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Universities Hold Transcripts Hostage Over Loans
Hugh Pickens writes "Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times that growing numbers of students are discovering their old school is actively blocking them from getting a job or going on to a higher degree by refusing to issue an official transcript. The schools won't send the transcripts to potential employers or graduate admissions office if students are in default on student loans, or in many cases, even if they just fall one or two months behind. It's no accident that they're doing this. It turns out the federal government 'encourages' them to use this draconian tactic, saying that the policy 'has resulted in numerous loan repayments.' It is a strange position for colleges to take, writes Lindorff, since the schools themselves are not owed any money — student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government, and in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way. They are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection. 'It's worse than indentured servitude,' says NYU Professor Andrew Ross, who helped organize the Occupy Student Debt movement last fall. 'With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture.'"
And the bubble continues to press against the thumbtack.
I have a feeling this collapse is going to be bigger than anything we've seen yet. Dot Coms or Real Estate be damned.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you allow the government to get in the middle. I am just glad that I didnt make the mistake of getting into the mess of student loans. There really is no excuse for what is going on here
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Perhaps people will actually start paying what they owe instead of getting a new iphone or whateve
Or, in other words, the government hating on its own and supposedly most valued citizens, "on behalf of" large financial companies. Hmm.
I was incredibly fortunate to be able to call my department head and speak with him, he personally corresponded with the background check agency and it was finally accepted that I wasn't lying, however, they said that I couldn't list the degree on my resume. This was in 2005 by the way.
...what happens if a student contacts the lender and informs them of the problem. I know people who have done this, lenders understand and generally work with you if you explain the situation. Not so much if you just stop making payments.
Just don't be a deadbeat. Taking more money than your McDonalds job can pay is a dumb position to put yourself in.
Considering almost no one pays for college without loans today, any college whose students could not get loans would be dead in the water. That gives a lot of leverage for banks to "ask" colleges to play along.
Then there is the unspoken truth that most of these degrees are worthless. If banks ever released official statistics on what degrees from which colleges resulted in the most defaults, it would hurt a lot of programs. (and immensely help out prospective students, but who cares about that?)
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You can't work until you start paying us back and you can't pay us back until you start work.
Seems a bizzare way of organising things. In the UK you can't pay back your student loans until you earn a certain minimum wage and then it starts to come out from your pay like a tax as a percentage of your wage. And like the summary says it is the government who hold the debt, not the individual Universities/colleges. If they really want to stop the problem of defaulting then surely it would make more sense to reduce the number of degress that didn't have much job prospects, rather then block the people with degrees from getting jobs.
This seems like a great way to get alumni to donate when they eventually do start making good money. The affected alumni are not going to harbor any resentment at all.
Any school who withholds a transcript for an overdue Perkins loan is probably doing the right thing since they're indirectly suffering economic damage. Not so okay for other loans.
When I got my student load the GST on it waw 7% so now it is 5% and that means I save money on my student load. If it drops lower I WILL MAKE MONEY because I got a student loan. If that isn't justice, nothing is.
That degree for which you took out a loan big enough to pay for a decent house isn't worth quite as much as an equivalent area of toilet paper.
Does seem like an effective tactic to lower the number of people competing for jobs thereby making the unemployment numbers a bigger pile of feces.
The way student loans typically work is that the bank or government pays immediately and then collects over time.
For the schools to withhold the transcript implies that the schools themselves weren't paid which is not how this normally works.
So... did the schools get paid or not? Who secured the loan? I've seen no instance where the schools have ever backed a loan for a student's education outside of scholarships and that's because the school is basically waving fees.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Now I can convince employers I have a degree law from Harvard. I am just behind in my loans.
If I was a lawyer I'd look at this as a Great opportunity to file a class-action lawsuit. As the summary states the colleges are not owed any money, therefore they hve Zero grounds to hold hostage the record of the students 4-5 years. They are committing a crime (charged money but did not provide the final document promised in the contract).
Go for it Mr. Lawyer.
Rape the bastard colleges.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
actively blocking them from getting a job
Really?
Admittedly, I'm out of touch with the prospects for Women's Studies majors, but is a lack of transcripts really a problem? I mean, for people who actually did something during their college career - like network, volunteer at non-profits/work on open source projects (CS/IT), interned somewhere, et cetera.
How wise is it to prevent those who owe you money from getting jobs to payback said money?
She concedes it's a difficult issue but says that "it's the only tool we have to make them pay."
A music major ... was making payments on his $62,000 student debt after graduation while working as an adjunct professor for Temple.
So we have institutions lending $62,000 to majors that have terrible job prospects, then when they can't get jobs they don't know how to get the money back... okay. How about don't lend that much money to someone who you can be pretty sure won't pay the money back? I know higher education should be accessible to all and this and that, but perhaps 62 grand for a degree in music should give us pause to reconsider a) why does a degree in music cost 62 grand and b) why does someone want to spend 62 grand for a degree in music.
I can partiall answer b). I was at a advisory board meeting for my university's CSE department recently, and some undergrads were asked the question: "So what is tuition now?" No one could answer. They don't even KNOW that they are paying $40k+ a year in tuition. This is because they don't even look at their bill. They fill out the fafsa, press a button, sign some papers, and get free money that gives another year of partying. The reality only hits them AFTER they graduate and look back at their full bill. This attitude on the student's side has got to stop
There's also the attitude on the institution side, that they can loan someone $60k for a degree in basket weaving and reasonably expect to get it back. This has to stop as well, but I don't know how to fix it.
