Slashdot Mirror
Student Loan Debt Has Nearly Tripled (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Recent college graduates who borrow are leaving school with an average of $34,000 in student loans. That's up from $20,000 just 10 years ago, according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that report, out this week, the New York Fed took a careful look at the relationship between debt and homeownership. For people aged 30 to 36, the analysis shows having any student debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home, compared to college graduates with no debt. The cliche of "good debt" notwithstanding, the consequences of borrowing are real, and they are lasting. The report paints a mixed picture of how student borrowing has evolved over the last decade, since the financial crisis. There are some bright spots: For example, student loan defaults peaked five years ago and have declined ever since. And repayment seems to have slowed down among high-balance borrowers -- those who owe $75,000 or more. Meaning, after 10 years, they have paid down only one-quarter to one-third of what they owe.
34 / 20 = 3
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The greatest generation got a bunch of handouts on the backs of this generation (social security, a bunch of fucking debt we can't pay back, cheap goods from free trade without suffering the loss of jobs and reduced wages, death of unions). It looks like us young ones are hedging bets that we'll be able to force some sort of bail out crisis and have our unwilling generosity repaid.
the New York Fed took a careful look at the relationship between debt and homeownership. For people aged 30 to 36, the analysis shows having any student debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home, compared to college graduates with no debt.
I'm glad public salaries were paid to come up with that study.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
to get a $200k+/year job (in addition to the $200k that I paid for schools)
When I went to community college in the early 1990's, I collected bottle and cans on campus to pay for next semester's classes and books because my parents (sixth-grade and high-school graduates) didn't believe in higher education. After doing that for a year, and avoiding a 98-year-old with a pointy stick who also collected recyclables, I got a job at the bookstore warehouse and worked 30 hours per week while taking 12 units.
My second tour through college after the dot com bust was paid for with a $3,000 tax credit that George W. signed into law after 9/11. I was working 60+ hours per week as a video game tester, teaching Sunday school and taking two classes per semester for five years. Made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major.
The most successful college students I know have worked their way through college without racking student loans.
The problem is special case cared out for student loans - in US you can't discard them in bankruptcy. This should be ruled unconstitutional. If you could discard them in bankruptcy, lenders will be forced to re-introduce risk analysis back into the system. Some loans will be declared too risky based on costs and job prospects for graduates from specific program at a specific institution. This will put pressure on universities to keep costs in check as it will be again possible to price out 'consumers' out of the system.
Children are the Future.
So screw them, we're getting raptured up next Thursday!
It doesn't matter at all what student loan debts has risen to..... So long as student income rises in parity with the proportion of debt load carried.
When I came out of undergraduate some twenty five years ago, the best I could find/hope for was about $30-$40K starting. Best. And I had $16K of debt. (Today I'm making double that... I could be making more still, but I like what I do and where I work and don't want to change that, so it isn't comparable.) So if today you have $30K of debt and have ten years to pay that yet you make $60-70K starting if you choose the right field and job? Yeah, $441.55 payments on $5833 gross (7.5%), versus $196.24 payments on $3333 gross (5.8%.) Tighter, but not too tight, honestly.
My graduate degree... well.... forget about it because it was wasted money from a what-I'm-doing-now-warranting-the-expense situation. And it was priceless for the memories and experiences it gave me.
But the consequences of borrowing have ALWAYS been real, kids. And it's why you should have paid more attention to basic math and algebra in school, kids.
Now get off my lawn.
You failed math.
$34,000 from $20,000 is only a 70% increase, not a 300% increase. In those 10 years, the value of $20,000 went up to $27,600, so it's really only a 25% increase.
A 25% increase in student loans during a recession is pretty well within expected range.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Make loans easy to get, relatively unlimited, guarantee the banks get their money come hell or high water, and, unsurprisingly, whatever the loans get spent on goes up in price to match whatever "relatively unlimited" means.
There's a solution to this, but it isn't to make education "free" (that just sets "relatively unlimited" even higher and cuts banks out of the profit). It's to stop guaranteeing student loans.
