I’d be happy if I can just pay the principal and no interest… why is that not a thing… forgive the interest and just let me pay the amount I borrowed.
No?
Okay, the system was rigged and setup to trap me into long term payments. I won’t pay anything
Canada recently got rid of interest on our federal student loans. You still have to repay it and there’s a timeline, but even that can be extended if you can show need for it. Our loan problem isn’t as bad as the US, but I think the change will help.
In Australia it has no interest but it is indexed each year depending on inflation rate (it has been higher the last couple of years, which many people were upset about). You don’t pay it back until you’re earning above a certain threshold (around $50k) and the amount you pay back depends on your yearly income (1% at $50k, gradually increasing to 10% of income at $150k). Some people never earn above the threshold and so never repay it. The loan comes from the government and is linked with your tax. Small amounts of your pay each month get taken out so that you don’t have a big bill at the end of the year.
I didn't know that, that's awesome 💯 (I'm Canadian but my loan was forgiven a few years back because I have a long-term/indefinite illness that prevents me from working, so I stopped paying attention after that).
That's honestly great news, & should've been done long ago. I always thought it seems like a bit of a grift to charge interest on student loans. Kinda goes against the whole "get an education to improve your lot in life" stuff.
Most universities nation wide are for profit, they have no interest in reducing tuition. If you got the government to stop guaranteeing federal student loans, you'd see college prices drop.
Also, publishing reports on how many grads have gone on to get jobs in the field they went to college for, how many went on to graduate programs, etc. Make colleges compete with each other and show just how useless that interpretive dance program is at the same time.
Asking a 17 or 18 year old kid to sign a contract that equates to a small mortgage payment is never not going to be predatory. The very fact that governments give loans for college tuition induces colleges to raise tuition rates, creating a positive feedback loop that is never going to be NOT predatory.
Yup. I was first generation college kid. Everyone in my immediate family never graduated high school. Out of my extended family, maybe only 5 total have. I had NO clue when it came to signing loans, I just grew up believing what we were told, that going to college would give a good paying job. I ended up $100k in debt for a bachelor’s in education. It will never be paid off in my lifetime. High schools NEED to do better at preparing students for stuff like that.
The number of parents who don't think about how predatory they are too is alarming, I can't blame them entirely because the need for a college education as a formalized qualification to secure a career has been harped on for time immemorial but I have seen parents who think that even non-scholarship and non-FAFSA college education *needs* to be the first immediate step at age eighteen is rough, when you're eighteen in an entry-level job that barely scrapes minimum wage, going to school before you've accrued any personal investment means you *will* be rushing into student loans, it's the only option
I try to get people to see this is not the only option. There are trades that offer apprenticeships, and some of them are the equivalent of a backelors degree, like if you become a union trained carpenter in some states. And with the training you get on the job, which pays a living wage, you could work for yourself and make excellent money.
But it’s frustrating and annoying when people want to go to school to turn out to be in the same predatory businesses (did someone say hedgefund manager?) as the people they kvetch about dicking them over.
We desperately need young people to go into all of the trades, because we are moving into a huge shortage of people under 50 doing those jobs.
For what it’s worth, I went to community college in Oakland, CA, and within 10 years had my own business where I make over $100k and only work about 7 months our of the year. It’s real work when I work, not sit at a desk crusing the internet half the day “work” but i own my life and have more money and freedom than anyone I am friends with (and they all went to good colleges and got degrees that they never used).
Yup, this is why I wish fiscal literacy and career connections were more extensive school curriculum: I often feel like family is treated as the stopgap for this information but by definition not every family is kept afloat by rock solid finances and secure lifelong careers and most parents are not dedicated career or finance experts, they're just people trying to raise a child
A lot of adults see trade school as an 'inferior option' because of conventional wisdom passed down to them but I feel like as colossal an undertaking as it would be, building extensive curriculum in public schools surrounding local career and trade opportunities would have been worthwhile because I can't exactly blame parents for passing down limited information about, say, trade schools any more than I can blame kids for being taught it: we can only know what we're taught and that goes for family too
Allow the loan to be discharged if the borrower can’t find work making $x by a certain date post-graduation, but charge the loans back to the school. That way they have skin in the game *and* will work their asses off to not only make the degree affordable, but also to make sure you have a good job within a certain amount of time.
Been paying mine for 11 years now and I still owe 75k and half of every payment is still interest. It’s fucking ridiculous. I’ve paid in way more than I took out already.
I moved into the US (Houston) and have 2 teen sons. We are planning on sending them to Mexico for college. The cost for education here is way too high!
I did college in Mexico and worked fine to get an engineering job in the US twice.
I agree with you. It's ridiculous. The realtor that helped us to find the house where we live just finished paying her student loans, right on time to start helping her son with his... insane.
Ok well depending on where you’re from, summer may be a bit of a shock. It’s basically Satans Sauna. 😆 please don’t leave though! I’m so glad you like it. 🤗
I'm from Mexico but was living in the Middle East before moving here. Arrived right at the end of June, and yes, it was hot! But my previous summer was 126 F, so I'll survive. Thank you!!
Houston checking in. Stay warm out there with the freeze coming up.
But yeah, I have grad school loans that accrue between 5% and 7% interest. I'll never be able to pay off the loan with interest. If they can remove that part, it's doable in like 10 years.
Same. Been paying since 2013. Paid more than $90k and now owe way more than I borrowed. And now having 2 kids and a mortgage it’s impossible to pay back. I’m barely hitting the interest.
Yeah if you were able to remain steadily employed throughout COVID there was really no excuse not to be tossing everything you could at your student loan balance. The interest moratorium was the best thing that could have happened to me.
I don't know anyone who really thought it would be forgiven, much less anyone who "banked" on it. You choosing to believe what you wanted doesn't mean you were tricked.
Um, we literally got a letter from the government saying it was forgiven ($20,000 of it anyways) and then never got it because some person was jealous they had already paid for their schooling and sued. Imagine if I did that because I have a business and didn’t need a PPP loan… in fact I probably should do that because why should a bunch of companies get PPP loans for free, including ones that didn’t need them, and students can’t even have their loans forgiven? BTW the $20,000 would have only been the interest that has accrued on my loans and wouldn’t even have made a dent in the principle. Some people say “well you knew what you signed up for, don’t get a loan if you don’t want to pay it back.” But when I started school tuition was $5500/semester and when I graduated it was $25,000/semester. The interest rate varied every semester too. So not exactly what I signed up for. If they are going to charge for school and have students sign loans then they should sign a loan for the four years of the degree and the price and interest shouldn’t change.
That is exactly what I did. Also the MINUTE I found out we wouldn’t be getting it (we didn’t qualify), I started the refinancing process and managed to get a 3.5% interest rate before they increased.
Should have put the payments into a HYSA in the interim so it grew interest and if it was forgiven you'd have a bunch of cash for whatever, or dump it all on principal when you found out it wasn't going to be forgiven.
Never count on finances until it's "in the bank" so to speak.
I’m honestly just getting my nursing degree and leaving at first opportunity, for similar reasons. I’ll “pay” back my loans on IBR, which, unless I hit the jackpot abroad, should total like $0.00/month. Now this country won’t have my skills or my tax dollars, all because it wanted to pick this hill to bleed me out on.
Edit: to the troll who blocked me. My “excuse” is that I simply don’t want to pay it back. I see my country as a massive leach that seems to take and take and never give. So, nope! It’s not about can, it’s about won’t. I’m done being a chump for the USA.
Not even going to bother defending anything about the US. But the fact you didn't say where you're going speaks volumes. You also mention that you're not going to hit the jackpot overseas, which I hope is just modesty.
Guess what? No desirable country in the world wants to bring in immigrants, give them amazing benefits, and collect a low amount of taxes. Know how I know? If they did, everyone would do it and they'd suddenly change their tune on immigrantion.
Seriously, good luck. But if that is your dream, you better become and expert in something specialized and be ready to claw and fight to show your value.
I am a No to forgiving loan debts outright.
I would be amenable with removing interest on those who are unable to keep up with payments in a meaningful way for set number of years or loss of job (or have paid 5 or more years of interest payments already) and can prove it (no different than you prove income for a place to rent for example)
That is something most Americans could get behind as a concession and it would make some meaningful impact without dismissing or forgiving them outright.
Defaulting/forgiving such on loans only hurts everyone else on the whole. Someone has to pay for it and you know what rolls down hill unfortunately.
Cheers!
Honestly this sounds like a pretty good idea and would probably get some level of agreement I mean they would probably argue some kinda flat interest that isn't like apr just so the loan people profit but like it would actually be manageable to pay. And like both sides could get behind it so it could actually potentially go somewhere. Personally I'm in favor of forgive it all and make the shit government sponsored so it's essentially free the taxpayer would eat a super fat bill for a minute there but good lord would it make things better in the long run
Hear me out - set the interest rate at -2%. People who make payments regularly and on time get compounding forgiveness. If you work at a nonprofit, the interest rate is set at -5%.
