<p>There are a lot of facts missing. Such as, can the now-cancer-free debtor work now? If so, why should her student loans be discharged? Presumably, her bankruptcy filing wiped out all of her outstanding medical bills and other debts. If she is permanently disabled, that is one thing, but that is not presented as the case here.</p>
<p>Another debtor profiled is a parent. So that means the “generational theft” argument doesn’t apply to her.</p>
<p>According to folks I knew who went to college in the '50s and early '60s, one didn’t necessarily need perfect GPAs/SATs. </p>
<p>Some public universities like CUNY and some midwest flagships were actually free or exceedingly nominal tuition for state residents in that period due to greater levels of government support for higher education at all levels. </p>
<p>Granted, the “price” of that was either one needed exceedingly high academic stats…not perfect for admission as was the case with CUNY* before 1969 or it was open admission for all in-state residents, but the public college concerned employed a college-wide weedout policy where half or sometimes more of incoming freshmen were weeded out by the end of sophomore year. </p>
<p>Even in the admittedly harsher latter case, since tuition was free or exceedingly nominal…the flunked out student was just out the time expended and could move on without large educational debt. </p>
<p>Then again, this was offset by more widespread societal discrimination in the same period where folks could be excluded on the basis of race, gender, or other factors that would be illegal and socially unacceptable by today’s standards. </p>
<ul>
<li>Read several local NYC newspapers stating one needed an 86-88 high school average to meet the minimum cutoff. Granted, I heard it was much harder to attain that back then.</li>
</ul>
<p>I think all of those questions have been asked and answered a million times. There are valid arguments on both sides, and in my mind it comes down to how much do we want the government to limit peoples’ choices when it comes to making economic decisions?</p>
<p>And the so-called article is full of the author’s pov. For example, </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d be shocked if the Judges on the 8th Circuit would agree that the ECC helped them “shape” their decision. </p>
<p>(Sorry, but that is just preposterous to me on its face. Yes, ECC made a legal argument to which the 8th Circuit agreed. They obviously had a choice to decide for the plaintiff but chose not to. Alternatively, the plaintiff could have appealed to the Supremes.)</p>
<p>But the law for undue hardship discharge is three part, and the third part reads:<br>
“…(3) that the debtor has made good faith efforts to repay the loans.” </p>
<p>It does seem logical to me that such clause includes using a payment plan, and debt elimination after xx years, which the Feds clearly offer. Indeed, the Ed Dept is pushing IBR now more than ever. But even if my logic is whack, the 8th Circuit seems to think it makes sense. Is that ‘shaping’ a court decision? Seriously?</p>
<p>Then there will be qualifications to get student loans, and the interest rate won’t be at 3.6%, and 17 year olds with NO assets will not qualify. My daughter will be 17 when she’s allow to sign her first set of loan papers (I’m not allowing that) and no bank, without a guaranty of repayment by the government, would or should approve such a loan to such an unqualified borrower. What is her qualification? That she has a signature? Even for an auto loan with a 25% interest rate you have to show some kind of income. Credit cards require a security deposit or a credit rating or a job. Even medical bills are usually incurred after a plan is set up.</p>
<p>I see the student loan articles every day and while there are a few cases where forgiveness is requested after a death or a student or cancer or full disability but the overwhelming number of cases are of situations where the student just borrowed too much to go to NYU or Berkeley or Miami and the theater degree or art history diploma is just not paying off. The students don’t make a plan to pay, the parents who signed for Plus loans are unhappy that their son or daughter can’t afford to pay his own loan, never mind the parents’ Plus loan.</p>
<p>I didn’t have any loans for college at my state university. I wanted to go to Berkeley but I didn’t have the money so I went to the school I could afford. I worked. My parents paid a little. I didn’t get to go home for all breaks and I didn’t study abroad (although my sister did after waiting tables for 2 years). I didn’t have a car and took a bus to work all summer and to my internship during my final semester. I don’t see any of these people who claim they were deceived into taking $100k in loans making these same sacrifices. They took the loans and spent the money. Now they need to repay the loans.</p>
<p>My sister did it in 1973, I started in 76. My sister was a great student, NMF, and got nothing. She went to Middlebury for only one year because it cost $5000. My father made about $25k/yr in those days, and he had 5 other kids who really liked eating and needed clothing. I know my parents privately borrowed the $5k and struggled for years to pay it back. My sister switched to a state school, my brother went to a state school, as did I, and the three brothers that followed. Lesson learned - we couldn’t afford big names schools but were well educated and happy at state schools</p>
<p>It is not realistic to pay a high percentage of the family income to tuition, especially if there are other choices. Didn’t make sense in 1973, doesn’t make sense now. But if someone makes the decision to borrow the money, they should pay it back. </p>
<p>My father went to UMass when it was practically free. His brother, 6 years later, had a scholarship and his mother went to work so he could go to Williams. The only schools that were ever ‘practically free’ were publics, and many on CC poohpooh publics because they aren’t the best, so even if they were free, would anyone go to one? There are countries where education is still free, but it is mostly for the elite classes or those students who score the highest on tests after high school. All others are shut out without a chance.</p>
<p>Before 1969, the CUNY system of public colleges…especially CCNY were regarded every bit as elite and then some by many folks, especially in the NYC/NE area. Granted, that also made admission exceedingly competitive especially considering it was free for city residents. </p>
<p>However, most of the best and brightest students who would have attended CUNY/CCNY before '69 ended up going elsewhere due to the botched introduction of open admission policies in 1969, the city’s deteriorating economic condition which eventually eliminated the free tuition for city residents in 1975, topflight Profs leaving because they felt they didn’t sign up to teach remedial courses for un/underprepared students who came in after '69, and the Ivies/private NE elite colleges no longer employing discriminatory admissions against racial/ethnic/lower SES classes. </p>