Ever-rising tuition fees, shrinking scholarships with increasingly stringent requirements, no regulation worth its weight in sewage in regards to the interest rates, and wages that make temporal stasis look stagnant?
No. It's the children who are wrong.
This proofs that not only prices went up, but quality lowered. If you adjust for quality the price increase is even higher.
Tuition prices are a result of the push that everyone should go to college.
That's neither practical or appropriate. Fully one half of the population has a double digit IQ. Sending them to college to fail out or lowering standards for them to pass does a terrible disservice to everyone who actually gets a degree.
I mean, this is getting ridiculous. When there's not a mistake, it's simply incomplete. And for this news, it's both at the same time.
"Student Loan Debt Has Nearly Tripled".....compared to what? I have to read the Text to find that is was compared to 10 years ago....which is also wrong.
Start earning your salary and work those Headline...and please stop the sensationalist too...
Elok
Mark Cuban noted that colleges increase tuition to the amount that students can borrow, and suggested if they capped the amount of loans, the universities would be forced to lower tuition or lose students.
It's an interesting idea, but in the end I'd guess the lower income families would get hurt.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
If you had read the article, you would have known that the tripling is in regards to the total amount of student debt, not the average student's debt.
For Spring Break! You'll be paying for that vacation for a long time.
It sure seems like Slashdot is falling in love with misleading headlines because there seems to be a plenty of them lately. I don't know who or why is making them misleading but please, knock it off.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Found the bot. It's dumber than the previous bots.
< life story >
I went to a public/private university. Tuition was >40k$ / year. I was able to get 25k in grants and scholarships, but that left me and my parents with a 15k gap.
As my parents had shit credit, they couldn't help co-sign any loans. I had to get an extended family member to help.
After the first year, I couldn't afford it. Flat out.
So I dropped out after one year. No degree. Entered the minimum wage workforce making 8$/hr as a line cook. Worked my way up to Assistant Manager with... $9.50/hr...
Two years later, two shit cars later, and countless roommates later. I lost my job. My father was working as a Project Manager for a nationwide networking company. He helped me land a part time gig that paid 25$/hr but hours ranged from 0 to 30 a week depending on what projects he could help me get on.
But it took nearly 6 months before I was handed that part time gig... I also went to craigslist and worked landscaping when I could, making 10$/hr. However, during the next year, and the flaky hours, I was evicted from my apartment, and I defaulted on my student loans (yes I used all the deferred time (whatever it was really called) I could)... At this time the amount was ~10k.
Before I went into default, I knew exactly how to pay back my debt, I go to a website, enter in the amount, bank account info, done.
A couple years later I found a Software Developer position making ~45k/year. Trying to get my credit back on track, I went to research how to start paying back my debt. This was the most difficult process I could imagine. How can it be that hard to find out who you owe money to?!
A couple months later I finally figured it out, but saw that they charged enough fees for the amount go back up to the original 15k!!!! WHAT?!
Every step of the way in trying to pay back my debt, I stumble on some problem or another. Medical bill, car repair/inspection/registration, roommate leaving without notice leaving me with 2x rent.
</ life story >
I'm am incredibly happy that debtors prison is outlawed, but it seems they have just morphed it into this obscene beast that just eats anyone and everyone dumb enough to fall for this popular fallacy of graduating HS, going to college for 4 years, then landing a job that can help pay back ur debt and life style.
Now, before all you red-wing nuts say "Don't live beyond your means, get a better job, blah blah" I did all of that. Sold my car, rode public transport, lived in a 2 bdrm apartment with 6 other dudes, moved back in with my parents for a while, etc... I did everything I could to save every penny I could... still wasn't enough.
Student debt is today's slavery.
And you know what? Of my group of friends, I'm considered one of the more fortunate ones... Another friend of mine is over 100k$ in debt... And he's currently unemployed.
chapter 11 and 7 for student loans whould fix it. The banks and schools have no skin in the game.
The headline refers to total student loan debt. The summary applies to individuals. Total debt can triple even when individual debt "only" climbs 70%, when more people make stupid choices.
Hey snowflakes - you are getting buttfucked.
