Student loan repayment strike

[Relic]

The problem is, those schools only accept qualified individuals, and its the people who have no business going to college that are taking out these loans and using them to pay for schools that offer them zero opportunities.

:stillsick: :stillsick: :stillsick: :stillsick:

....

What? So you don;t believe in educating your citizens for the betterment of society as a whole? No business going to college? What about high school? Elementary school? Who are you to judge who should/shouldn't try to earn an education?

[sperry]

:stillsick: :stillsick: :stillsick: :stillsick:

....

What? So you don;t believe in educating your citizens for the betterment of society as a whole? No business going to college? What about high school? Elementary school? Who are you to judge who should/shouldn't try to earn an education?

The idea that everyone needs or deserves go to college is the biggest reason these people are in the mess they are in the first place. Education doesn't mean going to college.

Community college is an extremely cheap option that will accept anyone with a high school diploma. It's a very good way to prove that you're an individual who could make good use of a college education, even if your current credentials (high school grades and test scores) indicate to the contrary.

[Bronn Stone]

If there were sufficient space in the Community College system, these private schools would not exist. That is the true shameful part of this all.

[Frog Eater]

The idea that everyone needs or deserves go to college is the biggest reason these people are in the mess they are in the first place. Education doesn't mean going to college.

Community college is an extremely cheap option that will accept anyone with a high school diploma. It's a very good way to prove that you're an individual who could make good use of a college education, even if your current credentials (high school grades and test scores) indicate to the contrary.

I agree with this. The local community college here is very affordable to residents of this county.

[Arakan]

My American Friends, we are allies and partners but thank the seven gods that there are certain areas in which we always will have opposing views, one of them is health care, the other education.

I will only say so much: if you want to utilize the maximum potential your society offers, education should NEVER be depending on whether you are rich or poor but only on the capacity of your brain.

I can only recommend this to all my American Friends: come to Europe, come to Germany, come here and study whatever you want. And the only criteria you will be judged on is the size of your brain, not the size of your wallet.

[Larry of the Lawn]

The idea that some of you are blaming the students for ending up in these situations is pretty fucked up, in my not so humble opinion. Most students enter into these 'contracts' when they are 18 years old. I'm sure you all know or have been an 18 yr old in the US. It is an incredibly idealistic, optimistic, and foolish age. You have an entire culture in love with the idea of rising higher, in wealth and social standing, than your parents through higher education. High schools push this through Guidance departments. Shit, my guidance counselor told me to go to the highest rated school I could get into and to just worry about the money later.

I agree that too many people are pushed into thinking a bachelors is necessary, and think that community colleges need to be able to handle a greater student load. It seems crazy to me that this isn't viewed universally as a great investment with tax dollars. Creating a more talented, capable and educated work force shouldn't be something where the student is the one stuck with a millstone of a bill for life. One of my uncles is a real bootstrapping Libertarian type (his grandparents paid for his college education and masters), and loves to rail about lazy students that can't pay back their debt, and how there shouldn't be any public financing of education. He also loves to whine about how he can never find decent help or how a cashier ringing him up can't figure out how to do the change in their head. Go figure.

And the cost of a Bachelor's degree has skyrocketed in the last 15 years, while wages, especially at entry level, fresh out-of-college jobs haven't come close to matching this inflation.

The truth is that higher education, even at non-profit schools, is a giant business. And in a lot of ways it can be predatory towards students. I'd like to see an even more broad spectrum strike-- as in anyone holding a student loan just stops paying it now.

[Swordfish]

The idea that some of you are blaming the students for ending up in these situations is pretty fucked up, in my not so humble opinion. Most students enter into these 'contracts' when they are 18 years old. I'm sure you all know or have been an 18 yr old in the US. It is an incredibly idealistic, optimistic, and foolish age. You have an entire culture in love with the idea of rising higher, in wealth and social standing, than your parents through higher education. High schools push this through Guidance departments. Shit, my guidance counselor told me to go to the highest rated school I could get into and to just worry about the money later.