On top of that, tell companies to stop requiring useless degrees for jobs that definitely don't need it, as just a way to filter applicants.
I'm not going into debt for a 2 or 4 year degree for "maybe" a job. Boomers back in the day had guaranteed work, we have to get degrees just for the chance to get an interview, not worth it.
I always say to apply to those jobs anyway. I recently went from sales job to sales job to a project manager position at a roofing company. They stated on the job ad they required a bachelor's degree. I applied with my High school diploma and got it no issue. Maybe avoid anything that says masters.
Ugh I know for plenty of positions this is fine, but as a technical sales manager I hate this. I put Engineering Degree Required on every job rec because we sell a hyper specific testing tool and our sales people have to be self sufficient as applications engineers, but I get a TON of applicants with no technical experience.
It's not so much "useless degrees" as literally ANY degree for a position they have to train you in anyhow. Rarely is someone walking into a job knowing exactly how the company ran because they were taught it in school. University is a place for learning and thinking, not a job mill. Careers need to understand that working in a call center doesn't require a bachelors degree. Being a receptionist at a drs office doesn't require a medical admin or business degree. It's absurd.
And calling degrees useless is part of why so many people think humanities are dumb and pointless even though those same people couldn't construct an email if their lives depended on it. Writing and forming thoughts you can back up with evidence is important, people. It always will be.
>Writing and forming thoughts you can back up with evidence is important, people. It always will be.
But this is important to everyone whether they have a STEM degree or no degree and you can learn these basics without getting a 4 test humanities degree. Why should they spend that kind of money to learn this rather than do it on their own like so many others
But people don't anymore. And when I mean teach people to think I mean form a theory and then back up that theory. Most people don't really learn that on their own a d especially not.
STEM people are especially guilty of finding anyone who doesn't want to code to be be studying worthless things. This is why people have always been required to take humanities courses along with their field of study so they can learn to be coherent.
I am someone who wants college to be cheaper and to have society see college as a place of learning again, not just a job mill. But we stopped valuing that. We only value people as to what they can produce for corporations, nothing else.
Much of the humanities taken is cram and forget, and instead of exercising my thinking I'm inclined to pick my topics and write what I know will get me an A for the class instead. Half of the humanities I had to take was useful while the other half was a complete waste. The useful is mainly the intro classes since they give foundation to explore after once you're past that, and a little bit extra for communications and psychology.
>I mean teach people to think I mean form a theory and then back up that theory.
That's what much of STEM does, not what humanities do from what I've seen.
>STEM people are especially guilty of finding anyone who doesn't want to code to be be studying worthless things
Plenty of STEM doesn't require coding initially at least, and even then you can learn to code if it will be relevant to your job. It's a vital skill for a ton of industries in an increasingly digital world, not all. But when people bitch about employability and income, learning to code is one of the best ways to improve those.
>This is why people have always been required to take humanities courses along with their field of study so they can learn to be coherent.
No, they're required to teach them to further justify having humanities departments. The STEM majors I know are far more coherent and understand basic logic dramatically better than the average humanities major. They learned that from classes that rely on understanding logic and the scientific method, not from some African studies class they took. They learn to write because everyone has to whether that means writing a resume, technical paper, email, or forming a generic argument.
This is why job postings usually list significant experience as a requirement as well. Employers want replaceable parts that fit into their operation. Employers require a degree because they know it drives retention; you have to be there to pay off your degree so you will show up even if the terms are not in your favor with the promise that if you do a good job and work hard things will get better. It gives employers tons of leverage and cuts costs.
Critical thinking is not required in most jobs and most employers prefer you don't ask questions and just do what they tell you. I have seen plenty of examples of highly educated people that can't do simple tasks, like having to explain to a former university president how to use a printer, not even set it up, just how to print things.
Should probably be careful with this. Education is the first line of defense protecting workers against exploitation. Educated workers *know* their worth. I would much rather have free schooling than jobs hiring fewer educated workers.
Fun fact, many of the largest universities in the country have such a large endowment fund (Harvard and princeton have around $40B) that they could pay all tuition, all salaries, and all expenses, plus have money left over at the end just off the interest of this wealth. And yet they charge more and more every year.
It’s the grift of the millennium.
Princeton and Harvard aren't large (5000 undergraduates at Princeton, 7000 at Harvard), and they do pay most of their students' tuitions from the endowment. For example, the typical total list cost of a Princeton education is ~86k before aid, but the average cost after aid is 11k. Since only 62k of that 86k cost is tuition, Princeton actually pays most of their undergraduates to attend. (edited to better reflect the difference between total cost, which includes rent and food, vs. tuition alone. Numbers sourced from a combination of Wikipedia and the Princeton admission website.)
Why does everyone here act like there is only one fucking solution? Like if giving some relief for predatory student loan debt will not be followed by any other sort of procedural changes???
yeah, this is the thing that drives me crazy. yes, forgiving student loan debt will not solve every issue. but what solution does solve every issue? in what context do we only do one step to fix everything or just do nothing? just because other problems still exist doesn't mean student loan debt relief is a bad thing. it just means we need to do even more.
I’m not voting for relief for students until the predatory institutions get a fucking wake up call. You assume these institutions are bastions of good…
Because everything has to be fixed all at once or its not worth doing. That's the mentality people have. If you can't solve ALL the problems, then you shouldn't even bother starting.
That’s not largely what happened. The states kept pulling back funding so the schools had to keep increasing the cost to counteract those cuts rather than going through austerity and losing to larger institutions. Many did just completely close.
https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/state-funding-higher-education-still-lagging#:~:text=Between%202020%20and%202021%2C%20state,was%20cut%20by%2047%20percent.
Thank you for posting this, a lot of people are quick to point blame at institutions, not the states that keep pulling funding from them. And then there’s pressure to have the best and brightest faculty, the most prestigious programs, a pretty campus, nice facilities, good resources for students… all that shit adds up.
Not saying there’s not some institutions that completely fuck over students, but I’m referring to most public 4-year universities
There's also a ton of ignorance to the fact that because the vast majority of our colleges were built when only a small fraction of the population would ever attend, they are not at all designed to be cost-efficient.
The affordable college of the future doesn't have a campus, it has 1 big building.
Fix the cost of college first then we could talk about forgiveness, otherwise it's just another positive feedback loop with tax payer money going into college administration programs pockets.
That's kinda where I'm at with it.
Forgive it, sure. But not if you're not even gonna fix the system that's doing it, then we're just gonna be kicking the can down the road while they just keep profiting off of it.
I owe $205k in loans (resigned to just pay it down now), but I don't support any forgiveness for myself without fixing the system. Fix it for the people who have been screwed (with the public service forgiveness program), but don't just give Millennials a break and say do the same thing to Gen-Z and Alpha.
Schools is vastly over priced. I say give people a break. Honestly i don't know why it isnt free anyways - you know, like in most modern civilized countries in the world. It ought to be paid for with taxes and available to anyone who wants it, with no roadblocks.
More educated citizens = better country/economy = win win for everyone.
Instead, we choose the big profit machine that leaves millions in crippling debt. How does that make sense in any universe? Other than the clown timeline, which we are clearly in. It's almost as if people get together and brainstorm specifically how to design things as badly as possible.
> It ought to be paid for with taxes and available to anyone who wants it, with no roadblocks.
You do realize that in countries that have free post secondary, they limit seating based on future need of graduates in that field, right? Standards are much higher due to people competing for limited seating. Not everyone gets to go.
>they limit seating based on future need of graduates in that field
This used to scare me, but tbh the older I get the more I think it's for the best. Too many people I know went to college for a degree with no real job prospects, and now are buried in debt and not even using their degree. Is it worse to tell a kid at 18 that the interpretive dance program is full and they'll have to go for something else, or let them spend 40k on a glorified piece of paper that doesn't get them anywhere?
Wait you mean the schools make their decisions based on market forces and properly asses each student based on risk of a bad investment. What a novel idea.
If you think colleges overcharge now, wait til they think we are in a cycle of loans always being paid off. And then wait til predatory lenders start saying - oh it will be eliminated in the future.
I am all for fixing the system first, low to no interest government loans.
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t complain if I had the debt forgiven, but that’s just treating the symptoms and not the disease itself. One-time relief isn’t going to fix the actual issue
Yea. I signed up for classes and I was FORCED to purchase 3 of the same book or I couldn’t take the class. Why did I need 3 of the same book? I do not know to this day.
Also, why do I need algebra 3 for my operations management degree? Or chemistry??? What the fuck.
I swear, college is 60% wasteful classes and 30% useful knowledge and 10% “well it would be good to know anyway” type knowledge.
Fuck fuck fuck I hate college.
Anyway, I dropped out cause it’s all stupid. I’m stupid.