Not necessarily for this reason, but it's as good as any opportunity to point out that you should really have a local copy of your transcript, preferably scanned into PDF along with your diploma as well. For many things, especially outside academia (e.g. applying to jobs in corporations), a PDF of your transcript is perfectly sufficient, and it's quite convenient to have one handy, even if you aren't behind on your student loans, because the official registrar transcript is often not very timely in arriving. Only a minority of things really require an original stamped/embossed copy of the transcript, versus a copy or even a PDF.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The American education system itself isn't that bad. It's not the best, but it's not the worst, either. The main problem is the people.
A large portion of Americans are religious to the point where they refuse to acknowledge reality. Even when it's readily available and of a high quality, these people will shun any education that may remotely challenge their religious beliefs in one way or another. They steer clear away from any sort of science, and many of them even distrust mathematics. This distrust and outright hatred of science and math doesn't leave them very many useful fields to study.
There's another large portion of Americans who aspire to be nothing more than "gangstas". Even when involving a curriculum developed by non-whites and taught by non-whites, these people still insist on rejecting "the white man's education".
Finally, there is the whole "hipster" phenomenon. These are adults who are mentally still children, usually due to growing up in a household where everything was provided to them. They also reject a useful education, either in favor of mooching off of their wealthy parents, or by studying a field that offers absolutely no job prospects and no real-world value.
It was one thing when there was a small portion of Americans who would embrace ignorance. There have always been people like that, and nothing can be done for them. But these days, we're talking about 60% or more of Americans who willfully and voluntarily reject a useful education. That's a recipe for disaster.
I'm not sure what part of the word 'loan' people don't understand.
Give me that money, and I'll pay it back. There you go. If you don't pay, you don't get what you bought with your loan.
If you stop paying your car loan, what happens? Repo. If you stop paying your college loans, what? Well, they can't take your education away...but they can take verification away.
That seems perfectly straightforward.
To be honest, after a while nobody asks for your transcript anyway. Nobody really cares about that crap, unless you're going to graduate school. I've interviewed lots of people, and never asked for one. Who cares how you did in school?
Once a school opens the door for corporations, there is basically no turning back -- corporations begin to influence every aspect of the university.
Palm trees and 8
Who is muddying these waters?
The schools have been paid, have they not? That's the whole point of a loan - lender pays now, and you pay the lender.
And, as others have said, it's a little short-sighted to stand in the way of those in debt, since the best way for them to pay off those loans is to be successful. Again, that's the whole point.
Any institution engaging in this sort of behavior is way out of line. In fact, it's rather rare to see such a clear-cut case of wrongdoing when it comes to financial/political entanglements.
Back off, universities. You are not moral guardians, gatekeepers, or creditors. You are educational institutions, and your obligation is to the students, not to whatever twisted group of people suggested you monitor you alumni for credit score violations.
A declining credit score is already one hell of a millstone - like weight gain, it's much easier to damage your score than improve it. The last thing we need is universities undercutting those students who need their credentials the most - those who essentially gambled a portion of future success on the hopes of a beneficial education. Do they want us to pay our loans off or not?
But is an employer asking for your transcript really that common? It has never happened to me in the 20 years since I graduated. After my first job, nobody cared other than that I had a degree in my field, and not one employer since then has checked just to see if I was lying about it.
Now grad school, sure they'll want your transcript, but if you can't pay your undergrad loans, is borrowing a ton more money and going to grad school really a good idea?
Necron69
I lost my leg to cancer when I was 12. Because of the pain from walking, I was forced to stop going to school before I could graduate. I tried to make it on my own working at target. But the loans people kept calling until:
I know the only thing I have to look forward to life is this continuing pain and having the student loans people call me telling me I'm useless. I can't even do minimium wage work.
I've been mailing all of the local papers and handing out the paperwork. When I do hang myself, they can't say they didn't know why. They can't say they didn't expect it. As a cripple with no other choices in this world, this is the last thing that I can give back to humanity.
There is no hiding. I am Zachary Dovel, and I hope to be remembered for the good and not the bad. I just need to hang myself before they force me homeless again. Like almost everyone else in this world, the student loans companies want all of the money without any of the responsibility.
The thought of hanging myself at my student loan organization doesn't bug me as much when I think it might make a differ
'It's worse than indentured servitude,' said NYU Professor Andrew Ross who completed his post doctorate work in Hyperbole at the University of Bologna.
Seriously, show me the debtors prisons..
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
They will give you an enormous amount of patience and latitude. All you have to do is call and tell them that you can't pay them. They will ask you a few questions, then take your word in regards to your income, employment status, and expenses without asking for so much a a shred of proof, and most likely grant you a deferment of forbearance.
When I couldn't find a job about 5 years ago, at first I got by on deferment for about 6 months, after which a had to bite the bullet and take a job way beneath my education level. When I called to tell them that I was now able to pay about 50% of my payment every month, they offered to keep the deferment in place so my partial payments would go entirely to principal. Yes, that's correct - they had even stopped the interest for the entire deferment period. They stopped time itself to help me. Once I had gotten on my feet I started full repayment. When I lost that job before I'd had a chance to save and build an unemployment hedge, they did it for me again.
They withhold transcripts in cases where students have dodged them, avoided them, and failed to acknowledge the debt.
You are the kind of fool who looks at the rigged game and says 'well why cant you play better?'
Good-bye
Since New York State is a right-to-work state, this may be a clear violation of the law.
Bluto: Hey! What's all this laying around stuff? Why are you all still laying around here for?
Stork: What the hell are we supposed to do, ya moron? We're all expelled. There's nothing to fight for anymore.
D-Day: [to Bluto] Let it go. War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: What? Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: [to Boon] Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard of something to say]
Bluto: The tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[Bluto runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer...
