<p>bchan1…Seriously…“the marketing department of major banks”? We’ve gotten mailings ad nauseum from universities across the country, but we haven’t gotten ONE SINGLE mailing from a bank trying to entice us to come borrow their money.</p>
<p>As comedian Ron White says…“you can’t fix stupid”. As long as uninformed and gullible students and parents walk WILLINGLY into a bank while bending over and grabbing their ankles I will not have any sympathy for them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with borrowing WITHIN YOUR LIMITS to help fund your children’s education, but people who exceed their means when there are affordable options which they KNOWINGLY bypass are simply foolish.</p>
<p>Please stop shovelling these loads of garbage that somehow people are “tricked” into borrowing unmanageable sums of money. As I said earlier, the only “protection” the borrower needs is from themselves. Once a sucker always a sucker, and if you fall for the slick marketing plan of a particular university and overextend yourself…shame on you. No one else…just YOU.</p>
<p>pepper…Of course I know what’s coming. The bubble has already formed, and was forming long before the bankruptcy laws changed in 2005. The universities saw an opportunity to start raising costs an an incredibly increased rate because they saw the need for a bachelor’s degree becoming more necessary. It wasn’t the banks that somehow coerced the universities into raising their rates.</p>
<p>As I asked the bleeding hearts earlier…what is their proposed solution? Are you going to allow all the idiots that INTENTIONALLY borrowed beyond their means and can’t repay to discharge their debt? What a great idea!! Let’s continue to reward bad behavior in this country. Wait…let’s have the government bail out these people. No wait a minute…that means more smart taxpayers who showed restraint and didn’t borrow beyond their means footing the bill for stupid people…that can’t be right can it?</p>
<p>Give me a freaking break. The laws do not need to be changed. The current laws may “protect the banks” for liberals who choose to look at it that way. In my mind they’re attempting to protect the rest of us from having to absorb the cost of the irresponsible borrowers.</p>
<p>Woah wolverine-I hear you and I know you know what’s coming-I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.</p>
<p>I don’t trust the banks anymore than I trust the government or borrowers.</p>
<p>Until responsible behavior in this country is actually not punished-and I don’t even want to suggest rewarding it-just not punishing it-is anything really going to change?</p>
<p>I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask why loans in financial aid packages are shown as aid. </p>
<p>In the end though it is my responsibility to educate my children about finances. </p>
<p>I only want to be able to tell him that in real life, just as in this house, there will be a price for irresponsible behavior. I can’t tell him that right now.</p>
<p>^Well said Pepper. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell others in this thread. All actors in this mess share the blame, but the borrower has the capability to avoid it before it ever starts. I wish more parents would take the time to educate themselves and their children about responsible money management, not just in the case of student loans but in every aspect of adulthood.</p>
<p>With the bankruptcy laws as is the only people hurt by irresponsible borrowing are the families that borrowed the money (2 generations at least since the parents and child are both on the hook). Making the loans dischargeable would allow for the same abuse of the system that drove the changes to the laws in the first place. A government bailout would put the burden on other taxpayers. Neither of those solutions is acceptable in my opinion. Sorry these people chose poorly, but why should anyone but themselves have to pay the price for their folly?</p>
<p>FA packages and how they’re presented is a seperate matter, but I agree with you about that. Don’t call a loan “aid”. The school isn’t loaning me the money, they’re simply telling me how much I need to cover. Slick marketing on their part for sure, but as long as people continue to fall for it…nothing will change.</p>
<p>Pepper, I agree with you. The only ones benefiting from the current system are the banks and the colleges. The rest of us will be paing for a bailout. </p>
<p>Wolverine, doesnt it bother you that all of us will be stuck paying for a bailout, even those who didnt borrow?</p>
<p>kayf…Under the current system, how will the rest of us be paying? Right now, irresponsible borrowers are stuck with the consequences of their foolishness. If they have to declare an individual bankruptcy, there is no impact to you or me or any other taxpayer. The only thing that would cost “the rest of us” is if the government for whatever reason decides to step in and bailout these people, and I’m totally opposed to that. Right now the only cost to everyone else is the ridiculously high rates the universities charge for their educational product, and everyone agrees that they need to change. But a government bailout of foolish people isn’t going to bring the rates down, and as I pointed out earlier rates were increasing rapidly before any bankruptcy laws were changed. If the changes to the law didn’t cause the rate increases, why would you assume that changing them back (which would allow for the same prior abuse that existed) will bring the rates down?</p>
<p>You can tell from my posts that I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility. Others here want to claim this is all a product of irresponsible lending. Why is it the banks responsibility to tell me what I can or can’t afford? Do the banks benefit from the current system? Absolutely, but only because foolish people are allowing themselves to be screwed.</p>
<p>It is a personal choice whether to jump into loans for your kid’s education. It is a personal choice whether to ‘advise’ your kid to choose a less-expensive school. More power to the people that can pay full boat with available funds. For both of my D’s, I paid more than the cheapest choice, but steered them away upfront from schools that they might have liked but I knew no way in Hades we were going to be able to afford.</p>
<p>I do, however, have a problem with private institutions that figure COA more or less strictly by adjusted gross income of the parents. As I’ve said, for real, true hardship cases–that’s OK. But anything more than that smacks of redistribution of wealth.</p>