<p>Also, UWisc-Madison, Berkeley, and many other state flagships were widely respected not only domestically, but also internationally. To this day, my Chinese-born father still wonders why I never applied to UWisc-Madison as he heard about its great reputation since he was a student back in China/Taiwan during the late '40s and '50s.</p>
<p>Sounds familiar. We were only “allowed” to go to college within driving distance since we could live at home and commute. I distinctly remember my father (who made a respectable income) tell my mother we could not move to the “it neighborhood” because they had 6 kids to put through college.</p>
<p>One of my brothers graduated valedictorian from a very competative private HS and wanted to “go away” to college. My dad told him UCLA was was perfectly acceptable and he could commute (he later went to medical school). No student loans were ever taken out for any of us. Funny thing is, we(all my siblings) all “let” our kids go away to college because society told us we should. I’m beginning to realize it isn’t society, it’s the ease of getting student loans and the comfort level many Americans have with debt. We also want to make sure our children aren’t being held back by anything.</p>
<p>Student loans need to be taken very seriously and colleges need to ensure that students are getting their money’s worth. I think the pendulum is swinging back towards fiscal responsibility and only biting off what we can reasonably chew. Colleges need to go back to providing the basics and leaving the country club accommodations to those that truly can afford it.</p>
<p>Sounds familiar. We were only “allowed” to go to college within driving distance since we could live at home and commute. I distinctly remember my father (who made a respectable income) tell my mother we could not move to the “it neighborhood” because they had 6 kids to put through college.</p>
<p>One of my brothers graduated valedictorian from a very competative private HS and wanted to “go away” to college. My dad told him UCLA was was perfectly acceptable and he could commute (he later went to medical school). No student loans were ever taken out for any of us. Funny thing is, we(all my siblings) all “let” our kids go away to college because society told us we should. I’m beginning to realize it isn’t society, it’s the ease of getting student loans and the comfort level many Americans have with debt. We also want to make sure our children aren’t being held back by anything.</p>
<p>Student loans need to be taken very seriously and colleges need to ensure that students are getting their money’s worth. I think the pendulum is swinging back towards fiscal responsibility and only biting off what we can reasonably chew. Colleges need to go back to providing the basics and leaving the country club accommodations to those that truly can afford it.</p>
<p>I hear parents on this thread talking about their own college experiences from eons ago. I think it’s preposterous to compare your situation from the 1970s to the present day. It’s comparing apples to oranges. Back then, institutional aid and grants made up the majority of financial aid packages for incoming college students. Today, it is student loans that make up the majority of financial aid packages. Moreover, tuition kept up with inflation back in the 1970s. Today, tuition has surpassed inflation to the point that not even the Pell Grant ($5,500) can fully cover the first year of tuition. More low- and middle-income families are being burdened with cumbersome student loan debt before the child can become ready for the workforce. The cost of housing, food/groceries, and transportation (with gasoline) consumes most entry-level workers’ monthly paychecks (again, wages and salaries have not kept up with inflation). In most places, a part-time job nowadays cannot cover a semester’s worth of tuition (in contrast, plenty of part-time work in the 1970s could have covered a year or more of tuition). Parents should stop preaching the silly “personal responsibility” mantra because times have changed. If nothing is done to keep tuition costs under control and reform the financial aid system, the bubble will burst before we know it.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of anyone going broke because they got cancer. I’ve heard of people going broke because they decided to finance expensive cancer treatments with money they don’t have.</p>
<p>You’re right, vlad. How dare anyone try to get treatment. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Btw, even those most basic treatments for cancer (hell, not even a treatment, just something to kill the pain while you die) can send people into bankruptcy. </p>
<p>The point still stands that we’re about the only developed country where you can go broke for <em>gasp</em> using even BASIC procedures to get better.</p>
<p>Romani, whether or not healthcare for all should be provided by taxes (single payer) is a different discussion. But don’t say that people are going bankrupt for things they can’t control, like getting cancer. It’s a choice that people make, to take treatment that they can’t afford (whether that treatment is “basic” or not) or to forgo treatment. It makes sense to be upset that people die from cancer because they can’t afford treatment, it doesn’t make much sense to be upset that people go bankrupt because they spent money they couldn’t afford to spend.</p>
<p>I see absolutely no reason why this particular debt is not dischargeable when corporate debt is. So if I have to pay despite hard and unforeseeable circumstances, then so do companies.</p>
<p>First, no slavery. A lender can’t repossess your person or your thinking ability.
Second, wide-spread, highly available, low-cost loans to potentially very high risk borrowers. </p>
<p>People haven’t been able to come up with a way to satisfy both of those without making the debt non-dischargeable. As soon as we can come up with something better we’ll do that instead. Until then, we’re stuck with what we got.</p>
<p>But I think this is the point that all us “silly” parents are trying to make. Times have changed because we have allowed them to change. Maybe, if we all didnt buy into college costing $50,000 per year, it wouldn’t. If there weren’t student loans available (in amounts beyond what can reasonably be paid back) there wouldn’t be as many families willing to support these institutions. They would be forced to keep their tuition costs under control.</p>
<p>^^Exactly. It’s those preaching no/little responsibility is what causes bubbles in the first place!</p>
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</p>
<p>There is a HUGE difference between corp bond debt – backed by investors who choose to risk their own money for a higher yield – and federal educ loans which are backed by US taxpayers. Secondly, corp bond debt parents is backed by the full assets and profits of the Corporation; education loans are backed by the POSSIBLE future incomes of 18 year-olds, some of whom have never worked a day in their lives.</p>