Control education by debt - Check
Control health care by fucking up, then nationalizing the system. Check
Control the rest by claiming "man made global warming". Check
"Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to
Pinpoint potential trouble-makers and neutralize them,
Neutralize them, neutralize them'
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
How long? Not long, cause what you reap is what you sow"
Let's tell everyone they need college in order to be successful, but let's not be specific about what kind of college will get you success; after all a basket weaving degree is just as valuable as an engineering degree.
Let's tell them that college is so important that we'll make government-guaranteed loans available to be sure they can afford that critical degree.
We'll add to the mix the natural market reaction of increasing prices as more money is made available to pay for the product.
Then we can all act surprised as loan loads increase, the feel good degrees don't allow one to make payments causing the ability to pay those loans to decrease resulting in a requisite government-bailout for everyone who got a student loan to pay for a degree that has no value.
If you think a degree is going to have a positive economic value for you then you make the investment to get the degree. If that means working two jobs and taking 6 years to get a degree then so be it, you can make the economic decision to do that. If the economic numbers don't make sense for you then don't go to college to get a degree.
The whole story line about college being better for you economically is based on a mis-understood or mis-applied correlation: people who went to college earned more than people who didn't. That headline is based on the overall group. A more interesting question would be what is the net cost of college by degree-type. A student who spends $50,000 for a worthless degree will be overshadowed by someone who spends $50,000 for a degree ultimately worth millions. The average of the degrees is higher than those who have no college but the value is still close to zero for the person with the worthless degree and $50,000 in student loans.
That $50,000 degree worth millions isn't because of the degree. It's because of the application of the knowledge attained with the degree by a person driven enough to use that knowledge in a way that creates market value.
... I'm ready to enroll in part-time college and am torn hither and fro wether I should go to the local University (classic CS, bland curriculum, ugly wasted 80ies architecture campus, further away from where I work, PhD option, higher rank, Math 1 through 5 (scares the shit out of me)) or the local University of Applied Sciences (Media CS, neat Master Programs, easy curriculum, brand new posh campus with all the bells and whistles, more chicks on the faculty (so I hope :-) ), PhD option on the ropes (might change within the next few years), 'lesser' rank, Math 1 through 3 (scary too, but manageable)).
Mind you, aside from semester fees of ~280 Euros these options I'm toying with are free (as in beer) and those fees actually are a bargain because as an enrolled student you get public transport for free in the entire state (there actually is a little problem with students enrolling just for the benefits alone).
Bottom line:
It sucks to be a student in the US.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
when we started cutting all the federal funds. They warned about this in the 90s when the cuts started and everybody said it wouldn't matter because salaries would be so high to compensate. Meanwhile we've still got folks spreading the already disproved lies that it's all because of fancy dorms and rich teachers. Yeah, a few nasty little diploma mills were taking advantage of the loan programs. The last administration shut that down. Of course, I'm not expecting the current administration to be so student friendly...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
While looking at debt of college, ignores the reason for the high costs. Colleges have been raising tuition prices because they know you will qualify for the loan and the loan will be repaid. There is a reason the borrowing has sky rocketed up to 1.3 trillion dollars, colleges are making buckets of money.
An example of alternatives, WGU Governors college was created to provide degrees for working people at a real affordable cost. Most people can buy a 40K car on a 6 year loan, but a 400k school loan, thats stupidly expensive.
The running joke is colleges are now just hedge funds with a college attached. And the money isn't used to lower tuition.
Selling free college is a scam the universities want, they think they will get paid at the same high price, just moving the cost to the government. (aka us the tax payers....)
I didn't even mention the money the sports teams are making also.
Indeed. My dad (born in '43) was able to pay for a Harvard master's degree in the 60's by selling hotdogs... and he's made it abundantly clear that he takes full credit (and then some) for the feat. Good fucking luck achieving that today...
once college becomes so expensive that the only way anyone can afford is it is by taking government assistance is the day either people revolt and the university system dies or people accept and are stuck doing whatever the government asks for the rest of their life lest their loans suddenly come due...
and I feel sorry for all the non-auto-diadacts that are in high debt for schooling credentials that dont have work waiting for anyone.