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic... but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: [stands up] Yeah, I agree. Let's go get 'em.
Boon: Let's do it.
Bluto: [shouting] "Let's do it"!
[all of the Deltas stand up and run out with Bluto]
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
If you don't borrow in the first place, you won't be whining about "the rigged game".
The first rule of student loans, don't get one!
The loans were made so that students could get transcripts of grades and degrees. If the students do not repay the loans then they should not retain the benefits of those loans. All that is happening is the grades are being repossessed until the loan payments resume.
I put all three kids though the UNC system, Chapel-Hill, NC State and Greensboro + grad school with no debt to me or to them. Maybe NYU and the Ivies and Columbia and all the rest need to re examine the efficacy of charging ridiculous sums of money especially in this economy. And increasing rates at 2x the rate of inflation year over year over year every year for the last 30 years. Maybe students need to re examine the efficacy of getting an MFA in post modern Marxist-Anarchist-Lesbian critical literary theory when literally the only job they can get is teaching that to the next crop of like minded students. Maybe parents need to stop enabling their kids to do whatever they like wherever they like for whatever it costs when it doesn't cost the students anything or they've convinced themselves that going a hundred thousand dollars in the hole is no big thing because they're a special snowflake and somebody somewhere will swoop in to bail them out. I got news for you. Anyone who MARRIES someone with huge student debt is an enormous idiot. So all the snowflakes should all work that crap out before they move on to the next phase of their lives, which no doubt will be moving in with their parents for Adolescence II, The New Beginning.
I have zero sympathy for anyone involved in this, just like the janitors who took out liar loans on half million dollar houses and now cry to Mother Government to bail them out because the banks went broke selling smoke and bullshit to EACH OTHER. Jesus Christ in a shopping cart does ANYONE bother with due diligence anymore?
Work 5 jobs if you have to and repay your debt.
I honestly hope you don't believe that. Even working 5 jobs at part time (20 hours) you'd be working 100 hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week. Assuming you get a full 8 hours of sleep (which you will NEED, working 5 jobs), that's another 56 hours. That gives you a full 12 hours left a MONTH, most of which you will probably spend going between jobs and changing uniforms. That isn't how people pay back education loans. That's how people become serial killers.
And it's not just as easy as "get 5 jobs". I have a friend who had (until last week) been unemployed for 3 years. She would have loved to work 5 jobs, hell she would have loved one. And it's not that she was unqualified-there is simply no work available, even at fast food places.
You seem to be a little out of touch with the world around you. But then again a lot of people who aren't in this situation are.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
I wondered when debtors prisons would be updated to the 21st century.
I'm halfway through paying, 4 years down, 4 to go.
First off, Hugh Pickens needs to learn how to use quotation marks properly, so that he isn't plagiarizing the article he's describing.
"It is a strange position for colleges to take, however, since the schools themselves are not owed any money. Student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government."
This is totally bogus logic. By this logic, a car dealership should help its customer cheat the bank out of the money it loaned the customer to buy the car. After all, the car dealer isn't owed any money. Well, the problem is that the banks obviously wouldn't take this lying down. Suppose Bank of America finds out that Jones Chevrolet is giving its customers instructions on how to default on their loans without losing their cars. BofA is going to respond by refusing to make further loans through Jones Chevrolet.
What is actually a "strange position" to take is to expect lenders to make a type of loan that doesn't have any collateral and that the borrower can walk away from without any penalty.
In the US, student loans are treated differently than other types of loans. You can't discharge them through bankruptcy. The IRS can garnish the borrower's paycheck if he defaults. These measures are meant to keep lenders in the market at reasonable interest rates (currently about 7%). Since these loans are highly regulated by the government, the electorate could certainly choose to make their terms more favorable to students. But guess what? Lenders can't be forced to lend. They will either raise interest rates or (if they're prohibited from that) leave the market.
The real moral of this story is that people need to stop being indifferent to the price of higher education. Tuition at private universities is getting crazier and crazier; their tuition inflation is about double the general rate of inflation. They can get away with this because parents somehow believe that getting a degree from the USC (the University of Spoiled Children) is going to be way better than getting one from UCLA.
People are also spending money on a degree that's way out of proportion to the market value of the degree. The article describes a guy who got an undergrad degree in music at Temple and ended up $62,000 in debt. Yeesh. Pennsylvania has a big community college system, but he obviously didn't consider spending two years there before transferring in order to save some money. He also obviously didn't consider the current market value of an undergrad music degree before going so far into debt to get one. He has his sights set on teaching music at the university level. A reasonable expectation for someone with a bachelor's in music is that you're going to spend your career teaching band to junior high or high school kids. But he's not doing that -- he thinks he's entitled to default on his loan because he couldn't find a permanent, higher-level teaching job at a university. (What he got was part-time faculty work at a university, which by its nature is a temporary job, not something you can depend on for the long term.)
Find free books.
things like life and death just stop mattering anymore. I'm tired of being threatened when I can't even walk outside. It's just time. I need to hang myself so they can tell something is wrong. I don't want to be in pain anymore.
They are going to be able to repo my life.
The thought of hanging myself at my student loan organization doesn't bug me as much when I think it might make a differ
Sounds like Universities are now becoming lackeys for the Federal government. These days, the vast majority (80% - 90%) of student loans come directly from the Federal government. Private lenders were taking advantage of students, so the government stepped in and pretty much owns the market. And the government won't generally let you off the hook for these loans -- even through bankruptcy. The government wants its money back.
The same government that subsidizes student loans also sends grant money to the Universities. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the government is willing to put the squeeze on universities to find some way to force students to pay. It shouldn't surprise anyone to find out that the Feds might withhold funding from Universities if their students don't pay back loans.
