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The Fed's Startling Student Debt Numbers That Every Young Person Should See
Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
What I’m about to tell you is not my own opinion or even analysis. It’s original data that comes from the United States Federal Reserve and national credit bureaus.
- 40 million Americans are now in debt because of their university education, and on average borrowers have four loans with a total balance of $29,000.
- According to the Fed, “Student loans have the highest delinquency rate of any form of household credit, having surpassed credit cards in 2012.”
- Since 2010, student debt has been the second largest category of personal debt, just after a home mortgage.
- The delinquency rate for student loans is now hovering near an all-time high since they started collecting data 12 years ago.
- Only 37% of total students loan balances are currently in repayment and not delinquent.
The rest—nearly 2 out of 3—are either behind on payments, in all-out default, or have entered some sort of deferral program to delay making payments, with a small percentage still in school.
It’s pretty obvious that this is a giant, unsustainable bubble (more on this below). But even more important are the personal implications.
University graduates now matriculate with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt.
Debt is another form of servitude. Like medieval serfs, debt keeps people tied to jobs they dislike in places they don’t want to be working for bosses they hate doing things that make them feel unfulfilled.
Debt makes it very difficult to walk away and start fresh.
In fact, ‘starting fresh’ is almost legally impossible when it comes to student debt. Even in US bankruptcy court, student debt cannot be discharged in almost all cases.
It is an albatross that hangs over you for a decade or more if you do make the payments, and it follows you around for the rest of your life if you do not.
(I’m not suggesting anyone default on what they owed—simply pointing out that nearly every other form of debt can be discharged EXCEPT for student debt.)
This kind of debt has a huge impact on people’s lives.
Again, according to the Federal Reserve, “[G]rowing student debt has contributed to the recent decline in the homeownership rate and to the sharp increase in parental co-residence among millennials.”
So the Fed’s own analysis shows that student debt is a cause for people in their 20s and 30s to live at home with their parents. Amazing.
This certainly hollows out the argument that a university degree is a one-way ticket to a higher salary, brighter future, and better standard of living.
Look, I’m not going to try to tell you that a university education is worthless or a cruel joke.
There are clearly both tangible and intangible benefits to completing a four-year degree, especially for vocations in science, medicine, etc.
But let’s be honest—many kids end up at university by default. They don’t know what they want to study. They don’t know ‘what they want to do’.
They’re just sort of expected to enroll, attend, major in something, and graduate.
Much of this is done merely to please other people or satisfy a social expectation without any real sense of whether the path they’ve chosen at that time is the right one.
Modern university education, in fact, is based on the premise that an 18-year old kid can make up his/her mind about what s/he wants to do in life.
But how can they really know what they want to do in life without first having some exposure to life itself? How can anyone know?
Most students grow up living at home with their parents. They graduate from high school. And they go off to college pressed to make some grand life decision without ever having dipped a toe in the world to get a sense of the infinite options.
From this perspective, spending four to five years discussing theory at such a formative age can be terribly counterproductive.
Subsequently graduating with an enslaving level of student debt can make the experience borderline destructive.
Again, it’s not to say that university has no benefit.
The question is whether it’s worth the cost at that particular time, i.e. whether entire generations should be forced into a cookie-cutter path where everyone spends ages 18-22 in university, graduates with a boatload of debt, starts a career in whichever industry is willing to hire them, and ultimately begins paying taxes.
This route takes away all the choice… the ability to live life deliberately.
It’s how people ‘end up’ doing what they do by default, instead of finding their professional passion and life’s calling.
Most people give up the choice. And it all starts with debt.
It didn’t used to be this way.
Long ago, people actually went to university to learn. That was the goal.
Today we’re told that it’s a necessary stepping stone for social and financial success.
Curious how the data demonstrates the exact opposite.
Like many of our prevailing social constructs, this education system is on the way out.