Employers should pay for schooling, since employers are that much more efficient at on-the-job training not Uni or College educators.
A professor is a religious-minded individual no-different than a God damned SPECULATOR.
If you are not ready for the jobs of today, tgan dont train for it tomorrow: I suggest, NO, I demand that you trade valuables for on-site training from your higher co-worker or officer. Better than that would be to startup your own college or university because that is where the steady money is; mass training of people on present jobs that will disappear but need to know for the next wave of future jobs that dont exist and never will exist anyway because employers like to oitsource and save money like a bunch of international JEWS related to everyone around the world so they can spend a month in every God damn country and then the next like AhskeNAZI Trump.
TONA! T.O.N.A.! Titles Of Nobility Act!
War of 1812! WAR OF 1812!
Thirteenth Amendment!
COLORADO State has three 13th Ammendments!
Colorado Springs National Archives Building!
Miscelaneous File Organic Constitutions and Indian Treaties!
Wampum!
About the only way you're going to make it through a masters degree these days without a wealthy parent or accruing vast debts is to sell a wiener alright, but not one in a bun, and sadly there are a number of students out there that have turned to the sex trade as a means of keeping themselves out of debt.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's overpriced, you can learn more on your own, and a degree does not make you any more hireable than no degree. There are TONS of degree holders working at walmart or flipping burgers. Hell my wife with her BSA can not get more than $13 an hour because women dont deserve male pay levels.
Do not go to college, go to a trade school or join a journeyman program and get a real education.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It will be 75% by 2030. Wanna bet it will go to 50% then 25% ect... The US is in decline in relative wealth in the world while economies like China and India are on the rise. We are burning through all our imperial wealth theft and no one these days wants to go on another pillaging campaign like the good ol days. Combine that with our declining birth rates and I ask you who is going to pay this generation's healthcare/retirement when they are older?
Tuition prices are not tied to inflation or any other real economic index. Rises in tuition have been shown to be directly related to one thing: the availability of student loans. So when the government makes more student loans available they are screwing all students, those expecting to go through school by taking out loans and even those saving and trying to work hard to pay their own way (which becomes harder and harder to do as tuition costs skyrocket).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There are a tremendous amount of crap degrees. Quoting Mike Rowe "People come out of College with a 4 year degree in basket weaving and 100K in debt, then wonder why they can't get a job." People have been duped.
People have been told that any degree is a leg up on a High School degree, which may have been true 30 years. Then Schools decided to expand the number of degrees to be sure that any attendee, even those that didn't really try, could still get a degree.
Banker: I see you have lots of college debt, which will make a mortgage difficult. How are the job prospects for a Gender Studies major?
Graduate: Well, I'm working as a retail clerk at a store while I wait for my big break in a massive company as an EO officer.
Banker: How about you come back after your debt is down or you have that great job.Graduate: But I have a degree!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A cult.
When I went to school a long time ago, I knew a lot of people who would sign up for the absolute maximum amount of loans they could -- way more than tuition costs. The government would pay the university directly, and students would get the extra balance back in a check (this was the mid-90s, we still had checks back then. :-) ) a couple weeks into the semester. Said students would then turn around and buy cars, booze, expensive apartment rents, etc. and just run up the tab their whole time there. I remember on "disbursement day" seeing lines out the door at the student accounts office waiting for their money.
Yes, tuition is stupid expensive now, and you can't swing it with a summer job anymore. But, how many students are borrowing the max, and using it to live large? I'm definitely saving as much as I can for my kids' educations so they don't have to go through the whole debt millstone. I graduated with a relatively small amount of debt and it was still a drag on my income starting out. Crippling? No, but I certainly wasn't able to save much before I got my first few raises.