Like the summary, and others, have pointed out: there's no good incentive for Universities to not send transcripts for students behind on their loan payments. So why else but pressure from the Federal government would Universities do something that harms their alumni and their reputation?
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Get an unofficial copy of your transcript immediately after graduation.
Won't work for every job, or for follow on degree admissions... but it will satisfy some employers.... at which point you can start paying your loan off if hired.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The only type of loans where the School is the Lender is Perkins Loans. These are 5% hard coded interest loans where the school guarantees the money. So if they don't get it back, they have to front it back to their creditors, i.e. their bank/the fed/whatever. You can't file bankcruptcy out perkins loans nor stafford loans. A creditor can garnish wages to get them back, but it is definitely a lengthy court process, especially if the student moves out of county/state. You also have to try hard to get a Perkins loan, since it is a subsidized Loan that has the aforementioned unflinching interest rate, generally by having a low enough Estimated Family Contribution (i.e. you are broke and/or your parents are broke). Also, the total amount of perkins loans is 50k per student, and 8k per year, in theory, but I have seldom heard of people getting anywhere near that kind of money since the Perkins allotment are actually quite limited.
A few more factoids:
a) If you have loans out, and if you don't graduate, you have to start paying them back immediately.
b) If you have loans and you graduate, the grace period of any of those loans that are obtained via the fafsa process is one year. This includes Perkins loans.
c) If you can't make the payments, you can choose to pay them back in 20 years instead of 10 (lowering payments) and then backload the payments (for now). By the time I was said and done, my first loan payments were in the sub 150 dollar range.
d) If you can't make those payments after the grace period has ended and you've already lowered the payments, apply for forbearance. When I was working for NSLDS and the FAFSA hotline, the policy was that you'll get it the first time for a length of six months after you fill out a form and apply for forbearancee. Then you have to call again. If you manage to hide in graduate school or fulfill one of the other conditions for deferrment, then you can also apply (using the same form) and your interest for subsidized loans (perkins included), is forgiven.
e) Perkins loan payments are seperate from other fafsa loans. Generally the school uses a different payment processor than the Direct Loans folks. However, the deferrment/forbearance process will bail you out of both types of loans for a while.
f) Once you have defaulted on your loans, you can't apply for deferrment/forbearance, not even if you go back into school. Once you default, you have to make 12 months of payments reliably before you are back in Uncle Sams good graces. So you can't hide in Graduate school and not pay your loans back indefinitely, unless you do some leg work before hand.
It takes a great deal of negligence to piss off schools to the point where they will come after you. If you game it right, you can not pay anything back for 2 years if you manage to speak to the right individuals on the phone. Indentured servitude it is not.
Here is the thing. For an undergraduate who is less than 25 in age, not married, not a veteran, not a ward of the courts, i.e. not an independent student, the limit for total loans are almost inadequate for the average state school. For example a standard University of Kansas education, estimated cost of tuition was 300 a credit hour plus fees for an _in-state_ student. It comes out to about 12k a year after fees. (Here is another interesting tidbit, 300 a credit hour fees use to be for _out_of_state students, the in-state fee was 67 a credit hour in 1996 and a flat fee of 3k a year for as many hours as you want to take before 1995. Those were the days). Typically your stafford loan limits are:
Dependent Students:
First Year $5,500 ($3,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Second Year $6,500 ($4,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Third Year and Beyond $7,500 ($5,500 subsidized/$2,000 unsubsidized)
Independent Students:
First Year $9,500 ($3,500 subsidized/$6,000 unsubsidized)
Second Year $10,500 ($4,500 subsidized/$6,000 unsubsidized)
Third Year and Beyond $12,500 ($5,500 su
Need the job to pay the loan...
...pay your damn student loan bill, dumbass! If you are behind because you had no job, call them and make arrangements.
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
If you go to school to get education, you need that, not the school' s diploma, or any degree.
If you go for a degree, 'they', the banks, the school, the government, have you over a barrel. They own you. They can bill you, blackmail you, lead you with the degree for a carrot on a stick.
Want current transcripts to document what you've done? Get them before you leave. Get copies for each year or term "for personal use". Take the copies to a Notary, write: "A true copy" and sign each page so the Notary can notarize them.
To get into a school, go to the head of the department of your interest before registration. Talk what you know already and what the department has to teach you. Prepare yourself beforehand to challenge the first term course work. Offer to challenge, even if you don't want to. Demonstrate you can, or could, challenge. Start attending if they are slow signing you up.
Your first choice won't let you push in, or the department head is ineffective or a jerk? Tell them you are not impressed enough to want to push and go your next choice. "Qualify" it. Move 'small and exclusive' up on your lists. Do these things and educate yourself, sample in other fields to broaden your education as you go, and to make it a real one, and you will be able to pick your jobs. And you will know how to, because the process is the same.
Worked for me, and still does.
Too many "students" using way too much government subsidized debt to create too many graduates for too few professional positions. Meanwhile the cost of education bloats too fast due to all the borrowed money sloshing around and the wages of professionals stagnate or plummet due to all the degrees sloshing around.
Sending all the morlock work to Asia while we attempt to make everyone into a highly paid classically educated eloi doesn't work. It's a racket and it has an expiration date.
Hold the motherfuckers who refuse to release the transcript hostage.
I bet the policy changes pretty damned quick after that.
How do the universities know which individual graduates are behind or defaulted on their loans? Is it only certain loan types? Are the loan agencies breaking any laws by sharing the graduates' personal financial information with universities? I RTFAs, and I got no answers.