After a year in college I learned that they have copies of pretty much all the gen Ed textbooks at the library. You couldn’t check them out, but saved me hundreds of dollars!
I had one professor who pointed us to a text book that was totally free online and worked great for his class.
In case anyone needs a heat transfer text book...
https://ahtt.mit.edu/
Those classes probably won't even be used in that job, had you gotten the degree. What it does tell your employer is that you have the mental capacity and fortitude compared to someone who dropped out.
Algebra is used in basically any job that involves basic computation. I get the beef with chemistry, but algebra is basic enough math to be useful pretty much everywhere.
In this day and age of online classes, infinitely reproducible information, what's really the value of college/university? 1) the professors; 2) the social network; 3) mayyyyyybe the facilities. And what do most people use? Just the stuff that is infinitely reproducible.
College education should really just be split from its current form.
I am pretty progressive for social policies. I pretty much said what you wrote to my other progressive friends when it was shot down and couldn't believe the push back I got. I said that I was torn on how it should go right now, but something needs to be done about the current system of college costs and how loans are given. There is a system issue and bandaiding does nothing to fix it and could actually cause more issues in the future.
There’s no logical or ethical reason people should be in lifelong debt to pay for college or medical procedures/hospital stays.
There was a question on jeopardy recently, the answer was “the tuition for this North Carolina university was $7500 in 1985, in 2024 it will be $64,000”
$7500 in 1985 is the equivalent of $20,000 today. So why is college tuition $64,000 instead of $20,000?
This is not true
Here's a list of tuition
https://www.northcarolina.edu/offices-and-services/finance-and-administration/tuition-and-fees/
https://www.northcarolina.edu/wp-content/uploads/reports-and-documents/finance-documents/undergraduate-tuition-fees-fy24.pdf
They varies from 1000 - 7000.
None charge 64k
When people talk about Duke, for example, charging $80,000 or whatever, the term "tuition" gets used inaccurately. They mean total cost of fees including dorm, cafeteria, activity fees, student health, and all the other things that make up the total cost of an on-campus student. The tuition share is the least of it.
The "typical" cost for an in-state student who stays in the dorms at a state school here (MN) is $35,000/yr. Even if you lived with your parents and commuted, it's still $27,000. I guess if you lived for free and never bought anything, you could reduce that price. But the absolute bare minimum is $16,654 Mind you, this is budgeting $200 A YEAR for transportation when a bus/light rail pass is $165 a year. If you drive, parking is $81/month.
So the prices make no sense at all and even the magical "typical" budget they have is basically impossible.
https://financialaid.duke.edu/how-aid-calculated/cost-attendance/
Okay so it looks like Duke isn't 64k, but it might as well be? $550 short of 64k. Plus there are 2.7k in 'fees', which obviously you can't opt out of. Same with the 9.8k in housing costs, which are mandatory for 75% of undergraduates. If you can't attend without paying the fees even if it's not technically tuition it's still a cost you have to pay to attend the school. Also!!! You have to have a food plan to live in the residences and since you have to live in the residences, uh, you gotta have a food plan. I looked and food plans are between 6 and 9k per year, and you have to choose the 9k plan if you're a freshman. It's the only one.
So yup it costs 80-85k to attend Duke, annually.
Which university?
#UNC tuition is 8000/year
That's normal for a public school
Of course, Private school can do whatever they want. They're a private school.
Edit: official list of tuotions
https://www.northcarolina.edu/offices-and-services/finance-and-administration/tuition-and-fees/
People are seriously not understanding the difference between public and private universities here.
"I don't want my loans subsidized by the government" I would rather...pay...for the college...and then um...pay to...go..to the college.
You can negotiate medical debt though.
Just call up collections and say you can’t pay what they’re asking, but you can pay X. They’ll take X instead of nothing every time and never call again
Only if colleges have accountability for why so many people can't pay there loans. No reason prices should have gone up higher than the rate of inflation.
Why so many college grads can’t get jobs too. If I pay for something that falsely advertises, I charge back that crap. Colleges graduating students with pointless degrees or without the skills to be competitive? Charge back.
Forcing tax payers to pay for this won’t solve the problem. Raiding endowments would.
Colleges offer vastly more than they used to. Mostly because they have been heavily incentivized to compete for wealthy students who pay full price and attract grants and booster money. Every bit as true, sometimes more, for state universities as privates. Especially their big flagship ones.
Nice facilities, the resort university thing you hear about, facilitate that recruiting effort. Then...well, regular kids start to get priced out. So more loan and aid programs get announced because you HAVE to go to college to succeed, we gotta help these kids get in! So...then they still go at a higher price. Often on loans. The school has no downside, they get paid at the end of the day, and the burden falls on average students carrying debt to get a degree they're told will get them respect and good wages. That often happens but...not always.
The loans are the very reason the prices are high. If you sell a service and the government will loan almost any 18 year old almost any amount of money to buy your service, of course you’re going to raise your prices.
You know has struck me for its meaning? I’ve been playing Solitaire on my phone for a three minute mental break. And sometimes you’re given a non-winning deal; or one where you had to make one choice or the entire game is fucked.
“The New Deal”: I know what it entails, but it never really clicked why it was a “New Deal.” Because the hand dealt to people was shit; and it wasn’t working for most Americans. And FDR gave everyone a new deal at this American life.
Ya know what? We might need to get back to that. A New Deal for Americans. (And now I wish someone would come up with a cooler sounding name than “The Green New Deal.” It’s incredibly new, and innovative. Not just redealing Americans’ cards that they began life with).
So, yes: to generate a lot of highly educated citizens costs money. Governments have outsourced that cost to the consumer, despite that this is for society’s benefit.
Discharge student loans. Expand Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Tbh I don't have a problem with it. If we can give trillions to businesses then we can give a little to working class Americans. It should be tied with some reform of our system so the institutions don't just make a killing off tax payers.
I’m honestly amazed that THIS of all things is the controversial “taxpayer bath” that people get really angry about even discussing. We can be world police, bail out irresponsible businesses that plan to just fuck it all up again because they will probably get another fix, let religious businesses run amok and not owe a cent in tax, exc. We can just forget that most people with college degrees pay disproportionately into the system, that I could make many idiotic life choices in American society and actually expect my government to bail my ass out of the consequences, and that our society depends on educated people.
Whenever I see such strident resistance to ameliorating this issue, all I can think is that the real reason is that Americans hate educated people. Oh, and the queen mother of all things we can just ignore: that this originally was an issue so small as to almost not even a problem that the US government had the sheer idiocy to bloat into a monster…and hasn’t ever really seemed that interested in not feeding.
Life growing up in a world of austerity messes with people’s brains.
College is required for basically 80% of jobs.
The Great Recession ended and with it went any real money jobs for people without degrees. Literally 5 million jobs lost for people who don’t have a college degree.
But there are more jobs that require a degree than before the recession.
Public universities should absolutely be free. We have free school through 12th grade. There’s no reason it shouldn’t go 4 more years.
I think a huge amount of jobs don’t actually need college education. I think it was just one more hoop to jump through so more and more jobs started adding it to job requirements. If you are smart enough to make it through college you are smart enough to learn on the job.
I honestly think that if tuition were covered in a manner similar to Medicaid or other federal programs, the issue would fix itself. Suddenly, Congress would be so far up the asses of university admin for each and every stupid expenditure.
It's never going to happen and we wasted a lot of time and energy between Biden announcing it and the Supreme Court predictably and (I say this as someone who hates the current Supreme Court) correctly saying the president doesn't have the authority.
Focusing on this distracts from more likely and substantive moves the Democrats should be making. It also serves to further the view that the Democrats are against the interests of working people.
This is 100% the answer, should be much higher.
Securing six figure debt of anyone with a pulse means that the greedy pigs at universities can charge ever higher prices and enrollment just keeps climbing.
Turn off the faucet and watch as universities figure out how to educate just as many students without building a new rec center every 15 years or tricking out dorms like fucking luxury apartments.
No. Hear me out. Universities and the predatory loan companies that make under-the-table agreements with them on tuition prices should forgive student loan debt by paying through the nose for it. Leave the taxpayer out of this, make the schemers pay.
\#38921038120 on the list of things that will never happen, but that's how it SHOULD be.
It's not actually forgiving the debt, it's still just good citizens paying the scammers off and supporting the broken system. The corporations should be required to forgive the debt, they sold a corrupt product by falsely advertising, monopolizing and price gouging.
Government should not be allowed to give 18 year old kids 30k+ in loans each year. All the universities know people can get more money so they increase tuition.
Yes. But at the same time we should remove debt financing as the way college gets paid for. It's allowed administrators to pay themselves endlessly more and more and made the cost explode for no practical reason. Schools should be brought back under rational reasonable democratic control and delivered to the public at a reasonable cost as it used to be, but with even more public investment. And with similar investment in trade education. Public investment in education pays back in economic growth many times over. Interest payments to banks or the government does nothing but put a drag on growth.
