Posted on 09/19/2014 7:29:29 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The media and advocates for income redistribution are creating a continual stream of stories about the student loan crisis. We are inundated with sob stories about people suffering under a crushing debt burden. The New York Times alone has had stories on how student loan debt is now a problem for senior citizens, how young people’s lives have been ruined, and how a whole generation will be unable to buy homes because of their student loan debt. Luckily, these stories are based simply on a few scattered cases. In reality, there is no student loan debt crisis and it is time for the media to report the facts, not the sob stories.
The New York Times informed its readers last week that there are now two million people over 60 years old that still have student loan debt, with an average loan balance of $21,000. To put this report in context, those two million seniors represent only three percent of all people in that age bracket and the average balance of $21,000 is only 78 percent of the size of the average car loan ($27,000). Assumedly many more than three percent of Americans over the age of 60 have car loans, yet nobody thinks that is a crisis.
Earlier this summer, The New York Times also implied that student loan debt is blocking younger Americans from buying homes. In reality, as the Times admits later in their article, the rate at which young people are buying homes is simply returning to its previous level because today’s young can see that the twenty-five year real estate bubble is over and there is no need to rush into home ownership.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
They haven’t even scratched the surface of student loan sob stories.
Remember we’re in at least our 7th year of non-stop home mortgage sob stories.
Not to mention health insurance sob stories.
If we could tax sob stories $1 each we’d have bazillions of dollars!
I’m all for going after “Big Education”
Let’s use the lefts tactics against them. Hit them in their enclaves. Down with Big Ed!!! They are making obscene profits!!!!
You borrow money, you pay it back. Anything else is stealing and should be punished as such.
From what I’ve observed, purely anecdotal, Millennials want to stay young and carefree longer than did their parents and grandparents. They don’t WANT to own their own homes. They prefer to rent and be unencumbered by mortgages, and to be free to move at will, whether across the country or around the globe. And, those I’ve known have made a priority of paying off college loans in their first few years after graduation, and to be debt-free by 30.
I worked with one gal, who was talked into getting two bachelor degrees over a six-year period, and owed around $70,000 by the end of the episode in the early-90s. She got behind in the early stages and by 2007....owed near $120,000. In 2013 when I last chatted with her....she had finally got it down to $50,000. But she’s almost forty...never owned a home....and her 401k deal is about half of what it ought to be at this age.
I feel sorry for her, but the naive nature of economics really bother me. She had no sense about loans, or how deep you could get. I worked with a second gal, who had zero college loans....but instead had $60k in credit card debt. She was trying hard to put down $1,000 a month, which I felt was an outragious amount, but it was the only way over five years to really take apart this whole problem, and she was pushing forty-five with a marginal 401k package for retirement.
It used to be that the really qualified students could get a very inexpensive education at state colleges and universities. Then, with student loans, affirmative action, money being spent for things besides actually educating students, and the insane idea that marginally qualified students are better off getting a college education with loans, it has spiraled out of control.
If public colleges and universities went back to providing an inexpensive college education but only for the truly qualified students (top 20% or so), it would get Big Education under control.
I’m sick of dimwits claiming that you need a college education to succeed, and consequently having taxpayers foot the entire bill for every ivory tower quack’s $100,000+ salary. If you have a decent IQ, you should be able to find a way to make lots of money with nothing more than a high school diploma.
You’re certainly not going to find a way to make a liberal arts degree useful, and even in the hard sciences (the one area where a degree is arguably worthwhile) you’ll be forced to make the evidence conform to the Big Government agenda. There are plenty of resources available to teach yourself a trade and how to open your own business available without paying some ivory tower stooge your life savings.
1. Bloated Administration costs.
2. Coddling of Professors so as to obtain grant money.
3. Retaining of and not spending the Billions of dollars in endowments.
4. Education means education, not indoctrination.
5. Eliminate all BS courses (ie. anything that ends with "studies")
Government mandating the availability of easy, low/no-obligation credit has single-handedly ruined this country.
I heard this morning that the UC chancellors are getting 20% raise,,, to ~380K a year...
Seven deadly sins:
1. Pride
2. Greed
3. Anger
4. Lust
5. Envy
6. Gluttony
7. Sloth
-----------------------------------------
7. If people worked they would have money. That takes care of SLOTH.
1. Then they took a job they were QUALIFIED for, instead of one that paid more, but they couldn't do, they would have success. That takes care of PRIDE.
5. If they focused on what is important in life, they wouldn't have so much ENVY. Important: GOD, family, friends and "love thy neighbor."
3. and 4. People can always FEEL or THINK of 4. LUST and 3. ANGER, but they don't have to act on them.
6. GLUTTONY: that will lead people to have to PAY for Weight Watchers. THAT means eating less and better and moving more...which are the lessons that we should have learned by the time we were 25 years old, when the human body "officially" stops growing.
2. GREED is a tough one, growing out of pride and envy. I remember a quote:
How can we be happy with more when we aren't happy with what we have?
MORE isn't always better.
But that is APOSTASY in this country, innit?
WHO voted for the raise?
SILLY question!
Supporting these type of idiotic programs has jacked up tuition rates to absorb every available government dollar and then some. Government student loans are easy to obtain and interest rates are jacked up to support the entire infrastructure.
People majoring in useless XYZ Studies pay the same interest rates as do kids with highly marketable degrees such as engineering or nursing. This includes the risk factor built into these rates which the graduates with marketable degrees will have to pay back their loans as well as those of the defaulters.
Thus, the perpetual adolescents are subsidized and we get more of them.
SOMEone in her family FAILED to teach her about money.
I was helping my mother with her checks when I was 13 years old. I wrote them and she signed them. She hated doing it.
I SLOWLY figured it out. Yikes...all that money out.
The students DRINK IT ALL IN...for a while.
THEN they get out into the REAL world and figure it all out. REALITY can be a real bitch shocker.
IN THEORY, two parents and a plethora of relatives are supposed to clue in children. They did so for me...I was READY for the real world.
Veni; vidi; vici.
I am retired now and well off, living a very good life...thanks to those wonderful parents and relatives.
God truly blessed me and I thank Him every waking moment of my life.
Interesting chart. What is the most noticeable is that six out of the nine least underemployed majors end with engineering. Of the remaining three, two are heavy with hard science and math (geology, physics) and only one is related to management/administation/social science (law) and it is mostly an artificial shortage created by the industry.
Sob stories about student debt are what the Democrat Party is counting on to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.
Mark my word, if things start looking bad for them in ‘16 they’re gonna float a student forgiveness scheme. And the young skulls o’ mush will flock to the polls to vote for it.
The cost and resultant debts are the result of a deliberate policy to saturate and wildly inflate education for the benefit of banks and education groups. What used to cost 10-20K now costs 100K+ and cannot be paid through “working your way through school”.
Add to that the unconstitutional construct of not being able to discharge the debt through bankruptcy (which is why money will be loaned readily to anything that breaths, which is the main engine driving the costs up up) and the debt being easily doubled from whatever current balance it is if you miss one payment and you can see this is a recipe for disaster.
If you could discharge the debts in bankruptcy there would be FAR more discrimination on the part of lenders with respect to creditworthiness and the costs would come back down to the realm of reality.
Of course, a lot of libtards teaching “wymens studies” and such will be gettin’ the classifieds out...
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