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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."
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."
There are plenty of groups that had vested interest in killing socio-economic mobility, but colleges weren't really one of them. While the colleges and universities in our country have plenty of faults to them, it is not their fault if students decide to major in philosophy and leave without good job prospects. What did this guy expect to find for employment?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"Gimme"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Get your general education classes done at a junior college. Much cheaper. Then transfer to a 4 year school if you're career path requires it. Note the emphasis on the word "requires". Don't go to college if your career doesn't need it. There's no point in graduating with what essentially is the size of a home mortgage. You're starting in the hole and you don't need to do that. The sooner that you can get into the workforce with a good paying job, the better off you will be. You can buy a car and home much earlier in life. You can also start saving for retirement earlier which makes a huge impact on when and how you can retire.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I agree the current way of funding uni in the U.S. is bad. However, if the government guarantees a uni attempt at a degree, how does the government put a price on it? Is Harvard comparable to Ohio State University? Does a uni degree attempt become another entitlement? Entitlements are already breaking the U.S. budget.
Maybe the U.S. could fund degree attempts at state unis. The problem there is that states have been pulling money out of higher ed. then turning around and claiming their state schools are still state schools. The some of the increase in tuition at state schools is directly the result of the state legislatures pulling money out. The legislators then turn around and claim there is a crisis in higher education with ever higher costs for the average person.
Proof this guy is a financial idiot, "You might want to follow these steps: Get as many credit cards as you can before your credit is ruined." Yeah- get as many credit cards as you can, because you're so awesome at paying back things you owe. Although I might agree with the sentiment behind the article- schooling can be cost prohibitive, and rich people can make tons of money off people just trying to better themselves, I totally disagree with the author's reasoning, logic, and their lack of responsibility.
Famous for sockpuppeting his own online threads.
Scott Greenfield adds some valuable additional commentary. The horror! He had to drop out of a "small private liberal arts college" and suffer the indignity of attending a public university. And this in an era when tuition was vastly lower than it is now.
I have a fair amount of sympathy for modern college students and graduates who are subsidizing a bonanza of administrators with no attendant benefit to themselves. But for Siegel to set himself up as one with such people is deeply deceitful. He wears his deadbeat status as a badge of honor.
Dog is my co-pilot.
You realize that no one gets to choose what "their tax dollars" are spent on, right? Otherwise I wouldn't spend a dime on things like drones and NSA data centers.
Given the option, I'd rather pay for a million people to go to college than a single Predator drone.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Many people are not aware, but it's been known for a number of years amongst physics education researchers how to actually measure the change in conceptual comprehension (actual assimilation of new concepts into the part of the mind that does real-world problem-solving) that results from a semester-long class. Force concept inventories (FCI's) can be administered both before and after a class, and these tests have already been given to tens of thousands of students. These tests have revealed very serious problems with public comprehension of science that starts on day 1 of the first mechanics physics course, suggesting that it is the lecture and problem set approach which is causing the problem. Eric Mazur has made a name for himself by discovering this problem at Harvard. What he found, by studying his own students, is that the plug-and-chuggers can ace their rote memorization exams, and yet still completely fail conceptual questions in the same exact domain/topic.
See Confessions of a Converted Lecturer, or the first two devastating paragraphs of the abstract here.
The college loans are not the only scandal happening at the universities. We should also be seeking to make sure that our straight-A students actually understand the materials they are memorizing, by instituting the FCI's. This would also help parents to determine the effectiveness of the various programs, and programs would once again compete on instruction.
If you go to school for Philosophy don't be shocked when you find out the Philosophy factory isn't hiring.
Why should I guarantee a college education to anyone with my hard-earned tax dollars?
Now take out that "college" part and wonder why you're allowing public schools at all.
Because I'm a victim
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
"Years later, I found myself confronted with a choice that too many people have had to and will have to face. I could give up what had become my vocation (in my case, being a writer) and take a job that I didn’t want in order to repay the huge debt I had accumulated in college and graduate school."
You want to be a writer but you can not pay off the debt you created getting a doctorate?
Really? You want into to debt getting a Phd in Philosophy?
Sorry but a lot of people have to take jobs they do not want to pay of debt or even to feed a family. You decided to spend a lot of borrowed money getting a degree and a Phd in a subject that does not pay well at all.
"Maybe the problem was that I had reached beyond my lower-middle-class origins and taken out loans to attend a small private college to begin with. "
Well yes it is. State schools are a lot cheaper and community colleges even cheaper. Get your required course out of the way on the cheap and then move on to University.
" I thought I deserved better, and naïvely tried to turn myself into a professional reader and writer on my own, without a college degree."
Talk about a sense of entitlement. You did not try to turn yourself into a anything on your own. You tried to use other people's money to live a fantasy. Who needs to pay a "professional reader". Wow. I just do not know what to say except pay up dead beat.
Wow this does so much harm to the idea of student loan reform that it almost seems like a right wing plant.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...instead of guaranteeing loans, the government would have to guarantee a college education.
that is what we do. Works fine, here in Europe.
In fact a number of Americans are now coming to Europe to study for free
Funny how when a corporation defaults on its debt and files for bankruptcy so that it can break union contracts and pay workers less, it's seen as a sharp business move, a recognition that their expenditures have come to surpass their income in a structural and unsustainable way. But when an individual decides the same, perhaps after coming to the conclusion that an investment in a home or university education wasn't as lucrative as it seemed it would be at the time, people start thundering about the moral necessity of paying back loans.
Regardless of what has happened to social mobility in the last 30 years, it hasn't affected the author of this article because he is 57 years old. He went to college in the 80's when college was not nearly as expensive. I went to college at the turn of the century and even then it was cheap enough you could pay over half of your college expenses by working part time at minimum wage.
