Nowadays, large student loan balances are not only hurting our young people right out of college. They are hurting people in their 30′s and 40′s. If a student pursued a post-graduate degree in order to teach or do research at a University, they could come out with over $100000 in debt. They may have been put in forbearance while in grad school and then they began paying them off at age 28, or later depending on when they finish… 20 years out is 48 years of age.
I think many of the young people who are borrowing are not using the best judgment, not that we did either, but both of us worked while in college so we didn’t have to borrow the max. In working with some students, I have seen them driving better cars than I have, wearing designer clothes, etc. Not all but certainly some of them do.
Some of us didn’t get the best interest rate when we refinanced. Our payment is like a really good house payment with today’s rates. Throw in elderly parents, illness, or spousal job loss and this can ruin someone.
All of us with student loan debt need help, not just the young ones…. I think if someone is teaching at any level they should get some relief.
What is going to happen is brain drain. Some of the brightest minds are finding jobs outside America. We should be aiding our students not crippling them with debt. It makes for destruction of our economy…..they know it strapped with debt there will be no buying.
And without good paying jobs….and debt relief from the United States government the future of the economy is going nowhere unless the students are bailed out. The crisis coming is far-reaching.
Misinformation and propaganda of all sorts and on all topics. None of which absolves anyone of responsibility for the choices they make freely, even those choices that don’t turn out as well as we hoped or planned. And I utterly reject the notion that any type of dividing line exists between “the 1%” and “the 99%”, the crossing of which in either direction alters responsibility for one’s choices or the ability to make them wisely.
If an adult individual is not responsible for the life choices they make, including how they manage their money, then who is? The last time I checked, personal responsibility and integrity were still progressive values, and entirely appropriate to be promoted of this board. If you disagree, let’s hear it. This is about a line of decadent capitalist-imperialist propaganda that argues “Get a college degree and take on mountains of debt to finance it because it’s a good investment” and the working class’ failure to see through the empty bullshit embodied in the pitch. Basically the 1% have conned Americans into thinking they should 1) pay for their own job training to make profits for the 1% and 2) go into non-dischargable debt to finance said job training. Saying adult individuals should be ‘responsible’ for the ‘choices they make’ is empty sloganeering, akin to a politician claiming he or she is ‘tough on crime.’ (When’s the last time you heard a politician tout that he or she is ‘soft’ on crime?)
This isn’t the 1950s anymore; people can’t segue smoothly into home ownership a few years after graduating from high school anymore, and even most low-yield jobs out there “require” a college degree as a result of high school diplomas being so watered down anymore. (Also, the whole fad of requiring one for its own sake. “The question isn’t “can I afford this loan?” in this market, it’s “can I afford to spend the next ten years bouncing from one minimum wage job to another until I get a lucky break somewhere?” and with things the way they are the answer to that has never been further from “no” than it is. “Just pick up a trade” isn’t becoming any easier these days either, before that riposte shows up.
On top of that, tuition tends to skyrocket over the course of a degree. Someone’s last year being half again as expensive as their first year is not unusual. It’s entirely possible to believe you can afford it when you start only to have another $20,000 on the bill by the end that you weren’t anticipating because an institution decided to raise their rates to build that third new business school or something.
Students earn degrees only to discover upon graduation that their “sure fire” career disappeared in the time it took them to earn their degree. Any career in construction went up in smoke between 2008 – 2010. What happened if you graduated during those years with even a STEM degree like civil engineering degree, architecture, drafting, or mechanical engineering? You cannot find a job AND you have many thousands of dollars of debt. Even some medical fields that were touted as “sure fire” like med techs or phlebotomists – crashed. Many radiologists are actually located in Mumbai which means US trained med staff is SOL. Or teaching – double zero if you graduated and tried to find a job.
Computer science guys have horror stories of the increase in H1B visa holders destroying their careers from 2006 onwards. What are they supposed to do with their loans now? Lawyers are getting laid off, paralegal work is being outsourced to India.
You can do all the homework in the world but the reality is that in the past few years, those who did their homework and believed they were in a “sure fire” or “high growth rate” career track are suddenly unleashed into a very, very different economy than when they started. Universities have a vested interest in lying to their students about their job placement rates so the student can go into student services worried about their future employability and be assured by the university that they’ll be placed.
However to a university it doesn’t matter exactly how you got “placed”. If you have a civil engineering degree and are flipping burgers at Wendy’s for minimum wage, the university doesn’t indicate that.
Some universities are in the midst of a flurry of lawsuits because of post grad employ-ability statistics fraud.
What you’re eventually going to have is an uneducated lower class and a educated rich class. Before, there was cause to help give them opportunities, but now the movement has only created educated debt slaves while the banks are in charge. And we’re to think it’s OK, because the Government is taking over the banks’ role. I’m not sure about that.
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