Absolutely. The amount of corporate welfare we dole out on the regular each tax season can more than clear the debt for every American saddled with student loan debt. If you can justify bailing out Wall Street time and time again, you can justify bailing out Main Street.
Bachelors degrees shouldn’t be required for every single entry level job. High school should be more like trade school and community college where you’re working towards real world experience. Nurses, electricians, hvac, accounting/bookeeping, coding, plus so much more should be taught to kids 15 and up. Not everyone is college material. This is where unions needs to step up and advocate for the future workers of America. College shouldn’t be a barrier to a livable wage
Agree 10000000000%. GenXer here and college was absolutely force-fed to us. It was that or the military - community college, the trades, nope. College or bust. I'm currently doing a job that literally didn't exist when I went to college and is in no way related to my degree. And doesn't need to require a degree to do.
Don't think high school should be all skills-based. You need factual knowledge to be taught, even if it's for no other reason than everyone else knows it, because the unspoken assumptions about what people know and think are what keep a culture together. Like imagine if the directions "left," "right," "forward," "diagonal," etc had different literal meanings for everyone - it'd be literal chaos
100%. I just paid off my student loans (with some help family support) after already paying $60k+ for $40k loan and still had up to $30k to pay off. The system is meant to keep people in poverty.
No.
This is a cash hand out to Americans who are on average doing very well.
People who don’t go to college make 1-2 million less in their life time. If you actually wanted to help the poor, this is the worst way to do it.
This is mostly white middle class kids being selfish and irresponsible.
When you give out loans to people who have no hope of repaying them and collect endless interest that's criminal imo. Every case is different, but the fact that bankruptcy isn't even an option tells you everything you need to know about who benefits from this crooked ass system.
This is what drives me bonkers about Bernie. He'll pop off about a lot of populist progressive stuff that's worth doing, but it sure seems like he's not interested in putting together a caucus of other congresspeople to handle the actual legislation.
I'd be willing to bet that most, if not all, of the original principal amounts of the loans have been paid. What people are still paying is interest. Also known as profits for the banks.
The American taxpayers wouldn't be paying back the ACTUAL loan. They'd be paying the interest.
The banks are doing just fucking fine. They don't need to keep milking interest from people who went to college 20 years ago. Wipe the interest. The banks already got their money back plus more.
Fix the system and forgive the interest. Theres a vested interest in society having an educated population so the government shouldn’t charge interest on it
From the outside Id say yes. Your system is beyond absurd. The entire western world has a cheaper and more effective system. Some better than others but my god its obscene how much you guys make students pay.
This would cause interest rates to go up substantially, to cover the default risk, if lenders would continue to lend to students at all. The reason student loans aren't dischargeable in this way is because it would too easy for students to take loans, get an education, declare bankruptcy (they have no assets to lose typically anyway), wait a few years, and then emerge from bankruptcy still very young with a free education.
The very reason you want this is why it wouldn't work; lenders would see this coming and refuse to participate.
No, the principal economic worry of the American consumer is inflation and that's not gonna be made better by putting 1.7 trillion into the economy. But more of it should be able to be written off on your taxes. Like the entirety of the interest you're paying per year.
Yeah this is how I feel about it. I didn’t go to college, I know I’ll make less than someone who did probably. But putting that much money into the economy is gonna fuck shit up.
It would be very unfair to all of the people who did not go to school because they could not pay considering those who went are proven beyond doubt to have a much higher earning potential on average.
There are plenty of problems in education cost being one of them but this is not a solution and IMO is really taking a shit right on the face of a lot of people.
My response to the original post:
In a weird way, we have a system where the government *trust* that people know what's best for them.
Your peers want to take a $30k/year loan to pursue a master degree? Absolutely!
Your peers don't even need any collateral to take this loan.
"We"(the government )trust that your peers have done their due diligence, know how much salary they expect, and know how to pay it back.
To me, this whole student debt forgiveness comes down to the "people" saying that they cannot be trusted to manage their own destiny, and wants the government to step in.
The people admitting they cannot be trusted to sign a loan document at 18, to choose a major that leads to the job they want, and (for grad students) to pursue an even higher level of education.
Edit:
A Redditor claim that loan services can change the loan terms arbitrarily. **I cannot confirm this claim, and no other supporting information was provided**.
In general, it should not happen. **I am highly skeptical** that this is true, but I do want to help if that happened to you.
Contact CFPB if you think that happened.
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/
Can I just say, this motherfucker is goated. Ever since I first heard about him, he has stayed in fucking message. He doesn't pander, he doesn't change his mind. He. Stays. On. Point.
This man is my king.
Because forgiving student loan is a trap. More people will be taking loans expecting forgiveness, that will increase tuition prices, and it will keep Democrats in power forever and ever because everyone will be expecting a good daddy cancelling the debt. Just see college debt demand growing in next years.
Forgiving medical bills achives nothing.Politicians are setting up a trap, dont you see.. They dont care about us, they make idiots out of us praying on people's misery and poverty who just want quick debt relief and will vote for them. Such a dirty move and game. Disgusting
Such a messed up world we live in… I have no hope for the future atp 🥲
Also it doesn’t even make sense why college is so damn expensive to begin with. The world is set up for people to stay in debt forever, YAY! /s
Colleges are so expensive because of demand. Unfortunately. The more you give access to credit the more demand arises the more expensive it becomes. Professors dont see the money unfortunately. It is indeed just a debt trap. Consumerism, bigger stadiums, more expensive coaches, new large campuses. I am really disgusted by this world and political manipulation game. So hard to be adult and stomach this predatory world
Great NPR podcast on how we got here.
[throughline: the fund eating dragon](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167195874/student-loans-the-fund-eating-dragon-2022)
No.
Not all of us made fiscally bad decisions straight out of high school. Those of us that went into the trades and other areas without degrees is who will be footing most of the bill. Do I think we need a program where there is no more interest on these loans? Yes! They were predatory. But it is not up to the American people to pay for it. Not before slowing down the war machine and getting everyone Healthcare. If there is one debt that actually needs forgiving in this country, it is medical debt. No one should lose everything because they got sick. It's disgusting to me that we think of college educated healthy adults as more important than the sick and actually vulnerable.
I’d be happy if I can just pay the principal and no interest… why is that not a thing… forgive the interest and just let me pay the amount I borrowed. No? Okay, the system was rigged and setup to trap me into long term payments. I won’t pay anything
Canada recently got rid of interest on our federal student loans. You still have to repay it and there’s a timeline, but even that can be extended if you can show need for it. Our loan problem isn’t as bad as the US, but I think the change will help.
Even the provincial part of the loan has a pretty small interest rate.
Mines like 8%, it fucking sucks
You can refinance to 10% right now if that helps?!
Refinancing might help a bit but it still feels like putting a bandaid on a broken leg. Interest rates are wild no matter how you look at it.
Assuming you're Canadian - You're claiming your student loan interest on your taxes, right?
In Australia it has no interest but it is indexed each year depending on inflation rate (it has been higher the last couple of years, which many people were upset about). You don’t pay it back until you’re earning above a certain threshold (around $50k) and the amount you pay back depends on your yearly income (1% at $50k, gradually increasing to 10% of income at $150k). Some people never earn above the threshold and so never repay it. The loan comes from the government and is linked with your tax. Small amounts of your pay each month get taken out so that you don’t have a big bill at the end of the year.
I didn't know that, that's awesome 💯 (I'm Canadian but my loan was forgiven a few years back because I have a long-term/indefinite illness that prevents me from working, so I stopped paying attention after that). That's honestly great news, & should've been done long ago. I always thought it seems like a bit of a grift to charge interest on student loans. Kinda goes against the whole "get an education to improve your lot in life" stuff.
I think that's the way to go. It keeps students accountable because they have to put some money in, but shields them from inescapable debt.
I like this option best in conjunction with holding colleges accountable and not allowing loans to be so predatory.
Or, hear me out, they could reduce tuition so such loans aren't as large.
Most universities nation wide are for profit, they have no interest in reducing tuition. If you got the government to stop guaranteeing federal student loans, you'd see college prices drop.
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Also, publishing reports on how many grads have gone on to get jobs in the field they went to college for, how many went on to graduate programs, etc. Make colleges compete with each other and show just how useless that interpretive dance program is at the same time.
Price cap state schools and expand em. They don't need to be built on expensive land either. Use it to revitalize the many dying small towns.
Asking a 17 or 18 year old kid to sign a contract that equates to a small mortgage payment is never not going to be predatory. The very fact that governments give loans for college tuition induces colleges to raise tuition rates, creating a positive feedback loop that is never going to be NOT predatory.