This guy is simply a sociopathic asshole who is just being provocative to get page views. He stopped paying his bills because he is an entitled prick, not because of the federal loan apparatus he is complaining about in the article. I have real sympathy for the problems younger millenials are having because of the rising price of college, and it is shameful for this author to exploit them like this.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I can't blame the universities for the mess the higher education system is in. They're just responding to market forces. Really, everybody is. It's just that the market has been circumvented by a well-meaning government.
The problem is that unlimited money is flowing into the higher educational system and there is no negative feedback loop to limit it. It's just one big positive feedback loop driving up attendance and cost.
1) Take as a given that "you have to go to college or else you'll have a shitty job." More on this later. The number of students going to college has been steadily increasing since forever. Part of this is because of the nature of our increasingly specialized and technical world, and partly due to social changes, like the progress made by women and minorities. I'm not in any way implying that's bad, I'm just saying there are more people going to school.
2) The government first issued direct loans to poor students in 1958. This method upset congress, though, because from a budgetary standpoint it showed as a loss the year the loan was issued, even though it would be paid back later. Instead, from 1965-2010, the government guaranteed student loans made by private lenders. If the student defaulted, the government would make the lender whole. This makes the rule that student loan debt cannot be discharged by bankruptcy especially petty. The lenders were at no risk, anyway. From 1993 on the government also issued loans directly. Also, as time has gone on, loans have become increasingly easy to obtain. Originally only poor students who could show financial need qualified for government-backed loans, but those requirements were dropped in the 80s.
3) Since there is no risk to the private lender, there is no incentive not to grant any loan request. As for government loans, there's no political will to deny students seeking money for education. So, there's no brake on the money flowing into the system. And the lenders aren't necessarily doing anything wrong here. There have been some scandals involving kickbacks to schools, but it's mostly unnecessary as people are lining up for these loans. Why would the lender say no? They'd just get called out for ruining some kid's dream of an education.
4) If the lender had to take a risk, they would be careful about issuing loans. Today a D student seeking a degree that might land him a $30k/year job (if he's lucky) can get a loan for $40k. With risk involved, the lender would consult actuarial tables. What are the student's chances of completing the degree? What are his chances of getting a job? What's his expected income? What's the chance of default? No such brake exists. (Note, I'm not saying degrees not tied to a high-paying job are worthless. More on this later).
5) Without the loan, the D student would go learn a trade, instead, or get a job that doesn't require a degree, like say work in a call center (yes, I'm aware of the current situation in which ads for low-level jobs like call center work have starting requiring degrees. It's part of the loop and I'll get to it later). A student seeking a degree that costs more than what's reasonable given their earning potential would also be turned away (this would be an incentive to keep tuition costs down. If liberal arts students can't get loans, your school doesn't get their money).
6) Since the number of students and amount of money they can borrow is unbounded, there's no incentive to keep tuition costs down.
7) How are students with options deciding what school to attend? We would hope they would decide based on the quality of the education, but that's difficult to measure objectively. Generally it just has to be "good." Also, many students don't know what they want to major in when they arrive, anyway, so it's difficult to make a decision based on the quality of a program. As long as they're reasonably confident in the quality of the education, they're making their decision based on amenities. How nice are the dorms? The recreational facilities? How pretty is the
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The major problem with student loans is that there is no longer any escape from them. Bankruptcy does not discharge them. You're stuck with them for life.
That is a major departure from traditional debt laws, and this is just wrong. People should be able to escape their mistakes after appropriate penalties.
A student, 18 years in age, cannot comprehend the gravity of the loans they are taking out. The whole situation is rotten: you are told that you MUST get a college degree, otherwise you will be a lifelong failure. You are told that IF you get a college degree, your future WILL be rosy and bright. You are told that ONCE you get a college degree, you WILL get a good job and then paying the loan off will be no problem.
That is the extent of your knowledge when you are 18. You have no idea how much your salary will be in four years, in fact, when you are 18, it is very likely you don't even know how much your parents make, or how much anyone makes beyond your knowledge of minimum wage. All you know is that you have to go to college and get that degree so you can get a good job. At least that is what my parents told me, and when I was in college, that is the same set of assumptions that everyone was operating under.
And once you get that degree and you can't get a job in your chosen field of study, or maybe you don't even get that degree (because a lot of people don't make it through college - many college programs, particularly engineering, are actually DESIGNED to weed people out), then you are sitting there with a stack of loans and no way to reasonably pay them off.
Prior to 2001, you could try to pay them for a while, but after finding that you were getting deeper and deeper in debt, you could take a deep breath, assess your situation, and then take your lumps in the form of bankruptcy - knowing that you would have a finite period of time in which you would be penalized by a bad credit rating. But at some point it would be over.
In 2001, congress changed the law to eliminate the discharge of student loans from bankruptcy. Any other financial failure is redeemable, but a decision that you made when you are 18 years old, a failure that is not easily foreseeable (because people don't know their capacity, people don't know their future earning potential, people don't know what the job market is going to do), is not forgivable. Never, until the day you die, and even then, your estate will be on the hook for them.
And the loan companies are given extraordinary power, backed by the government, to collect their debts. Hey, if someone owes me money, I can't attach someone's tax returns - but student loan companies can do this. It is also very hard for me to garnish someone's wages to collect a debt because there is always the threat that the person will file bankruptcy. The lack of that threat here gives student loans extraordinary power.
That is the problem here, and it will take people like Lee Siegel, doing what he did, to bring this to the forefront of discussion. Certainly any abuse of the student loan process should be curbed, but an iron shackle on everyone is not the right response to any potential abuse.