Just like our unsustainable monetary system in which we award totalitarian control of our money supply to unelected bureaucrats who conjure trillions out of thin air in their sole discretion…
… just like our unsustainable banking system in which commercial banks hold just a tiny fraction of their customer deposits and then gamble away the rest of it…
… and just like our political system in which a government that’s $60 trillion in debt continues to waste money with wanton abandon…
… this education system is unsustainable.
It’s just as unsustainable to expect a 22-year old to enter the world with uncertain prospects and tens of thousand of dollars of debt.
And, like our monetary, banking and political systems, it’s time for a reset.
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" Behind on payments" .......LGBT majors are particularly affected
"What I’m about to tell you is not my own opinion or even analysis."
"Debt is another form of servitude. Like medieval serfs, debt keeps people tied to jobs they dislike in places they don’t want to be working for bosses they hate doing things that make them feel unfulfilled."
Karl Marx called. He wants his book back.
Tic toc bitches
https://orderstatistic.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/why-are-physicists-drawn...
Even before the financial crisis, there has always been a surprising number of ex-physicists who find their way to graduate study in economics. It could be that many of these math-physics people have simply concluded that they no longer like physics and are interested in economics instead. (Moreover, the job market for economics Ph.D’s is much better than the job market for physics Ph.D’s.) I suspect however that some of them are here because they have some incorrect perceptions about the field. A student with a mathematical-physics background could easily convince himself that he has superior mathematics abilities than typical economists and superior statistical and computational skills than most economists.[1] He might go on to conclude that, as a consequence of his superior mathematical and computational abilities, he should be able to enter economics and start contributing quickly and easily. He might also anticipate that he could easily adapt established models or techniques in physics to study economic phenomena and impress the profession.
If you are one of these people, let me try to disabuse you of these notions. Your mathematical abilities are actually not that much better than most economists (if they are better at all). You will have to spend a lot of time acclimating to the subject and the path to actually making contributions will be long and difficult. In all likelihood, there are very few (perhaps zero) off-the-shelf models or techniques in physics (or engineering, or chemistry, …) that will produce meaningful economic results. ===========
I found this enlightening seeing how many physicists work for TBTF.
Newsflash 1: The guys who came up with HFTs (the math, the HW and the SW) were Physics PhD's, not Economics PhDs.
Ditto for the Derivatives games of the 2000-2008 era.
Ditto for the guys at DOD's center for Currency Wars (if you read Jim Rickards and his Currency Wars).
Newsflash 2: ALL breakthroughs and Enabling Technologies in Engineering are based on Physics and Chemistry. Where a Nobel Prize still means something. /Unless you reverse-engineer Space Alien tech, which still requires physicists, not economists./ sarc
In the meantime they did find the god particle... It's a printing press. HFT is a black hole.
There are so many big problems today!
Most stem from the corrupt people in power! Banster's, and Politicians that can be easily bought.
Education or lack thereof, there is a cazillion dollars in student loads but no real education to be had.
Real leaders need to be selected.
Leaders that are put forward by real people power from real thought.
There is plenty of knowledge, it is just covered up by the corrupt.
First the ones that know what is going on need to somehow reach the zombies and wake up the whole system.
Get rid of the Wars, the MIC, the overpaid college's, Banksters, Politicians, the super pacs.
None of this will get any better, until the people realize that they themselves have to be a part of the change.
Quit looking for someone else to fix the problem for you! Get off your ass and get other people up as well.
Gov is not the answer to fix anything, it always get's Fuc*ed up and overpriced!
Showe them you do not need them!
With your taxes, Who are you working for you or them, how many hrs of the day do you work for them with absolutely nothing to come from it?
EDUCATE YOURSELF AND THE PEOLE AROUND YOU!
Whew, I feel better now!
Get rid of government.
****off topic and out of country - but oddly related***
Here in Quebec, (no) Future Shop (electronics retail stores) closed Friday, unanounced and unbeknownst to employees and shoppers alike...
Needless to say, majority of sales clerks were students !
1500 jobs/65 stores...GONE, POOF !
Hope and Change...Northern Style.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/future-shop-stores-closed-across-canada-...