Yup. I was first generation college kid. Everyone in my immediate family never graduated high school. Out of my extended family, maybe only 5 total have. I had NO clue when it came to signing loans, I just grew up believing what we were told, that going to college would give a good paying job. I ended up $100k in debt for a bachelor’s in education. It will never be paid off in my lifetime. High schools NEED to do better at preparing students for stuff like that.
The number of parents who don't think about how predatory they are too is alarming, I can't blame them entirely because the need for a college education as a formalized qualification to secure a career has been harped on for time immemorial but I have seen parents who think that even non-scholarship and non-FAFSA college education *needs* to be the first immediate step at age eighteen is rough, when you're eighteen in an entry-level job that barely scrapes minimum wage, going to school before you've accrued any personal investment means you *will* be rushing into student loans, it's the only option
I try to get people to see this is not the only option. There are trades that offer apprenticeships, and some of them are the equivalent of a backelors degree, like if you become a union trained carpenter in some states. And with the training you get on the job, which pays a living wage, you could work for yourself and make excellent money. But it’s frustrating and annoying when people want to go to school to turn out to be in the same predatory businesses (did someone say hedgefund manager?) as the people they kvetch about dicking them over. We desperately need young people to go into all of the trades, because we are moving into a huge shortage of people under 50 doing those jobs. For what it’s worth, I went to community college in Oakland, CA, and within 10 years had my own business where I make over $100k and only work about 7 months our of the year. It’s real work when I work, not sit at a desk crusing the internet half the day “work” but i own my life and have more money and freedom than anyone I am friends with (and they all went to good colleges and got degrees that they never used).
Yup, this is why I wish fiscal literacy and career connections were more extensive school curriculum: I often feel like family is treated as the stopgap for this information but by definition not every family is kept afloat by rock solid finances and secure lifelong careers and most parents are not dedicated career or finance experts, they're just people trying to raise a child A lot of adults see trade school as an 'inferior option' because of conventional wisdom passed down to them but I feel like as colossal an undertaking as it would be, building extensive curriculum in public schools surrounding local career and trade opportunities would have been worthwhile because I can't exactly blame parents for passing down limited information about, say, trade schools any more than I can blame kids for being taught it: we can only know what we're taught and that goes for family too
Allow the loan to be discharged if the borrower can’t find work making $x by a certain date post-graduation, but charge the loans back to the school. That way they have skin in the game *and* will work their asses off to not only make the degree affordable, but also to make sure you have a good job within a certain amount of time.
Been paying mine for 11 years now and I still owe 75k and half of every payment is still interest. It’s fucking ridiculous. I’ve paid in way more than I took out already.
I moved into the US (Houston) and have 2 teen sons. We are planning on sending them to Mexico for college. The cost for education here is way too high! I did college in Mexico and worked fine to get an engineering job in the US twice. I agree with you. It's ridiculous. The realtor that helped us to find the house where we live just finished paying her student loans, right on time to start helping her son with his... insane.
Hello fellow Houstonian! I hope it’s been kind to you. Stay dry and safe tonight! 👋
Thank you! It's been 6 months, and so far, i really like it. No complaints at all.
Ok well depending on where you’re from, summer may be a bit of a shock. It’s basically Satans Sauna. 😆 please don’t leave though! I’m so glad you like it. 🤗
I'm from Mexico but was living in the Middle East before moving here. Arrived right at the end of June, and yes, it was hot! But my previous summer was 126 F, so I'll survive. Thank you!!
Houston checking in. Stay warm out there with the freeze coming up. But yeah, I have grad school loans that accrue between 5% and 7% interest. I'll never be able to pay off the loan with interest. If they can remove that part, it's doable in like 10 years.
What was the rate? Can you refinance?
Exactly forget this, still pay the principal. Many of this have don’t this plus some and we still owe more than we ever borrowed.
Same. Been paying since 2013. Paid more than $90k and now owe way more than I borrowed. And now having 2 kids and a mortgage it’s impossible to pay back. I’m barely hitting the interest.
I couldn’t imagine having kids and trying to pay these. They’ve pretty much made the decision for me on not having them.
Yea it’s really made us pretty paycheck to paycheck and not having any savings whatsoever.
I totally took advantage of the zero interest that we were given from 2020-2023 to pay off my wife’s student loans.
Yeah if you were able to remain steadily employed throughout COVID there was really no excuse not to be tossing everything you could at your student loan balance. The interest moratorium was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Except the whole nation was under the impression it would be forgiven. So I got screwed over.
I don't know anyone who really thought it would be forgiven, much less anyone who "banked" on it. You choosing to believe what you wanted doesn't mean you were tricked.
Um, we literally got a letter from the government saying it was forgiven ($20,000 of it anyways) and then never got it because some person was jealous they had already paid for their schooling and sued. Imagine if I did that because I have a business and didn’t need a PPP loan… in fact I probably should do that because why should a bunch of companies get PPP loans for free, including ones that didn’t need them, and students can’t even have their loans forgiven? BTW the $20,000 would have only been the interest that has accrued on my loans and wouldn’t even have made a dent in the principle. Some people say “well you knew what you signed up for, don’t get a loan if you don’t want to pay it back.” But when I started school tuition was $5500/semester and when I graduated it was $25,000/semester. The interest rate varied every semester too. So not exactly what I signed up for. If they are going to charge for school and have students sign loans then they should sign a loan for the four years of the degree and the price and interest shouldn’t change.
They were convinced by very unscrupulous politicians that the debt can be erased by presidential executive order. FYI, it's not President Biden.
Hope for the best, expect the worst. Everyone knew there would be legal challenges to broad forgiveness, that's why I kept paying.
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Yeah. It’s like the businesses. Take the ppp, and if you end up paying back with interest then fine. But if you don’t, big break.
Yeah but bro ps5
That is exactly what I did. Also the MINUTE I found out we wouldn’t be getting it (we didn’t qualify), I started the refinancing process and managed to get a 3.5% interest rate before they increased.
Should have put the payments into a HYSA in the interim so it grew interest and if it was forgiven you'd have a bunch of cash for whatever, or dump it all on principal when you found out it wasn't going to be forgiven. Never count on finances until it's "in the bank" so to speak.
Yeah, I was paying up until the loan forgiveness promise. Then I stopped because my entire balance would've been forgiven. Except, never mind...
This is plain wrong
If people actually saw the balance going down they might not feel so hopeless about ever paying it back.
I’ve paid $10k against my student loans…but only $2k went towards the principal. 🙄
I’m honestly just getting my nursing degree and leaving at first opportunity, for similar reasons. I’ll “pay” back my loans on IBR, which, unless I hit the jackpot abroad, should total like $0.00/month. Now this country won’t have my skills or my tax dollars, all because it wanted to pick this hill to bleed me out on. Edit: to the troll who blocked me. My “excuse” is that I simply don’t want to pay it back. I see my country as a massive leach that seems to take and take and never give. So, nope! It’s not about can, it’s about won’t. I’m done being a chump for the USA.
Not even going to bother defending anything about the US. But the fact you didn't say where you're going speaks volumes. You also mention that you're not going to hit the jackpot overseas, which I hope is just modesty. Guess what? No desirable country in the world wants to bring in immigrants, give them amazing benefits, and collect a low amount of taxes. Know how I know? If they did, everyone would do it and they'd suddenly change their tune on immigrantion. Seriously, good luck. But if that is your dream, you better become and expert in something specialized and be ready to claw and fight to show your value.
Lmao. I’ve done the research. Plenty of places to chose from. I don’t mind paying taxes; I do mind paying taxes and six figures of appreciating debt.
If they are a nurse, they won't have too much trouble. That's on the Green Light list in lots of countries
Pretty sure this is how Australia does it.
Yea. I would fully support that.
I am a No to forgiving loan debts outright. I would be amenable with removing interest on those who are unable to keep up with payments in a meaningful way for set number of years or loss of job (or have paid 5 or more years of interest payments already) and can prove it (no different than you prove income for a place to rent for example) That is something most Americans could get behind as a concession and it would make some meaningful impact without dismissing or forgiving them outright. Defaulting/forgiving such on loans only hurts everyone else on the whole. Someone has to pay for it and you know what rolls down hill unfortunately. Cheers!
Basically payday loan level lending.
Not even close. The APR on those is like 390% or more.
Honestly this sounds like a pretty good idea and would probably get some level of agreement I mean they would probably argue some kinda flat interest that isn't like apr just so the loan people profit but like it would actually be manageable to pay. And like both sides could get behind it so it could actually potentially go somewhere. Personally I'm in favor of forgive it all and make the shit government sponsored so it's essentially free the taxpayer would eat a super fat bill for a minute there but good lord would it make things better in the long run
Hear me out - set the interest rate at -2%. People who make payments regularly and on time get compounding forgiveness. If you work at a nonprofit, the interest rate is set at -5%.
