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U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

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Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#91

Post by larrywright »

AngryData wrote: post #85
larrywright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free college is an awful idea, honestly. That's not going to fix the problem, and will most likely make it significanly worse.

Why? It works for high school, I don't see how college is any different.

High school is a guided path, there are choices to be made but everyone comes out of it with a similar set of skills and knowledge. College is self-guided and people can choose the degree they want to pursue.

The problem today is that there are a lot of people who pursue degrees with little regard for the cost and the applicability of the degree they're pursuing. If they do that now, when they have some skin in the game, how will that improve if college is "free". I think you'll see more people getting degrees in fields that have no job market. Sure, they don't have debt (the rest of us will foot the bill), but they have no job prospects either.

The people I see on Facebook and other social media complaining about the cost of college and the job prospects they have all have one thing in common: they bought into the "pursue your passion" lie and came out of college with a degree that they can't use.

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#92

Post by emmelaich »

mindslight wrote: post #57
exabrial wrote: post #36

Student loans need a TILA box: you're taking $100,000 loan for a $30k/year job. It'll take you 20 years to repay, do you wish to sign?

All the check boxes in the world still can't obtain consent from a child. And make no mistake - someone about to graduate high school, herded by their parents and other authorities their entire life, is a child. It's time to admit the failure of this particular financial engineering scheme, and close it down. Rather than complaining about the money that has already been lost, be diligent in preventing whatever govern…

That's why an actual example with numbers is important, like the other replier.

Also should add the typical earnings for person with the desired degree, with history.

There's probably a case to be made that students were conned into unrealistic loans.

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#93

Post by larrywright »

semajian wrote: post #87
larrywright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free college is an awful idea, honestly. That's not going to fix the problem, and will most likely make it significanly worse.

I guess the most prominent counterexample is Germany, which has basically free tuition. They also have different kinds of high schools preparing people for universities or trades, not everyone needs to go to university.

I know that it's worked elsewhere, but that doesn't mean it will work here (without some cultural changes). I'm not saying college shouldn't be free - maybe it should - but I'm saying that the problems we have today with underemployment aren't going to be fixed by free tuition.

We first have to undo decades of treating trades as a lesser class of work, and telling everyone they have to go to college and "follow their passion".

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#95

Post by karlakush »

shmerl wrote: post #62
jtbayly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this meant to be sarcastic? I suppose it would be possible if you enslaved those with PHDs and unpaid debt, forcing them to teach at universities administrated by those enslaved for their debt, built by those enslaved for their debt. Pharaoh had a lot of things for “free,” as did the plantation owners in the US, but the cost of free is pretty much the opposite of free for those who end up doing the paying. And the…

I'm serious. Society can figure out how to make education free, and not put students in crazy debt for years. If you don't advocate it, you basically advocate debt profiteering.

What makes you think we can find enough professors willing to work for free that this would even be in the realm of possibility?

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#96

Post by mbrumlow »

downrightmike wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it I can ditch close to 90 grand in loans lickety-split but students cant? how is education any different? When you initially took your loans, your lender assessed your credit and made the lending decision accordingly. Any individual loan won’t pan out, it on average the portfolio will, because the lender controls what loans are made. Student loans are completely different. The lender (the federal government…

The assessing is done by the school as they are a trusted third party. And then the school inflates prices to bring in more money for the endowment and administration. The selling line is something like: "Don't want to have a shit life and no options? We didn't think so, so sign this paper and go cram for tests and don't worry about the bill. People with a degree earn more than those without." And then the jobs are s…

> The assessing is done by the school as they are a trusted third party.

That might be for some loans, but from my understanding everybody is guaranteed a loan, regardless of their grades. The point was the government would back the loans so those who were less affluent could also go to school.

The end result is we tried to help the poor, and screwed everybody else along the way. Not only did the poor get a bad deal, people who could have normally afforded school got slotted into these bad deals too.

People like to blame the schools for raising the prices, but that simply how supply and demand works. Schools can hold X people, if > X people want in then the price goes up. Schools can also only expand so fast.

The fact is, not everybody needs to go to a 4 year school. The process of making it near mandatory lowers the value it brings in general as curriculum is adjusted for a much wider group of people -- generally by lowering the bar. This is in part because you now have a bunch of people given loans who without getting that degree probably won't be able to pay back that first year of school they failed out in -- even more so when that is north of 20k.