I agree that too many people are pushed into thinking a bachelors is necessary, and think that community colleges need to be able to handle a greater student load. It seems crazy to me that this isn't viewed universally as a great investment with tax dollars. Creating a more talented, capable and educated work force shouldn't be something where the student is the one stuck with a millstone of a bill for life. One of my uncles is a real bootstrapping Libertarian type (his grandparents paid for his college education and masters), and loves to rail about lazy students that can't pay back their debt, and how there shouldn't be any public financing of education. He also loves to whine about how he can never find decent help or how a cashier ringing him up can't figure out how to do the change in their head. Go figure.

And the cost of a Bachelor's degree has skyrocketed in the last 15 years, while wages, especially at entry level, fresh out-of-college jobs haven't come close to matching this inflation.

The truth is that higher education, even at non-profit schools, is a giant business. And in a lot of ways it can be predatory towards students. I'd like to see an even more broad spectrum strike-- as in anyone holding a student loan just stops paying it now.

On what grounds?

And again, that's not a strike, that's default. Anyone can stop paying these loans anytime they choose. but there are repercussions.

How would you like to see this system work?

[ThinkerX]

I am in direct proximity to a microcosm of this situation.

A couple years ago, my lovely young daughter, tired of being mired in retail jobs, started taking classes at the community college. I warned her repeatedly about student loans, using several relatives and associates who are still hounded by student loan people 20 and 30 years after finishing college.

First year, she took out the smallest size loan she could get away with, kept her job, and moved back in with me to save cash. Then she flunked a couple classes. This put her in a bind - she could bow out, and start repaying that loan immediately - doable but crippling for years to come; or she could continue taking classes and not repay the loans until she graduated. She took the second option. I told her she was tap dancing at the edge of a deep chasm. I told her she'd be better off looking into some form of vocational education, get training directly related to what actual employers are looking for. These do exist: there are short term classes around here that turn people like her into medical assistants or open the door for bottom level law enforcement stuff.

Second year - this year (2014-15) she opted for a heavier class load at the community college - and a heavier loan to go with it. I told her she wasn't tap dancing at the top of the cliff; she'd done jumped off and the landing was going to hurt like hell. Even with a good job, that loan is going to take a long while to pay off, and leave her with dang near nothing extra in the meantime. (she told me she'd morph into a bouncy-ball)

Bonus: her math teacher this time around started the semester off with a diatribe against decimals. Another teacher is in the habit of issuing last minute homework assignments via the internet without advance warning.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A diatribe against decimals??? What the hell?

[CelticBrennus]

Doing a lot of "history" with that history degree?

I also have a history degree, and a number of my friends from college also have degrees in history, literature or philosophy. Amazingly, all of us are doing fairly well in life. What too many people fail to understand is that a degree in liberal arts is far more then learning about a period of history, or 17th century English literature or Kant, it is teaching people how to read, write, and comprehend. It teaches people how to think, to analyze and synthesize arguments and positions from multiple sources. If any business cannot find a use for a person who can do these things, its a business that deserves to fail.

For the record, one of my history friend and myself went into law, and the other into a printing business, the English lit person is now a managing editor for a large trade publication and the philosophy guy still smokes a truly amazing amount of pot and teaches English in Vietnam.

[North Walls]

It depends on whether or not the colleges lied or embellished their credentials. If the students made bad decisions they should pay for it. But there is an inequality in negotiating power between individuals and corporations and that needs to be taken into account, and students should be given the benefit of the doubt in case of clear misleading intent from the colleges.

[smegma]

This is very close to home, as I just finished my bachelors degree and pretty soon the payments are going to be due. As an adult student and with a college-aged daughter, we've both been the target of these for-profit universities. It's UGLY business.

