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Student Loan Interest Rankles College Grads
theodp writes "Like many recent college grads, Steven Lee finds himself unemployed in one of the roughest job markets in decades and saddled with a big pile of debt — he owes about $84,000 in student loans for undergrad and grad school. But what's really got Lee angry are the high interest rates on his government-backed student loans. 'The rate for a 30-year mortgage is around 5%,' Lee said. 'Why should anyone have to pay 8.5%? The government has bailed out homeowners. It's bailed out big businesses. Why can't it also help students?' Not only that, federal student loans are the only loans in the nation that are largely non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, have no statutes of limitations, and can't be refinanced after consolidation, so Lee can forget about pulling a move out of the GM playbook. And unlike mortgages on million-dollar vacation homes, student loans have very limited tax deductability. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education blamed Congress for the rates which she conceded 'may seem high today,' but suggested that students are a credit-unworthy lot who should thank their lucky stars that rates aren't 12% or higher. Makes one long for the good-old-days of 3% student loans, doesn't it?"
Repeat to yourself until you understand: a university is not a job training center. Those are called "vocational colleges" and produce many of society's useful morons: plumbers, electricians, and other Bush-voter jobs that are held in universal scorn. I mean, how many societies have plumbers as heroes? Sane, sustainable societies treat education as an end in itself, an expansion of the mind that is a bargain at any price. If you're not educated, then you might just find yourself in that voter's booth pulling the wrong lever...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Ideally, yes. In practice no. Ideally we would all learn how to think for ourselves, how to form opinions, how to learn and how to adapt. In practice you sit through lectures about topics that most of the time won't benefit you, cram before a test, regurgitate the information on a test and repeat. Not only that but everyone is out to screw you for your last dollar. You pay for overpriced texbooks with new editions that are just old editions rebranded with pages switched around so you can't use the old textbook, you pay overpriced tuition, you live in tiny dorms that are smaller than some bedrooms with some strange roommate who either enjoys doing drugs, listening to the type of music you don't like at full blast, coming in late at 3 AM and waking you up, or something equally as annoying. Yeah, education should be more than how you will function in society but if you've stepped onto a typical campus in 2009, you will find that isn't the case.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"Neocon libertarianism"
At least the libertarian support your right to smoke what you've been smoking. It seems to be good shit based on the crazy shit you're coming up with.
P.S. I do not want to pay for your children college, FUCK OFF THIEF.
\u262D = \u5350
The rest of the world is tired or hearing about your health-care issues. Please don't start with education fees!
Hint: most modern civilizations have free health-care + free education.
Another hint: the Red Dragon is awakening while you eat Doritos.
I disagree. Housing should be free. Food and water should be free. Health care should be free. Education on how to get these things should be free. Stuff required to sustain human life should be free.
However, education in general should be reasonably-priced. That much, I can give you. It costs far too much, but it's certainly worth paying for.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
I'm sorry that you ended up on disability and (assuming the disability was legit and was not expected at the time of granting the loan) believe that becoming (at least permanently) disabled should give some relief on Fed insured student loans.
However, I don't think we should be insuring loans for degrees or people who have little chance of getting jobs in the areas of their degrees. One way to deal with this (as has been done at the vocational school level in some states at least) is to make the EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION somewhat responsible for students who fail to make $ after graduation. This will give the schools some motivation to (1) Screen Students Better (2) Teach Practical Skills (3) Improve the Quality of Education.
There are few jobs for experts in Old English, or Ancient Religions, or even Philosophy, outside academia (and, most of those jobs within Academia exist just because someone needs to teach the next generation of idealistic and well educated Walmart Greeters). We have a word for these things: "Hobby" (not "Practical Profession or Trade") and as a taxpayer, I have little desire to fund Hobbies.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Irrelevant. Republicans are racists, and so is anyone who defends a racist system. This comment is context free. It's appropriate to point out racism anywhere.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Irrelevant. Pointing out that Republicans are racists doesn't require any rational link to context. It is a statement that stands alone, and is always appropriate. You're obfuscating the issue. Stop supporting racism.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Recision and pre-existing conditions are only an issue in the private health insurance market. If you get your insurance through your employer, which (by far) most Americans do, neither issue is relevant.
If you are retired, disabled, or unemployed, you are almost certainly covered my Medicare, which is also a highly respectable medical-care program.
It's only those who are in-between who have problems... Those who only work part-time, are self employed, and make money but barely eek out a living, who fall through the cracks of the US system, because they just weren't so prevalent decades ago when the system was put together. It's something that needs to be address, and will be, fairly soon.
Your POV on the subject vastly exaggerates the problems in the US, and completely ignores the numerous problem with the NIH in the UK.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No. It's socialist and therefore by definition not as good as the US system. Number one! Number one[1]!
[1] They can't count any higher.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, I will be hard pressed to show it, to you. But that is because you dont want to see it. Needless to say it exists and many nations have benefited from it.
America has benefited from it too. I am not interested in benefit to America, I am interested in benefit to my own wallet. I am not going to force people to do one work or another in order to benefit society or my own wallet. The can do so if they choose to.
You blame the person for their situation. If you're poor its you're fault right, not because you were born that way or that you were denied the same advantages as me.
That's why we have Pell grants. So poor people can go to college.
And can afford one, you circle the point yet again. Not every USian can afford a decent education, but again this must be all their fault.
You keep on saying this, but I'm not sure why. In fact every American can afford a decent education.
If you're poor its you're fault right, not because you were born that way or that you were denied the same advantages as me.
In America, or any free country really, where there are ample opportunities for any man to lift himself out of poverty, it is more a matter of people not knowing how to remove themselves from poverty than it is of any systemic problems keeping them down. If someone is kind enough to help them see the way out of poverty, then they should be thankful.
Although you keep talking in a selfish way, taking the selfish point of view, and keep trying to relate it to a self-interested reason for doing things, I don't think you are really selfish either. I think you care about these poor people because it makes you feel sad to see them remain in poverty, and want to help them. And I admire you for that. Good job.
Qxe4
FWIW, my uncle was recently diagnosed with a heart problem back in the UK, he was in hospital the same day, operated on within 2 days and back home 2 days later. The only real down-side was that he couldn't attend the wedding because of the US insurance costs.
And two weeks before the wedding, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She opted to put off the operation-date offered (1 week after diagnosis) and wait until after the wedding. Since then she's been back and had her operation.
Cancer survival rates are 50% higher in the US than in the UK. Go look it up, the data is on NHS's website. NHS is not the rosy picture you think it is.
Only 15% of America is uninsured. We do not have a healthcare problem.
You want to institute something that will remove the profit motive in the medical industry.
Health is the next growth opportunity for the US, but not if there's no profit to be had. We've sequenced the human genome and you want to cut off any reason for a company to try to use that to find a cure for something. Then you'll probably want more government funding to universities.
It's not about "handouts", fuckwit, it's about getting a fair deal. If you and John McCain go broke and are forced to declare bankruptcy tomorrow, he's free to seek new mortgage terms for his 11 secondary homes while you are Shit Out of Luck on your student loans. THAT'S what it's about.
Maybe you'd have an easier time seeing that if you weren't so enthusiastically grabbing your ankles for the rich and powerful while putting on airs of elitism.