Record Surge in Past-Due Student Loans Adds to US Debt Burden

[4WD]

Kids who transfer to a 4 year university after completing 2 years at a community college, on average, get better grades while at the university than the kids who started there.

Yep, and it helps to grow up a couple years before falling into the social temptations of the big schools …

 

[4WD]

That would go against the spirit of the student loan scam.

Spirit? More like a ghost from the past

 

[4WD]

1 800 USA NAVY...who is 18 and signs on the dotted line with the blank check being up to your life. Some young dumb kid with no life experience. You expect them to do what they said they would. I was that guy, but I knew I couldn't afford college. You sign something at 18 you follow through. That is how i paid for college. My sympathy level is low if you go to some crazy expensive school. You have options.

The military isn't for everyone but I wouldn't be opposed to some type of public service if you want help with your student loans. Give something back, be a part of something bigger.

Having said that college has become a business. I'm not even sure where education falls on their list of priorities. It is too expensive and some of the people I see now are just being pushed out the door.

Was listening to Mike Rowe yesterday - amazing shortage of good paying blue collar positions - and with the big investments in factories - going to be some great opportunities …

 

[SC Maintenance]

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If government artificially caps the cost of anything (aka price controls), supply disappears because nobody can make a profit at anything and everyone walks away from making that good or service. Or, the quality disappears.

Well the Joke is sort of on them - because the number of potential students will continue to decline. Even though more kids go to college, there are less kids. The population pyramid below is from 2023. The peak undergrad attendance was 2010, and has declined since then. Those kids would be the 30-35 YO group I circled.

Its no surprise that 2010 became the year the government took over the student loan program. The universities have seen this coming so there goal is to extort more money out of each kid, because there are less kids, and will continue to be less kids.

 

[buster]

Graduated HS in 95, college 99. Even back then I was surprised how much college cost. Saved money by going to a state school. Came out with about $15k in loans. Paid off long time ago. Not sure why so many people expect to spend $300k on a degree and come out with a good job. Just not realistic. Physical sciences are still a safe bet.

Another thing is some of these kids getting a degree in Lesbian Studies and wondering why they're still poor. Do they ever think about these things in advance?

 

[nickaluch]

In that case, then the government should get out of the student loan business. As a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay for other people’s college.

Much worse is the vast majority of responsible students who take out credit will pay higher costs because of those who don’t pay their debts.

This has nothing to do with any other American or the President of the United States.
If students want the ability to claim bankruptcy, then they should go through all the credit checks and employment certifications to prove they could pay that loan back for an unsecured loan no less.

Obviously they can’t and that is why paying back a student loan is mandatory for the privilege of being given money on the Goodwill that it will be paid back with no proof of income, responsible credit or collateral.

I can't argue that all bankruptcies should be illegal. We all pay when someone or company claims bankruptcy.

 

[ATex7239]

That would assume people can do arithmetic, and think/plan beyond today.

It also assumes the student loan companies aren’t gonna play games to get more money and they absolutely do. Like the accrued interest being rolled into the principal balance when you graduate, consolidate or move the loan so now there is interest on top of interest. Or mishandling payments then applying fees and penalties which accrue interest on top of the fees and penalties. Or ignoring communications like a notification of in-school status so subsidize loans keep accruing interest for several months. And then refusing to remove the unwarranted accrued interest even after acknowledging the “error.”

All of which happened to my wife and I by the way. I’m so glad we’re done dealing those criminal organizations. We’re paid off and never doing that again. Anyone who’s worked for them can rot for all I care.

 

[Cropduster172]

Part of the problem is parents giving kids the choice to go to whichever college they want. We gave our kids the choice...go to whatever college you want and get accepted but we're only paying the equivalent of in state tuition for the University of Delaware.
My daughter wanted to go to Lehigh...a good engineering school. I told her go for it but she'll be staring down the barrel of at least $80k in student loans when she graduates.
She went to U of D, loved it and went on to Penn Dental...the loans for that are a different story but she can afford to pay them off if she hasn't already.

 

[wander2039]

We're a year away from the college experience. Our senior is waiting to see what scholarships he can get. I told him to claim his Lao half and he already has a 4.0GPA at the smarty pants high school here. I told him to attend a non-expensive college elsewhere. Get out of KC and experience another city/state, nothing is good about being here. He's kinda a nervous-nelly so probably won't. The loan aspect will be interesting since he should have a credit score being on our credit card.

 

[walterjay]

We're a year away from the college experience. Our senior is waiting to see what scholarships he can get. I told him to claim his Lao half and he already has a 4.0GPA at the smarty pants high school here. I told him to attend a non-expensive college elsewhere. Get out of KC and experience another city/state, nothing is good about being here. He's kinda a nervous-nelly so probably won't. The loan aspect will be interesting since he should have a credit score being on our credit card.

Consider Pittsburgh State in SE Kansas.

