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Writer: "Why I Defaulted On My Student Loans"

schwit1 writes: There are some valid points raised in Lee Siegel's 1,100 word rant against college loans (if not so much against college education). There are also some bad ones. But two things are clear: the words "personal" and/or "responsibility" were used precisely zero times. Siegel, who described himself as "the author of five books who is writing a memoir about money," is hardly a glowing advertisement for the return on nearly a decade in university just to achieve a Master of Philosophy degree.

Siegel says, "As difficult as it has been, I’ve never looked back. The millions of young people today, who collectively owe over $1 trillion in loans, may want to consider my example. It struck me as absurd that one could amass crippling debt as a result, not of drug addiction or reckless borrowing and spending, but of going to college. ... The rapacity of American colleges and universities is turning social mobility, the keystone of American freedom, into a commodified farce. If people groaning under the weight of student loans simply said, 'Enough,' then all the pieties about debt that have become absorbed into all the pieties about higher education might be brought into alignment with reality. Instead of guaranteeing loans, the government would have to guarantee a college education."

2 of 1,032 comments (clear)

  1. Re:pricing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    The only entitlement breaking the US budget is the goddamn conservatives entitlement to go to war every 20 years.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/presidential-budget-2015/

  2. Re:Social mobility was killed, but not this way by Daemonik · · Score: 0, Troll

    Thank you for your well thought out and rational post. Now hurry along, you've got to make it to your MRA meeting on time or you'll miss the next episode of Coast to Coast. Tonight they're revealing the lizard people who are trying to take away sovereign citizen's gun rights!