The process is crooked as sin. When I was in high school back in the 90s, they handed the Student Loan applications to us in class to fill out. Not knowing any better, I did.
I despised the idea of loans because my parents really messed up big with them, and when I got “my money” I was appalled at what I had done. It was more money than I’ve ever seen (in today’s dollars it was chicken feed), and I swore I would never get another. It sure made for a tough time paying for school, but it left me without the staggering debt.
A hard lesson to learn, and one that needs to never happen, but the university industry has got society by the short hairs.
The study is badly flawed, only looking at 35 instances. For the 99+% of the population, the answer is ‘fuggetaboutit’. The loans keep building up as people can only pay the minimum, and when they die, the lenders or the feds come after the estate because the debt is far beyond what the initial loan was.
Time to change the whole thing.
First, if the debt is 20 years old, forgive it. Period. It’s not gonna be paid, so charge it off.
Second, do away with student loans. It will force colleges to re-evaluate their costs, etc as the number of people going to school for useless degrees will fall drastically.
Third, it will eliminate degrees in “woman’s studies”, etc as these are useless except to create more burger flippers at McDonalds.
Fourth, it will change what constitutes a degree. No longer will you be taking all these mandatory non-relevant courses required by colleges just to fill up the 130 hours. Cut the degree to 60-80 hours, focus on what is IMPORTANT to the course of study. If it puts some departments out of business, fine.
Fifth, eliminate the “you must graduate in X years” or you lose your credits. Yes, some colleges do this. If it takes you 10 years, so be it.
Yep, I fell into the same trap, as have my two boys. If there was some way to discharge my student loans I’d be in the front of the line with the paperwork to do so.