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Student Loans, Who Pays, and Forgiveness (best i could title it)

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Looks like we are all in different boats. I saw am interview with a girl from stanford. Graduated $130,000 in debt. Majored in Spanish with a minor in woman's studies. Let me leave this conversation  with one final thought, NOTHING is free. No matter how many times you hear it is.
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Art Vandelay said

Corporate tax rates don't tell the whole story. Amazon nearly doubled their profits from a year ago, at around ten billion. They paid zero dollars in taxes. They actually received over a million dollars in returns… I sure the hell didn't. And they weren't the only (by a long shot) corporation in that boat. The idea wasn't that they use their profits to buy back shares, but that they'd hire more people and give out raises and bonuses to the average worker. Guess which one happened? This is about what happens every time we dole out "tax breaks". The CBO (prior to the midterms, if that matters to you) estimated that these "breaks" would add almost two trillion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years. Cool. If it's all the same, and we're going to swallow it up regardless, I'd rather pay-off student loan debt and have money left over…

The necessity to have a college degree for employment now is greater that it was thirty years ago.
College degrees are now unreasonably priced (compared to thirty…).
Predatory loans are targeted at teenagers and young-twenty-somethings…
Wages have stalled by design (of lobbying interests in large corporations over many decades).
Not everyone can (or should) serve or have parents with money to invest, should only children of "wealth" receive an education (cause that's a loop)?
And I'm pretty sure the market won't sustain electricians at the same volume of, "a Starbucks on every corner."

Summer football conversations are weird.

Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 4:39 PM #386836

These conversations are not weird and I think need to happen more often in today world. This is forum is mostly college grads of different generations and a conversation on how economics effects put school and world are healthy.

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Local Owl said

Looks like we are all in different boats. I saw am interview with a girl from stanford. Graduated $130,000 in debt. Majored in Spanish with a minor in woman's studies. Let me leave this conversation  with one final thought, NOTHING is free. No matter how many times you hear it is.
Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 4:46 PM #386837

Yes, every drop of student debt in the country is from private schools kids who studied liberal arts. I just pointed out the most debt cases are from public school kids in the 30k range, but ignore that.

No one is asking for completely free how about just fair?


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I have 3 daughters.  The oldest is at FAU, will be a Junior this Fall, and is majoring in Social Work (she wants to be a high school guidance counselor or work in some kind of counselor role with a college).  My middle daughter will start her Freshman year at FSU this Fall and wants to get into communication disorders/speech therapy.  My youngest daughter is heading into the 11th grade and she is already thinking that she wants to go to Valencia in Orlando and get a certificate to do sonographs/ultrasounds.

Assuming all 3 stay on their current paths, the first two will cost around $80k each all-in for 4 years of school/living expenses and will probably end up with jobs making $35-$40k when they are 22-25 years old.  My youngest will cost about $8k on the 2.5 year program at Valencia and will be making probably $15-$20k more by the same age (or younger).  I work in IT, and there are tons of certification programs that don't require any college that would immediately lead to 6-figure incomes in the same timeframe (especially in Networking and Security).  There certainly are plenty of other programs out there to pursue that cost less and lead to higher income.  In today's market to me it seems specialization (or a trade) make you more marketable (and in less debt).

The point is there are lots of options, and going to a 4-year college is a choice.  If we are going to drastically reduce or cap or forgive a bunch of student loan debt, I need to change my approach and start borrowing a bunch on the 2 that are going the 4-year route.  I totally agree the cost of education has gotten outrageously out of hand, but I would prefer the emphasis is on addressing the cost AND that high schools offer paths that lead to some of those trades and specializations instead of just focusing on trying to get kids to signup for all AP classes and perpetuating the "you have to go to a 4-year school" song-and-dance.
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I agree with some of the previous commenters that the cost of tuition is getting extremely prohibitive. I agree we need to do something to reign on costs and find ways for institutions to make higher education cheaper for the students. Having a highly educated workforce

My previous response was directly in response to the idea of loan forgiveness which I disagree with.
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I agree with owl dad. The problem isn't the younger kids wanting to improve their hire ability.  It also isn't old farts like me who want to keep the government out of my pocket.  The problem is with the incredible rising cost of higher education and societies pressure on kids to attend prestigious  colleges. The Hollywood scandal  is a perfect example.  Fyi….the polatician  talking about this are only looking for votes. I can never see this happening. But something g needs to happen. What…I don't  know. I'm not that smart. But like Shane said, it is good to talk about it because it is a problem
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Local Owl said