A few things:

- I used to be in employment recruiting, and most companies would not even consider a bachelor's degree from a for-profit college as legitimate - that's not even those with bad reputations, but the more popular ones like U of Phoenix, Kaplan, Capella, and Argosy, etc. They flat out do not believe that they got the education they should have AND that there are red flags raised from a candidate with these degrees - that they weren't good students, or never had to learn the skills to successfully navigate university - whether that part is true or not, that's the perception. This is especially stark when you have so many candidates with degrees from non-profit universities right alongside them, and with very few exceptions (DeVry for certain technical fields, for example) they are not even in consideration any more than they would be without a degree.

- If you've ever experienced a timeshare sales pitch, that's what it's like to visit a recruiter at a for-profit school. I took my daughter to one at a for-profit art school, and they not only paint a picture of enormous lucrative benefit after graduation, they actually break things down into monthly payments and keep throwing out there how things can be deferred and they also have private loan officers THERE to convince you to take out additional money over and above FAFSA, etc. Not only that - but they have actual "closing" procedures that they do, just like a used-car salesman or timeshare - and it's all high-pressure tactics. I told them I needed to think it over and they basically said if I walked out the door that my daughter would lose her shot at going to their school because I had to sign on the dotted line right then and there (needless to say, I didn't).

- A LARGE portion of for-profit students are working, or military veterans, or single parents, or all of the above - those are their "sweet spot" candidates. Sure there's also kids with bad grades, but more often than not they are trying to manage life - work, family, etc., while getting caught up on their education. So they get aggressively courted by these for-profit schools that promise easy, manageable workloads that cater to their schedules. However, what most people don't realize is that MOST non-profit universities also have flexible scheduling, night and weekend classes, online, or classes that meet half online, half in-person. Examples - Harvard, Yale, Northwestern (where I just graduated from) many state schools - here in Chicago nearly every university has some type of program like this! You can get a degree from Harvard almost entirely online! I worked full-time, raised my daughter, and went full-time to one of the top universities in the country all at the same time (I did not take any online classes, but there were some available). But I was lucky to venture into this - the awareness of these options is so low that they think the for-profit schools are their only choice. Until non-profit schools become better at recruiting students like me, for-profit schools will continue to rise and their return-on-investment will continue to plummet.

[ThinkerX]

A diatribe against decimals??? What the hell?

That was my reaction as well.

Apparently, the teachers...very intense dislike...for decimals is because they are less precise than fractions, and because they lead to numeric impossibilities: aka 1/3 = 0.3333R

This particular community college is a very good place to go to learn about oil field instrumentation and technology. People come here from across the country for those programs. Also has a good EMT program. Those teachers tend to know their stuff, and keep tabs on the students long after they get their (2 year) degree. Other things...arts, writing, history, and so on, its mostly one teacher fiefdoms and drat...forget the term, but they have heavy class loads and slave wages.

[Pecan]

No, the problem is that lenders are allowed to make these loans without any risk. Banks don't loan money to people so they can start a business that is doomed to fail, because they know the person will end up in bankruptcy and they won't get their money back. (Let's ignore government bailouts for now.)

In this case, the lenders are allowed to make loans for something they know is almost assuredly doomed to fail, but they dont' have the risk attached to it because the loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They're getting governmetn protection to prey on the desperate and ignorant.

Yep. This right here.

[Solmyr]

@Arakan, I agree with you on a philosophical level, but not on a social one. Our current society cannot support a majority of the population being highly educated. This is slowly improving over time, but we're far from making baristas and burger flippers obsolete. There are so many jobs that not only do not require a higher education, they actually suffer from having a highly educated workforce, for such workforce is bound to feel unfulfilled in such a job, resulting in low motivation, high turnover and etc.