If students at the University of Utah where I studied Physics can run one of 33 teaching nuclear reactors in the U.S., I'm pretty sure letting them near an email server would probably be OK. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705368841/University-of-Utah-has-own-nuclear-reactor-tucked-away.html
When I was working on a CS degree, one of the work study jobs a number of people in CS could get was computer operator on the campus computer system, which in fact gave them the keys to the kingdom. Unsurprisingly, the world didn't end as a result, nor were the operators grades ever 4.0 across the board.
-- Terry
You are the kind of fool who looks at the rigged game and says 'well why cant you play better?'
Actually, im the kinda fool who started out very poor in a crappy small town, single parent home with a step father with mental issues.
I learned that if you work hard the game rewards you. Don't feel entitled to things and ALWAYS repay a debt.
Says a lot when people are sympathetic to the person who expects something for nothing.
If large institutional investors (like Wall St. banks) are heavily invested in higher education, then there would be ample pressure to do things like withholding of transcripts.
I would be interested in seeing some statistics on this question.
I owed $40 for a book. I am 100% completely positive I returned my book but their records indicated they did not have it. I refused to pay for it. On graduation day my name was called and I went up on stage, shook a few hands and received my diploma case and inside was no diploma, only a bill for $40. When I joined the US military a few months later, my recruiter paid the balance to get the diploma.
From my understanding, you can join the US military and they will pay all or a portion of your student loans.
Protect and serve, and wipe out some school debt!!
http://www.military.com/Resources/ResourcesContent/0,13964,44245--,00.html
Students are given access to easy credit and can spend a lot of money on tuition without any conception of how they are going to pay it back or what they can afford. If students default, universities shouldn't get all that money since they are complicit in the process and it should help reign in the bubble.
But colleges keep raising tuition and we keep allowing students to get deeper and deeper in debt to pay the tuition. But the debt is what allows the tuition to go up beyond what people can afford in the first place. Like any bubble, there is no way to stop this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Oh...wait...he's causing your pain.
There couldn't be high tuition without the vast amount of money given out for loans. The same was true of home prices. Cheap credit is at the core of it.
And as time goes on, not allowing students, who made a lot of these major financial decisions at 18, to discharge debt in bankruptcy seems downright wrong.
So colleges will raise tuition and we'll allow students to become bigger debt slaves because that's the compassionate thing to do.
This bubble will burst and there will be a lot of pain. It's going to happen and it's going to be ugly.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Since the school I attended had this thing with their career services. They'd help you but only for 6 month immediately after graduation. After that they'd start charging for their services. In my case the problem was my depression(admittedly self diagnosed) didn't really let up for more than a year after I graduated and I was a little bummed out that they basically weren't going to help after making me depressed in the first place.(Since I pretty much wasn't in the condition to even be able to use the services at first.) So to state it more succinctly they were will to help for free students who didn't need the help.(IE student who had a job before or up to 6 months after graduation) If you needed the help, oh you had to pay for it. (Did I mention it was a private school so they charged up the wazoo in the first place? Admittedly back then things weren't as expensive as now but even I paid more than I would have expected.) It was of course self defeating since one of the things they accomplished in the end was to convince me to never donate a dime to them ever. (I always get a cheap laugh when they send their stupid fund raising letters, pleading with me to donate to them when I know I never will. Karma is a bitch, but it does make me think I should donate to the state university again.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Seriously, call them and tell them to knock this off or they're never seeing a dime from you. I just checked the universities I've attended. Not a word on their web sites that they do this.
They come in, break a couple of your fingers, and say "have the money by friday."
This student loan policy is like coming in, breaking a couple of your fingers, gagging & tying you up, sticking you in the trunk of your car, driving out into a forest, and saying "have the money by friday" as they walk away with you still locked in the trunk....
One huge problem is that the schooling (schooling, not education) centers around rote memorization and teaching to the test. How things work, why they work, how to apply them... those kinds of questions are nonexistent in most cases.
Albert Einstein: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
Back the Jurassic age of education (late 1970s), my official M.S. transcript was held up until I paid all the parking tickets I had accumulated over my college career.
When I didn't have a job and couldn't easily afford to make my loan payments, I requested a six-month deferment online. It was approved within a few days. No sweat. My universities still provided transcripts too as I was applying for professional programs at the time. This was 2007-2008, and I see that the possibility of deferment is still available to me today every time I check my balance online.
My understanding, and I hope this is still true, is that as long as you communicate with your lender (in my case the federal government) BEFORE you start missing payments, you'll be okay. However, any hint that you plan on blowing off your obligation, even as little as missing one payment for no apparent reason, will get you into trouble. I don't know where my fellow debtor went wrong here, but I'm wondering if he just missed payments without contacting the lender.
Also, it's a music program he's applying for. Can't they just have him play an instrument or see a portfolio or something? We don't need an official piece of paper to prove everything.
Ultimately your resume shows your competence. I got a few salaried positions over the years just putting the date I was going to graduate on my resume (clearly marked as "expected graduation date"). I got my first salary position in my field about 2 years before I graduated. You don't necessarily need the degree. As long as you can show that you're actually knowledgeable and capable and that finishing the degree will not interfere with your work schedule. Obviously, if the issue is paying a debt then you don't have to go to classes so it won't interfere. You might end up with a slightly lower starting salary but that will go up quickly then.
I've been working for a company now for over a year and my boss just recently found out I had a degree in math. At a certain point, they just don't even look at it. It only came up because he was talking about another possible area I could do work within the company. They look at your listed accomplishments and see if you're competent enough to do the initial job they want you to do.
