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Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

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Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#211

Post by malnourish »

adrianN wrote: post #196
pmiller2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't help. Lottery tickets have the odds of winning printed right on them, and people still buy them.

Spending ten bucks on a lottery ticket doesn't hurt most people while winning the lottery can have a live-changing impact. Every action is rational for a properly chosen value function.

Yep. I'll spend 8-16 bucks a month on lottery tickets. It's what I use spare cash left in my wallet for. It's not going to break the bank and I'm likely not going to win, but it's a nice pipe dream and where I live a decent amount of the money goes to the environment.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#212

Post by zip1234 »

JackFr wrote: post #171
Lazare wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, absolutely. We have laws banning outright fraud, setting minimum food safety standards, a lot of rules about packaging and labelling. And that's good! But we don't have any laws or expectation that a food vendor is going to be acting in my best interests. If I want to spend my rent money on 87 large pepperoni pizzas, nobody is going to arrest the guy who took my order because he didn't sit down and have a 30…

It's not as simple as that. They are a servicer, not a lender -- they are contracted by the lender to collect the money from the borrower. So the borrowers never asked to be customers of Navient. They borrowed some money from a bank or the government, who then contracted Navient to service the loans. Now servicing loans is like owning an interest only bond -- you get a small payment every month as long as the loan is…

Maybe we shouldn't be mad at Navient then? Seems like the government is the root cause of the entire student loan mess. Basically unlimited amounts of unsecured debt for people that don't understand the implications and are not required to get a degree that has a ROI to pay it back in a reasonable amount of time. Setting people up for a lifetime of wage slavery...

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#213

Post by jordanmoconnor »

da02 wrote: post #150
jordanmoconnor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to an engineering focused private university, borrowed my way through the whole thing (housing, food, everything), parents didn't pay a dime. Stupid? Yes. But that's reality for a lot of people. I'm shocked those averages are that low.

How much was the tuition per year? Did it take long to get a job when you finished your studies?

Tuition + room and board was about $40K for 4 years.

The school has a good internship/co-op program, so I was fortunate to step into a junior engineering role right after graduation. I'm a C+/B- student. Graduated with a 2.98 GPA.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#215

Post by esrauch »

lr4444lr wrote: post #134
LyndsySimon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> out of the loans that the US Dept of Ed decided it can't collect on anymore Nope - Navient isn't a collector, it's a servicing company.

It's both[0]. But what it's not doing is duping aspiring college graduates to take out these loans in the first place. As detestable as their predation on the delinquent may be, they're not pumping up the loan bubble. https://www.navient.com/about/who-we-are/services/

On the other hand, my loan servicer was changed to some unbelievably poorly managed servicing company years after I had graduated (not one of the big 3-4 companies): think login without ssl, mailing me paper with my SSN printed on it, couldn't get a person on the phone after waiting on hold for hours.

I never choose to make any financial deal with that company and I never would have given any choice. The net result was just that I made it my absolute top priority to pay off the rest of my loans held by them (which was also a very frustrating process, with several rounds of extra interest and surprise tiny fees and more inability to get someone on the phone) but other people wouldn't have that luxury.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#216

Post by rhino369 »

da02 wrote: post #159
rhino369 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College degrees still mostly have a good ROI. The huge lie is the ROI on pedigree, prestige, whatever you want to call it. Kids are still being told to apply to expensive small private schools and to worry about the financial aid process later. Kids are told to find the right fit. None of that really matters. The big ROI is just getting a degree or the type of degree. There are few elite schools that have a much bett…

How did he get accepted into Stanford? Academic qualifications plus leadership/extra-circular activities? Or solely on grades?

Stellar academics and test scores. He did a stint in the army so that might have helped, but didn't seem very involved in extra-circulars.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#217

Post by rhino369 »

labster wrote: post #170
rhino369 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College degrees still mostly have a good ROI. The huge lie is the ROI on pedigree, prestige, whatever you want to call it. Kids are still being told to apply to expensive small private schools and to worry about the financial aid process later. Kids are told to find the right fit. None of that really matters. The big ROI is just getting a degree or the type of degree. There are few elite schools that have a much bett…

Depends on the job. If you want to get on the US Supreme Court, you have to go to Yale or Harvard. But in general yes, it's a good idea to shop around. It also depends on the field you want. CSU Northridge is a pretty marginal school, but it's great at geology.

Law is a big outlier in general. There the degree doesn't matter at all, only the prestige. But I still wouldn't recommend paying 200k to go to Yale if Northwestern offered you a full ride. There is one SCOTUS job every 4-5 years.

For law, I'd say get a scholarship or aid at a great school or don't go at all.

In many ways grad school is an outlier in general. It's often just not worth it to get a PhD from a less respected institution. The difference is that most PhD programs pay you, not nice versa.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#218

Post by bluGill »

twblalock wrote: post #142
theseatoms wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow borrowers to default on student loans. Then banks can charge an appropriate interest rate for the credit risk of the borrower, based on pursued major (among other things).

Very few students would qualify. Most of them have no credit history and little to no income. If it were easy to default, the entire system would collapse. Obviously the impossibility of defaulting and the ease of getting loans feeds the problem, but what you are proposing would destroy the system rather than fix it.

Very few students in worthless degree would qualify. Engineering and medical degrees would do much better because good students would not default as the degree is part of what drives their job.

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#219

Post by selimthegrim »

cbennett wrote: post #50
dominotw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people who can do this are benefitting from the way current things are setup. Why would they cut the branch they are sitting on.

Target market would not be folks already massively invested in these stocks. Target market would be student loan debtors who have comfortable jobs and salaries north of 50k. Apps like Robinhood have opened the ability for folks earning even less than 50k , to comfortably invest. Many tens of thousands may be interested; there could be a bigger market opportunity than you think.

How much is Robinhood taking in fees again?

Re: Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own

#220

Post by pjc50 »

developer2 wrote: post #188
techsupporter wrote: post #4

> There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer... Navient says its public statements encouraging borrowers to contact the company didn’t mean it would act in their best interest. So, pardon in advance for the vulgar language, but why the fuck is this OK? From any company? I'm getting real damn sick and tired of "what the big print gives, the spidery print takes away" and how we'r…

Oh give me a break. The primary rule for being an adult: do not take on debt you may not be able to reliably pay back. No lender owes any borrower favors to help with their debt. If you can't afford the debt, don't borrow it. Debt isn't some magical tool to obtain free money. You're taking money from someone, with a straightforward contract to pay it back. If you can't pay it back, you shouldn't be borrowing. The lev…

> Why is debt considered "normal" in the 21st century?

Probably because it's extremely hard to get a university education or a house without it?

Especially educational debt; people are required to commit to it right at the beginning of adulthood and before they've learned the skills for the career that's supposed to be able to pay it back.

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