It's not just a job market issue. Intelligent populations are more difficult to govern, more unruly, tend to apply higher scrutiny to their elected governments, demand more reforms, etc. And this would create a problem for the current ruling class. The way they solve it is quite elegant - let the free market dictate the price of knowledge and education. It makes perfect sense, as long as you are able to indoctrinate the already-intelligent population that their knowledge is a product, to be sold, and not, instead, shared freely, for the common good. Such indoctrination isn't that difficult either in an economy of scarcity, where one is made to always strive to have more than one has.

On-topic: If Greece can go on a loan strike, so can American students. Too bad the the current legislations do not allow (afaik) for a canceling of student debt in the event of a default.

[Arakan]

@Arakan, I agree with you on a philosophical level, but not on a social one. Our current society cannot support a majority of the population being highly educated. This is slowly improving over time, but we're far from making baristas and burger flippers obsolete. There are so many jobs that not only do not require a higher education, they actually suffer from having a highly educated workforce, for such workforce is bound to feel unfulfilled in such a job, resulting in low motivation, high turnover and etc.

It's not just a job market issue. Intelligent populations are more difficult to govern, more unruly, tend to apply higher scrutiny to their elected governments, demand more reforms, etc. And this would create a problem for the current ruling class. The way they solve it is quite elegant - let the free market dictate the price of knowledge and education. It makes perfect sense, as long as you are able to indoctrinate the already-intelligent population that their knowledge is a product, to be sold, and not, instead, shared freely, for the common good. Such indoctrination isn't that difficult either in an economy of scarcity, where one is made to always strive to have more than one has.

On-topic: If Greece can go on a loan strike, so can American students. Too bad the the current legislations do not allow (afaik) for a canceling of student debt in the event of a default.

I see where you are coming from and would like to add a few things. First, it is true that it makes no sense that everyone studies and for many jobs this isnt the right way. But education is more than just going to university. Especially our model in Germany IMO is quite an international benchmark when it comes to non-graduated job qualification, without compromising on high standards.

Furthermore, and this is the most important point, the current US model of education has the very high risk that in the long-term the US as economy will lose its international competitiveness.

All economies in the world, the major ones as well as the small ones, are in a constant international competition, largely increased by the on-going trends of increasing globalization. In principle, this is not a bad thing at all, in contrary, this competition is what in the long-term will increase global wealth and will drive further innovations. Of course all of this under the premise, that international competition is fair (which in many cases it still isnt but I am optimistic: we are improving on that front).

Having said that, the US (as no other country in the world) massively benefited from the influx of highly qualified and very well educated (but rather "cheap") human ressources after the collapse of the former Eastern bloc and the explosion of globalization in the 1990s.

There are clear indicators that those times are over. Of course the US will still attract foreign human capital but they are now in heavy competition for the brightest heads.

From a macro-economic longterm point of view, the US must utilize their domestic potential much more. And to do so, education or not shouldnt be a question of the size of your wallet.

[Glaurung]

I hate to tell you, but there are quite a few legally non-profit institutions where similar things are going on. Some of their former students may be trying this soon.

I believe most schools have to accurately report placement rates, but I do believe the information they provide is often not sufficient enough to tell the whole story. They are all good at misleading to a degree depending on what they report and how they report it, to make it look as good as possible.

striking against third party creditors doesn't make the greatest sense.

I think a lot of loans can be borderline predatory. Most students coming out of high school don't have a true understanding of how these loans work and have no comprehension of how compounding interest can kick them in the ass if they hold off payments until they're done with school. They don't know what they're getting into. It's like handing car keys over to a kid who's never even sat in a car before.

I pay $900/month on my loans and I'm an accountant, so I had some idea of what I was getting myself into and I was surprised at how much I owed when I finished up school. Like many others, I'm chained to this for a long time...now the wife and I have a baby on the way that we did not plan and we don't really know what we're going to do... Welfare programs don't really consider student debt in the equation when determining if you're eligible for financial assistance. I know way too many people my age who are in the same situation. They mostly make decent to good salaries even, but aren't buying anything...i.e. stimulating the economy, and they aren't having kids because although they may want them, they can't afford them(especially with skyrocketing daycare costs).