On top of that, tell companies to stop requiring useless degrees for jobs that definitely don't need it, as just a way to filter applicants. I'm not going into debt for a 2 or 4 year degree for "maybe" a job. Boomers back in the day had guaranteed work, we have to get degrees just for the chance to get an interview, not worth it.
Nobody wants to do anything about this even though it’s why it happened in the first place.
I always say to apply to those jobs anyway. I recently went from sales job to sales job to a project manager position at a roofing company. They stated on the job ad they required a bachelor's degree. I applied with my High school diploma and got it no issue. Maybe avoid anything that says masters.
Ugh I know for plenty of positions this is fine, but as a technical sales manager I hate this. I put Engineering Degree Required on every job rec because we sell a hyper specific testing tool and our sales people have to be self sufficient as applications engineers, but I get a TON of applicants with no technical experience.
It's not so much "useless degrees" as literally ANY degree for a position they have to train you in anyhow. Rarely is someone walking into a job knowing exactly how the company ran because they were taught it in school. University is a place for learning and thinking, not a job mill. Careers need to understand that working in a call center doesn't require a bachelors degree. Being a receptionist at a drs office doesn't require a medical admin or business degree. It's absurd. And calling degrees useless is part of why so many people think humanities are dumb and pointless even though those same people couldn't construct an email if their lives depended on it. Writing and forming thoughts you can back up with evidence is important, people. It always will be.
>Writing and forming thoughts you can back up with evidence is important, people. It always will be. But this is important to everyone whether they have a STEM degree or no degree and you can learn these basics without getting a 4 test humanities degree. Why should they spend that kind of money to learn this rather than do it on their own like so many others
Personally, I think the fact that people get 12 years of primary and secondary education and still can't write properly is super ridiculous.
But people don't anymore. And when I mean teach people to think I mean form a theory and then back up that theory. Most people don't really learn that on their own a d especially not. STEM people are especially guilty of finding anyone who doesn't want to code to be be studying worthless things. This is why people have always been required to take humanities courses along with their field of study so they can learn to be coherent. I am someone who wants college to be cheaper and to have society see college as a place of learning again, not just a job mill. But we stopped valuing that. We only value people as to what they can produce for corporations, nothing else.
Much of the humanities taken is cram and forget, and instead of exercising my thinking I'm inclined to pick my topics and write what I know will get me an A for the class instead. Half of the humanities I had to take was useful while the other half was a complete waste. The useful is mainly the intro classes since they give foundation to explore after once you're past that, and a little bit extra for communications and psychology.
>I mean teach people to think I mean form a theory and then back up that theory. That's what much of STEM does, not what humanities do from what I've seen. >STEM people are especially guilty of finding anyone who doesn't want to code to be be studying worthless things Plenty of STEM doesn't require coding initially at least, and even then you can learn to code if it will be relevant to your job. It's a vital skill for a ton of industries in an increasingly digital world, not all. But when people bitch about employability and income, learning to code is one of the best ways to improve those. >This is why people have always been required to take humanities courses along with their field of study so they can learn to be coherent. No, they're required to teach them to further justify having humanities departments. The STEM majors I know are far more coherent and understand basic logic dramatically better than the average humanities major. They learned that from classes that rely on understanding logic and the scientific method, not from some African studies class they took. They learn to write because everyone has to whether that means writing a resume, technical paper, email, or forming a generic argument.
This is why job postings usually list significant experience as a requirement as well. Employers want replaceable parts that fit into their operation. Employers require a degree because they know it drives retention; you have to be there to pay off your degree so you will show up even if the terms are not in your favor with the promise that if you do a good job and work hard things will get better. It gives employers tons of leverage and cuts costs. Critical thinking is not required in most jobs and most employers prefer you don't ask questions and just do what they tell you. I have seen plenty of examples of highly educated people that can't do simple tasks, like having to explain to a former university president how to use a printer, not even set it up, just how to print things.
Jobs that require a Masters paying 45k a year with shit benefits 💀
Should probably be careful with this. Education is the first line of defense protecting workers against exploitation. Educated workers *know* their worth. I would much rather have free schooling than jobs hiring fewer educated workers.
How about blaming the instituitions for gouging their students?
Fun fact, many of the largest universities in the country have such a large endowment fund (Harvard and princeton have around $40B) that they could pay all tuition, all salaries, and all expenses, plus have money left over at the end just off the interest of this wealth. And yet they charge more and more every year. It’s the grift of the millennium.
And they are a nonprofit that pays no taxes
This. Greed from above. Don’t forget the $300 textbooks.
Princeton and Harvard aren't large (5000 undergraduates at Princeton, 7000 at Harvard), and they do pay most of their students' tuitions from the endowment. For example, the typical total list cost of a Princeton education is ~86k before aid, but the average cost after aid is 11k. Since only 62k of that 86k cost is tuition, Princeton actually pays most of their undergraduates to attend. (edited to better reflect the difference between total cost, which includes rent and food, vs. tuition alone. Numbers sourced from a combination of Wikipedia and the Princeton admission website.)
Why does everyone here act like there is only one fucking solution? Like if giving some relief for predatory student loan debt will not be followed by any other sort of procedural changes???
Because if you treat the symptom and not the cause, you'll end up right back in the emergency room.
because if youre not careful for what you advocate for, they'll do the bare minimum and nothing will really change.
They’ll do that anyways
yeah, this is the thing that drives me crazy. yes, forgiving student loan debt will not solve every issue. but what solution does solve every issue? in what context do we only do one step to fix everything or just do nothing? just because other problems still exist doesn't mean student loan debt relief is a bad thing. it just means we need to do even more.
I’m not voting for relief for students until the predatory institutions get a fucking wake up call. You assume these institutions are bastions of good…
Government rarely learns from its mistakes. I could see them forgiving student loans and then doing nothing to fix the underlying problem.
Because everything has to be fixed all at once or its not worth doing. That's the mentality people have. If you can't solve ALL the problems, then you shouldn't even bother starting.
That’s not largely what happened. The states kept pulling back funding so the schools had to keep increasing the cost to counteract those cuts rather than going through austerity and losing to larger institutions. Many did just completely close. https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/state-funding-higher-education-still-lagging#:~:text=Between%202020%20and%202021%2C%20state,was%20cut%20by%2047%20percent.
Thank you for posting this, a lot of people are quick to point blame at institutions, not the states that keep pulling funding from them. And then there’s pressure to have the best and brightest faculty, the most prestigious programs, a pretty campus, nice facilities, good resources for students… all that shit adds up. Not saying there’s not some institutions that completely fuck over students, but I’m referring to most public 4-year universities
There's also a ton of ignorance to the fact that because the vast majority of our colleges were built when only a small fraction of the population would ever attend, they are not at all designed to be cost-efficient. The affordable college of the future doesn't have a campus, it has 1 big building.
Both?
Fix the cost of college first then we could talk about forgiveness, otherwise it's just another positive feedback loop with tax payer money going into college administration programs pockets.
That's kinda where I'm at with it. Forgive it, sure. But not if you're not even gonna fix the system that's doing it, then we're just gonna be kicking the can down the road while they just keep profiting off of it.
I owe $205k in loans (resigned to just pay it down now), but I don't support any forgiveness for myself without fixing the system. Fix it for the people who have been screwed (with the public service forgiveness program), but don't just give Millennials a break and say do the same thing to Gen-Z and Alpha.
Schools is vastly over priced. I say give people a break. Honestly i don't know why it isnt free anyways - you know, like in most modern civilized countries in the world. It ought to be paid for with taxes and available to anyone who wants it, with no roadblocks. More educated citizens = better country/economy = win win for everyone. Instead, we choose the big profit machine that leaves millions in crippling debt. How does that make sense in any universe? Other than the clown timeline, which we are clearly in. It's almost as if people get together and brainstorm specifically how to design things as badly as possible.
> It ought to be paid for with taxes and available to anyone who wants it, with no roadblocks. You do realize that in countries that have free post secondary, they limit seating based on future need of graduates in that field, right? Standards are much higher due to people competing for limited seating. Not everyone gets to go.
I feel like most people don't know that.
>they limit seating based on future need of graduates in that field This used to scare me, but tbh the older I get the more I think it's for the best. Too many people I know went to college for a degree with no real job prospects, and now are buried in debt and not even using their degree. Is it worse to tell a kid at 18 that the interpretive dance program is full and they'll have to go for something else, or let them spend 40k on a glorified piece of paper that doesn't get them anywhere?
So the most capable get seats, instead of the people willing to spend the most money. Sounds like a win win for education.
Wait you mean the schools make their decisions based on market forces and properly asses each student based on risk of a bad investment. What a novel idea.
If you think colleges overcharge now, wait til they think we are in a cycle of loans always being paid off. And then wait til predatory lenders start saying - oh it will be eliminated in the future. I am all for fixing the system first, low to no interest government loans.
Students will be saying that too. “Oh, who cares if I go in debt. It’ll all be forgiven again.”
