Posted on 06/08/2019 3:29:53 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The U.S. student loan system is broken.
How broken? The numbers tell the story. Borrowers currently owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loans, an average of $34,000 per person. Over two million of them have defaulted on their loans in just the past six years, and the number grows by 1,400 a day. After years of projecting big profits from student lending, the federal government now acknowledges that taxpayers stand to lose $31.5 billion on the program over the next decade, and the losses are growing rapidly.
Meanwhile, four in 10 recent college graduates are in jobs that don’t require a degree, according to the New York Federal Reserve. And many American colleges are dropout factories: At more than a third of them, less than half of the students who enroll earn a credential within eight years, according to the think tank Third Way.
The U.S. is shoveling more and more money into a highly inefficient system that, polls find, Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with. College tuition has soared 1,375% since 1978, more than four times the rate of overall inflation, Labor Department data show. The U.S. now spends more on higher education than any other developed country (except Luxembourg)—about $30,000 a student, according to the OECD. Meanwhile, college presidents are being handsomely rewarded for the success of their enterprises: Seventy of them, including a dozen at public colleges, earned over $1 million in 2016-17, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
How did we get here?
The student loan system was built in the 1960s on the overarching belief that higher education is a safe and worthy investment for both society and the individual. At the time, the first children born after World War II—the baby boomer generation—were beginning to graduate from high school and enter college.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
university Big crooked business at the expense of stupid students with no knowledge of finances offered garbage courses that will not benefit them in the real world of earning a living. The victims will be represented by the feckless politician offering relief for a vote
Just stop giving out any more government-provided student loans — and focus on recovering that which has already been paid out.
Our young people will become better people by actually having to work for their studies and being wiser consumers on the education they purchase, and we will start to trim down the massive, Marxist, hate-America propaganda system that our tax dollars has funded.
There should be claw backs from some of the colleges, too. They are very much complicit in this scam.
People keep making the claim that the colleges somehow scammed the borrowers. I haven’t seen any evidence that they did any such thing. No colleges gave a guarantee that any student would miraculously become rich after attending their classes, etc.
Add to that businesses who require a college degree for almost every job.
It wasn’t a guarantee, but they strongly implied it.
When I was a kid, there were public service announcements - one of them had the tagline of “you ain’t going nowhere without that sheepskin.” I don’t know if it was the government or the colleges that were behind it.
What are you going to require every car salesman who told a young guy he was going to really turn heads and get the attention of young women once he bought a new car to somehow reimburse the buyer, too?
Free advice is all over the place. Doesn’t mean it is all good or that it should all be listened to. And college was a good move for millions of Americans.
We have to write off and take the hit on much of what’s owed.
There are seniors in their 70’s and older being crushed by student loan payments from loans they took out in the 1970s and 1980s.
Maybe they shouldn’t have, but they did. And, I’m not interested in passing judgment.
The costs associated with collection would far outstrip what little can be collected.
Currently, payments are income based, leaving the possibility of $0 per month.
If people don’t have the income, how do you plan to collect?
There are also generous carve outs for some borrowers who take qualifying “public service” jobs.
Meanwhile, universities sit on *billions* in endowments and jack up tuition every year.
President Trump actually drafted a proposal that makes good sense, but, it was resoundingly rejected.
Congress was caterwauling, predictably, about Trump’s plan to cut the carve outs.
The President wants a cap of 12% of discretionary income in payments, with the entire thing wiped out in 25 years. That would take the burden off of seniors. I saw a news report about a 94 year old studying for his real estate license. He has to get a job to pay his f*****g student loans at 94.
Any assaults on the universities; this I can support. But, harassing people until the day they die, no. Wasting taxpayer money chasing people who can’t pay is just stupid.
> I haven’t seen any evidence that they did any such thing.
If you pull your head out of its current location, you might see what everyone else sees - an industrialized scam preying on the young.
Still do.
I am surprised sometimes to see a Bachelor’s degree required for some jobs. It’s a byproduct of degree inflation.
No we dont write it off.
We tax the endowments of the colleges and universities.
We have them sell properties.
Let the education-industrial complex pay it off.
There are TRILLIONS in endowments.
There are Trillions tied up in properties
Get em!
Yeah, but the salaries and benefits of those administering the programs will continue to increase unabated.
The government needs to get out of the student loan business. Fat chance of that happening.
“People keep making the claim that the colleges somehow scammed the borrowers. I haven’t seen any evidence that they did any such thing. No colleges gave a guarantee that any student would miraculously become rich after attending their classes, etc.”
*
You’re right. But, under the current system; easy student loan money, there’s little incentive for universities to improve their product, increase productivity and reduce cost. There are ever so vague signs of hope though. I read an article a few days ago that many universities because I’d declining applicants for their MBA programs are either shutting them down or switching to on-line programs. There are lots of things that could be done to reduce cost though; one that comes to mind is why is it necessary for elementary school teachers go through a four year college program? You got to be kidding me. A two year associate degree would do just fine for aspiring elementary school teachers to learn what necessary to teach at elementary school level. And, being an associate degree can be earned at most regional community colleges many could earn the degree while living at home, working part time, etc. like I said, there’s lots of things that “could” be done to reduce higher level education cost. Just have to blast through inertia, unions, etc.
No, no, no—we don’t! Anyone in their ‘70s being crushed by student loan payments was especially idiotic or criminal.
And the idea of payments being income-based has always been a scam—talk about incentives to make your citizens lay-abouts!
Universities sit on billions because people have made charitable contributions to them—and then they have invested those contributions wisely.
And they only jack up the tuition to what the market will bear. Once we totally pull the plug on taxpayer-funded loans, the market will bear a lot less and a lot of these six-to 12-year luxury vacations starting, well, immediately.
That was a bad, Javanka-driven move by Trump and I’m glad it didn’t go through.
BTW, the student loan system even vaguely as we know it today only started 60 years ago, and through the 80’s, at least, you’d have to be either on your way to a medical degree or an idiot to rack up debt of the type you are alluding too.
What are you ever doing on a conservative site if you have such a pathetic idea of people paying their debts and not sticking taxpayers with their bad loans?
Only 4% of the Obama’s “Dreamers” graduate from college, after receiving millions in student aid. Our tax dollars flushed down that toilet.
First, again, pull the plug on any additional taxpayer funding of college. Period. Grants too. If states want to continue their state university systems, which they will. Then fine. As it is, anyone can easily go through the associate degree level just as you suggest—live at home, and then work and/or study part-time if you can’t manage doing them both full-time. Do it year round, and part-time doesn’t take any longer than the average graduating student takes for supposedly full-time study now anyway.
But even after an associate’s degree, most systems guarantee credit transfers and acceptance to their state college system, within which such students can continue on to a bachelor’s degree (or more) if necessary.
I’m okay with four years of college for elementary school teachers, but I would have states ditch their master’s in education requirements immediately and also purge education majors at the undergraduate level. Those ed schools are what have pulled our educational system down to the sorry level it is at today.
We used to consider “the young” adults.
In this case, the overwhelming bulk of the targets of this scam are 17-year-old minors and younger.
They’re subject to years of brainwashing in the schools; expecting them to make informed decisions in their own interest after that is wholly unrealistic.
This is a scam aimed at children, to plunder them financially at the very first moment they are able to legally ink a contract. But most of the scam happens before they are legally able to sign.
This is not college funding. This is financialization and asset-stripping, the worst of the worst of predatory finance, filled with gross misrepresentation and outright fraud at every level.
The term for the debts that result is “odious”. None of it should be paid; the colleges should be liquidated to pay the debts, and clawbacks from administrators and faculty should fill any shortfall.
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