Before we started guaranteeing loans it as either your money, your parents money, or somebody loaning you money who truly was invested in vetting candidates abilities to finish school, get a job, and pay the loan back. With prices generally being lower the loans were smaller too.

A much better way to have addressed the issue with poor people would have been to set up grants, vetted students based of merit, and provide grants for those kids who showed promise. The end result is paying a lot less than the mess we have today, and it would have not dragged down those who would have probably been able to afford school on their own accord before this mess happened.

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#97

Post by emmelaich »

semajian wrote: post #87
larrywright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free college is an awful idea, honestly. That's not going to fix the problem, and will most likely make it significanly worse.

I guess the most prominent counterexample is Germany, which has basically free tuition. They also have different kinds of high schools preparing people for universities or trades, not everyone needs to go to university.

If all good education was free there would be no private Universities in Germany. But there are many and they all charge fees.

Also, _not_ all public universities are free.

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#98

Post by zaroth »

nimbius wrote: post #10

Disclosure: I work as a blue-collar engine mechanic. Ive never been to college. That having been said, im familiar with debt after the 2008 housing collapse. I lost my truck and my trailer home, partly because of a shady home loan and partly because well, my employer went out of business. That having been said it was relatively easy to discharge these debts. the bank wasnt too upset about the home and offered to help…

Losing a professional license (or even a driver's license) based on a student loan default is asinine. [1]

I've never heard of outstanding student loan debt limiting eligibility for food stamps (SNAP) or section 8 housing. Can you point to any resource which can confirm this? My understanding is that both programs are based on household income.

[1] - https://studentloanhero.com/featured/unpaid-student-loans-fa...

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#99

Post by microcolonel »

nimbius wrote: post #10

Disclosure: I work as a blue-collar engine mechanic. Ive never been to college. That having been said, im familiar with debt after the 2008 housing collapse. I lost my truck and my trailer home, partly because of a shady home loan and partly because well, my employer went out of business. That having been said it was relatively easy to discharge these debts. the bank wasnt too upset about the home and offered to help…

Education loans, especially the highly-regulated and specific form currently practiced[0], do not have collateral. If you fail to restructure your other debts, there is property to control; if you fail to restructure your student debts, the lender is out on their ass. Student loans are pretty soft on borrowers, the way I look at it. What perhaps should be done is to make the liability conditional on income: loans for nonsense degree mill "educations" would become dramatically more expensive, which I think would be a good thing; but so would loans for anything lenders didn't find promising.

Of course, in the U.S, the government is involved in a lot of the lending, which means that they'll probably do whatever irrational thing pleases whoever they're trying to please; except this time around when they're doing the thing they are responsible for doing (actually enforcing the terms of the loan agreements) rather than the popular thing.

Here in Canada, I feel the system is pretty unfair to people who did not require higher education; I'm stuck paying for the useless, pompous ignorami who make private life harder and more boring for me with their prefab ideas and vague bloviation, and I've been paying net taxes into it since I was 17.

When I move to the U.S, I hope I'm not paying even more for the same garbage that convinces smart people that they are useless without college, and convinces dumb people that college has automatically made them useful.

[0] As long as the conversation about the tremendous amount of student debt held in the U.S. is centered around loan forgiveness, lenders have no incentive to improve their practices. The federal government can't just steal their property, so they figure they'll get a sweet settlement and a smooth exit, just like the lenders who were publicly scapegoated, and privately rewarded, a decade ago.

Re: U.S. Stepping Up Enforcement on Delinquent Student Loans

#100

Post by bradleyjg »

nimbius wrote: post #10

Disclosure: I work as a blue-collar engine mechanic. Ive never been to college. That having been said, im familiar with debt after the 2008 housing collapse. I lost my truck and my trailer home, partly because of a shady home loan and partly because well, my employer went out of business. That having been said it was relatively easy to discharge these debts. the bank wasnt too upset about the home and offered to help…

> She is a biologist, but all of her money goes straight to the loans. it has for 9 years now.

Federally owned student loans, which are the vast majority, have income driven repayment plans available. There are a lot of details but most are eligible for a plan that requires the payment of 10% of income after 150% of poverty line.

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