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The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

nytimes.com

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Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#141

Post by adminprof »

wtvanhest wrote: post #90
drcode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suffered so others should have to I didn't "suffer", I just fulfilled the obligations I signed up for when I signed up to my loans.

Maybe you can go in to specifics? When I graduated in 2005, the cost of college was just heating up. It is now in a full meltdown and it would be ridiculous for me to compare my situation in 2005 to someone entering college in 2018. Cost is way up from then to now.

I've heard this a lot but don't see much in terms of numbers about this. For private universities, the sticker price is high, but the effective tuition that students are paying has actually stayed the same or decreased [e.g. http://time.com/money/4777909/private-college-scholarships-2...]

For public universities, they were substantially cheaper than private universities due to state subsidies. The tuition has almost doubled over the past 15 years for the few places I checked, but that's only a bit over inflation. Public state universities are still a great deal.

So I think the stats are using a lot of for-profit colleges which skew the numbers up. They are expensive and don't offer a lot. Anyways, I would love to see some actual data and the breakdown of what schools are increasing tuition.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#142

Post by harryh »

gamechangr wrote: post #113

I co-signed a loan for a friend who worked in as a Chemical Engineer for GE. Long story short, he had his Visa revoked, so I ended up on the hook for $16k of his student loans. I took a look at some of the financing terms and they are completely ridiculous. He paid $130 a month and at the end of the year he had only paid down $70 in principal. These terms should be criminal.

(130 * 12 - 70) / 16,000 = 9.375%

That's a bit high but doesn't seem totally out of line for an unsecured loan.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#143

Post by [deleted] »

thatjsguy wrote: post #63
dev_dull wrote: post #19

There really needs to be some “free market” ideology injected into the way loans are dispersed. First of all students need a way to declare bankruptcy. Second, we must take into consideration future earnings potential when deciding how much and at what rate.

What if we just like... paid for school with taxes like literally every other country? (Trust me, it shouldn’t cost as much as it does to get a degree. I promise it can be and, in fact, used to be affordable.)

[deleted]

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#144

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #119
citrablue wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 questions 1/ Are there solutions on the table where the cure isn't worse than the disease? That money has been spent, it came from somewhere. Can it just be vanquished without repercussions? 2/ Objectively, what is the likelihood that continuing the status quo crashes the system? 3/ What are the long term consequences from potential solutions? E.g., if current debts are forgiven/cancelled, would lenders refuse to l…

Much of this debt was never spent it was created from thin air due to interest. Saying someone does not get profit is very different from saying they don’t get principal. But more directly these people and institutions made a bet, the fact not all bets win is a basic fact of life. PS: I have negligible student debt at sub inflation interest rates remaining. But, for people with 8+% interest rate loans that interest s…

[deleted]

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#145

Post by tryptophan »

bogomipz wrote: post #84
acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…

>"Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt," There's an interesting parallel with the cost of healthcare. Increases in costs for both seem to outstrip inflation year over year. And there's lots of of people making lots of money in both sectors. And yet nobody in either sector seems to be able to say exactly why the costs are increasing at the untenable rates they are. The only thing Washington ever seems to do…

Hm...housing, healthcare, college, pharma are all heavily regulated and are subsidized by the government in one way or another. All are outpacing inflation by a very significant margin, for dubious gains in utility.

Anyone else seeing a trend here?

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#146

Post by thatjsguy »

troupe wrote: post #133
thatjsguy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody getting a break doesn’t bring you down, it just brings them up. I’m sorry you had to pay off your loans. I’m paying about $100,000 myself. But even if I didn’t get amnesty, I’d rather not have one more graduate who, like me, has sincerely considered whether simply being dead would be easier to deal with. And there are a lot of people like that. I’d rather be in debt forever if it means that subsequent multit…

So if person A got a degree that they can use to get a job with $40k of debt and has worked hard to pay it off, but person B has incurred $40k to get a degree that isn't going to lead to a job, you seem to think we can just forgive the debt of B without having any impact on A. Where do you think the money to pay for that debt will come from....well people who have jobs and are working. So basically person A has to pa…

So I dated a 41-year-old. He went to school about 15 years before I did. Know how much student loan debt he has? Zero. Zilch. Nada. In the amount of time it takes to reach the age necessary to acquire a learner’s permit, we inflated the cost of education into the stratosphere.

Education used to be affordable. It is absolutely not impossible to go back. I’m curious to know how long you think education has been this unaffordable, because it’s a pretty new phenomenon. I’m therefore confused why it’s so hard to imagine a world where education is reasonably-priced.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#147

Post by severine »

jldugger wrote: post #36
dev_dull wrote: post #19

There really needs to be some “free market” ideology injected into the way loans are dispersed. First of all students need a way to declare bankruptcy. Second, we must take into consideration future earnings potential when deciding how much and at what rate.

> First of all students need a way to declare bankruptcy. While I'm not for or against such a policy, I find it intriguing you think bankruptcy is free market ideology adjacent.

On The Importance Of Efficient Bankruptcy To A Free Market Economy: https://outline.com/8stGYk (from Forbes no less!)

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#148

Post by thatjsguy »

citrablue wrote: post #111
stormbrew wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The converse of this being the assumption that having a huge number of people stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is not itself a drag on society that eventually comes out of other people's pockets one way or another anyways. "I survived a bad system" is not justification for the perpetuation of that system.

Similarly, people who survived the system should have just as much access to remedies as people currently in their own difficulties.

Absolutely, but if we have to deal with the burden while ensuring future students don’t have to suffer (because let’s face it: short of Jesus Christ coming back and demanding it, I don’t see private loan forgiveness in our future), I’d rather do that. I just want SOMEONE to have a break. It doesn’t have to be me.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#149

Post by forapurpose »

I know it's oversimplified, but it results from American business' assertion that the 'free market' is the best solution to all problems, and American acquiescence to it. In other words, it comes from try to squeeze profit from every damn thing, from people's health, to education, to privacy, to government services (i.e., 'privatization') to everything else.

I think the free market is a great tool, but like every tool it is good for some problems and not for others, and also it's a means to accomplish our goals, not an end in itself.

Re: The Student Debt Problem Is Worse Than We Imagined

#150

Post by zaroth »

drcode wrote: post #34
acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It's a damn shame we've let this crisis reach this scale. Along with healthcare, climate change, the debt, our inauguration, and so on, we've been essentially frozen for most of my life as politicians concern themselves more so with existential power struggle. The right wants to bring us back to the gilded age, the left makes headlines but is barely relevant, and the center is trying to squeeze bandaid solutions whil…

I must say, as someone who made quite a few sacrifices to pay off my school debt, I'll be pretty miffed if less responsible people from my same generation get a break on their loans.

I’m of a similar mind having worked hard to pay my way through undergrad over 6 years.

I would be OK with slashing interest rates. A loan which has such special status that it can’t even be cleared through bankruptcy should have a remarkably low interest rate.

Something like, every month you make your payment the interest is credited back to the principal. Or perhaps require 6 months of consecutive on-time payments after which interest goes to zero or 1% as long as you keep making regular payments.

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