Work Safe Porn
I agree it's a crappy thing for the government to pressure schools to do, but it's not at all like the analogy the NYU prof has put forth. It's more like buying a lawnmower for your landscaping business on a loan, then not repaying the loan. Just because the bank repossesses the lawnmower does not mean they're depriving you of your ability to get work. It just means you cannot use the lawnmower to help you find landscaping work, at least until you start making the loan payments.
The students are not unable to work (that would be like debtor's prison). They can find work just as easily as any other able-bodied person. They just cannot find work which takes advantage of their degree which they haven't been paying for.
Here in Belgium, any degree in any university (bachelor or master level) costs around 500 euro tuition per year, for anyone. Additional costs are housing (around 250-300 euro a month for a room in a university dorm or in a shared house), food (subsidized by the university, a decent meal in the university restaurants costs around 3-4 euro's), and books (most courses are printed as a stack of A4 paper and distributed by the university itself, for only the cost of the paper). Of course there is the occasional prof that insists you buy book XYZ for 50-100 euro's, but that is rather rare, and generates a lot of complaining. There are almost no other costs.
Furthermore, if you are a "needy" student (e.g. your parents died when you were 17), the tuition is dropped entirely, you get almost free housing, and about 1100 euro's a month for living expenses (nothing of this needs to be paid back by the way). It is almost impossible to go into debt for your higher education here... By the way, anyone is welcome here, we have great beer, and still have a decent old-style education.
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
without affordable loans the number of students would drop dramatically.
Without student loans, the price of education would drop dramatically.
Inexpensive, readily available student loans have the same effect on the cost of education as inexpensive, readily available home loans did on the cost of property during the housing bubble - they give the purchaser far more purchasing power than they would normally have, resulting in the price of the product being bid up much higher than its value.
We're trapped in a vicious cycle - education is perceived as "too expensive", so we give out loans to students so they can pay for education. Then prospective students, collectively armed with more money to pay for education, then bid up the price of education, making it too expensive.
A good way to look at this is imagine someone is selling a car that you want to buy. The car costs $10,000, an you only have $2,000 but you need it to get to work, so you'll take out a loan to buy the car. Then, the government comes along and decides to give a free $10k loan to whoever buys the car. What happens? Now a whole bunch of other people can buy the car too, so the dealer raises the price to say, $12,000.
So now instead of a $8k loan with market interest, you have to get a $10k loan with discount interest. Didn't make the car any cheaper for you, but the car dealer made an extra $2k off the taxpayer.
Student loans are working the same way - they use taxpayer dollars to inflate the cost of education, raising the costs to both students and the taxpayer.
What's worse is, just like we had no standards on housing loans leading into the housing bubble, we have no standards on student loans either - virtually any student can get a loan, even if the school they are going to go to is a degree mill where graduates see no increases in employement opportunity (as measured by low loan repayment rates), or they are getting a degree where the expected salary can not justify the loan cost. (i.e. tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt for a degree in a career path with $30k top pay.)
We would be far better off if we eliminated student loans entirely, allowing the costs of education to fall and people would once again be able to afford to pay for an education with a job while they are in school, instead of having to pay for their education for 20 years after school.
paintball
Hey everyone! Here in the German speaking world (Germany, Switzerland, Austria) We pay around 0-1000$ a university year. (bachelor or master) We don't have such fancy places like Harvard and Yale, but at least everyone is able to get an education if he/her really wants. In my case I studied from 19-23 a classical art bachelor in Switzerland. Then a bachelor in business administration from Germany. And finally a Master in finance in Austria (kinda like a MBA) I don't have any debts. (I know no one who does because of college) I live in shitty places (enough to fuck and study and read) and have an 5 year old nokia phone and a cheap lenovo netbook. But who cares?! Also in big cities here you don't need a car. I will soon be 30 years old, I didn't really work hard in my life, you know bartender and clothe shops, but I am ready to give back my fair share of my salary to society in order that other people can enjoy their youth as soon as I get a real job. CU
If the government REALLY "got in the middle", this wouldn't be a problem in the first place since public colleges and universities would be dirt cheap or even free, as they are in most other OECD countries.
How would banks make billions in federally guaranteed and subsidized profits if the government just provided higher education to qualified students?
paintball
Live in Finland already? Live out the remainder of our lives in quite modesty and let our children have a free wonderful education?
I know at least one Top-5 university will withhold a degree until full repayment of any money loaned by the university is repaid. This doesn't apply to student loans, just "emergency" loans from the finance dept, typically agreed when a student drinks themselves into poverty and can't pay rent for the month, buys a £400 coat and can't afford noodles etc.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Spend billions on worthless nigger families so they can live happily without a job and just breed!
But make it hard for a student to find a job (!) because he didn't pay few dollars to the university!
Welcome to america...
There appears to be at least two inaccuracies in this article.
1) Defaulting on Federal Stafford loans do affect the school for a period of time. Schools who participate in Federal Student Aid (FSA) are beholding to a concept of the "Cohort Default Rate". The basic premise is this: The U.S. Department of Education (ED) monitors the number of loans that a school has in default relative to the total number of loans made to the school for a rolling three year period. If this ratio passes a certain point, ED begins applying an ever increasing set of penalties on the school. If the cohort default rate passes a certain point, the school loses its ability to issue FSA. Also, Federal Perkins Loans are subject to this as well, on top of the fact that schools partially fund Perkins loans with their own money.
