<p>KelsMom, it’s not exactly FUN qualifying for the IBR program. I doubt if you’d want to switch places with me…</p>
<p>No disrespect, dsc6, but it isn’t very FUN paying for other people’s educations when their debt racks up a much larger national debt, as this forgiveness program will do. While I don’t mind helping others meet their educational goals, this program means that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be left with an ever growing national debt that can never be repaid. Generations before have been made to repay their loans in full…why should future generations have the same requirements?</p>
<p>Nikki…there have always been loan forgiveness programs. Yes…this one seems to be more encompassing…but I NEVER paid a dime on my student loans and they were fully forgiven after my five years of teaching in a priority school district.</p>
<p>Actually more should be allowed to qualify for the IBR, or some equivalent needs to be formatted for the other forms of loans. </p>
<p>It would have a major positive effect on the potential recovery of our shattered economy, allowing the middle class professional mired in edudebt some money to send those resources to the housing, automotive and etc market. </p>
<p>Plus if the current system of allowing the corporate lenders to dictate policy, and have a stranglehold on a generation continues…the bubble which they propagated and only benefits them will implode. At that point its “Remember My Forgotten” man set to a postmodern tune. </p>
<p>And anyway, recent assessments of the corporate bailouts indicate the overall liabilities for the taxpayer might be some 14 trillion. Perhaps doing something to help out the middle classes might go further towards saving our nation than more party money for speculators, and predatory lenders. </p>
<p>But that might take some intelligence, and independence from the educational lenders lobby which our current government seems to be lacking…</p>
<p>Yes, thumper…but this one just about allows anyone with a student loan to get theirs forgiven and that, as a taxpayer is frightening. Stafford Loans were designed to help students get their education, with the ultimate goal that the repayment of one loan would help to fund the next loan. The larger the criteria for forgiveness, the less loans being repaid.</p>
<p>As I said, I don’t mind helping out the next generation, but I see some major problems arising with this forgiveness program…especially since I have seen some of the data released by the Department of Education to FAO’s. They plan on virtually encouraging all borrowers to apply for IBR so that most students will partake of loan forgiveness.</p>
<p>“While I don’t mind helping others meet their educational goals, this program means that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be left with an ever growing national debt that can never be repaid” </p>
<p>Actually much of that ever growing debt has been the product of military spending, and more recently the bailouts. Of that 4 some trillion (and the potential 14 trillion extended costs) virtually all of it has gone to corporate speculation and banks. As such loan forgiveness programs are comparative pocket change. And having these in a meaningful manner would allow the current generation to move its money to the consumer economy, which would in itself raise tax revenue. </p>
<p>Plus there is the tax money going to lenders subsidies, overbillings, liquidity payments, and the eventual bailout. Which have gone into the billions. </p>
<p>And in the long term, if something effective isn’t done to mediate the predatory aspects of student debt, there will be trouble. This condition is inherently economically and socially destabilizing. Already I see amongst students a unease about education and the system it supports, which will only worsen if nothing is done to mitigate the student debt issue. These detrimental conditions are why so few countries have emulated the American model of educational funding. They know it is a toxic and nonfunctional variant of ‘trickle down’ theory.</p>
<p>“Yes, thumper…but this one just about allows anyone with a student loan to get theirs forgiven and that, as a taxpayer is frightening.” </p>
<p>Actually the upcoming implosion of a 580 billion dollar student debt/credit bubble is more frightening. Especially since it was produced by a system of privatizing profits and socializing risks…which never should have existed in the first place.</p>
<p>dsc6, my income probably WOULD qualify me for the IBR. As one who has lived within my means all my life … choosing a school I could afford rather than one of the elite schools I could have attended … I am not overly sympathetic to those who choose to borrow to the point that it becomes impossible to repay. I understand that borrowing to finance an education is often a necessity. I just think that the unfettered borrowing that goes on is ridiculous. Students on this forum routinely ask about how they can borrow $20,000 or more a year (in addition to the student loans the school offered them). There ARE less expensive alternatives. I have had to deny Stafford loans for students who are at their aggregate undergrad loan limit ($57,500) and are still classified as freshmen (they school-hop and degree-hop for years). At some point, it’s time to just get a job.</p>
<p>“I am not overly sympathetic to those who choose to borrow to the point that it becomes impossible to repay.” </p>
<p>Yes the unfettered borrowing is a problem. But of deeper import, and much less coverage is the means by which what had been a reasonable student debt, escalates into impossibility. The insane fees, interest capitalization, resale and enhancement of fees, non timely crediting of payments and etc are what has vexed many more recent students. Under those conditions even those who pay, get trapped. Which is inevitable in a system which degraded into little more than government sponsored usury. </p>
<p>Those who obtained and payed student loans before the educational lending lobby let the tigers out often don’t know how bad the situation has become. </p>