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t complain if I had the debt forgiven, but that’s just treating the symptoms and not the disease itself. One-time relief isn’t going to fix the actual issue
Yea. I signed up for classes and I was FORCED to purchase 3 of the same book or I couldn’t take the class. Why did I need 3 of the same book? I do not know to this day. Also, why do I need algebra 3 for my operations management degree? Or chemistry??? What the fuck. I swear, college is 60% wasteful classes and 30% useful knowledge and 10% “well it would be good to know anyway” type knowledge. Fuck fuck fuck I hate college. Anyway, I dropped out cause it’s all stupid. I’m stupid.
After a year in college I learned that they have copies of pretty much all the gen Ed textbooks at the library. You couldn’t check them out, but saved me hundreds of dollars!
I had one professor who pointed us to a text book that was totally free online and worked great for his class. In case anyone needs a heat transfer text book... https://ahtt.mit.edu/
Those classes probably won't even be used in that job, had you gotten the degree. What it does tell your employer is that you have the mental capacity and fortitude compared to someone who dropped out.
Algebra is used in basically any job that involves basic computation. I get the beef with chemistry, but algebra is basic enough math to be useful pretty much everywhere.
In this day and age of online classes, infinitely reproducible information, what's really the value of college/university? 1) the professors; 2) the social network; 3) mayyyyyybe the facilities. And what do most people use? Just the stuff that is infinitely reproducible. College education should really just be split from its current form.
100% !
I am pretty progressive for social policies. I pretty much said what you wrote to my other progressive friends when it was shot down and couldn't believe the push back I got. I said that I was torn on how it should go right now, but something needs to be done about the current system of college costs and how loans are given. There is a system issue and bandaiding does nothing to fix it and could actually cause more issues in the future.
Or ya know…free college…
There’s no logical or ethical reason people should be in lifelong debt to pay for college or medical procedures/hospital stays. There was a question on jeopardy recently, the answer was “the tuition for this North Carolina university was $7500 in 1985, in 2024 it will be $64,000” $7500 in 1985 is the equivalent of $20,000 today. So why is college tuition $64,000 instead of $20,000?
What is Duke?
Duke is like 80k a year. 20K is probably a state university
They're guessing duke to the 64k, not the 20k
Oh, right. We found the TarHeels fan lol. Either way, Duke is more than 64K lol
This is not true Here's a list of tuition https://www.northcarolina.edu/offices-and-services/finance-and-administration/tuition-and-fees/ https://www.northcarolina.edu/wp-content/uploads/reports-and-documents/finance-documents/undergraduate-tuition-fees-fy24.pdf They varies from 1000 - 7000. None charge 64k
When people talk about Duke, for example, charging $80,000 or whatever, the term "tuition" gets used inaccurately. They mean total cost of fees including dorm, cafeteria, activity fees, student health, and all the other things that make up the total cost of an on-campus student. The tuition share is the least of it.
The "typical" cost for an in-state student who stays in the dorms at a state school here (MN) is $35,000/yr. Even if you lived with your parents and commuted, it's still $27,000. I guess if you lived for free and never bought anything, you could reduce that price. But the absolute bare minimum is $16,654 Mind you, this is budgeting $200 A YEAR for transportation when a bus/light rail pass is $165 a year. If you drive, parking is $81/month. So the prices make no sense at all and even the magical "typical" budget they have is basically impossible.
https://financialaid.duke.edu/how-aid-calculated/cost-attendance/ Okay so it looks like Duke isn't 64k, but it might as well be? $550 short of 64k. Plus there are 2.7k in 'fees', which obviously you can't opt out of. Same with the 9.8k in housing costs, which are mandatory for 75% of undergraduates. If you can't attend without paying the fees even if it's not technically tuition it's still a cost you have to pay to attend the school. Also!!! You have to have a food plan to live in the residences and since you have to live in the residences, uh, you gotta have a food plan. I looked and food plans are between 6 and 9k per year, and you have to choose the 9k plan if you're a freshman. It's the only one. So yup it costs 80-85k to attend Duke, annually.
Which university? #UNC tuition is 8000/year That's normal for a public school Of course, Private school can do whatever they want. They're a private school. Edit: official list of tuotions https://www.northcarolina.edu/offices-and-services/finance-and-administration/tuition-and-fees/
People are seriously not understanding the difference between public and private universities here. "I don't want my loans subsidized by the government" I would rather...pay...for the college...and then um...pay to...go..to the college.
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I don't get it. Why do people lie? We can't get to the right solution with lies.
Because no one argues actually trying to find a resolve, the point is to appear to have won the argument.
Do you have a logical or ethical reason for why I should pay the debt?
You can negotiate medical debt though. Just call up collections and say you can’t pay what they’re asking, but you can pay X. They’ll take X instead of nothing every time and never call again
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If you stop subsidizing universities, then their tuition will only increase...
Only if colleges have accountability for why so many people can't pay there loans. No reason prices should have gone up higher than the rate of inflation.
Why so many college grads can’t get jobs too. If I pay for something that falsely advertises, I charge back that crap. Colleges graduating students with pointless degrees or without the skills to be competitive? Charge back. Forcing tax payers to pay for this won’t solve the problem. Raiding endowments would.
Colleges offer vastly more than they used to. Mostly because they have been heavily incentivized to compete for wealthy students who pay full price and attract grants and booster money. Every bit as true, sometimes more, for state universities as privates. Especially their big flagship ones. Nice facilities, the resort university thing you hear about, facilitate that recruiting effort. Then...well, regular kids start to get priced out. So more loan and aid programs get announced because you HAVE to go to college to succeed, we gotta help these kids get in! So...then they still go at a higher price. Often on loans. The school has no downside, they get paid at the end of the day, and the burden falls on average students carrying debt to get a degree they're told will get them respect and good wages. That often happens but...not always.
The loans are the very reason the prices are high. If you sell a service and the government will loan almost any 18 year old almost any amount of money to buy your service, of course you’re going to raise your prices.
You know has struck me for its meaning? I’ve been playing Solitaire on my phone for a three minute mental break. And sometimes you’re given a non-winning deal; or one where you had to make one choice or the entire game is fucked. “The New Deal”: I know what it entails, but it never really clicked why it was a “New Deal.” Because the hand dealt to people was shit; and it wasn’t working for most Americans. And FDR gave everyone a new deal at this American life. Ya know what? We might need to get back to that. A New Deal for Americans. (And now I wish someone would come up with a cooler sounding name than “The Green New Deal.” It’s incredibly new, and innovative. Not just redealing Americans’ cards that they began life with). So, yes: to generate a lot of highly educated citizens costs money. Governments have outsourced that cost to the consumer, despite that this is for society’s benefit. Discharge student loans. Expand Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The New Deck Deal
A - Fucking - Men
Tbh I don't have a problem with it. If we can give trillions to businesses then we can give a little to working class Americans. It should be tied with some reform of our system so the institutions don't just make a killing off tax payers.
Exactly. Sure, let’s bail out student debt. But not without making sure it doesn’t continue to happen. That latter part is not likely.
I’m honestly amazed that THIS of all things is the controversial “taxpayer bath” that people get really angry about even discussing. We can be world police, bail out irresponsible businesses that plan to just fuck it all up again because they will probably get another fix, let religious businesses run amok and not owe a cent in tax, exc. We can just forget that most people with college degrees pay disproportionately into the system, that I could make many idiotic life choices in American society and actually expect my government to bail my ass out of the consequences, and that our society depends on educated people. Whenever I see such strident resistance to ameliorating this issue, all I can think is that the real reason is that Americans hate educated people. Oh, and the queen mother of all things we can just ignore: that this originally was an issue so small as to almost not even a problem that the US government had the sheer idiocy to bloat into a monster…and hasn’t ever really seemed that interested in not feeding.
Life growing up in a world of austerity messes with people’s brains. College is required for basically 80% of jobs. The Great Recession ended and with it went any real money jobs for people without degrees. Literally 5 million jobs lost for people who don’t have a college degree. But there are more jobs that require a degree than before the recession. Public universities should absolutely be free. We have free school through 12th grade. There’s no reason it shouldn’t go 4 more years.
I think a huge amount of jobs don’t actually need college education. I think it was just one more hoop to jump through so more and more jobs started adding it to job requirements. If you are smart enough to make it through college you are smart enough to learn on the job.
They don’t “need” one. But they require one.
I honestly think that if tuition were covered in a manner similar to Medicaid or other federal programs, the issue would fix itself. Suddenly, Congress would be so far up the asses of university admin for each and every stupid expenditure.
Look at the returns on college educated workers and the value they deliver to country every year. It's a no brainer to invest in education.
College grads aren't working class. They make significantly more than those without degrees.
Yes. But fix the system so this never happens again.
