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DEBT LOAD FOR PRIVATE AND PUBLIC COLLEGES..
Total student loan debt has just crossed above credit card debt in America for the first time ever
Posted on 10/26/2011 8:29:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Two-thirds of all college students now graduate with debt, and owe an average of $24,000, as student loans are quickly becoming the only way many Americans can afford a college education.
As a result, thousands of young people -- who are also facing high unemployment -- are forced to tackle mountains of debt immediately after graduating, and many are uncertain about their futures.
Shannon Johnson, who has been a lawyer at a small, family-owned firm in North Dakota for two years, said she owes more than $150,000 from her undergraduate degree and law school.
"Because of my choice to attend college and law school, I live every day paycheck to paycheck and am forced to rely on credit cards to get by," she said. "I don't feel like I will ever be able to get to a better place, buy a home or start a family."
Others are wondering if going to college was worth the cost.
"I cannot find a well paying job," said Robin Snyder of Perkasie, Pa. "I equate it to the housing market crash -- I now owe more on my education than it's worth."
The total U.S. student loan debt is quickly approaching the $1 trillion mark, and last year it surpassed credit cards as the highest debt that Americans carry. That is in part because the cost of education has skyrocketed in the past 30 years, up 900 percent since 1978.
Shockingly, one of the biggest jumps in college costs came in the last decade. According to CollegeBoard, tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities increased 5.6 percent each year beyond the rate of general inflation.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
An intended consequence of this is that non-Eric Holder's people bury themselves in student loans that are now owned by the federal government.
Get this: student loans are the ONLY debt you cannot escape through personal bankruptcy.
This means that the vast majority of kids graduating from college these days are indentured slaves to the federal government.
If you don't think Washington has plans to exploit this situation, you must be from some other planet.
ABC’s timing is SO OBVIOUSLY at White House bequest. I’d call them Stooges, but that would be a gross insult to the memory of Larry, Moe and Curly.
Welcome to the newest victim group. And Obama has already started to pander.
i graduated college with a ton of debt too. i worked a regular low paying job, made payments with my little payment ticket book, and then eventually, I joined the army.
they paid for the rest of my loans, and i served and was honorably discharged.
problem solved.
The Massiah has already started to buy votes.
Like, who would hire an attorney who was stupid enough to have ammassed $150K in student loan debt, to work in the family business?
And who hasn’t yet realized that paying off $15K a year will mean a lot of beans and rice?
Oh wait, then there are the credit cards she is now living on ....
D.OH.
There are so many problems with student loan programs. The reality is the gov’t should never be involved with them. A (former) friend got through school on loans all the way through a masters degree in psychology & discovered she couldn’t get a job that she was willing to take. (Her internships had been in drug-related therapy & she didn’t want a job in that field.) She discovered that there was a 9-month grace period before she had to start paying back the loans, but if she enrolled in another class it put that grace period back another 9 months. So she regularly took an art class & hadn’t begun to pay off her loans 10 years after finishing her degree. We haven’t been in touch in some time, but I imagine she has continued to utilize that loophole.
before tenure was granted to protect communists from public scrutiny,
profs didn’t make more than the average company employee.
then came the boomer generation that expanded the universities into questionable activities
and padded salaries.
meanwhile, profs do not work as many hours as they did before tenure.
in sum, less work, more pay. and big universities with many non-essential employees.
What passes for a college education today is ridiculously overpriced, largely because the government will hand out money to anyone gullible enough to turn it over to a post-secondary school. The schools get more highly paid (and under-worked) staff and sparkling new facilities, while the kids get loans they will pay til eternity. The best solution to this self-inflicted problem is to cut off the money spigot ASAP.
While all of your points are valid, the bottom line is that any Obama program to forgive student loan debt has the potential to buy him a whole heck of a lot of votes from young skulls full of mush. It’s why taking direct Federal control of this program was a top priority for the Dems early on.
Well, it’s the result of a lot of things - outrageous costs from maintaining a sleek and glossy herd of tenured professors who rarely teach a class, for example, and the proliferation of majors that seem almost designed not to prepare people for any useful work.
My governor here (Rick Scott) touched off a firestorm with the simple remark, “äfter all, how many anthropology majors do we need?” People feel it is their right to major in basketweaving and then expect the salary of a CEO.
Reducing the overall cost of school through something like Perry’s $10,000 BA plan (which relies heavily on distance learning and flexible class schedules to permit students to work) would also help.
But the fact is that the students all take on these loans voluntarily. Some people take none, and people who take less in loans actually can pay off their loans reasonably quickly once they start working. As for people who get huge loans for medical school or lawschool, these professions usually do pay well enough to permit repayment of the loan.
Another big problem is that the money is too easy to get, and now that the loans are underwritten by the Federal government, there is no incentive for the banks to be more cautious.
Being one of the non EH people, I found out a long time back when I went the local community college FA department to see what I could get and help with the paperwork, I was essentially ignored and given runarounds while EH’s people no matter what were most welcome.
I’m very confused about why I’m supposed to care about this....
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