<p>crizello—You had me until your final sentence. Unless a student (and/or their family) “has some skin in the game”, higher education is at risk for being watered down…And what’s wrong with vocational education? Entrepreneurship? Guaranteed college education is not the be-all and end-all.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is what I think needs to happen.</p>
<p>I am still paying student loans and I am 56 years old.</p>
<p>I borrowed for undergraduate, MBA, law degree, and graduate law degree.</p>
<p>But I am paying it back.</p>
<p>Yes it is burdensome.</p>
<p>But I don’t expect the taxpayers of this country to bail me out.</p>
<p>And I CERTAINLY don’t think a 25 year kid should have his loans forgiven. He will be in the work force for another FORTY YEARS.</p>
<p>You can even tie his loan payment to the amount of his taxable income. That would be fine with me. </p>
<p>But those asking for, or should I say, DEMANDING, total loan forgiveness, are simply freeloaders, plain and simple. If you borrow money, and don’t pay it back, or at least try to pay it back slowly over time, then basically, you have STOLEN THE MONEY. </p>
<p>Not only that, but they are selfish freeloaders, because the more loans that are defaulted on, the less likely that the government will make student loans to today’s students.</p>
<p>Hmmmmm… </p>
<p>it seems to me those Wall Street protestors have more in common with the Wall Street bankers than they might care to admit !!!.</p>
<p>Free college? Never going to happen or it’s not going to happen for the sleep away kids who require a modern gym and franchise food courts to be happy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This.</p>
<p>Or, the pell should cover the cost of a state university education as it did when it was invented. State education should be stat based admittance and available to all who qualify, without debt.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, except that the protestors will go home with nothing when the snow starts and the bankers will continue to find ways to get the government to gaurantee their interest bearing loans.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, I’m talking about an undergraduate degree. The rest of it? The government should simply not gaurantee. The banks can do their due diligence on those loans and charge the interest they charge based on the risk model.</p>
<p>Mom of Three:</p>
<p>Good post.</p>
<p>I saw someone on CC yesterday who was going to University of Central Florida, who was talking about the amazing new gym they have. </p>
<p>And I don’t know if it is true or not, but supposedly they have a heated sidewalk at Penn State.</p>
<p>And some colleges have gorgeous dorms that are more akin to luxury apartments.</p>
<p>Time for America to live within its means. </p>
<p>When I was a kid, the kids getting grants were going on ski weekends to Colorado, and Spring Break in Cancun, while I worked during the holidays to make a little money towards paying for school.</p>
<p>Yes, and administrator salaries and pensions which should make anyone involved with a “non-profit” horrified.</p>
<p>Subsidize…how exactly do you plan to have that happen? Where exactly do you expect that funding to come from? Tax dollars? If so, whose tax dollars? Are you going to ask taxpayers with no children, or those whose children won’t attend college, or are already past college age to pay as well?</p>
<p>Get serious people. The growing sense of entitlement in this country is truly getting pathetic. Even with the cost structure of higher education completely out of control, there are still affordable alternative for nearly everyone in this country. It may not be the school that you WANT…but since when is everyone entitled to everything they WANT???</p>
<p>In my personal opinion, perhaps the money we put into NATO would be better used educating our population. For example, 1.5 billion spent on an undeclared war on Libya? Or, the @ 60% or so we fund the IMF, a part of that might be spent on educating our population, or the tarrif we could add to the goods brought back into the country by US companies who took the manufacturing jobs overseas so that everyone would need an eduction? I don’t know…</p>
<p>I think there are lots of places where we could find the money. Also, and just to be clear, the cost of an education could come waaayyyyy down, much like the housing market, and there could definitely be caps on adminstrator pay…at state schools. Just to start with.</p>
<p>Poetgirl, I agree with everything you’ve said. Education in your state, where you pay taxes should be free or affordable for everyone without loans. College education has gone up by a higher amount than practically anything- 350+% over the last 10 or 20 years. That is crazy. I put myself through our state flagship by working with 2 small children and taking a small loan. My S goes to a school 18 hours away because it was affordable and a fantastic place. Would it have been easier to be close to home yes, but we would have had to borrow a lot which we preferred not to do.