Guess a lot depends on how that bad decision was made. Being defrauded isn't a bad decision on the victim of the fraud, an also for $100,000 I'd be expecting some quality. That's a non trivial amount of cash.

$100,000 is a lot of cash. Most students don't reach this even at public universities. This person almost surely had to have switched majors and extended their stay, while not working for a few years.

Have you no honor?

If you put your mark on the paper it's your responsibility to follow through with your end of the bargain. It's not like the bank sought these students out and forced them to sign up for the loans. These students(or anyone for that matter) should take responsibility for their actions. Can I go on strike with my bank over my mortgage payments?

Either figure out a way to make your payments or take the black, Night's Watch cab always use bodies

The banks didn't force them to sign, but they did seek the students out....at least private loans did. The admissions departments really advertise private and federal loans too though. As I mentioned earlier, most don't realize what they are getting into. Personally, I don't understand why they can't at the very least lower the interest on federal loans.

Private loaners also need to improve their process rather than just handing out money like crazy. I got a loan from Sallie Mae when I decided to go back to school...I had been working full time and thus didn't qualify for financial aid, but wanted to go back to school, so a private loan was the best option. All it took was a short phone call and I had a check on the way without a cosigner. That small loan had doubled in size by the time I graduated.

I do agree though, you make the decision and sign your name, you pay...or at least pay what you can. I'm struggling, but I make my payments and will continue to do so. But something's got to change.

BTW, I'd love it if I could put in some public service/time and have my loans forgiven or lowered.

[Solmyr]

@Arakan - your analysis does not contradict the conclusions of mine - you are saying that the US would need to produce more educated people domestically, I say that the current system treats education as a precious commodity that only the rich can afford. As long as enough rich people send their kids to universities and enough of those rich kids are not particularly dumb, the US will be able to produce enough* educated people domestically.

* By that I mean enough to keep its competitive edge. Note that this edge, although largely a product of the influx of educated immigrants, once seized, can be maintained through other means - economic, financial and geopolitical power are just some of those.

You bring up Germany's education system (with which I have some familiarity, my brother having studied in Germany for 8 years) - I don't think Germany is an example of a good higher education system. Yes, universities are open to everybody, but sometimes to the point of wastefulness. Correct me if I'm wrong (might not be the case anymore), but don't German uni students receive a scholarship merely for enrolling? This was one of the phenomenons that had my brother flabbergasted - there were all these kids, who enrolled just to collect money. They never studied, rarely came to lectures and when they did it was to ask stupid questions and waste the diligent students' time. Meanwhile our parents, whose combined yearly income was <€10k, were cutting all corners imaginable to pay for his education abroad. Our fellow American boarders might be rubbing their eyes right now - going to uni to receive money?! If only those poor American students on a strike knew, they'd be lining up in front of the German embassy this very day for visas.

The case I am arguing is that although education should be subsidized, the higher you go in education, the less should society help you - the proportion of the subsidy should be somewhere along the lines of the proportion of people, of that education degree, that society requires.

[Whitestripe]

BTW, I'd love it if I could put in some public service/time and have my loans forgiven or lowered.

There is a program for people who work full-time in public service. I had a portion of my grad school loans forgiven (not this program, it was in 1997) because I went to work for a not-for-profit with my brand-spankin' new master's degree.

[Glaurung]

I have better health insurance and other benefits with my current employer and I would almost surely take a salary hit.

Also....as an accountant that has taken on plenty of non-profit and government clients, I can assure you I would not want to get involved with working for one. Most are incredibly disorganized, have poor controls(too few or too many), and are staffed by people that don't know what they're doing. You may be able to move up to a position with more responsibilities quicker than you can in a for-profit company, but your career path is limited and the mess that you're likely going to have to clean up isn't worth the small bump in pay.