I agree with owl dad. The problem isn't the younger kids wanting to improve their hire ability.  It also isn't old farts like me who want to keep the government out of my pocket.  The problem is with the incredible rising cost of higher education and societies pressure on kids to attend prestigious  colleges. The Hollywood scandal  is a perfect example.  Fyi….the polatician  talking about this are only looking for votes. I can never see this happening. But something g needs to happen. What…I don't  know. I'm not that smart. But like Shane said, it is good to talk about it because it is a problem
Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 7:03 PM #386842

I think the main issue is for FAU and many other public schools is someone will eventually get elected and try to tackle this issue and when they do expect them to look at public universities and ask why students are funding 50 percent of athletics and have amenities that resemble a resort.

People talk about free education in Europe, but college doesn't look like it does here. They keep it simple with buildings that hold classes, some club sports, and most kids do not go away.


We as society typically wait until an issue is a problem until we fix it thus we have to take drastic sometimes unpopular actions.

Bailouts are part of that.
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Shane Marinelli OC40 said

d-owl said

faufan2017 said

I'm a student with a lot of debt and I think cancelling student debt is a terrible idea. Going to college is a major life decision that people spend months thinking about. Most people get into multiple colleges and choose where they go based on its full cost and the estimated benefit of that degree. This involves selecting the school that might give more scholarships even if its lesser known. Many students across the country make their college decisions based on which school will give them more scholarships. Some even go to community college and get their AA before going off to a university because they want to save money. These hardworking and smart students make prudent financial decisions that will affect their professional careers for their lifetime.

On the other hand, there's the group of financially irresponsible individuals who go to college for no real reason. They go to expensive private schools, out of state schools, change majors a bunch, fail classes and keep retaking them.

Forgiving student debt essentially punishes all the smart and hardworking students who made prudent financial decisions and helps people who were purely financially irresponsible.


Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 1:59 PM #386832
Exactly my point earlier. There are programs that can be utilized right now to eliminate some of your student debt, but in this information age there is more than enough resources and information at your disposal to make the best decision for you, weighing all your options, including how much debt you're going to incur and what the job market is in your specific field. This is precisely the reason I even attended FAU in the first place, and why I chose to go to the law school I ended up going to. From my perspective (coming from a legal perspective), if you want to go to a private law school for 3 years, spend+ $50K in tuition, and it's not a highly ranked school, shame on your for not doing the research to understand what your job prospects realistically are and how your debt may affect you. Some of that problem also falls on these schools, which many times gives students a false perception about what the value of their degree really is – but again, if you make a decision to incur that debt, you take responsibility for it – which includes finding strategic ways to eliminate some of it or learn how to deal with the burden and be fiscally responsible.

And since I know what the underlying narrative in a thread like this typically is, I historically have always leaned to the left and I'm certainly not at an age where I'm approaching retirement.
Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 3:07 PM #386833
You guy are talking about a small portion of the student debt issue. Private loans only make up 7 percent of the debt.  The average 4-year bachelor student leaves with around 30k in loans which on the surface sounds manageable, but when you factor wages vs cost of living and many are forced to make minimum payments to for a long time and end up paying thousands and thousands more in interest.

Like I pointed before tuition has risen 175 percent in public schools since 1990 and starting wages around 10 percent after adjusted inflation.

Going to FAU for four years and getting your business degree is not irresponsible spending and no one should be punished with decades of debt for that sorry.

I worked in health care when I first graduated from college and learned how much of crises this country is in with the shortage of doctors we have. We have made medical school so expensive many Americans are choosing that career path is not worth it.  We depend on hundreds of doctors coming from China and India and now because of new immigration laws, it has become tougher for them to get the visas they need to work here. It hurts small towns and underserved areas where these doctors required to start their careers to fulfill the visa.
Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 4:23 PM #386835
First of all, I am all for enhancing programs that people can partake in to help with student debt  (there are various ways people can get relief today in certain careers e.g., working public sector jobs in some careers, etc). I also agree tuition is getting outrageous (and that to me is a product largely of private schools knowing they can charge that kind of tuition and they will get paid one way or another). However, not every institution is an expensive private institution with an outrageous tuition, and just saying people are penalized by going to FAU or that 7% of the loans at issue are private loans is missing my point.

