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I am dead sick of the over generalization that anyone who has defaulted on their student loans is just refusing to pay for them or got a degree that would never lead to a job with an income sufficient to repay them.
Especially from people who borrowed before the massive increase in Federally guaranteed money that caused tuition prices to explode.
Case in point. My dad got an engineering degree from Iowa State University without taking out loans and the equivalent to a minimum wage job doing dishes and odd jobs at a restaurant was enough for rent, food, entertainment, books and tuition. In just four years.
Go on, try that today.
First thing you need to acknowledge is wages are stagnant and education is getting more expensive. It literally costs more for everything that it did back when and by the time you've paid for a roof over your head and food in your belly... there might not be enough for the minimum loan payment with your entry level salary.
A salary that the self-righteous lecturers found sufficient 30 years ago to make loan payments, and live well.
20 years ago and live OK.
10 year ago and live at all.
And this assumes that your degree is worth something.
But what if your degree would be worth something if the people who owned the school had not been convicted of fraud and predatory lending practices?
People who didn't run the place or control daily operations, the school was literally the same as it was for decades when it built a strong reputation for graduating students who knew how to do what was expected right out of their gowns?
The fraudsters bought that good school with government approval, because you cannot make such a purchase without the Department of Education's sign-off.
DoE allowed the sale in spite of an ongoing investigation into their loan practices at other schools.
But it's the student's fault that nobody calls back with that school on their degree?
Never mind that there's no place that an employer can call to confirm they were ever a student let alone a graduate?
A degree that cannot be used to get into a different school to further their education and perhaps earn a way to service that loan.
And it's not underwater basket weaving.
Business Administration and Accounting degrees from this school going back decades became valueless overnight when the government concluded its case and closed the schools.
Leaving borrowers with a pile of debt and no realistic way of ever paying it back.
A lot of borrowers.
I hope that Brandon forgives the billions and billions of student loan debt.
The government has been handing out money to every worthless piece of shit in the world; why not people with college educations who could actually be worth something once freed of a problem that government caused in the first fucking place.
By the way, oh high and mighty arbiters of whom is of value and whom is worthless, you'd better be able to show that you've been actually lobbying your congress creatures to eliminate DoE, Federal student loans and welfare recipients getting free college. Because if not, you're part of the people what let this happen and are angry that you are now caught up in the avalanche now that the pebbles no longer get a vote?
How about you take a nice big sip of go fuck yourself.
The increases in tuition were exactly in step with the increases in federal and state-level student aid. And much of that money was plowed into fancier facilities, layers and layers and layers of administration, and, yes, useless degree programs. Some of those degree programs existed so that otherwise-unsuitable-for-college students could get degrees, others were put in place to placate chronic protesters. University and college administrations, taking one with another, have all the backbones of chocolate eclairs.
ReplyDeleteColleges have always exploited and cheated students. For many decades, you've had well-known, famous coaches tempting poor kids from deprived backgrounds to come play for their teams, offering them no-work, easy "studies" and dangling the lure of "da proze" before their eyes. They forget to mention that only a few college-level players go on to "da proze," and the rest either "graduate" with useless degrees, or get injured and thrown out into the street, all but unemployable. One way I'd fix this would be to yank the accreditation of any college or university that charged money to watch intermural athletics. All that money has long since turned Alma Mammy into a tramp.
I'd rather make the institutes of "higher learning" eat those loans than out-and-out forgive them. It would serve them so right.