<p>And when the correlative problem of 6%+ yearly tuition increases is brought into the picture very soon the overall situation escalates into impossibilities. And that’s even without the types on college confidential who’d borrow Bolivia’s GDP to go to some dream school. </p>
<p>And state schools are not necessarily the way out, currently I teach for one and so know the issues therein. Predominant of which is that the debt ratios to family incomes, are unsustainable for the populations within these schools. And the situation is worsened when corporate lenders co-opt school financial aid offices, which has happened at two of the schools in my region. So yes there are less expensive alternatives, but for the populations these schools have traditionally served the debt ratio has long since gone past the point of reason. </p>
<p>As far as just getting a job, no dispute on the intent. But unlike every other form of debt in the US, educational lenders have no statute of limitations on collections, FTC regulations on harassment are compromised, and even such as social security and disabilities have been attached. So for a student whose been sold down the river by his or her school and its favorite lenders, its improbable they will be able to get any meaningful job. Those who are debt compromised are poor candidates for entry level employment. The potential employers simply do not want to have the agents for the lenders and guarantee agencies calling their desks every half hour, nor can they deal with the other problems brought up by a lending system run mad. </p>
<p>The unfortunate fact is our educational lending system is very, very sick and its becoming socially toxic. So the solutions which worked for many in the past, are no longer viable for many of our current students and families. </p>
<p>In some regards the current IBR program is laudable, but it is also a half measure towards reforming an educational lending system which has actually become a detriment to our nation. Professor Galbraith once said “the function of the poor in the middle ages was to provide for the rich”. In a perverse sense that’s what we have done with our educational lending system. The function of the middle classes is to provide billions for the care and feeding of a parasitic educational lending system. And obviously in regards to the conceptual persona of the function of education, and the preservation of the middle classes it is a dichotomy which cannot be reconciled.</p>
<p>This will increase the cost of college for (and the taxes of) those already getting soaked on tuition. We’re paying full boat tuition and our son can’t even get a deferred student loan. The only way he would qualify is if he were emancipated. What is the logic there?</p>
<p>There’s very little logic inherent to the whole system. For example when the US transitioned over to the profit based loan model, there was a direct correlation to the 6% yearly increases in tuition.
Under the older system wherein grants (Pell, GI Bill etc) and direct support for academe by government was the dominant method, tuition was reasonable. Especially when compared to familial incomes.
In part this was because the older system, by its nature, assured a greater accountability by academe. The funding was more limited, and governmental over sight was more obvious.
And the money which goes to socializing the risk for these lenders (and it yearly is in the multi-billions) could have gone to direct support of students and colleges. On the whole its a system, or scam, of which Tweed, Vanderbilt, Fisk, or Capone would have been envious. The middle class pays for it, but at the same time they cannot pay enough to get out of it. </p>
<p>The loan based system co-opted the workable older system, and neither academe or the lenders have any genuine interest in containing costs. The lenders by privatizing profits and socializing risks, benefit from escalations in tuition. The colleges, having sold their soul (and the students and families) to the lending based system have no impetus to affordability. The real consequences of their excesses are transferred to students and their families. Its a sign the loan document, come to our glitzy school, and the devil may take what happens after. </p>
<p>Your son, alas is caught up in a morally bankrupt and rigged system…</p>
<p>Likely so, one of the aspects of the corporate lenders paradise is that is has been pure hades on the public service professions. </p>
<p>Academe for example, many profs have terminals, but end up sending so much of their income to these predatory companies that it is rapidly becoming an idiots game to even consider collegiate service. And the moral problem is that many of us teaching in academe want out, because some schools have become little more than shills for these companies. Its a impossible moral conundrum to desire to teach and serve, knowing that your system is going to serve up those same students to abusive debts operated by incredibly powerful corporations. </p>
<p>And for those lost souls who are adjuncts with terminals, well they’ve already been consigned to economic ruin. The capitalization of interest on deferments, and enhanced fees, and other loan sharking tricks (in all but name loan sharking hasn’t been condoned by lobbyists, congress, the USDOE, yet…) have really done the adjunct population over and under. </p>
<p>NEA has commented on the problem, they’re worried about losing schoolteachers to the debt scams. </p>
<p>So its good the administration has done some motion to cleaning up this mess, with limited forgiveness and consolidation programs. But much more will have to be done, and soon, before the combination of exploitative educational debt combines with our current economic depression…and sends an entire generation of educated people into a economic and social oblivion. </p>
<p>Problem is the lobby pressure is so intense to preserve this beast of a system, and many in DC are entranced with that lobby money, that its a unfortunate possibility that reforms may be too limited and too late. Many of the politicos have no sense of the desperation caused by this misguided and immoral educational lending system nor of the hatred which it is viewed, and little inkling of how socially and economically destructive it has become.</p>