30% of America's Student Loan Borrowers Can't Keep Up After Six Years (cnbc.com)

The IRS recently ruled that under some circumstances employers can link their 401(k) matching contributions to the amount of an employee's student loan repayments -- making it easier for recent graduates to take advantage of this employer benefit. But that's one spot of good news in a sea of bad, according to one anonymous Slashdot reader: Two new articles criticize America's student loan policies (under both the Obama and Trump administrations). CNBC cites reports that within six years, more than 15% of student borrowers had officially defaulted, while 10% more had stopped making payments and another 4.8% were at least 90 days late. And for-profit colleges fared even worse, where nearly 25% of graduates defaulted, and a total of 44% faced "some form of loan distress."

These trends were masked by Department of Education reports which stopped tracking repayment rates after just three years (reporting defaults rates of just 10%), according to Ben Miller, senior director for post-secondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "Official statistics present a relatively rosy picture of student debt. But looking at outcomes over more time and in greater detail shows that hundreds of thousands more borrowers from each cohort face troubles repaying."

Comments

Re: Let's talk about debt and committment

[BlueStrat]

So fix the actual problem

The "actual problem" is one nobody here even wants to admit exists.

It's government guaranteed/backed student loans. Colleges and universities have every economic motivation under such a system to raise tuition to ridiculous extremes as the current reality has born out.

You end up with people who should not have gone to college saddled with debt they cannot hope to ever repay. Even those for whom a college education would otherwise be a good choice are saddled with enormous debt they'll be repaying for a significant fraction of their lives.

Get the government out of the student loan business.

Strat

No, for what I wish was the last time, that's not

[rsilvergun]

the problem. College was _always_ this expensive. We haven't done anything radical to colleges. The dorms aren't that nice. There's a few that are and they're for the rich kids. You pay extra to get into them, there's fewer of them and most kids pay for the cheap dorm or off campus living (or with their folks). I'm putting a kid through college right now.

Public Universities are _public_. They don't operate on supply and demand. They don't raise prices just because they can. Again, I'm putting a kid through college and saw this first hand. My kid's program had half as many slots as qualified (GPU > 3.8) applicants. They used interviews, sports and volunteer activities to sort out who got in (no, they did not use skin color). If it was supply & demand they'd have just raised tuition unit they only had the # of applicants for slots. Like you do for a Britney Spears concert or a sports game.

What made the price of college sky rocket was Clinton & Bush slashed federal funding. Again, college was _always_ expensive. You didn't notice because 70-80% of the cost was paid by the federal government. The Mega Corps allowed this because they needed a trained workforce. Now that they've got H1-Bs and outsourcing they don't need us anymore; and they wanted those tax dollars back. So they bought off Congress & the last several presidents for tax cuts and had funding slashed. You and your children have been made obsolete.

Go drag your ass down to your local University and pull up some college newspapers on microfiche from the late 90s/early 2000s. You'll find story after story, all meticulously researched by college economics professors, discussion this and how loans would start cropping up leading to a debt crisis. What you will _not_ find is any discussion of this in the regular newspapers (outside of a few left wing rags). Our mass media is owned by billionaires and they squashed these stories.