Everyone loves to say that not everyone needs college, and I do think that's true. We need more trade guild style apprenticeships to feed the skilled labor pipeline. But for those who are going to end up in more involved fields, I still think college is a good way to gain the maturity and self-reliance you need in a controlled environment. If every low-skill job is going to be automated, then you'd better be on the side doing the automating or else life is going to be miserable. Do I use anything I studied in college directly for work? Not really, I'm in IT and studied chemistry. But, I did learn how to tackle a brand new problem, deal with crappy bureaucracy and unfair insider/office politics, and gained the ability to stick to a task and learn new things fast. Those are skills any employer should be looking for, not JavaScript Framework of the Month, but the ability to learn 5 of them in a year.
My daughter's BS in Mathematics will cost me about $18K. Add another $12-16K to get her PhD. (All of which I am so far able to pay for in cash)
How on earth does the average student end up owing $34K at the end of 4 years?
Also, how on earth does a college graduate not have most of that $34K paid off in 10 years? Come on you guys, it's not THAT hard to pay off debt. All it takes is a reasonable job and the willingness to knuckle down and forego indulging oneself with unnecessary costs. Did you get some worthless degree and pay though the nose for it? If so, your lack of forethought does not mean someone else should be responsible for bailing you out and you need to grab your bootstraps and get busy...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Hmmm. I guess you forgot that now almost anyone can go to college even if they can barely read and write and consider 2+2 to be advanced mathematics.
Bring back admission standards (which would mean less students in university) and the costs would drop. Students who need remedial help should get it - but not in a 4 year college. Costs would drop.
Also drop the comparative literature courses and assorted basketweaving classes. You do realize all those gender studies programs cost money.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I mean if lenders want a virtual guarantee of repayment ok, I can see arguments for why student loans are a somewhat special case... but then with that needs to come minimal interest. I'm talking like half a point, maybe 1 point, over the federal discount rate. You want a government enforced lifetime repayment guarantee fine, but you get a government enforced minimal rate of return for it.
If they aren't ok with that, they are always free to lend normally at whatever rate they choose, but subject to normal bankruptcy laws.
They way it is now though is BS.
About the only way you're going to make it through a masters degree these days without a wealthy parent or accruing vast debts is to sell a wiener alright, but not one in a bun, and sadly there are a number of students out there that have turned to the sex trade as a means of keeping themselves out of debt.
I doubt you'll make enough selling wieners. Pussy is the one that tends to make the money.
Also, it isn't as though universities can just lower tuitions infinitely. There's waste and overspending to be sure, but then there is in everything, expecting perfect efficiency is foolish. However there are just a lot of costs. It is expensive to run something like a university, particularly if you want good people. I mean if you have someone who has a PhD in a desirable discipline like engineering or law or chemistry, and are talented researchers, well they have a lot of career options. You can't say "Ya we'll pay you $30k/year, that should do right?" There's tons of other costs like buildings, computers, etc, etc.
Someone has to pay. In the past, a lot of it was paid with tax dollars for public schools, however that has been a real, real popular source for state legislatures to cut. There are public universities with less than 20% of their budget coming from public funds. Well the money has to come from somewhere, so an increase in tuition it is.
You can't say "just make cuts" because cuts are going to have an effect. You can cut quantity, like reducing the amount of faculty, staff, and facilities in which case you can simply take less students, or you can cut quality, like cutting salaries (which leads to the best people leaving), cutting building maintenance, cutting lab supplies, and so on which leads to lesser quality education. However you can't demand that cuts be made but no difference manifest.
You are bad at math and erading comprehension
From the article: "in the absence of more targeted grant or scholarship programs, more people are taking out student loans, and they are borrowing more. All that borrowing adds up to a total of $1.3 trillion, nearly triple what it was a decade ago."
The per-person debt is only up by about 70% (not 2.4%, I have no idea how you managed that number) but the TOTAL debt held by all people has tripled over ten years according to the article.
But for jobs requiring licensing degree revocation would effectively not let you work if a license is dependent on it.
Making easy money for bankers!
Again, though, only if the licensing body treated it that way. The only reason revoking my law degree would affect my license to practice is that the system assumes the only reasons that could happen are far worse than mere poverty and reflect directly on my character and fitness.