Hope and Change!
The zombies just have faith that the person they elected, mosty because they did not like the other Guy,
will take the country and make it grow, without ever looking back to see if they ever do anything they said they would.
Sooner or later these zombies will awaken, but will it be too late?
The closing of the business must have been a huge shocker. Funny how employees can go to "work" day in and day out seeing before their very eyes that NOBODY is buying any of the store's crap.
<< Hope and Change...Northern Style.>>
The big news is the 30 (40th?) anniversary of going metric. Yeah!!!
"Like medieval serfs, debt keeps people tied to jobs they dislike in places they don’t want to be working for bosses they hate doing things that make them feel unfulfilled."
I read the article and thought to myself, that's the real world working for bosses they hate, doing things that make them feel unfulfilled. Simon Black must be one of the Tyler's or else why would the Tyler's keep putting his crap up. Yes Simon in some utopian society we can all work for ourselves, doing things that make us feel good and fulfilled.
Hopefully you're wrong about Yuan becoming the next reserve currency because I have a feeling the Chinese could give two shits about you feeling good about your vocation.
Tyler's, this guy really sucks.
What? Why? He didnt say all jobs or bosses sucked. He meant that if you have a big debt load you dont have much choice but to keep working that shitty job
whats wrong with working a job that you love and are passionate about?
Not a thing, but unless you are self-employed, that job can vanish overnight. How many times have you been laid off? I've been laid off 3x since in turned 50 (late 2008 and we all know what started then)... Thankfully I found a full time job 8 months ago. Before that I was contracting as a STEM worker, generally being the token white amongst a group of H1B visa holders from India. But I could ask for $50+/hr and get it. The H1B visa holders actually thought $25/hr was good money for the work they did.
One of the great unknowns with this issue is how many parents co-signed on these loans that are going into default. The Government, (read bankers), will get its "pound of flesh" one way or the other. The assett stripping of the middle class continues.
I have little sympathy for young people that take out huge amounts of debt for degrees that do not naturally lead to employment that will enable paying back the debt (ie a business case). My wife and I graduated in the early 80's each with 15000 in debt at 10% interest and jobs paying 30000 to start. We both paid our debt off in 9 years. Our company now starts engineers at 65000/yr and the interest rate on debt is much lower. As such, borrowing 40000 today makes sense for an engineering student. I have a nephew that took 5 years and 80,000 to get an anthropology degree and he is willing to work a 10$/hr job for 20 years tohave his debt forgiven by Obozos policies. He deserves a fked up life.
Preach on self rightous brother!!!
I get such a kick out of the "when I was in school...I did everything proper...and I don't care about context because I'm feeling superior right now!"crowd that litters these stories. Lots of patting yourself on the back ensues.
lmao no kidding, these fucking guys. Guess what, the early 80s is not NOW! My dad graduated in the early 80s and is successful as well. I guess that makes me an asshole right?
Well now that depends. How much did you spend, how much do you owe, what degree did you get from which school and what kind of connections did you make while you were there?
I think it's called ROI or some shit. It's super-duper complicated and I can understand how none of today's students could possibly see any of this coming. After all, folks who graduated from high school 4 - 6 years ago had the whole world in front of them, everything was awesome, and job prospects grew on trees.
Yeah, let's just forgive all of that debt, that's the ticket.
LibertyGhost,
Regarding Self-Righteous
We are not the ones without a job and with a mountain of college debt. Anyone can work summers, skip spring break in Mexico, and avoid adding to college debt.
Catch a ride with those whose stupid parents bought them cars in high school instead of putting money their college fund. You save a hell of lot of money by refusing to allow a vehicle to own you. College kids today live a life of luxury that would not be recognizable to their parents and grand parents' generation.
And another thing, a major is usually not your "hobby" of playing video games. Plan a career based on your ability which actually has a chance of landing job.
Blah, blah, blah.
One in a million.........
