Some older Americans say millennials’ student debt is their own fault

Where is the evidence they were predatory and the problem exploded after the Federal Government took it over almost 10 years ago at Obama's order in 2010. So Obama was a predatory lender?

 

Student loan tail draggers ain't no victim class.

 

1. You ignored the massive fraud and government enabling of that fraud and cause of the hyperinflation in education costs that led to this social crisis, which were the main points of my post. Also the point about bankruptcy dischargeability. Should defrauded citizens have no remedy when they are defrauded and government exacerbated the fraud? "YOU MUST HAVE A DEGREE TO COMPETE IN AMERICA!" has been a government-edu lie narrative for decades now. 2. My post was crystal clear in agreeing, as you say, that the taxpayers don't owe defaulting students, but that the parties actually responsible won't be held accountable and the taxpayer will be left holding the bag anyway... unless rational reforms are enacted while Democrats aren't in power.

This social issue is going to get "worked out" one way or the other, and that it's going to just hang around as is is a pipe dream. In fact, it's going to get worse and worse if no reform is enacted. I would prefer that it be done during a Republican Administration and Congress because it was Republicans who removed the bankruptcy discharge after repayment in the first place (and it was plain graft when that was done), and if it's left to simmer until we have a Democrat President and Congress, and we will again one day, whatever results is going to be a bigger bendover of the taxpayer than any rational solution nonDemocrats would enact.

IMO the best outcome available is to

1. reinstate bankruptcy discharge after a 7 year period of timely payment of standard, not means adjusted payments, and to bring in a broader, special definition of the bankruptcy estate that can include parental assets, trusts, in certain cases AND/OR create a new Chapter 13 type chapter specifically for student debt that requires restructure and repayment based only on ability to repay and make dischargeability conditional on meeting the repayment requirements of that program for more years, say 10. Include closure of all preexisting loopholes that allow hiding of assets with respect to student loan portions of the bankruptcy estate. Due to the state of the bankruptcy law now, few if any will be able to game the system by hiding assets because reformed bankruptcy doesn't work that way, has been tightened up with reforms relatively recently... and defrauding the bankruptcy courts carry significant penalties.

2. Civilly penalize the entire edu industry that defrauded these students and parents via withholding of a significant portion of government funding that would be put into trust to defray costs to taxpayers of the reform/write down. If this fraud had been perpetrated by any private sector entity, no one would bat an eyelash at sticking it to the perpetrator. Institutionalized education is -vastly- wealthy today due to this fraud, and should be the primary source of remedy.

3. Cap government guarantees of student loans to X$ (50-75k) per person per lifetime going forward.

4. Ban employees, interested parties, subsidiaries or affiliates of the education industry from also participating in student loan financing operations. This is a hidden secret in the problem that is kept tightly under wraps. Look at the boards of student loan finance companies and you will lots of university bureaucrats who use their clout to lobby for ever more restrictions on student loan discharge while simultaneously pumping out a Madoff level fraud on American students and parents.

5. Deny ALL student loan guarantees to fields that can't establish a history of recognized, direct value results in the marketplace.

6. Remove all race and gender based aid and make all financial aid identity group blind by federal law. Only economic circumstances should ever be considered in allocating aid, not nebulous LW identity considerations. THIS is a huge untold story behind the student loan crisis, because a large portion of the spiraling increases in costs (esp in professional schools) has occurred so that minorities and females pay little or nothing, while white, and ironically Asian males (a tiny minority compared to black or women for example) pay double or triple. I personally experienced this years ago, learning that black and female law students at my school were paying a pittance, often NOTHING, while white and Asian male students were paying double or more. Very often, my black and female friends in question receiving this massive redistribution came from affluent families, whereas I did not. Race and gender based financial aid that discriminates against white and Asian males should be outlawed immediately.

OR wait around, self-righteously point fingers at the "irresponsible students and families" who were defrauded and still being defrauded and find out what kind of vastly more expensive, vastly government enriching, vastly incompetent butt reaming Democrats are going to give the taxpayer one day not too far off. This isn't going away, I would rather it not be the worst variety of gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex crooks who will figure out some massive greater fraud to perpetuate towards self-enrichment in the process of fixing a problem that is going to be addressed one way or the other.

 

I agree some of these financial lenders preyed on naive students.

But the student borrowers should have had every reason to know what they were getting themselves into.

Maybe blame the people who were telling these students a college degree was an automatic ticket to a high paying job.

 

Note that Harvard isn't paying Warren $400,000 to teach one class (if she is getting $400,000, which is high, even for Harvard standards). Professor salary is usually divided into 1/3 teaching, 1/3 scholarship, 1/3 service. In medical schools, professors actually are often not paid to teach at all, they bring in their salary through research grants.