I think I may have been among the last few who was able to put themselves through college working a shitty menial job. Finished my BS back in 2000 and paid for it all myself working at a gas station and later at U-Haul. At the gas station I started working there in high school and was an assistant manager while in college then switched over to U-Haul because it paid better, went from $13.50/hr to $15/hr,. the only reason I got more I could install hitches and fill propane and a lot of people lack the basic mechanical knowledge or the safety sense. Since then college costs have gone up close to 4x and I could probably make the same amount now working those jobs but in nominal, not inflation adjusted, dollars so I can understand people not being able to afford to put themselves through college.
Time to offend someone
back in the late 90s we cut the massive Federal subsidies they were getting. Federal grant money was what made public universities affordable. When that got cut they shot up in price. There's an article on 538 I've linked to elsewhere to prove this.
Keep in mind none of this is true for private for profit Universities. Those guys were and always will be a bunch of crooks taking advantage of desperate kids who couldn't make the cut into public school. That's what makes the lie that rising costs are due to evil schools so insidious. It's a lie with just a little itty bit of truth as long as you ignore the public schools that are actually teaching kids. And as we all know the best kind of lie is one with a little bit of truth mixed in somewheres.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Higher education is free (as in beer) or very close to free in most of the countries which are "stealing your jobs" We don't have student loans to repay.
Demand cheaper education to your government! Make riots, like students in Chile did.
Free higher education, means not only that you don't have to pay student loans, it also means equal opportunities for poor people.
the colleges haven't raised their costs. We pulled the federal funds they were using to subsidize tuition. All you'll see if you let those loans discharge in bankruptcy is raising interest rates. The kids'll still pay them too because these days without a college degree or a lot of luck/connections you're spending the rest of your life at Walmart.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
to cover the defaults. You're basically unemployable without a degree these days thanks to all the oursourcing, H1-Bs, etc. They know this. If you're in the middle of a desert selling water you can bloody damn well charge what you want.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know the claim that a student could pay for an ivy league degree back then with a minimum wage job has been proven to be a complete lie? Utter bullshit.
Repeating it as a personal anecdote doesn't make it any more true.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, did they also account for inflation? one dollar now is less worth than it was 10 years ago..
My mother worked at jack-in-the-box to pay for her college tuition. Yeah that's right, a minimum wage job was able to pay for a bachelors degree in 1970ish. My grandparents stuffed extra cash under a mattress for a year and then had enough money to buy a house. NOTE: Grandpa was not rich, worked construction at an oil company.
The government federally insures/guarantees housing loans and ~10 years later houses are too expensive to pay for by saving up for a year. About another 10 years later and we have a massive crash in the housing market culminating in the year 2008, the banks got bailed out and many ordinary americans lost their house and where kicked to the street.
The government federally insures/guarantees student loans and ~10 years later tuition is too expensive to pay for with a minimum wage job. About 10 years later we should expect a crash in the student loan market. How do you think the government will react to the banks, federally-funded colleges and students after seeing what they did in the housing crises?
The future doesn't look bright. Hopefully we can all learn our lesson: The Government federally insuring/guaranteeing loans almost always causes terrible market distortions and should almost never be done
Nope it will sit at about that 75% for ever because that is about what it takes in per year compared to what it pays out. Also the SS trust fund runs out in 2034 but stops taking in more than it receives around 2020 (although a few years ago it paid out more than it took it). You can read page 6 of the annual trustees report and find out the highlights.
Time to offend someone
First, the definition of "college" has changed. It used to mean a 2-4 year, brick-and-mortar school for obtaining a bachelor's degree, master's degree, or doctorate. Now, it effectively means that any institution *or company* with an accreditation giving classes for people outside of the K-12 system. Your profit-profit, distance learning companies have facilitated a massive portion of this debt and provided a proportionally small ability for the debtors to actually pay the debt off.
Second, and happily, more people are actually going to college, so with any amount of individual debt, the numerical increase in students will increase the amount of total debt.
Third, prior to the recession of the mid-2000s, major universities saw themselves as competing for undergraduate students. Why? Because those students can bring in an almost-unlimited amount of Federal student loan money. My own university leased out massive amounts of land to a company to build beautiful (read: expensive) student housing to attract more and more undergraduates instead of historically standard (read: sufficient and cheap) student housing. So, colleges and universities expanded because they had a new influx of students and the government was willing to lend them whatever amount necessary for their education. And prices went up... QUICK.