The game is rigged to enslave everyone. The world has changed a helluva lot since the 80's. There are no jobs and most of these kids are killing time at $30k a year because their high school principal told them they should.
Your nephew is willing to work.....enough said. When are you people going to wake up and realize that the economic disaster we have created is about to come home to roost. We will see how your "job" holds out.
What ever happened to moving home and putting 80% of the pay check on the college debt? Mom will feed you and put gas in the car if you are actually working toward something other than having a good time.
Hell, she subsidized you for 4 years already, so what is one more?
Of course, if you took 6 years for a 4 year degree, you deserve to be kicked to the curb, and it is about time you learned debt is slavery. Run an amortization statement, and make multiple principal payments on every future purchase. Don't kids learn this in high school anymore ?
And another thing, who is herding kids toward worthless degrees in gender studies, race studies, or medieval lit appreciation where there is no chance of a job offer? Have academics become the scourge of modern life or is it the parents who are destroying the next generation with their low expectations ?
I did a brief stint at a local university where they still offer nuclear engineering degrees... Starting salary for a select few grad students/seniors was $100K+. The rest, however were hoping to get a government job with the NRC, or one of the national labs... key word - "hoping"... When they didn't offer me a raise after fixing everything, I started looking at contracting in earnest. First contract job...$50/hr with overtime.
I paid for my college the old fashioned way. Joined the military, they paid $2 for every $1 I put in up to a whopping total of $8100... Between working a full time day job, it was enough for me to get a degree at night (3 courses per semester).
Having insomnia helped a lot...No debt though.
How is that different from saying you stole the money to pay off your debt? just because you out-sourced the theft?
<<I paid for my college the old fashioned way. Joined the military,,,,>>
I do not mean to demolish you but I mean to make a point: the printing press entangles everybody in the economy.
The only statist job I ever had was shelving books at the public library. Now, I am self-employed but 50% of my clients are silly civil servants. I am only a few degrees of separation from the printing press too.
29000 is not too much for a decent paying job at say 45000 or so to start
Or you can go the Simon Black way to millions:
Use OPM or Taxpayers' money for your university education.
1. Have the brains, drive, perseverance and connection to Congressman to get into West Point
2. Get some battlefield DOD experience. Intelligence is safest, and best for career after DOD. Let someone else get the Hero medals/trinkets for a lifetime of MD visits.
3. Leverage you health, training, experience and connections, to join a thriving enterprise, or build your own.
4. If you can't DO, then... TEACH: Tell others how they too can Flip That House (if they buy your classes and CDs), subscribe to your Newsletters, etc. And even though your education and training was paid by the evil Government, you can still diss said evil Government for its socialist evils, and become a Born-Again Libertarian. Catching, catching.
How cool is that?
A lot of good comments on this thread.
We all know it's a ponzi and that the number of new suckers is not enough to maintain the current flow demands. Someone mentioned that they should default en mass, another added that obviously they are defaulting, and then someone pointed out that "we" will be on the hook for their default.
That is a standard M.O., for the corporate/government frankenstein financial system we are chained to. The answer is, we all default. No one pays. Let them collapse on themselves. Nothing changes until we put our fear aside and say, "No."
College kids are not afraid because they probably don't have anything to lose....yet. Time to stop paying The Man, and tell him to come and take it if he can.
And, like our monetary, banking and political systems, it’s time for a revolt.
Tyler, you're kidding. Right?
You didn't get your acceptance letter?
You're a boomer whose threatened by new money circa Gen X & Y?
I don't get it.
The boomers took out loans on deprciating properties wroth $700,000 to speculate-properties = illiquid.
And you're stupid enough to cite $20,000 for 4 years student loan as the ad hominem?
No wonder why the US can't thrive in a global market. Do more drugs you self loathing fool.
Another harm that comes from the massive student debt is that it goes to fund the liberal madness in academia, who then agitate for more funding and more socialism for the rest of us.
