans discharged but didn't because they didn't even try. As…

Did the lender contest? Was the bankruptcy actually adjudicated? Your client may well have just gotten lucky. The Brunner test is a tough one to pass.

Discharge through bankruptcy and discharge through the US Dept of Education are different reliefs.

In bankruptcy, available statistics show educational loans are discharged, in whole/part, 50% of the time when attempted.

My client's loan was discharged through the US Dept of Education. Unlike bankruptcy a lender can't contest, there is no adjudication because the matter does not go to court and a lawyer really isn't needed.

It surely isn't luck. While most people falsely believe student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy, even more don't even have any idea there is a separate process to discharge student loans directly through the US Dept of Education.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#98

Post by serge2k »

enraged_camel wrote: post #81
marknutter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a journalism degree in Canada doesn't somehow make it more viable. We don't need more journalists, plain and simple. Nobody should be paying money to become journalists.

>>We don't need more journalists, plain and simple. I disagree. In a country with free press, journalists play a critical role in uncovering truths and disseminating the information among the public. The problem is that the vast majority of people with the title "journalist" today aren't really journalists. They're just brain-dead writers for news conglomerates and PR firms. And yes, getting a degree just for that is…

There is a difference between not needing more journalists and not needing journalists.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#99

Post by serge2k »

richerlariviere wrote: post #17
DickingAround wrote: post #3

$200k for journalism and media studies was a bad investment. It's a tough message, but you have to invest in education more intelligently than 'throw money at it and hope for the best'.

The U.S. educationnal system is wrong. If you go to Canada, you will pay less than 30k$ for you entire program. It's illogical to waste 4 years if you don't have solid chances to get a job and make it profitable, maybe it is not the place to go and/or the career to follow.

I did my entire education on loans (in Canada, lived at home and worked part time but actual tuition and books was paid with loans). 5 years (double major) of mostly full time tutition (last couple semesters when I was just finishing requirements were less) was just right around 30k.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#100

Post by otterley »

will_brown wrote: post #97
otterley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the lender contest? Was the bankruptcy actually adjudicated? Your client may well have just gotten lucky. The Brunner test is a tough one to pass.

Discharge through bankruptcy and discharge through the US Dept of Education are different reliefs. In bankruptcy, available statistics show educational loans are discharged, in whole/part, 50% of the time when attempted. My client's loan was discharged through the US Dept of Education. Unlike bankruptcy a lender can't contest, there is no adjudication because the matter does not go to court and a lawyer really isn't…

Does the DoE's ability to discharge student loan debts include private student loans, or only federally subsidized ones? My understanding is that the DoE has no legal interest in the former. Also, for many students, private loan obligations dwarf federal loan obligations.

Also, under which criteria did your client receive loan forgiveness? Total/permanent disability? TPD will only apply to only a small fraction of borrowers; bankruptcy is much more difficult to attain a discharge under.

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