In my first year at a major public research university in California in 2000, my annual tuition and fees cost $4,057. (That doesn't include things like books, housing, transportation, etc.) The cost in 1996 was $4,050. When I graduated, the annual tuition and fees and increased to $7,475-- an 84% increase in just a few years. This year, at the very same campus, tuition and fees cost $15,166 per year. That's almost a 375% increase over 17 years and it has everything to do with the unlimited access to federal student loans.
Lastly, consider that my numbers are just for tuition and fees. Housing costs skyrocketed in the same time. As did the cost of textbooks as well as has (for better or worse) the standard of living which includes smartphones and data plans.
For people aged 30 to 36, the analysis shows having any student debt significantly hurts your chances of buying a home
If you still have student debt 10 years after you graduated I wouldn't give you money for a house either.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
I've spoken to lots of WWII vets because of my history interests... and several had told me about their lives before the war. One of them told me about selling popcorn and lemonade near construction sites and busy streets (only in the summer!) and earning enough to pay for his 4 year degree. He didn't have to work during the year, and that earned him enough to live and attend classes during the year. The stand alone is nearly impossible with the zoning restrictions and laws in place, forget about affording college, books, food and a place to sleep during the year. Those gentleman never pretended it was all their own doing however. They freely acknowledged that people had climbed the golden ladder and pulled it up behind themselves.
This toxic lot reminds me why I moved to Australia. Here repayments only kick in as an automatic deduction when your salary exceeds 60k.
Amazingly, that is nothing, compared to the mind boggling stupidity of the English voter. Because they selected a bunch of total morons to rule them, their student debt now amounts to about £50,000, a year ago that would have been the equivalent of $75,000 although now, due to another mind boggling piece of English stupidity, Brexit, it is about $62,500. That is average/median debt,
Imbeciles.
Maybe you just didn't pick up on his innuendo as a child. Lots of college kids do whatever it takes to pay for college.
Indeed, good fucking luck.
They are also the generation that gave the vote to njiggers and let Islami immigrants take over the country.
This toxic lot reminds me why I moved to Australia. Here, uni repayments are affordably deducted only after the graduate starts earning over 60k a year. And there's no interest load.
ok, now, riddle me this. Let's say that everyone keeps getting older.... but the new people paying into SS don't make as much money....
What it pays out will continue to rise while what it takes in is in decline.
Also the SS trust fund runs out in 2034
And that doesn't sound... bad? (Oh, and that's the OASI funds. The DI funds run out in 2023).
Imagine if you had a big debt, and you're looking at your budget and you could only afford 75% of the INTEREST on the loan, the year-to-year running costs. Oh, hey, the prognosis is better then it was years ago. It's not 75%, only 81%.
To illustrate the magnitude of the 75-year actuarial deficit, consider that for the combined OASI and DI Trust Funds to remain fully solvent throughout the 75-year projection period: (1) revenues would have to increase by an amount equivalent to an immediate and permanent payroll tax rate increase of 2.58 percentage points to 14.98 percent, (2) scheduled benefits would have to be reduced by an amount equivalent to an immediate and permanent reduction of about 16 percent applied to all current and future beneficiaries, or about 19 percent if the reductions were applied only to those who become initially eligible for benefits in 2016 or later; or (3) some combination of these approaches would have to be adopted.
Harvard has a good Financial Aid Program https://college.harvard.edu/fi...
The students have to pay for the half billion Dollar football stadiums where they have a 12 person coaching staff that each gets at least a million a year. College athletics is the biggest money waster for colleges....and the fact that expenses for administration grew 300% the past decade while expenses for academia were flat or declining. Tuition pays for those who cannot speak in complete sentences, but look like fridge and can throw a ball far. And for those who did not get a degree, but got a job that makes getting a degree as expensive as possible. To put it bluntly, fire all the fancy coaches and ditch half of the administrative staff. Cuts tuition in half right there!