I have a little bit different view of this than many. I grew up in an academic family. My dad was a political science professor. I'm the only member of my family (and it's a large family) for 3 generations who doesn't have a 4-year degree. Heck, almost all the rest of them have at least one advanced degree.
I was raised to think of adademe as some sort of priesthood, almost, devoted to learning for the sake of it. I believed it, too. I showed aptitude and desire, and was placed several years ahead of my age group throughout school. When I got to high school, I had an experience where an English teacher typed me as a B- student. Everything I turned in, I got a B-. My buddy in the next seat always got a C+. We started writing each other's papers. He got C+'s on the papers I wrote, and I got B-'s on the papers he wrote.
Then I dropped out of high school and took a BASIC computer programming class at the local college over the summer. They let anybody in if you paid, and at that time the class was less than $100 (about 1982, probably). I got an A, and went back to Registration Day in the fall. I had a file, so they let me register. They didn't catch me until I had a full year of all A's, so they made a deal with me and let me stay enrolled. I was working away happily until the professor I was closest to dropped dead. Afterward, I learned the hard way that his colleagues hated him, and me for being his little pet. I started getting moved out the door, and took the hint and left. I had no idea how I'd pay my 3 years of college debt; it was almost $3,500 if you can believe it. An astronomical sum. I've been working ever since.
I never should have been in college that young. I should have finished high school, and taken a couple years off digging ditches or selling snowshoes to Eskimos, and then come back to college when I had at least gotten laid a couple times already. Then I would have had some idea of, if not what I wanted to do, what I didn't want to do.
The real problem is that my Dad and so many others came of age when there was a huge population bubble of college-age kids. The GI Bill did that, and then the Baby Boom. All these colleges were founded from about 1950-1968 or so. Then there was a Baby Bust, and there were way too many colleges for the number of interested and qualified students. Faced with closing a lot of colleges and throwing a lot of professors, administrators and support staff out of work, Academe cooked up a scheme with Big Business. Colleges would offer vocational training, which students would have to pay for, and Business would require a degree. Business wouldn't have to pay for on-the-job training anymore. It worked fantastically. It also opened the door to the corporate organizational model in colleges. Administrators multiplied, and their Assistants, and paid themselves more in line with Executiives than with merely middle-class Academics. No good hogtrough goes un-wallowed-in, and now we have the obvious endgame, where they've priced themselves out of business. Meanwhile, you see ads for receptionist jobs requiring a 4-year degree, that costs several year's worth of salary at that job. Assuming one has to pay for food, housing and transportation, it's completely unaffordable at the prevailing wage.
I can't say I got ripped off, or that college is a rip-off. College actually teaches one how to think. Not just to "figger," but to THINK, in the way Western Civilization has developed. Not everybody needs to know how to do it to function, but that is the point. I didn't learn any vocational skills at all, but I did learn how to do the only thing I have ever really done, which is to find, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute information. I did that as a fry cook, a carpenter, a beekeeper, and now in my current obscure niche as a corporate events consultant.
I want my kids to go to college, because I want them to be informed and able to think. They're well on their way. I don't want to bankrupt myself or them, but I don't want them to sell out cheap either; the cheaper college options are almost strictly vocational, or sub-par. It's a damn shame the colleges sold out what was valuable about them for short-term job preservation in the '70s and '80s, but that's what they did. And once Finance got its nose under the tent, the absolutely predictable happened, and here we are.
So I still think I want my kids to graduate high school, and think very seriously about joining a circus, or working on a fishing boat, or being a stagehand for a couple of years, unless they really know what they want to study. What they study and what they may end up doing for a living don't have to have anything to do with each other. If they learn how to THINK they can figure out how to do anything any job or career would require. I know, because I have done it.
But the financialized Education Industry, like every other aspect of our society that has become financialized, is a fucking shitshow. May it die of its own sclerosis, and soon.
40 million Americans are now in debt because of their university education, and on average borrowers have four loans with a total balance of $29,000.