Do I begrudge anyone because they might get a little break here? NO. Look outside, times are incredibly tough, there are no jobs. No one is asking for total forgiveness they are asking to cap the payments based upon income and end the payments after 20 years(instead of the 25 it is now). How is that forgiveness?</p>
<p>We can bail out banks, give corporations tax breaks, but we can’t help some of these kids who are facing mountains of debt? Scholarships or free education based upon income is ok, but a little help based upon income after you graduate is so wrong? </p>
<p>I clicked on this thread expecting to hear “thank goodness” or “it’s about time” based upon some of the other threads on CC about the terrible debt loads these students are carrying, but instead I hear- “I went without, I saved, if I can do it everybody can, no one should get a break”.</p>
<p>And I fail to see how one is “penalized” for paying your traffic tickets on time, if others are offered amnesty later? What penalty are you facing? It is done because it is a win-win- states or gov’t collect $$ they might not otherwise and they eliminate the cost of collection.</p>
<p>Can we please stop being dramatic and stop ignoring the facts? Please provide some sources and statistics for the assertions of “terrible debt loads these students are carrying.”</p>
<p>[Student</a> loan debt on the rise - Oct. 22, 2010](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/22/pf/college/student_loan_debt/index.htm]Student”>http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/22/pf/college/student_loan_debt/index.htm)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/01/student-loan-financial-aid-opinions-colleges-10-debt.html[/url]”>http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/01/student-loan-financial-aid-opinions-colleges-10-debt.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“Help Center - The Arizona Republic”>Help Center - The Arizona Republic;
<p>I could go on and on, but I don’t want to seem sarcastic or dramatic or anything like that. ;)</p>
<p>poetgril,</p>
<p>Here is what I wrote way back in post #3:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t see anything in those articles that disputes this. So we are really arguing about how dramatic those particular facts are, and whether they constitute a crisis worthy of mass loan forgiveness. I’m not seeing it.</p>
<p>
Again, just saying ‘college’ s/b free isn’t the full picture. Does that mean ALL colleges s/b free? Should taxpayers subsidize private colleges? How about for profit colleges? What about ‘not for profit’ colleges that still charge a huge amount of money and have extremely highly paid administrative staff and endowments in excess of a billion dollars? </p>
<p>Assuming no one thinks that taxpayers funding what currently can be a >$200K private U education is such a great idea (although I suppose some people might), that would leave us with an attempt to create some colleges that are funded by taxpayers to the tune that the students pay nothing. There are a couple of issues with that. </p>
<p>Firstly, there’s not enough money to pay for it as illustrated by how there’s already not enough money to pay for most of these already subsidized colleges that as the OP points out, have rising costs. </p>
<p>Secondly, my guess is that we’d end up with the same situation we have now anyway because a lot of people, especially those who post on CC, won’t want their kid to go to Cheap State U, especially as it tries to operate within what’ll for certain be a very tight budget, so they’ll go ahead and save up for 18 years, borrow, give up their home equity, etc. to send their kid to the more expensive school. Face it, most of us on CC have already made that choice between lower cost and more expensive options and have not chosen the least expensive option. In fact many of the students (and their parents), many of whom are on CC, have already decided to forego free options (full rides) for a more expensive option. I know my kids didn’t go to the cheapest options (with me being an enabler). How about you?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not paying mortgage loans is what put us into this mess in the first place.
[/quote</p>
<p>Well, there was a little more to it than that.</p>
<p>I think public school K through college should be free. But I am practically a socialist and wished all citizens of this country could have the benefits like the people in the Scandinavian countries do. </p>
<p>Our country has 40+ million citizens (mostly children) living below the poverty line. It’s a national shame.</p>
<p>“It has seemed for a while to me this might be a deliberate attempt to eliminate the middle class. Too far fetched?”</p>
<p>No it’s not. </p>
<p>There is a great book I’m reading that I highly recommend. All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McCleaan and Joe Nocera. </p>
<p>This started way before the recent economic crisis. You need to go back 30 years to see where it all started and how it has evolved.</p>
<p>Are college loans that hard to pay off? Just cut corners here and there and live a modest life until you pay it off. I don’t see what the big deal is unless you made some bad decisions. If then, it is your fault for not being able to pay for the loan.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree, there is blame at many links in the chain. If special interests hadn’t lobbied to enable home ownership, there wouldn’t be more loans available. If politicians hadn’t caved and encouraged banks to make more loans for homeownership, there wouldn’t be all those bad loans. If the loans hadn’t been made so easily, then the borrowers wouldn’t have been unqualified and defaulted. If the borrowers hadn’t stopped paying, then AIG wouldn’t have had to make good on its guarantee and gone out. If the banks hadn’t repackaged and sold the debt, then the investors wouldn’t have lost money. If Americans wouldn’t have invested in what looked like a secure investment, then the banks wouldn’t have sold the debt. If the banks hadn’t sold the debt, they wouldn’t have had to be bailed out…etc…etc…</p>
<p>If we can stop the student loan chain from being broken, by encouraging everyone to pay back their loans, we can nip another crisis in the bud.</p>
<p>It’ll take a lot of Starbucks to pay a $400 a month payment…</p>
<p>The biggest problem is that many of these students can’t get a career job that pays them a good wage that would allow them to live independently and pay off their loans. </p>
<p>One of my acquaintances has over $100,000 in student loans. I don’t see where it affects her life much because she quit paying on them years ago and she doesn’t plan on paying on them ever. So what if the loans are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. That loan is dead money on some bank’s books. </p>
<p>How many other zombie loans are there out there?</p>