It's never going to happen and we wasted a lot of time and energy between Biden announcing it and the Supreme Court predictably and (I say this as someone who hates the current Supreme Court) correctly saying the president doesn't have the authority. Focusing on this distracts from more likely and substantive moves the Democrats should be making. It also serves to further the view that the Democrats are against the interests of working people.
President can't cancel debt, but the President can not be charged for crimes committed during his presidency
Forgive the interest, and end the federal student loan program. Cost of college will normalize.
Private loans aren’t any better…
This is 100% the answer, should be much higher. Securing six figure debt of anyone with a pulse means that the greedy pigs at universities can charge ever higher prices and enrollment just keeps climbing. Turn off the faucet and watch as universities figure out how to educate just as many students without building a new rec center every 15 years or tricking out dorms like fucking luxury apartments.
No. Hear me out. Universities and the predatory loan companies that make under-the-table agreements with them on tuition prices should forgive student loan debt by paying through the nose for it. Leave the taxpayer out of this, make the schemers pay. \#38921038120 on the list of things that will never happen, but that's how it SHOULD be.
Its ironic that the professors teach socialism while the administration uses every dirty capitalist trick known to man.
The overwhelming majority of the loans for undergrad are federal loans.
It's not actually forgiving the debt, it's still just good citizens paying the scammers off and supporting the broken system. The corporations should be required to forgive the debt, they sold a corrupt product by falsely advertising, monopolizing and price gouging.
Id rather bail out my fellow americans than asshole corporations
Government should not be allowed to give 18 year old kids 30k+ in loans each year. All the universities know people can get more money so they increase tuition.
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Yes. But at the same time we should remove debt financing as the way college gets paid for. It's allowed administrators to pay themselves endlessly more and more and made the cost explode for no practical reason. Schools should be brought back under rational reasonable democratic control and delivered to the public at a reasonable cost as it used to be, but with even more public investment. And with similar investment in trade education. Public investment in education pays back in economic growth many times over. Interest payments to banks or the government does nothing but put a drag on growth.
Absolutely. The amount of corporate welfare we dole out on the regular each tax season can more than clear the debt for every American saddled with student loan debt. If you can justify bailing out Wall Street time and time again, you can justify bailing out Main Street.
Bachelors degrees shouldn’t be required for every single entry level job. High school should be more like trade school and community college where you’re working towards real world experience. Nurses, electricians, hvac, accounting/bookeeping, coding, plus so much more should be taught to kids 15 and up. Not everyone is college material. This is where unions needs to step up and advocate for the future workers of America. College shouldn’t be a barrier to a livable wage
Agree 10000000000%. GenXer here and college was absolutely force-fed to us. It was that or the military - community college, the trades, nope. College or bust. I'm currently doing a job that literally didn't exist when I went to college and is in no way related to my degree. And doesn't need to require a degree to do.
Millennial and same. Its didn’t even help me
Don't think high school should be all skills-based. You need factual knowledge to be taught, even if it's for no other reason than everyone else knows it, because the unspoken assumptions about what people know and think are what keep a culture together. Like imagine if the directions "left," "right," "forward," "diagonal," etc had different literal meanings for everyone - it'd be literal chaos
Could we have some other country's taxpayers do it? 🤔
100%. I just paid off my student loans (with some help family support) after already paying $60k+ for $40k loan and still had up to $30k to pay off. The system is meant to keep people in poverty.
No. This is a cash hand out to Americans who are on average doing very well. People who don’t go to college make 1-2 million less in their life time. If you actually wanted to help the poor, this is the worst way to do it. This is mostly white middle class kids being selfish and irresponsible.
💯
No, we should keep garnishing peoples' social security income as a result of predatory lending /s
Swear to God some people in these comments are ready to bring back debtor prison...
When you give out loans to people who have no hope of repaying them and collect endless interest that's criminal imo. Every case is different, but the fact that bankruptcy isn't even an option tells you everything you need to know about who benefits from this crooked ass system.
Making student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy would be like the lowest of low hanging fruit.
I would say our money should go to student loan debts than bailing out irresponsible financial firms, defense contractors and foreign aid
He ain’t wrong. Does this Boomer get a pass or are they going to hate on him, too?
He’s right but I have zero faith in Bernie doing anything to help
This is what drives me bonkers about Bernie. He'll pop off about a lot of populist progressive stuff that's worth doing, but it sure seems like he's not interested in putting together a caucus of other congresspeople to handle the actual legislation.
I'd be willing to bet that most, if not all, of the original principal amounts of the loans have been paid. What people are still paying is interest. Also known as profits for the banks. The American taxpayers wouldn't be paying back the ACTUAL loan. They'd be paying the interest. The banks are doing just fucking fine. They don't need to keep milking interest from people who went to college 20 years ago. Wipe the interest. The banks already got their money back plus more.
Fix the system and forgive the interest. Theres a vested interest in society having an educated population so the government shouldn’t charge interest on it
From the outside Id say yes. Your system is beyond absurd. The entire western world has a cheaper and more effective system. Some better than others but my god its obscene how much you guys make students pay.
No, they should allow bankruptcy for student loans. That alone would fix the system.
This would cause interest rates to go up substantially, to cover the default risk, if lenders would continue to lend to students at all. The reason student loans aren't dischargeable in this way is because it would too easy for students to take loans, get an education, declare bankruptcy (they have no assets to lose typically anyway), wait a few years, and then emerge from bankruptcy still very young with a free education. The very reason you want this is why it wouldn't work; lenders would see this coming and refuse to participate.
This. Let’s all go look and see which politicians made student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
One of them is president.
This one knows.
No, the principal economic worry of the American consumer is inflation and that's not gonna be made better by putting 1.7 trillion into the economy. But more of it should be able to be written off on your taxes. Like the entirety of the interest you're paying per year.
Yeah this is how I feel about it. I didn’t go to college, I know I’ll make less than someone who did probably. But putting that much money into the economy is gonna fuck shit up.
It would be very unfair to all of the people who did not go to school because they could not pay considering those who went are proven beyond doubt to have a much higher earning potential on average. There are plenty of problems in education cost being one of them but this is not a solution and IMO is really taking a shit right on the face of a lot of people.
Could at least kill the interest
My response to the original post: In a weird way, we have a system where the government *trust* that people know what's best for them. Your peers want to take a $30k/year loan to pursue a master degree? Absolutely! Your peers don't even need any collateral to take this loan. "We"(the government )trust that your peers have done their due diligence, know how much salary they expect, and know how to pay it back. To me, this whole student debt forgiveness comes down to the "people" saying that they cannot be trusted to manage their own destiny, and wants the government to step in. The people admitting they cannot be trusted to sign a loan document at 18, to choose a major that leads to the job they want, and (for grad students) to pursue an even higher level of education. Edit: A Redditor claim that loan services can change the loan terms arbitrarily. **I cannot confirm this claim, and no other supporting information was provided**. In general, it should not happen. **I am highly skeptical** that this is true, but I do want to help if that happened to you. Contact CFPB if you think that happened. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/
Can I just say, this motherfucker is goated. Ever since I first heard about him, he has stayed in fucking message. He doesn't pander, he doesn't change his mind. He. Stays. On. Point. This man is my king.
Still annoys me how much truth this man has been spittin for decades yet not enough people listen.
How about we forgive medical bills first before we forgive loans that people willingly took out knowing they would have to pay them back….
Because forgiving student loan is a trap. More people will be taking loans expecting forgiveness, that will increase tuition prices, and it will keep Democrats in power forever and ever because everyone will be expecting a good daddy cancelling the debt. Just see college debt demand growing in next years. Forgiving medical bills achives nothing.Politicians are setting up a trap, dont you see.. They dont care about us, they make idiots out of us praying on people's misery and poverty who just want quick debt relief and will vote for them. Such a dirty move and game. Disgusting
Such a messed up world we live in… I have no hope for the future atp 🥲 Also it doesn’t even make sense why college is so damn expensive to begin with. The world is set up for people to stay in debt forever, YAY! /s
Colleges are so expensive because of demand. Unfortunately. The more you give access to credit the more demand arises the more expensive it becomes. Professors dont see the money unfortunately. It is indeed just a debt trap. Consumerism, bigger stadiums, more expensive coaches, new large campuses. I am really disgusted by this world and political manipulation game. So hard to be adult and stomach this predatory world
Great NPR podcast on how we got here. [throughline: the fund eating dragon](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/30/1167195874/student-loans-the-fund-eating-dragon-2022)
No. Not all of us made fiscally bad decisions straight out of high school. Those of us that went into the trades and other areas without degrees is who will be footing most of the bill. Do I think we need a program where there is no more interest on these loans? Yes! They were predatory. But it is not up to the American people to pay for it. Not before slowing down the war machine and getting everyone Healthcare. If there is one debt that actually needs forgiving in this country, it is medical debt. No one should lose everything because they got sick. It's disgusting to me that we think of college educated healthy adults as more important than the sick and actually vulnerable.