Posted on 09/30/2014 1:59:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Today’s students are being crushed with John Bunyan’s proverbial burden on their backs – student loan debt. Until relatively recently this debt could have been discharged in bankruptcy.
Then all that changed when Sallie Mae, the Student Loan Marketing Association, was privatized in 2004. Albert Lord, the new CEO, and his lobbyists went to work to change the laws so that student loans could not be discharged in bankruptcy. Today the cumulative student loan debt is more than $1 trillion.
While a generation ago a high school diploma was considered sufficient for a decent middle class entry level job, today it’s a college diploma even if the job itself could be easily accomplished by a person with just a high school education.
In Sallie Mae annual reports, CEO Albert Lord has boasted that the company’s extraordinary financial growth could be attributed to fees collected from defaulted loans, as well as loan origination growth. Lord, who personally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars (on the books) in politicians and PACs involved with education legislation is probably the largest individual beneficiary of student loan privatization.
In 2001, US News reported that Mr. Lord’s compensation for the year 2000 had skyrocketed to over $33 million. From 1999-2004, Sallie Mae’s top two executives, Al Lord and Tom Fitzpatrick, received compensation worth $225 million and $245 million, respectively. Both men have regularly topped Fortune Magazine’s list of highest paid CEO’s in the Washington D.C. Area. Albert Lord also put in a bid to purchase a major league baseball team, the Washington Nationals, with the wealth he extracted from defaulted borrowers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sandiegofreepress.org ...
Rightly; students know that school is expensive and there are ways to pay your debt, just end up to a solid place and stya on track. I’m sick of hearing how everyone should absolve students of consequences of their actions. I am sure that if they spent for years working and not partying, they would be graduating a lot sooner.
There are schools that are tuition-free or only require work/study, plus the GI Bill, Voc Rehab, AmeriCorps, VISTA, loan forgiveness for joining the military or teaching and lots more.
And after four years of leftist indoctrination and PC re-eduction, they come out of college even stupider than when they went in.
Well, debts owed due to judgements on intentional torts aren’t dischargeable either.
Don’t ask how I know this.
Great; we need our young people to start learning how to research their options before they mindlessly go the usual route.
The students aren’t actually the issue or the problem; that would be the cynical university administrators who use the students as conduits to amass massive amounts of personal wealth, which they then turn around and use to support (by and large) liberal political causes.
Personally, I’d authorize bankruptcy for student debtors, with a “clawback” provision to get the money back from the endowment funds of the universities which got that cash in the first place.
RE: I know a lovely young lady — going to college (last spoke to her about a year ago). She was working part-time waiting tables.
She had over ... $150,000 in student debt.
I think it will be with her, her entire life.
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Well, since she’s a lovely young lady... maybe she could marry a rich man or something. They’re always looking for lovely young ladies.
That could help solve her problems... :)
The government has put in all sorts of ways to repay the loans - some loans are repaid for nurses who go into county hospitals; teachers who go into low income areas; the new crop of community organizers/lawyers can take a very low paying job for 10 to 15 years and pay pennies on the dollar for their loans...and have them completely discharged after a certain length of time.... if you can't find a job there is even an income based repayment option where even someone oweing $100K can be paying $50 a month.... so there is no excuse for deadbeats NOT repaying their loans.
I should write a book or at least a booklet. No one has to load-up on student loan debt.
And first two years at a community college saves more than half of tuition rate of a four year university
Yep, that’s half of the mechanism for them being federally guaranteed (the other half being garnishment). That guarantee is what gives them the lower interest rate, and the complete lack of credit checking. If we make it so they can be discharged they’ll lose all that.
Yeah, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are full of men like that. IIRC, Brooke Shields made a ton of money “partying” over there when she was younger.
Wait until one of these idiot graduates discovers that 40 x $2,000 = $80,000 and that all he needs to do is to slowly open forty credit cards, charging $2,000.00 to each card, converting the items purchased into cash, use the money to pay off his student loans, and then declare bankruptcy.
That would be a great project and likely a fascinating read.
That’s still not the best route for everybody. Question number one should be “why do you need a degree?” If you’re not going into the professions, it’ll be hard to answer that one. I can teach a barely literate 18 year old how to make six figures in sales the first or second year. How does a degree come into play there? There are may jobs where only a one or two year course is necessary that pay better than most four year degrees. Example: Nursing home administration.
2.) If they are allowed to be forgiven, watch the scores of 22 to 23 year olds who are suddenly bankrupt. This was a big problem before the reform.
To me the solution is simple, make the colleges or universities co sign the loans. Many have a big endowment, then see how many of the African/womyns/gender studies programs disappear.
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