If we are talking about eliminating student debt with one, swift stroke (as I have heard from some of the proponents for it), let's take into account those who incur grad school related debt – most people who take on this level of student loans – MBA's, JDs, PHDs etc are more often than not going to be able to have careers where they can sustain the debt and know what they are getting into beforehand. If the federal government simply forgives the debt, a lot of people like me (assuming I incurred tremendous student loans, which I didn't because I strategically sought out and received scholarships) would just get windfalls anyway – heck if I owed six figures coming out with a high six figure salary anyway, I'd certainly take it – but by and large eliminating student debt with one swift stroke would help the very demographic the proponents for eliminating debt don't care much about helping.

Then you ask yourself how would eliminating student debt work administratively and legally if you are going to treat folks differently based on other economic factors (salary; income; net worth etc?); remember, these federal student loans are promissory notes and contracts where money is paid to an institution and you agree to pay the debt off with interest. Is the federal government going to then say hey – the person with a $250,000 salary with $250,000 in student loans shouldn't get any debt relief, but the person who went to FAU for 4 years, incurred, $30K in student loans and makes $60K should? Can the federal government come up with some scheme that arguably is "fair" – sure; could it be applied fairly across the board – not a chance; at least not right now, and you would see fights from all angles if this is applied differently.

Then of course you have to ask yourself what would the economic impact be – would this truly help the very people it attempts to help get on their feet? What is the slippery slope – do we just start eliminating mortgages, credit card debts, car loans etc because they aren't "far" and people are being "penalized"? Do we even expect our government to come up with the money and get it right? LOL it's a great utopian dream, but not realistic.

It's healthy discourse, and I am not even writing this to convince anyone to think like me. I'm simply writing my opinion which is based on what I have seen during my career, and how realistic (and fair) I think something like this can really be. Like I said previously, there is enough information out there for folks to make informed decisions as to where they attend school. Heck, I wanted to go to (and was accepted) to Syracuse (and other higher raned UG schools) – I went to FAU for a number of factors, and tuition paid a major part of my decision. I also ended up going to a top 70ish private law school when I could have went to law schools ranked a bit higher – primarily because of scholarships I received – and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
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d-owl said

Shane Marinelli OC40 said

d-owl said

faufan2017 said

I'm a student with a lot of debt and I think cancelling student debt is a terrible idea. Going to college is a major life decision that people spend months thinking about. Most people get into multiple colleges and choose where they go based on its full cost and the estimated benefit of that degree. This involves selecting the school that might give more scholarships even if its lesser known. Many students across the country make their college decisions based on which school will give them more scholarships. Some even go to community college and get their AA before going off to a university because they want to save money. These hardworking and smart students make prudent financial decisions that will affect their professional careers for their lifetime.

On the other hand, there's the group of financially irresponsible individuals who go to college for no real reason. They go to expensive private schools, out of state schools, change majors a bunch, fail classes and keep retaking them.

Forgiving student debt essentially punishes all the smart and hardworking students who made prudent financial decisions and helps people who were purely financially irresponsible.


Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 1:59 PM #386832
Exactly my point earlier. There are programs that can be utilized right now to eliminate some of your student debt, but in this information age there is more than enough resources and information at your disposal to make the best decision for you, weighing all your options, including how much debt you're going to incur and what the job market is in your specific field. This is precisely the reason I even attended FAU in the first place, and why I chose to go to the law school I ended up going to. From my perspective (coming from a legal perspective), if you want to go to a private law school for 3 years, spend+ $50K in tuition, and it's not a highly ranked school, shame on your for not doing the research to understand what your job prospects realistically are and how your debt may affect you. Some of that problem also falls on these schools, which many times gives students a false perception about what the value of their degree really is – but again, if you make a decision to incur that debt, you take responsibility for it – which includes finding strategic ways to eliminate some of it or learn how to deal with the burden and be fiscally responsible.

And since I know what the underlying narrative in a thread like this typically is, I historically have always leaned to the left and I'm certainly not at an age where I'm approaching retirement.




Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 3:07 PM #386833
You guy are talking about a small portion of the student debt issue. Private loans only make up 7 percent of the debt.  The average 4-year bachelor student leaves with around 30k in loans which on the surface sounds manageable, but when you factor wages vs cost of living and many are forced to make minimum payments to for a long time and end up paying thousands and thousands more in interest.

