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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
#62Full text if you don't want to deal with google/paywall workarounds: More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on more than $200 billion owed, raising worries that millions of them may never repay. The new figures represent the fallout of a decadelong borrowing boom as record numbers of students enrolled in trade schools, universities…
Great comment. Most people I know with this problem are just not able to get hired. Businesses reject them as underqualified or overqualified for every job unless offered minimal wage. Unfortunately, minimum wage doesnt pay cost of living plus minimum $1000-2000 loan payment.
So, I blame several parties in event loan was for kind of degree that should've paid off. The market for doing everything possible not utilize talent properly. Colleges and high schools that oversell the value of and overcharge for degrees. As Im for universal college, I'm less worried about credit checks so much as blaming government or lenders for allowing majors with low likelihood of repaying. The minimum payments are pretty ridiculous, too, with a progressive scheme making more sense.
So, many factors involved. Yet, there's no shortage of college-educated, enthusiastic, hard-working people aiming for all kinds of jobs. Just little willingness to hire them for a fair wage or at all.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
And that's assuming you can get enough hours to work full time, and also have benefits to cover whatever mishaps may develop. And that you don't have any dependents.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#64My 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...
Some of these income based payment plans have a forgiveness clause after 20-25 years, so it may still make sense.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#65If graduates had the option to discharge their student loan debt in bankruptcy in exchange for revoking their degree, I wonder how many would end up taking that option.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#66> 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 t…
The TARP bailout was not money just handed out to banks. It was loans to banking and other industries which was repaid in full overall. And in fact it was the auto industry which failed to repay the loan, not the banking industry.
I'm not a fan of the financial sector but let's keep the facts straight here
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#67There'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…
I think this is well intentioned but would be absolutely disastrous if implemented; it would give large employers de-facto control over what we are allowed to teach in higher education and encourage short sighted investment in current careers at the expense of cutting edge fields. Nevermind the substantial arguments that an education should be more than vocational training, and that job placement in many majors is more a function of the candidate and not their degree; predicting the careers of tomorrow is a hard task best not left in the hands of government bureaucrats or even large corporation's hr departments.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#68My 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…
Man same situation exactly. We don't get $0 invoices though. What pissed me off is that there is no way the university spend $100K educating her. That money probably went to build some palace with some guys name on it.
''you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!''
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#69My 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…
Don't teachers usually have loan forgiveness programs after X-years? I think a lot of government associated jobs offer a perk like this. I'm not sure if this is state specific or not though.
They are conditional with having employment in the first place as well as if the government entity they are under has approval for such forgiveness. My wife doesn't qualify under most programs and given the glut of newer grads or veterans (she's been beaten out by veterans for 10 positions with 100+ applications referred - none of which were non-veterans according to the hiring committee we managed to find out) she's competing against that can accept the $12 / hr wages I basically have to pay the residual myself instead. That's marriage for you.
Re: More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments
#70There'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…
Must the value of an education be purely the salary you can get afterwards? The true roots of liberal arts (which used to include everything from astronomy to mathematics to botany) lie in creating a well-rounded, educated, sophisticated person. We can't all study STEM, and we as a society shouldn't demand that.