 

[wander2039]

Consider Pittsburgh State in SE Kansas.

Both his aunt's went there.. actually one of his aunts still takes classes over there 20 years later LOL. I was thinking further than that though.

 

[PandaBear]

No way in h*** should the federal government be loaning TAXPAYER dollars. That means in order to fund student loans, they would have to increase taxes. Your proposal is essentially identical to the giveaway plan of the last admin!

Government all over the world have been giving money to public education of the mass one way or another since Napoleon started doing it, one way or another.

 

[PandaBear]

That's so crazy, I've never heard of it priced so low in my life at $31/credit hour. At that price, there's no reason to not take some classes every now and then to stay fresh or learn new random subjects.

It is subsidized through local property tax. Just in case you don't know we have something like 1.2-4M homes in the area on average, and even if we factor in prop 13 it is still way too high compare to average. We are paying for it one way or another.

BTW our libraries are also waiving all late fees, so unless you are past due like .... forever and they write it off as a loss wanting you to pay for the book, you can be late for as long as you want.

 

[PandaBear]

They should at least have to tell students what they can expect to earn after getting one of their degrees, what the per month loan payments will be and how long repayment will take... And give an update every year.

The expectation and reality also change over time. You can't promise that over the entire loan term.

I remember back in the days Electrical Engineer drop out into Computer Science, and the pays reflect that. Today it is the other way around. People also did a lot of that "estimate" on the hot topic of "bio-infomatics" and in the end those graduates have no jobs.

Same for pharmacist. A rush of students and acceptance led to suppressed pay. No school will want to take that risk unless they stay small and accept only trust fund kids going back to their family businesses. They won't need loans anyways.

 

[PandaBear]

So its better just to make the banks richer? You're gonna pay it anyway through higher interest when the loans are not paid. You already pay for K-12. Would you rather have a dumbed-down society that has no higher education and the resulting social issues that come with that, or spend a bit more on the future of the country?

Bank is a casino. They go big or go home. The other one is insurance companies.

The only reason people will lend money to a student is if you can promise they will pay it back, because people drop out, job market change, world economy change, etc. There is no job guaranteed to make you money for an extended period of time. Maybe the closest is lawyers and doctors, that's why most of the trust fund kids I know enter those fields even if their parents most likely will ask them back to the family businesses eventually.

Even engineers and scientists can get home foreclosed and unemployed, and couldn't afford to pay back their student loans.

 

[PandaBear]

About getting specific degrees like engineering, there are many public universities that have cooperative programs with local community colleges that help ensure that those credits do transfer. At least that is the case here in Washington.

At least in California, our 2 major public universities system would specify which classes are going to transfer and what you need to do to transfer them (like getting at least specific grades).

Most people I know have to spend an extra year between the 2 system if they want to finish AA in JC/CC before the BS in 4 year college, so factoring that into the lost of 1 year employment as well too. It was a coin toss back then due to college cost and income but today it likely means a better decision to just transfer if you don't mind not being in the same school for 4 years.

 

[Dave Hess]

My sister went to University of Miami law school and repaid her loan.

Back then it was $50,000

She has a small law firm and doesn’t recommend younger folks go into law because of the $200K student loans.

 

[PandaBear]

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Well the Joke is sort of on them - because the number of potential students will continue to decline. Even though more kids go to college, there are less kids. The population pyramid below is from 2023. The peak undergrad attendance was 2010, and has declined since then. Those kids would be the 30-35 YO group I circled.

Its no surprise that 2010 became the year the government took over the student loan program. The universities have seen this coming so there goal is to extort more money out of each kid, because there are less kids, and will continue to be less kids.

This birth rate decline is not US specific. It happens all over the world and we are actually doing better than East Asia and Europe already. Universities closing down is not a US specific concern. Anyways, all over the world university education is pretty much a common goal for middle class to their kids even though most jobs really don't need them. I can't guarantee they don't need it in the future but at least today most are just using BS or AA degree to screen out dead beats who would do more harm in the companies. In the end the education isn't a guaranteed based on which school you go to (tuition cost or acceptance rate), but rather just a screening process of the year you were accepted, and if you don't drop out, how consistent you are since you entered.

After I work with a few Ivy league grads I started to realize why Wall Street loves them: they have much higher stress tolerance than the lower tier schools in statistics. Throwing them a 60 hour week and they will handle that ok, but not the lower tier schools grads who demand "work life balance" because they missed their online gaming or movie night with girlfriend.

 

[alarmguy]

My sister went to University of Miami law school and repaid her loan.

Back then it was $50,000

She has a small law firm and doesn’t recommend younger folks go into law because of the $200K student loans.

There is no doubt she knows people in my family circle down there in Miami. However, many of them may have retired by now, but there were many, some high profile, one of them decades back when I was young was the highest of the high profile and that’s all I can say.