Holy Jesus! And these are the youth whom business needs as consumers to boost sales of cars, houses, furniture, baby clothes and assorted family stuff. These people are supposed to be forming families and entering their peak consumption years, giving American businesses a prime market to sell to and make corporate profits.
Considering the kids debt levels added to the shit nature of most private sector jobs, their potential as markets for business are pretty shitty.
Of course, this never registered with either business or the government that business holds on puppet strings. If every body is working hard , in debt and making low wages, that is the corporate dream world. Lets see, where is the demand out there?
Well, they did think of this:
Insurers that offer dependent coverage must cover adult children until their 26th birthday, even if the young adult no longer lives with his or her parents, is not a dependent on a parent's tax return, is no longer a student or is married.
http://difp.mo.gov/news/2010/Parents_can_soon_keep_children_up_to_age_26...
So they forced people to buy a private product in a different way...how corporatist of them. Not a benefit to anyone but insurance, corporate sickcare and BIG GOV.
Wow! I thought that coverage for children meant ones still at home, or a dependent on their tax return. So really, the parents policy now covers all their kids till age 26! Wow!
You nailed it, Mr. Burton.
As a "consumer-based" economy, we are fucking-fucked. The baby-boomers can't unload their assets (houses) on grandchildren who (due to crappy jobs) can't even afford to live on their own.
Generations bled dry: assets bled to short-sales and depreciation, assets expended on "the most valuable investment you can make."
"Extra" cash made our economy tick-- doesn't work so well when most are in survival-mode.
You can see the debt burden (put in $7250 per year) with this handy Loan Repayment Tool:
https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/loans/parent-loan-rep...
It is all one big scam :) you name it, education, health care, housing, car loans, credit cards, insurance... good luck, folks... i am going home, 8 time zones away from here...
There are not enough people who want to WORK for their money. We buy 8 year olds cell phones . The ball bearings hanging out of pierced noses are a nice touch when you get your cold fries on a ten dollar combo junk food drive through.
I worked earning money summers from age 12. In the clock jobs during high school three or four nights a week. Home at 1130 pm and on the bus at 630 am. Fuck people , this isn't America any more. Grown ups on bicycles with their grade schoolers in full body armor on the sidewalks. God forbid someone falls and skins a knee. We climbed a water tower in entrance to middle school. Matter of honor in the neighborhood. Yea we knew if we fell we died. We all grow up differently. Or used to anyway.
Trophies for showing up. Hell, second place is first loser.
Know why we fell so far behind? We don't expect shit from any one any longer . Can't hurt anyone's feelings now . Wanna know why middle school kids send nude pictures around with each other. Cause some spineless parent bought a 13 year old a cell phone because "everyone else has one."
It goes on and on. I gotta stop. It's a blood pressure thing .
"University graduates now matriculate...."
umm, a graduate does not matriculate (enroll)
This article was beautifully-written, and truly one of the best that I've seen out of Simon Black.
If you want to see where government acts like the mafia just look at the student-loan racket. At least you can get out of a juice-loan with a broken leg or two, but with a student loan, you're over the barrel for life.
[G]rowing student debt has contributed to the recent decline in the homeownership rate and to the sharp increase in parental co-residence among millennials...
How about declining wages? How about skyrocketing tuition rates (esp. at public universities)? What a bunch of disingenuous assholes.
A lot of for-profit colleges are no better than the criminals that run those unaccredited tech schools with late-night TV commericals and vacuum up STUDENT LOAN CASH from unsuspecting students (until such time as they default excessively).
I read 140+ comments and nowhere (nor in the main article) does anybody discuss how wisely these student loan funds are spent. Here we are in spring break season and thousands of students are partying wildly on your tax dollars.
If somebody has to borrow money to attend college, they've got no business spending it in Fort Lauderdale1. The taxpayers of Florida may disagree with me, but you can get drunk and laid back home for a lot less than the cost of a spring break vacation.
1Excluding, of course, those students actually attending Fort Lauderdale colleges.
Every time I received a student loan, it went to the universities' bursar. I would have to go there, fill out a form, and sign for the loan.