<p>Can you tell I saw ‘Atlas Shrugged–Part 1’ over the weekend? MUCH better than the reviews.</p>
<p>jnm123…You did exactly what every parent in this country should feel responsible to do…get their children the best education that their family can AFFORD. That doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest option, but so many people think they have to send their kids (I love whoever came up with the term “snowflake” ) to the “best” school they get accepted to. It’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>The quality and value of the education received from local and state universities and community colleges is unfairly degraded and underestimated in this country, and many here on CC are guilty of “ranking bias”. I think middle class families are pretty much being priced out of attending major public and private universities unless they qualify for major merit scholarships. While that’s a shame and something that needs to change, there are more affordable (but less attractive) choices that these families have. When more families start taking these choices we MIGHT see the market start to self-adjust.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you what, some of the community colleges around the Chicago area–College of Lake County and Harper College in particular–are a more viable alternative than ever before. Most of the credits transfer if the student wants to attend a university down the line. Enrollment at both those colleges have had double-digit increases for the past 3 years. That tells you something’s happening, good for them.</p>
<p>^Amen. I’ve agreed with almost nothing that the current Washington administration is pushing, but encouraging and supporting individuals who attend community colleges is the one thing I liked.</p>
<p>You say - “kayf…Under the current system, how will the rest of us be paying? Right now, irresponsible borrowers are stuck with the consequences of their foolishness. If they have to declare an individual bankruptcy, there is no impact to you or me or any other taxpayer. The only thing that would cost “the rest of us” is if the government for whatever reason decides to step in and bailout these people, and I’m totally opposed to that”</p>
<p>Right now, borrowers can not declare BK for student loans. Eventually, just as with home mortgages, the govt will step in with plans to bail them out. There are no other choices. Telling students to just say no to excessive loans wont work. The answer is to tell it to banks. The only way I know to send a message to banks is through change to BK law. IMHO, no one other than a banker/college employee should support the current system. Everyone else is just putting their head in the sand.</p>
<p>kayf…Of course there are other choices. It is not the government’s responsibility to step in and bailout individuals (or major corporations for that matter) just because they find themselves in an untenable situation. I feel badly for individuals who have been caught up in the mortgage crisis only because they lost their jobs as a result of the economic recession. I don’t feel one bit of pity or sympathy for idiots who bought more house than they could conceivably afford and/or took an ARM without having the first clue what the implications were, or worst of all took mortgages without ever having any intention of paying. If you don’t think these types of people make up a HUGE portion of those caught by the mortgage bubble, you are the one with your head in the sand.</p>
<p>To what level do we need to take this “people are obviously too stupid to protect themselves” mentality? What other deep dark secrets are out there that innocent, unsuspecting consumers are unaware of? I’m so fricking tired of people blaming their own bad choices on someone else. If you choose to smoke, or drink, or eat crappy food…whatever the case may be…have at it. But don’t act surprised and want someone to bail you out from the consequences that come from it.</p>
<p>You seem to think that it’s inevitable that the government “has to” step in and do something. No…they don’t. And if the anger and resentment from this last round of bailouts is any indication, I’m hopeful that they won’t. Maybe when the families whose children are coming up on college age see the financial ruin that all the current sufferers have PUT THEMSELVES INTO they’ll think twice before signing. “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it”…I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before.</p>
<p>It will be new for the government to step in and forgive school loans. Many of my generation had their college loan paybacks squeezed out of them. That’s why PLUS came into being with parents being held on the spot as the costs went up so high. Now the parents’ credit and resources can be tapped if payback is not made. The government was squeezing a lot of stones for a while trying to get broke students right out of college to pay back their loans. Had to wait a lot of years to get them, but get them they did for the most part. </p>
<p>But these school loan numbers scare me. Some of them are higher than mortgage amounts.</p>
<p>As I read the info regarding this public service loan forgiveness, it seems to only apply to Federal student loans and the individual has to have worked in public service for 10 years and have made “qualifying” payments during those years before the loans are forgiven. If Stafford loans max out somewhere around $27K-ish and they’ve supposedly been paying on them for 10 years…how much can (or should) be left to forgive? I’ll be curious to see if there will be any info available down the road as to how much people are actually trying to get paid off versus potentially “holding back” or “min-running” the payments for 10 years to get out of part of their responsibility.</p>
<p>D1 is in med school, and members of her 1st year class have already been had seminars on doing public service in low-income areas or military service in return for some or all forgiveness of loans. Don’t think there’s anything in the world wrong with this, although it’ll be her decision when the time comes.</p>
<p>I WILL have a big problem, however, if the student loan problem gets so bad that defaulters get bailed out by the government. Can’t imagine that happening, but you never know I suppose. And I don’t give a crud whether I have the wherewithal to pay off our Parent PLUS loans or not, but if it happens, I want some of that too. I can play stupid with the best of 'em. :)</p>
) to the “best” school they get accepted to. It’s ridiculous.</p>