In 1983, at the age of fifty-two, Betty Ann enrolled in New York University’s law school. As a middle-aged Black woman, she wasn’t exactly the typical N.Y.U. law student. Her white male classmates would slyly elbow her books off the long library tables, and once, while standing at her locker, a classmate waved a ten-thousand-dollar tuition check, signed by his father, in her face. Betty Ann had borrowed twenty-nine thousand dollars in federal loans. Today, she owes $329,309.69 in student debt. She is ninety-one years old.
Whoopi is the same moron who advocated that “Dr.” Jill be made Surgeon General!
They’re not forgiving the debt, they’re collectivizing it.
When she dies, that will take care of the loan. It’s pretty much the only way.
That's so 1950s racist. Color me skeptical of the whole story.
Did she sleep through contract law?
“she wasn’t exactly the typical N.Y.U. law student”
Most managed to pay off their loans on schedule I suspect.
Something about the story isn’t adding up here.
How do the penalties for a $29,000 debt end up at $329k?
That seems absurd on so many levels. It’s a federal loan, not the down the street payday loan shark.
2x or 3x penalties over decades covering interest and inflation is one thing, but over 11x?
Imagine if all student loans were written off in 2022.
The class of 2027 would think it only fair to them that college should be free, as would all future college students.
If college isn’t worth paying for, it isn’t worth attending, or more likely, the student is not qualified for higher education.
In 1975, I got a 3% NDSL and a 7% commercial student loan.
In 1985 I graduated from law school owing close to what Betty Ann owed. $20,000 plus. By 1994 I had it all paid off. If they forgive Betty’s, I want a refund with interest.
“In 1983, at age 52, Betty-Ann enrolled at NYU’s law school, she borrowed $29,000 in federal loans. She now owes over $329,000.”
In terms of buying power, I think $29,000 in 1983 money is about $110,000 in 2022 money.
Let the woke universities with their tax free endowments forgive the damn loans.
Note: Inflation was modest from 1952 to 1967 under Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ.
Note: I think the last ten years CPI growth is badly understated.
Things have on average have nearly doubled in price since Obama took office.
No one should listen to any group of yakking women on tv. Ever.
I would totally be OK with legislation enabling those students to either transfer the debt from those students to the universities and have them pay out from their endowments, or allow the students to sue their former universities for fraudulent enrollment. That would cost the taxpayers next to nothing and shore up a portion of that outstanding debt.
Given the lack of details in this article's anecdote, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the elderly lady did not end up graduating and practicing law. She probably dropped out and ignored the debt for years, only paying when it was either convenient or if the creditors were able to make a good threat to her. It's a shame she didn't fogure out law wasn't her thing in life, but she was far beyond a dumb 18 year old who couldn't know the risks.
If you can't hold a 52 year old college graduate to responsibly enter into a student loan contract, all contracts have no meaning.
Betty Ann could have and should have paid off that debt decades ago.
It was part of the agreement when she took out the loans.
This issue could sink the GOP. Something outside the box has to happen here, certainly after the principle of a loan has been paid, there has to be a way out for these people. Slavery is illegal and this is basically slavery.
I can’t stand NYU. I’m not saying she shouldn’t pay off the loan, but when I lived in NYC all time I would see NYU sponsoring anti-capitalism protests and debates when THEY are the biggest capitalist pigs going. They are so freakin’ leftist that when Pelosi went there in 2017 even she told they to cut it out with the anti-capitalism crap. Imagine what the tuition is now if it was $29K forty years ago.
For his part, Obama’s attempts to reform the student-debt crisis have, in some ways, worsened it. In the twenty-tens, as student-loan balances hit one trillion dollars, Obama expanded income-driven repayment (I.D.R.) options, a relief program that began in 1993. I.D.R. allows borrowers to reduce their monthly payments to a percentage of their income, rather than in proportion to the total balance; after twenty to twenty-five years of payments, the loans are eligible for cancellation. In theory, I.D.R. offers relief to lower-income borrowers by offering lower payments and an expiration date, while recovering full costs from higher-income borrowers. But the program has been an administrative failure, thwarting its redistributive promises and exacerbating the student-debt system’s underlying inequities. Lower loan payments allow interest to fester and capitalize, swelling balances to amounts far greater than the original.
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Obama created the problem with yet another government program that was either I’ll thought out or of malicious intent: allowing borrowers to sink deeper in debt as the banks gained.
Now there is clamoring from leftists to fix a problem they created with yet another bailout, which does not fix the underlying problem. This would amount to a bailout of the banks under the guise of loan forgiveness.
Whoopi has a net worth of over $60 million. If she feels so bad about someone taking a loan they didn’t intend to pay back, then maybe she can pay the loan off for Betty Ann.