Maybe you shouldn't have gone to college in the first place, or, perhaps instead of going after a degree, that, pays 30-40 thousand dollars a year, which, when you were living off mommy and daddy sounded good, until you moved out on your own and have to put up with rent, car, food, expenses...you should have gone after a degree with a bigger potential, or gone to a 2 year trade school, or, SAVED UP the money instead of going INTO DEBT! Other than taxpayers who will probably be on the hook for this disaster, I have no pity on these idiots who go into HUGE debt, just to go to "big college". The media et al, gets all bent out of shape about "big oil", "big agriculture", "big pharma" but they OVERLOOK one of the biggest of the "bigs"....UNIVERSITIES. College presidents, deans, coaches making hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS of dollars a year, plus bonuses, and what not. Some professors don't even work a full week!
Seriously though, anywhere is cheaper and better than the U.S. I don't understand why people come over for an education.
Which many grads will happily sign up for within weeks of graduating, and pay off in 60 or 72 months. But asking them to pay of their student loans is some sort of crime against humanity.
My alma mater requires a 3.6 GPA. In practice my program required a 3.8 GPA and additional requirements. Only 6 graduated per year on average from that program. Still cost 50k with 19k per year in scholarships and grants. This was in a prestigious STEM program studying information assurance.
Nothing will reduce the cost of university. Nothing.
The trust fund running out in and of its self isn't a problem. The problem is the lack of revenue to the program and has been for quite some time and over the last 17 years every president has paid lip service to the underlying problem but has done nothing. As time marches on the problem is only going to get harder to solve. I was not commenting on how good or bad it was only pointing out that it looks like it isn't going to be perpetual decreases in payouts. What should be more worrying is some of the proposals that people have for fixing it. The one that gets me is the means testing one which would basically prevent those who managed to plan because they ended up paying in but then don't get anything. The people who would be hit by it won't be the wealthy but instead would be the middle class who still managed to save for their retirement and/or who happen to be getting a pension. So for someone like me who makes a good living (not rich by any means but comfortable) manages to live cheaply and has saved quite a bit and who's wife is a teacher and would be getting a teacher pension it basically means the wife and I get fucked royally. I get to shovel money into SS and the like but with means testing I will likely get told to piss off when I go to collect.
Time to offend someone
The problem is that higher ed. has a lock on the market. If they feel they will not get enough citizen students then they could easily fill the seats with foreign nationals.
These foreign students not only drive up tuition, they compete for grants further driving up the costs for citizens and thus tuition borrowing.
Sounds like outsourcing, right?
Also There was this implied promise that if you did the work and bore the expensive of a college degree that you would somehow be more successful.
Then they either moved manufacturing to slave labor totalitarian states and gave the rest of the work to outsourcing maggot wranglers.
$20K to $34K over 10 years averages 5.4% per year. According to College Board data on public 2yr, public 4yr, and private 4 yr colleges, tuition and fees increased from 2006-7 to 2016-17, on average, 4.5%, 5.2%, and 4.1%, respectively. (These are all compounded rates and the tuition/ fees are enrollment weighted)
So the extra debt is likely, due mostly to tuition increases, with public 4 yr colleges being the worst offenders.
FYI - Using simple averages debt went up 7% and tuition/fees 5.5%, 6.6%, and 5.0%. Still close, but compounding is more accurate, since this year's tuition increase is always based on last year's tuition.
Source for college board data is below, but you need to look at the current dollar tuition/fees from Table 4 in the excel data. The PDF and presentation are all corrected for general inflation while the original Fed presentation on student debt, that this article is based on, appears to use nominal dollars, i.e. dollars uncorrected for inflation.
https://trends.collegeboard.or... (See download box in upper right.)
Nope, PhD here, zero debt, graduated recently. If you actually go into a field that has value, tuition is paid by the school and you recieve a stipend to support yourself.
would you care to point to your reference for this proof? Because in (to pick a year at random) 1960 minimum wage was a buck, and harvard's tuition was $1520 per year (both from here). Certainly 1520 hours of work would not be trivial to wrap classes around, but it's still not even full time.