Also, the teaching component benefits from the research/scholarship. You want your kid to be taught by someone who is at the forefront of the research in their field. That's the difference between a research university and a 4-year college. You don't get exposure to the cutting edge, if your professor has not published a paper in 30 years, since the time of their PhD. Would you get a top-level research professor by paying them $40,000 a year? Most likely not.

 

That's what grad school is for.
Undergrad is for learning the fundamentals well

 

I agree it was their choice, but their fault?

Consider that in today's job market, Corporate America won't hire a freakin' janitor without a college degree. It's become this "everybody must have one" commodity, and the cost of obtaining a degree just kept going up and up. When you're 18 or so and facing an uphill climb just to make a decent living, it can seem like the only choice.

 

That's a boatload of money. Which colleges are that expensive? Assuming a four year stint, that's a whopping $57,000 per year. That's more than some mortgages, ffs. College should not cost even a fraction of that. It was bad enough when I graduated from high school in 1969, which is why one of many reasons why I didn't go, but not everyone can achieve a six figure income without one, not these days, and a six figure income is more or less required just to make ends meet in some places, like this guy you wrote about in San Francisco.

The fact that they can never file bankruptcy on those student loans is draconian, IMO.

 

It was probably a private university. My sister just graduated from Rice. That's $60k+ a year. If out Dad didn't pay for it, that would be a ton of debt.

Even if you graduate with debt, it doesn't have to be an unmanageable amount.

 

Something needs to be done to reduce the cost of a college education. Dunno what that something is, but unless the cost is controlled somehow, this mess will continue and young people will suffer under that weight.

 

It's not their fault. College is crazy-expensive. Gone are the days where you can get a college degree by taking a part-time job over the summer.

I know I tried and ended up taking college part-time. It took me 10-years to earn a 2-year associate's degree in liberal arts. But at least I'm debt-free.

 

The cost is a direct result of available financing

 

And if 70% fewer people refused to pay for those degrees, corporate america would be forced to hire people without degrees

 

Excellent point. I urged my own son to consider a trade that could not be outsourced, like plumbing, auto mechanics, etc. He took my advice and now works in an auto body shop, making a decent living. He is happy, secure, and self-reliant, and his only debt is a mortgage on a modest but solid home. He did go to community college for a couple of semesters, but that tuition was next to nothing.

 

Let's reduce the cost of a college education. How? Get rid of the Edifice Complex where every retiring president, football coach or associate vice dean of the Studies Studies Department has to have a big new building named after it. Cut back on administrators. There are colleges that have more administrators than teachers. Cut back on the assistant vice presidents, vice provosts, associate deans, student social media observers, integration counsels, diversity coordinators, deputy assistant vice presidents and so on. I must say these people are not idle. They are very busy, sending each other memos about memos, going to meetings about meetings and conferences about conferences. Use the money to reduce tuition and fees and pay more to the scornful underpaid grad student who is doing the actual teaching.

 

Because it is not the role of businesses to prey on customers. They are to offer a fair product at a fair price without trapholes.

The dems are writing legislation now to introduce on the first day of the new term after sweeping next year's elections.

 

Warren's lack of any meaningful practice experience, lack of any significant -scholarship- especially elite scholarship of the type expected of a law school like Harvard, lack of any meaningful specialty (Huey Long "chicken in every pot" rabble rousing disguised as specializing in consumer bankruptcy is not scholarship, and in addition, "specializing" in consumer bankruptcy is the equivalent in the law of "specializing" in traffic court or DUI defense... not exactly prestigious stuff), history of affirmative action gaming and chicanery towards self-enrichment and self-promotion moot out the above utterly and entirely. Try again.

 

1. Because their educators told them they could not survive any other way. Maybe they should pay?
2. Yes, and retroactive relief is called reparations.
3. Yes, and they should get reparations for being smart enough not to get into debt they couldn't afford.

You forgot those who paid for their children's college education. The should get paid reparations, too. The children who had their education paid for by others should get nothing.

 

Why are college students so stupid? Is it just a lack of common sense? Have they grown up seeing reparations being paid to classmates in the form of food stamps and welfare and think they deserve it as well? Wouldn't that make them racists? That's what I think they are, racists. They are angry that blacks were given a chance and they weren't.

Then, they join Antifa and use blacks as scapegoats for their hatred of the rest of society, which they were taught in college was the reason for their debts. Could you imagine if they learned the truth while going? They have to brain wash the students. They do it out of fear and guilt.

 

If they didnt ask the bank for the loan, they wouldnt owe them

 

Rightist logic is predatory.

 

Have you never heard of undergraduate research? That's one of the man benefits you get at research universities. I would not send my kid to a school with no undergraduate research. That's where the real learning happens, rather than in the classroom. I currently have five undergrads in my lab, two of them already co-authored a paper. When they apply to medical school, guess who gets the pick, the applicant with or without paper, considering grades and MCAT scores are similar?

 

If "logic" (in that context) is the 24/7 Spamming of Fever Swamp Memes (that they picked up from Twitter Trolls), then your observation is clearly valid.