Posted on 10/02/2014 5:55:39 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Let's call her Alice. One of us has known her for years. She earned her Ph.D. in the mid-1990s when academic jobs were scarce, and she wound up an academic gypsy. She left graduate school to take a one-year full-time academic appointment, but then found herself cobbling together part-time teaching jobs at different community colleges in a large metropolitan area, earning a couple of thousand dollars for each course she teaches. She is a dedicated teacher, but her annual income is between $30,000 and $40,000.
Alice owes $270,000 in student loans. She only borrowed about $70,000 to pay for grad school, but she's never been able to afford much in the way of payments, and after consolidating her loans and accumulating interest charges for years, she's watched her debt roughly quadruple.
If Alice taught students in a low-income high school or was a recent graduate, she would be eligible for various programs that would allow her to discharge at least some of her debt. But since she graduated at a time before income-based repayment and loan-forgiveness programs, there is no federal program to help established part-time community-college faculty discharge their old student-loan debts.
In fact, the federal government is quite content with Alice's situation. The $270,000 she owes is carried on the government's books as an asset. The government reasons that, since it is nearly impossible to discharge student loans through bankruptcy, it will eventually collect all of the more than $1 trillion in federal student loan debt that Alice—and millions of other student borrowers—owe.
Not likely. Because Alice has figured out how to avoid repaying and still stay in the government's good graces. She is able to defer her loans without accruing additional interest by enrolling in two community-college courses per term
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It is less noble.
Now wait a minute. I, too, finished with a 75K debt. I, too, put it in forbearance for about 5 years. It only went up to 86K. Now maybe she's been in forbearance twice as long, even three times as long, but that alone wouldn't pop you up to over quarter of a million dollars. There's something they are leaving out.
If the PhD is a desirable field it seems that the pay is very good. My daughter has inquired about accounting and it is a 3 figure salary. A friend’s daughter scraped by for years but now is teaching History at a Florida State and my friend says they are paying her very well. I admire anyone willing to stick to academia long enough to get a PhD.
MSM is beginning to lay the groundwork for Democrats to propose student loan forgiveness. Beckel’s October Surprise IMO.
They always leave stuff out in these sob stories.
The did this with all the millions of mortgage sob stories.
Seems like she has probably never paid much at all on the debt. $70,000 at 7% will balloon to about $270,000 after 20 years. So all she has to do is keep taking those classes and keep deferring until she’s around 60 and retire with over a million in student loan debt.
Ebola's gonna take care of everything.
OK I know this is off the subject...but tangential to student loan forgiveness.
If Texas or other states were to secede and become a free republic, the USA might not be able to collect any student loan claims and assets from the citizens of those states.
Factor in additional migration to the new republic by other student loan debtors, and the USA would loose a ton of student loan assets and professional level taxpayers.
I figure other non-student loan debt owed by those migrants would also be non-collectable unless by treaty or through a local branch of USA financial institutions doing business in the free republic. The result would be a huge financial shift of assets between the USA and the new republic as well as taxpayers.
If the cards fell in her favor, she could come to Texas and start over debt free. Maybe even tell the IRS to go roll a donut for past debt. Think about it.
Disclaimer: I know this idea won’t work and I’m not in favor of secession by anyone. No liberals were injured physically in this fantasy senario. Mentally yes. Hopefully they will recover their sanity.
I am having some difficulty in trying to find a point in your paragraph. First of all what is a “3 figure salary”? People usually speak in terms of annual salary, in which case three figures is laughable, you have to be into six figures to have anything to brag about, even if it is monthly three figures is still laughable, it has to be in the high four figures per month to amount to anything at all now and low five figures per month to have bragging rights. Does your daughter have a PhD? You don’t make that clear. Does your friend’s daughter have a PhD? What does “paying her very well” mean? I hope it is more than a “3 figure salary”.
And it results in the academics with the least financial sense most attracted to decision making positions.
Does the subscription-only article say what “Alice” got her degree(s) in?
Is she, perchance, a specialist in Black Left-handed Red-Headed Transgendered Male Lesbian Oppression Studies?
Oh my goodness, I meant 6 figures. Thanks for so eloquently pointing out my mistake.
If she picked a high-yield major such as 3-D printers, instead of feminist accordion music of 18th century Ireland, the loans would be repaid and she’d be stylin’.
The article does not indicate which freakin Ph.D. the fictional “Alice” eventually got.
It is a choice: if you pick a marginal degree, you get insolvency as the result.
It is not the “economy” or “student debt” that is the problem.... it’s your effing major.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.