More information can be gleaned here: http://ifap.ed.gov/DefaultManagement/CDRGuideMaster.html
2) There has been argument for at least the 13 years I worked as a contractor to ED that transcripts are school property. Mark Kantrowitz, noted FSA researcher and commentator, has posted an excellent article on his website describing the subject here: http://www.finaid.org/educators/withholdingtranscripts.phtml
If you read the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), there is one section of the regulations that may be useful as leverage in dealing with a case of withholding transcripts. Mark deals with this section in his article. If you are experiencing this issue, I highly suggest you read the article, as well as the reg itself and make your argument from there. I have semi-successfully made the argument on behalf of clients previously during my time as a contractor, so please note your mileage may vary. The larger schools may offer a compromise (which the reg allows) while the smaller schools may cave in due to how much it'll cost them to offer the compromise.
Good luck.
I! Tego Arcana Dei.
Can I ask exactly what a transcript is and what it's used for?
In the UK, we get certificates showing our final exam/degree grades, and that's it. I assume a transcript is a detailed record of everything you do somewhere?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Thereby completely assuring that they cannot get the jobs that will allow them to repay the loans that are preventing them from getting the jobs. Its a man-made catch-22 whose only purpose no matter the argument is to make sure that banks profit while the rest of us can go to hell. I know that sounds pretty nasty but what are we suppose to think? We bail out the banks but we're letting the Post Office degrade and fall apart even though that's the one we all use. Meanwhile my taxes are paying for $1200 car rentals, apartments in DC, and God knows what else. Now I may not be able to get a job to actually pay my debts even though I'm an upstanding citizen whose just run across some problems financially in the past. Teach them a lesson and start using Credit Unions and use your votes to show DC how fed up with it we all are.
Learning? New experiences? Whatever else they claim? Nah, certification; and you had better pay up.
When you dont pay for what you contracted for. They graduated or left long ago.
If I was 18 years old today and looking at my options, I would reject taking out student loan where I would have no option of declaring bankruptcy on it if things go horribly wrong. Student loans as they stand now are a trap that students have almost no way of getting out of other than death or severe disability. The next thing these heartless businesses will probably start doing is hounding dead students’ relatives for the money. Students should either work for a few years at some job even if it is just flipping burgers and save up their money for a college education or skip the idea of going to college at all and go into a trade. College tuitions are too high and you don't get as good a return on investment of you time and money as you once did years ago when fewer people had a college education. When almost everybody has a college degree it becomes almost worthless in the job market. Graduates are not getting the decent paying jobs like they used to and they have more debt now to pay off. You are basically becoming a debt slave when you take out a student loan. Just say no to the student loan trap.
Of course, then there are those of us who choose to believe in both science and religion. Crazy talk, yes, I know.
The fact of the matter is, there is a lot of stuff we simply don't know. A hundred years ago, current tech would have been considered downright fanciful. It really isn't a big leap to assume an omniscient deity would be able to make better use of fundamental laws of reality (physics, etc) far better than we're ready to accept.
This doesn't preclude our own bumbling attempts to understand the universe, along with all the wonderful things science and education bring. I, for one, refuse the false dichotomy.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The problem is a bunch of entitled, snotty little kids that believe the internet is a fundamental human right, who want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Everything is a right these days.
Here you are making a gross generalization of the problem, with in a nutshell is as follows: 1) a raise in tuition costs, combined with 2) greater difficulty in getting a decent job without a 4-year degree (*point elaborated more at the end of this post)
A college education is not one of those.
Why not? Again, why exactly not? Now, again, I'm not advocating for it to be a free-for-all-right, but I would like to know why people get so cranky about the subject. To be honest, and to qualify my statement (which is already off the tangent) is that it should be a right for qualified individuals. The problem is that there are little barriers of entry to college. There should be quotas, with harder entrance exams and middle-school/high-school scores to back up an application request. Then and only then, those who get in should get get as much help as possible from the government.
Why? Because education (even higher education) is an asset of national interest, like infranstructure and armies. Because that is what most developed countries in the world do (in particular barrier of entries to higher education.)
The same people claiming to "work" for their education are the same ones who racked up $100,000 in loan debt for an English degree and demanding that all student loan debt be forgiven.
Every one. All of them? Are you telling me that what you are describing here is the general case?
Yeah, I went to college. I did night classes over 8 years in the Army, still doing night classes while working full time.
Congratulations. Myself it took me 8 years to get my BS in CS, starting with zero knowlege of English, studying part-time and full-time while also working part-time and full-time flipping burgers and working in computer labs, enough to live (by eating stale muffins), but not enough to pay for college (thank God for Pell Grants and student loans in my senior year and grad school.) So I know (kinda) what you mean. I say kinda because I've never served in the armed forces, so your work is more commendable.
However...
I could stop working and use my GI Bill, like thousands of people do. Their college funding was earned by actually doing something.
What it seems to me is that you are allowing your services to the nation (which we all people with a modicum of decency appreciate) into a holier-than-thou attitude. If people don't do the exact same amount of sacrifice you did, then they are not working for it. That is pretty much how you are summing it up, with one single stroke. If that is not what you mean, your words certainly paint it that way.
I mean, how else to explain the gross generalization that you so readily apply to your countrymen? That is a sad emotion, not a solid argument for the issues at hand.
Seriously, yes, there is the English major with $100K in debt, but are you telling me that such a case represents the majority or all of the people that are now struggling with rising education costs and student loan debt? (*) There used to be a time when you didn't need a college degree to get a good job. Manufacturing jobs, blue collar jobs were the middle class. That is no more. As recent as ,possibly 15 years ago, it was still possible to get a job as a programmer, machinist or master electrician with a AA/AS/AAS degree. Now it is impossible.
Add to that the fact our country does not have a viable vocational education system (like Germany or Japan), and we have hundreds of thousands, millions coming out of HS without viable skills nor direction (other than joining the Armed Forces, which of course it is not a viable alternative for all of them.)