Like I pointed before tuition has risen 175 percent in public schools since 1990 and starting wages around 10 percent after adjusted inflation.

Going to FAU for four years and getting your business degree is not irresponsible spending and no one should be punished with decades of debt for that sorry.

I worked in health care when I first graduated from college and learned how much of crises this country is in with the shortage of doctors we have. We have made medical school so expensive many Americans are choosing that career path is not worth it.  We depend on hundreds of doctors coming from China and India and now because of new immigration laws, it has become tougher for them to get the visas they need to work here. It hurts small towns and underserved areas where these doctors required to start their careers to fulfill the visa.





Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 4:23 PM #386835
First of all, I am all for enhancing programs that people can partake in to help with student debt  (there are various ways people can get relief today in certain careers e.g., working public sector jobs in some careers, etc). I also agree tuition is getting outrageous (and that to me is a product largely of private schools knowing they can charge that kind of tuition and they will get paid one way or another). However, not every institution is an expensive private institution with an outrageous tuition, and just saying people are penalized by going to FAU or that 7% of the loans at issue are private loans is missing my point.

If we are talking about eliminating student debt with one, swift stroke (as I have heard from some of the proponents for it), let's take into account those who incur grad school related debt – most people who take on this level of student loans – MBA's, JDs, PHDs etc are more often than not going to be able to have careers where they can sustain the debt and know what they are getting into beforehand. If the federal government simply forgives the debt, a lot of people like me (assuming I incurred tremendous student loans, which I didn't because I strategically sought out and received scholarships) would just get windfalls anyway – heck if I owed six figures coming out with a high six figure salary anyway, I'd certainly take it – but by and large eliminating student debt with one swift stroke would help the very demographic the proponents for eliminating debt don't care much about helping.

Then you ask yourself how would eliminating student debt work administratively and legally if you are going to treat folks differently based on other economic factors (salary; income; net worth etc?); remember, these federal student loans are promissory notes and contracts where money is paid to an institution and you agree to pay the debt off with interest. Is the federal government going to then say hey – the person with a $250,000 salary with $250,000 in student loans shouldn't get any debt relief, but the person who went to FAU for 4 years, incurred, $30K in student loans and makes $60K should? Can the federal government come up with some scheme that arguably is "fair" – sure; could it be applied fairly across the board – not a chance; at least not right now, and you would see fights from all angles if this is applied differently.

Then of course you have to ask yourself what would the economic impact be – would this truly help the very people it attempts to help get on their feet? What is the slippery slope – do we just start eliminating mortgages, credit card debts, car loans etc because they aren't "far" and people are being "penalized"? Do we even expect our government to come up with the money and get it right? LOL it's a great utopian dream, but not realistic.

It's healthy discourse, and I am not even writing this to convince anyone to think like me. I'm simply writing my opinion which is based on what I have seen during my career, and how realistic (and fair) I think something like this can really be. Like I said previously, there is enough information out there for folks to make informed decisions as to where they attend school. Heck, I wanted to go to (and was accepted) to Syracuse (and other higher raned UG schools) – I went to FAU for a number of factors, and tuition paid a major part of my decision. I also ended up going to a top 70ish private law school when I could have went to law schools ranked a bit higher – primarily because of scholarships I received – and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Posted On: Jun 16th 2019, 8:32 PM #386844

I agree 110 percent with this post. I do not think a complete bailout will happen. As you have pointed out and what has been discussed on this thread the issue deeply complex.

The issue we see a lot in this country now issues are absolutes. We see it is either a complete bailout needed or "suck it up and work,''  we also fail to understand that many solutions won't be good for everyone.

Through four pages of thread here despite obvious political sidings and generational gaps we have all come to an agreement, there is a problem. Now how to solve that


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The majority of people who are having issues paying off their debt are people who didn't finish.  I think we do a poor job as a society for advocating for CC, trade/vocational skills, entrepreneurship, etc.  For people that did finish, I think we should expand on current programs we have now as opposed to eliminating debt for everyone.  Get teachers to inner cities and eliminate their debt after 5 years.  Let student loan payments be a pretax thing, give companies tax relief if they offer tuition assistance and loan repayment assistance as benefits.
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