No. I never got a huge bag of money.... ever.
They aren't loaning you a sum much in excess of your tution and housing... sure, housing may be a stupid thing to take out a loan for, but it's common.
You're certainly not getting enough extra money in that loan to pay for spring break, Fucktard.
The best financial decision lower and middle class American high school kids can make these days is to NOT go to college.
The cost and focus on the bricks and mortar to get an 'education' is a joke. I posted before - basically you pay $50,000 plus plus a year to go sit in a room to watch a lecture on a monitor- usually from an assistant How about using the Internet and forgetting the bricks. The students can access the info on their laptop in Mom and Dad's basement where they will end up living anyway
The campus is a place for kids to go hang out with other kids and party. Be cheaper to let them out of the basement on the w/e and pay the bar tab
Given that university students are disproportionally white (not counting international students), and considering that taxes do pay for all school to high school, I would say it is almost a racist policy to saddle students with debt
Borrowed from another ZH post:
Just wait till the middle of election season 2016. Obama & Co will be offering loan forgiveness not seen since the Jewish Jubilees. Student loan forgiveness, mortgage forgiveness, car loan forgiveness and even IRS forgiveness. Heck .gov may even pay full sticker price and just give you a car. Where will the money come from? "Obama' Stash" as the nice black lady said during O's first election
What a bunch of cry babies! You took out the loan so now you need to pay it back over your life time. If you don't, the release from debt will be added into your income according to the IRS. Many folks don't like the idea that you dump your unpaid loans onto their tax returns making more and more taxes for those who saved for their schooling.
If you wanted to go to school without the risk of such loans, why didn't you go to school in Europe where they don't charge any or much for tutition? It's a global world and you act like the USA is the only game in town. No wonder the USA is the last in almost every category.
I know many couples who bought apartments in Paris with the money they saved for tutition for their children, and then sent their children to school free in France.
The price for a hooker should be going down then.
depends on whether or not she has a 4 year degree. takes a lotta hookin to pay off that college debt
"Student debt" my ass.
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-takes-action-protect-americans-predatory-poor-performing-career-colleges
This is really a stupendous theft and fraud, many billions per year.
The real problem is much smaller, and is much more a function of the disasterous economy than of the colleges.
This is what an Oligarchy is all about; the financialization of everything.
Welcome to Neo-Feudalism and the implimentation of neo-serfdom.
Students they may be, but an education is not what they're receiving; not in America any longer.
Trapped and given no way out; this is what America's become, which has no resemblance to a republc.
My oldest will enter university this fall, and after every acceptance letter received we get a financial aid "Award Letter" in the mail. They spell out the loans available to make sure room and board and all tuition is fully paid. These loans are mostly "ParentPLUS" loans, they put the parent on the hook FYI. I wonder how many suckers take these loans --
https://studentaid.ed.gov/types/loans/plus
The majority do...in my experience. I've worked in 'higher ed' 11 years counciling people in the real costs but the combination of MSM and gov k-12 soft sell propaganda mqkes it all an emotional decision for most people. They are convincex "they are doing the right thing". The other thing most people would be shocked by?
All tge parents "borrowing" that same financial aid from their kixs to maintain tgeir lifestyles...across the board from poor to middle class. It's happened for decades too...pretty disgusting situation overall. The kdkids are just looking for someone to be honest with them usually. Few people they can trust though. They haven't been prepared to make these decisions at all and that's not their fault.
Third World Fourth Reich bananas republik of freeloaders imagined their kids would be better...while the Pentacon Kill Industries' culture of slaughter on the global junkie "reserve currency" rages with impunity across a planet that despises all things USSAN.
After entitlement, foodstamps, derivatives, toilet paper dollah and endle$$ hubris comes the fall.
This is why you don't major in Medieval Feminist Bisexual studies.
