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More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

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Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#41

Post by hohod »

gozur88 wrote: post #20
codeulike wrote: post #7

Thats how its supposed to work, in the UK at least. Student Loans are like a distributed tax that only gets paid by the grads who earn enough to repay. edit: Also, in the UK, once you do earn enough, payment is automatic via deductions from payslips.

That's a terrible system, IMO. Why should we be rewarding B-Ark people while at the same time punishing people who get degrees in Engineering and Medicine? I can understand the logic for tax-supported universities (not necessarily agree, but understand), but this just seems... intellectually dysgenic.

The same way you tax more people earning more money ?

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#42

Post by AJ007 »

sh1ps wrote: post #22

A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me. Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage th…

A big problem is that at age 17, all of the adults are saying go to college & take out these loans. Guidance councilors, teachers, parents. The most compliant high schoolers will just do what they are told without thinking about it further.

I imagine this will start changing. When I was a kid, that group of adults had the benefit of cheap degrees. Today, now that group of adults is us and we did not go to school cheap (personally I don't fall in to that category out of personal choice, but most of my friends do.)

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#43

Post by fixermark »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #36
sh1ps wrote: post #22

A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me. Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage th…

Who is supposed to work those jobs then? Even if Yelp relocated their non engineering staff, paying them minimum wage in some other city won't help them.

Actually, it can. It's not just the payment; it's payment against cost of living.

$9 an hour might afford a house in the suburbs of a small city, or an apartment in a smaller city. It doesn't scratch the paint on the cost of a basic apartment in the Valley.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#44

Post by Symbiote »

guelo wrote: post #21

There's a simple solution, the Feds should cutoff loans for schools that don't get their students jobs. The government are the only ones that are able to accurately calculate which schools are completely worthless. In fact they should take it one step further and advertise to the whole world what percentage of students get jobs in their studied field and the average starting salary. That would finally put some market…

> schools to do their damn job and teach useful skills

That may be the purpose of the loans, but it is not necessarily the purpose of universities.

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#45

Post by AnimalMuppet »

igetspam wrote: post #27

My wife is one of these borrowers. She has a master's degree in teaching. It cost her over $100k to get and she can't find job that would pay her enough that she'd be required to pay anything back. I've seen her loan repayment docs and her minimum payment due is $0 every month. While I think her decision to get a masters in education was a bad one (before we were married) I laugh at an institution that would loan her…

While she doesn't have a job that pays enough to trigger repayment, is the loan accruing interest? If so, is the interest rate higher than the one on your mortgage? If so, you might want to reconsider your strategy...

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#47

Post by rdtsc »

> The Education Department has assembled a “behavioral sciences unit” to study the psychology of borrowers and why they don’t repay.

Ha! There is a bit of a hypocrisy there -- if big banks / companies piss away money and choose to strategically default then (and some even get bail-outs), it is just business. If people do it for whatever reason, well clearly the are immoral, deficient somehow, their psychology needs to be studied by a special committee.

> Some borrowers aren’t repaying even when they can.

Yap, makes sense. They see banks get bailouts, why shouldn't they get bailouts. Now maybe they shouldn't have been allowed to borrow to start with. But maybe so shouldn't have banks and insurance companies been allowed to leverage to unsustainable levels.

> The singular goal of our student loan program is to help all students get a degree that sets them up for success

One a separate note, that needs to be reviewed and re-evaluated. There are deeper issues here. Simply handing out billions of dollars for degrees like Masters in Basket Weaving from Phoenix University cannot possibly be seen as solution to anything (except well, handing out tax payer money to Phoenix University...)

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#48

Post by santaclaus »

sh1ps wrote: post #22

A big takeaway from this article (for me) is that people are surprised that 17 year old kids don't understand what they're doing when they take out that college loan. Shock and astonishment despite there being little to no preparation for this kind of financial understanding previously in their education. That surprise and shock shocks and surprises me. Honestly it kind of reminds me of the whole Yelp minimum wage th…

> Person knowingly takes a minimum wage job in the most expensive city in the world

I want to work in Yelp's Monaco offices!

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#49

Post by magicGLASSman »

Daishiman wrote: post #31
sooper wrote: post #11

In New Zealand the Government has started to arrest defaulters at the border[1]. This may not work as well for US as I am not sure of the percentage who travel outside the country versus NZ. [1] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Wow, modern-day debtor's prisons making a comeback. Welcome to the Middle Ages.

Most our tax dollars go to pay down the interest on our countries debt and you go to prison if you don't pay your taxes. Crazy Days

Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments

#50

Post by codeulike »

gozur88 wrote: post #20
codeulike wrote: post #7

Thats how its supposed to work, in the UK at least. Student Loans are like a distributed tax that only gets paid by the grads who earn enough to repay. edit: Also, in the UK, once you do earn enough, payment is automatic via deductions from payslips.

That's a terrible system, IMO. Why should we be rewarding B-Ark people while at the same time punishing people who get degrees in Engineering and Medicine? I can understand the logic for tax-supported universities (not necessarily agree, but understand), but this just seems... intellectually dysgenic.

Because perhaps there's a view that its worth something to society for people to study things that dont necessarily lead to a high salary?
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