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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

#171

Post by maxerickson »

erichocean wrote: post #156
letitgo12345 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean, they paid it back by having the USG buy all their shitty home loans to get them off the books? I'm not a fan of the financial sector but let's keep the facts straight here

It anyway isn't the case that TARP and QE are aimed just at the financial sector. They are aimed at preserving the existing economic order. If insurance companies start defaulting, things get exciting.

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

#172

Post by roymurdock »

tyre wrote: post #59

We have set students up to fail. On the one hand, we tell them that everyone has to go to college and that more education is better. Regardless of whether more education has any financial return. Is that the only metric? Absolutely not, but there is a point at which education is a luxury.[1] My entire high school education was focused on how to get into the "best" college. On the other hand, in order to get that educ…

Interested to hear what you think some possible solutions might be.

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

#173

Post by kin »

I also noticed while doing taxes that if I borrow money, I'm going to pay interest on that money I borrow. One of the incentives to this self investment is that I can deduct the interest that I pay.

However, apparently, if your salary is above a certain threshold, you don't qualify for education deductions and credits.

It's a first world problem, I know, but I just found out and it kind of sucked.

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

#174

Post by baudehlo »

sushid wrote: post #108
pmiller2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?

Replying here because the above comment is too many levels deep: this shows exactly what is wrong with hiring. Especially the HR manager who is so used to getting 100 resumes and trying desperately to find a reason to throw out 80 of them. Some of the best people I ever worked with didn't have CS degrees, and it's sad that HR still works this way at so many places.

(We are working to change it in our niche of Sales, but even there we have these same battle stories).

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

#175

Post by paulmd »

magicGLASSman wrote: post #49
Daishiman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Absolutely false, interest payments make up only 6% of Federal spending.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

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

#176

Post by alanh »

ryandrake wrote: post #121
Symbiote wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Depends on your definition of "purpose". The purpose of the DMV is not necessarily to enable people to drive, but they are the ones who do the test and hand out the piece of plastic, so we're kind of splitting hairs.

> splitting hairs

No we’re not! The framing of higher education as a career enabler with positive ROI is the #1 bit of propaganda that has justified and reframed how tuition is evaluated and is directly responsible for the steady and insane yearly tuition hike since the 1980s.

Fighting for the essence and purpose of higher education is therefore not trivial but in fact paramount.

The fact that we are having this conversation in a thread suggesting that the federal government enforce universities as job mills is, I trust, enough evidence to make my point.

For a more in-depth treatment of this topic, see "Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media" on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behi...

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

#177

Post by nibs »

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…

More victimization of the people who take these loans on. If you can drive one ton of sheet metal 60 miles an hour among peers, you can understand that spending other people's money on something requires you pay it back. The problem is people think it is worth it, not that they are victims.

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

#178

Post by e40 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #159
sushid wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what are you doing now? What did you intent to major in/did you end up majoring in?

I'm a software engineer now. I majored in math. I've literally had recruiters tell me they couldn't offer me an interview because I didn't study "computers," including once at a college career fair. I wanted to tell that woman about the people who invented computers, but I held my tongue as she threw my résumé back at me.

Many of the people I have worked with had degrees in math. I'm not sure if more had CS degrees or math degrees, to be honest.

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

#179

Post by shostack »

jbkkd wrote: post #111

We're headed toward a financial crisis. Borrowers not being able to pay loans.. Awfully sounds like the mortgage crisis.

/EDIT/

Would love to know why I was downvoted for pointing out what seem to be very real differences in the circumstances and asking for some backup in the form of data as to why this will lead to the disaster that the parent stated without supporting facts.

-----

I'm not sure they are equatable.

- Don't pay your mortgage, lose your house. This partly caused some of the panic that made a lot of people try to sell when they couldn't make payments. Don't pay your student loans...give back your knowledge? If I recall correctly declaring bankruptcy won't get rid of these loans, but it isn't like people are on the streets.

- A big factor in the mortgage crisis was how these bad loans were packaged into all number of convoluted and intentionally misleading securities products, and then dumped on the public markets where they became a large part of the portfolios of Main St. and Wall St. investors. Are there similar securities products around college loans, and is there data that suggests that repayment issues with them could have anywhere near the same impact?

I'm genuinely curious for some data on this. It ultimately looks like the ones left holding the bag would be the government (not good, but they have more flexibility in how they deal with things that doesn't necessarily tank the economy) and other loan institutions/banks. I don't think anyone will shed a tear if the banks get hurt as long as it doesn't cripple the economy, which again, it doesn't sound like it would.

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

#180

Post by kmonsen »

alanh wrote: post #163
vonmoltke wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally never got that message. I got the "you will go to college" message, but it came bundled with a "don't borrow $40,000 for college" message. In fact, I turned down my first choice school (Rose-Hulman) because I would have accrued $50,000 on loans over four years. That seems to be unfortunately typical now.

I really wanted to go to MIT, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when they were bragging that average student debt after graduation was “only” the price of a brand-new minivan or sports coupe.

The return on investment on an MIT degree and a sports car is pretty different.

If you graduate MIT with a decent degree in a wanted field you are going in the right direction.

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