Just have a look at http://www.usdebtclock.org/ for 5 minutes, things like unfunded liabilities, not in work force, food stamp recipients, total receiving benefits or the fact that there are now almost 2 gubbermint empolyees ~24 million for every manufacturing job ~12 million, and put these numbers in perspective with the various tax "revenues" then it's all too clear that this system is merely hanging on a thread and living on borrowed time.
I usually check out that web page every month or so... I did note there is one number that is getting smaller. Credit card debt.
That debt is really awfull. you dont feel free and you are never truly happy. A way out of this mess would be a relief. Meet and greet car parking Gatwick
The part that pisses me off are all the bullshit statistics that convince people that several k in loans isn't bad because a job awaits them.
I'm also really tired of hearing about the 'trades'. Not everyone is physically capable of that kind of job. It is NOT the answer to this problem, perhaps a small part at best. I worked in 'trades' for over 20 years I wouldn't recomend the crap to anyone. Let's see........work outside in freezing and super hot weather, get yelled at all the time by some inept 300lb alcoholic fat ass, deal with a deranged cocaine snorting owner, accomplish physical feats that would take 2-3 normal people to do, drive all over the place, potentially face layoffs, etc etc etc.
Please stop preaching this trades bullshit as a magical solution.
sounds like you want a job but don't want to work.
I was at carwash sat watching end of msu/louisville when "kid" (early 20s) finishing my car came in to get me. we ended up chatting for a minute (wasn't about to leave that game w/under 2 min) when he mentioned that he went to michigan st but was working there on weekends to help pay off his student loans.
wow...
I would like to see an analysis of the universities debt. My former alum almost doubled the size of campus in 10 years. Huge buildings with all the goodies. They have to be as gullible as any entity taking on massive debt and expecting continual revenue growth as the norm.
I think the best solution would be to create a system of proficiency exams. Allow students to learn the material outside the institutions, pass the proficiency tests, get college credits and receive a degree. There are many of us who could teach the required subjects in a one person private business and lots to learn on the net. Of course we need science lab courses at an institution but lots of basic skills like English composition, history, foreign language, basic math, etc. do not require that. The partying and spring break vacations are not necessary either. They just add to the eventual debt. It's an excess of consumption that past generations never had. We can't afford that lifestyle for the young now and in the future it won't be possible at all.
The $29K average loan balance doesn't sound that bad.
If you can't pay this much back it is not a debt problem it is a job problem.
$200 a month @ 3% for 15 years -
You need to earn an extra $1.15 an hour to cover it with a 40 hour a week job.
$1.15 an hour -- if your degree (ASSUMING YOU GOT ONE) didn't get you that much more over not going to school you really fucked up.
there are many millions of Americans getting an education lately.
if your a parent who co-signed a student loan, knowing you'll be paying the guaranteed salaries, and benefits of the 1%er communist professors that taught your child that america is among the worst countries in the world, through the garnishment of you're wages, and a lien on your house.
if your a student, at the local bar, drinking alcohol, and smoking weed, discussing what the professor taught you that day about how horrible america, and your parents are, then proceed to order another round on your newly acquired credit card, running up YOUR children's, and grandchildren's future personal, and tax indebtedness.
so here's your education, are you in the 50% of Americans who will gladly let someone else pay their bills, or will you learn, that the 1%ers, and the less than moral politicians have practiced, and taught anti-American ways for decades.
The $29k figure is bullshit, it's just looking at averages... which includes many who have been paying off for some time as well as those who never had much to begin with (cus it was from 20 years ago).
What you need to look at is the average for the past 4 years of college exits, both graduates and drop-outs. You'll see that number double if not triple.
I proclaim....the local school systems are often a major contributor to this garbage. We have a VOTE today on raising Prop Taxes by 67% for local schools. 1st off--NO. But these schools propogate the "go to college to make something of yourself" crap. They have these "IB" international baccalaurate programs--UN good, diversity over purpose, and other crap! No more money azz clownz.
Oh, I went thru this same system; met a lot of good people in the service and found out I got a crappy edu-mi-ka-shin.
I corrected that on my own. What they didn't want me to know was that they were all wrong!