Let's destroy your ability to get a job to earn money, until you pay us the money you spent to get a job. The tactic might help in the few cases where the person has some money to pay towards the loan, but in the larger case where they don't have an income this behavior is self-defeating and destructive.
There is a corner in bankruptcy where a vendor that fails
to deliver product in a way that hobbles a company from
making money to repay that vendor can find themselves
liable for more than they bargained for.
While most US student loans are guaranteed by the federal gvmt
the school could find that the guarantee is void because they blocked
the student from working.
Student loans like home loans were granted with no consideration of
the true ability to pay the loan back. The honest wages that
some degrees might qualify a graduate for might fall under the poverty
level after a couple kids yet the loan is in keeping with a high paying
executive level dotcom/startup lottery ticket winner.
There are dead beats out there and they need to pay back
a little or a lot. Sadly the terms of many loans are so good
that paying the loan back does not make financial sense to
someone with a sharp pencil .
University finances are out of control.... it is not a light dance shoe that will drop.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
holding a diploma hostage is nothing new. In 1966 I birrowed $50 from the Texas A&M former studen assn to get clothes for interviews. A nmonth after graduation I find that I cannot get a copy of my transcript because of this loan. I scrounged up the $50 anf paid the loan and told them I would never support any of the former student programs. I have not to date howervr I told my former professors I would be happy to assist any needy student of research project.
carl lahser
The bubble in the housing market happened because the government didn't regulate the housing loan market, but ended up on the hook for the defaults anyway. If they had regulated the fly by night lenders and forced banks to adhere to their own standards instead of letting those banks play "pass the trash" , none of the liar loans and NINJA loans would have happened.
If the government could regulate prices of healthcare services the way Japan's government does , then we wouldn't have the industry making up the prices they like and passing the bill to the government.
If the government could have told the universities to go fuck themselves when they started implementing double digit inflationary tuition prices back in the 80s, then we wouldn't have the astronomical, unpaybackable student loans that are presently going to go into massive default.
If the government has to pay, then the government has to be able to control costs. That's the solution the rest of the developed world has come to in healthcare, in education and in housing .
But here if you try to regulate these industries, the tea party crowd has a fucking aneurysm and starts screaming about "socialism".
The opposite anti-socialsm - seems to not be working out so well for anyone except the Angelo Mozilos of the world.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/long-after-fall-countrywides-mozilo-defended-his-legacy/
To all you young people!!! At the moment of graduation, get about 20 copies of your transcript, Post one on your Social Network page. Send another to a public notary and have the legitimate document publicly recorded. In short, remove the University from the equation. Take back what is yours, and hold it tight. Greedy minds and hearts will rob you at the first opportunity.
As mentioned in the article and in the comments, universities who do this generally have no legal standing whatsoever to be doing this: it's a contractual matter between students and banks and maybe the government to which the university isn't even a contract party. By withholding transcripts the university can be sued to high heaven for damages due to lost income or opportunities that result from it. All it will take is one or two legal cases (with the damages easily exceeding even the worst loan debt obligations) to end this questionable practice.
Part time jobs are not automatically 20 hours, they're up to 20 hours. Usually less than. Especially if you're trying to juggle the schedules of multiple jobs.
I'd like to know what fantasy world you think you live in, where you can just go out and get a part time job and assume you'll be working 20 hours. Or go out and get a second part-time job to supplement the income from the first, and your hours automatically doubles to 40. In real life, schedules (yours and theirs) won't let you work 40 hours on 2 part-time jobs unless you're lucky. Suggesting that someone could work 100 hours on 5 part-time jobs is downright absurd. The stars would have to align to get 5 jobs, much less 5 work schedules, that let you work that much.
Yes, but of course the university depends on a constant stream of government money in the form of loans for current students.
That money has a number of strings attached to it, and the Dept of Education can invent new strings as it sees fit.
"If you want to be on the approved disbursement list next year, you will do this for us."
Something like that.
Which means that there is no rational reason for anyone to ever pay back student loans. This also causes the interest rate to be very high. The government make it "work" by stepping in and covering the banks for the "lost" interest as well as the "uncollectable" loan balances.
A rational person might think that the government could just pay tuition directly to schools and eliminate the bank "middlemen". But that would be "socialism" and even if it weren't, it would just encourage non-stop frat parties at taxpayer expense.
OK, so now you understand the higher ed "debate"...
Seems pretty fair to me: you pay to get a set of services including a transcript, and they are withheld if you don't pay. I think that same rules apply at the Supermarket or the gas station.
The strange thing here is the sense of entitlement that people have regarding their debts. Now, the tuition prices at many US schools to seem crazily high, but the correct solution there is to go to a cheaper school. Of course, education is probably one area where it is definitely not a god idea to focus on the short-term cheap deal, but you do need to keep in mind that the price you pay actually has to be paid, even if a loan is involved.
to every person with a student loan:
calculate the amount of principle currently owed on your loan. (say 50,000)
Add 1% (i may have mistaken how this works) to that to represent an APR of 1% (so we now have 50,500)
take 1% of that amount. (505)
Pay that amount, the 1%, over the next year. (42/month)
repeat the following year (slightly lower amount each year)
do this until the schools, business, banks, congress, everyone gives up on this form of slavery, forgive most of the debt, establish fair pricing for school. see, you dont refuse to pay, you pay diligently a reasonable rate as long as the 1% arent held accountable. Some have suggested people refuse to pay. if you do that, no one can distinguish between utter deadbeats, people with hardship, and those who could pay, but shouldnt have to. nice and fair across the board.