Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We’ve assisted banks, homebuyers, current homeowners, and even bribed people out of their cars with cash for clunkers. I find myself wondering if current student loan holders in repayment will ever be offered some assistance?
It sure would be nice if I could consolidate my loans at a better rate than weighted average of the interest rates. I have no problem making my current payments, but I would like to save a few bucks and the interest deduction makes me meh. I also have no desire to work for the government or particpate in the ICB repayment program.
Actually, I don't think homebuyers were helped all that much, certainly not compared to the banks. Likewise, when institutions start to go down because of all the student loan money that has been handed out "like candy," it's the institutions that will get the bail out, and the taxpayers who will pay and suffer the lousy resulting economy, and most likely the student borrowers will end up as in debt as ever.
Student loans are a horrific predatory scam, one that our most elite institutions are in on. They grab kids who are 17 or 18 years old, who don't know a damn thing about money or the economy or interest rates, who don't know words like "accrue" or "capitalize," and they get them to sign away their lives for the promise of a ticket to the middle class. It's probably hard for us to imagine what it's like to be ignorant, but these are really just kids and if their parents don't know then they don't know. They sure don't teach these things in school (too busy memorizing trivial facts about the American Revolution and the parts of woody plants). But how Americans love to blame the victims....(until they are the victims).
I'm a moderate Democrat.
I believe in single payer health care and helping my fellow man during times of economic uncertainty.
With that said, I borrowed via the student loan program and worked my ass off to pay it back.
To those that want this debt erased I have this to say; Pay it back!!
You borrowed it for an education that did not guarantee you anything but a diploma upon graduation.
It didn't guarantee you a job or for you avoid a recession/depression.
You signed on the dotted line as I did.
NOW PAY IT BACK!!!!!!
Not likely, and I'm not sure it's a good idea either.
I get that massive student loan debt stops people from doing things like buying houses, having children, etc, but the "free" money train has to stop sometime and people have to take a little bit of responsibility.
"Helping" will simply make the problem worse down the line. We need to address the bigger problems in academia (enormous bloated administration that gives itself gigantic raises, enormous sums of money wasted on non-academic things like athletics and "cultural centers" and "green initiatives"), not pretend they don't exist.
They may not be the reason, but they certainly make it easier to waste money and raise costs. Students treat loans like monopoly money, leaving universities with little to no pressure to address waste. Sometimes students even get in on the waste, voting to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on things like remodeling student unions.
No there's no correlation between student loans and tuition increases. Period. Until people understand this, the mentality of blaming the victims will continue.
Quote:
Continuous pressures to examine the Bennett hypothesis have led to nearly 15 years of federal research. Studies conducted during three successive administrations — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — have found no link between student aid and tuition increases. The hypothesis is nothing more than an urban legend.
“Regarding the relation between financial aid and tuition, the regression models found no associations between most of the aid packaging variables (federal grants, state grants, and loans) and changes in tuition in either the public or private not-for-profit sectors.” (italics added)
– U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics, Dec. 2001, Study of College Costs and Prices 1988-89 to 1997-98, Vol. 1
“The Commission finds no evidence to suggest any relationship between the availability of Federal grants and the costs or prices in these institutions,” and “has found no conclusive evidence that loans have contributed to rising costs and prices.”
That was a long term study done to see if there was any correlation.
I think the primary reason for increases in tuition has to do with state funding towards universities which has been steadily declining over several decades. Education is usually the first thing to get cut for some reason during a downturn. Universities respond by increasing tuition to compensate. The US also isn't the only developed country where students take out loans to finance their education which is why I found it odd that people continue to believe that loans are the reason for tuition increases. Canada, right above us, has some of the lowest tuition rates in the first world and as seen earlier this spring, when education gets put on the table for cuts and tuition is in danger of going up, the people protest it. Unlike here where it gets cut and people stand idly by and then blame the victims.
I don't think our education system is in any major need for reform from the ground up, but problem of rising tuition doesn't seem like something that will be addressed anytime soon.
Last edited by Octa; 07-23-2012 at 12:52 PM..
Reason: typo
No there's no correlation between student loans and tuition increases. Period.
There's no correlation between low interest auto loans and auto sales.
There's no correlation between low interest house loans and underwater borrowers.
There's no correlation between low down payment/rent to own shops and low income areas.
No there's no correlation between student loans and tuition increases. Period.
There's no correlation between low interest auto loans and auto sales.
There's no correlation between low interest house loans and underwater borrowers.
There's no correlation between low down payment/rent to own shops and low income areas.
Keep repeating it until you believe it.
I have a background in economics and education.I'm not going to blindly believe something when there's no concrete evidence to support it just because many people wrongly believe it to be true.
07-23-2012, 01:08 PM
i7pXFLbhE3gq
n/a posts
Octa, I think you need to read my post again, as you seem to have missed the point.
Increased availability of financial aid doesn't cause tuition to go up, as the article you linked pretty clearly establishes.
What it does do, however, is take away the incentive institutions would otherwise have to keep costs under control. States cut funding for higher education, and in response schools raise tuition instead of cutting back on things like athletic programs that can't support themselves and "diversity programs" and such that serve only to waste money.
Or this:
"Where does all that money go? Much of it to lavish spa-like facilities and grand new construction, including $100 million or so for multicultural centers and sports stadiums. The debt taken on by colleges has risen 88 percent since 2001, to $307 billion. Jeff Selingo of the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a “lost decade” of wild campus spending: “The almost insatiable demand for a college credential meant that schools could raise their prices and families would go to almost any end, including taking on huge amounts of debt, to pay the bill. In 2003, only two colleges charged more than $40,000 a year for tuition, fees, and room and board; by 2009, 224 were above that mark.” And now many are inching toward (or past) $50,000 a year..."
Link from that far Right Wing anti Education publication known as The New York Times.
FWIW, I have a background in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. Dueling majors @ 10 paces anyone?
Not any time soon given the current political climate and obstructionist in congress. As evidenced, a lot of people also have a boot strap mentality when it comes towards human investment where they blame the victims instead of a broken system.
College tuition has been outpacing inflation for a while now and is the reason why people are taking out a larger amount of loans to finance school. One would think that loans are the real reason, but there's very little evidence to support that loans are the reason.
If you provide easy money to subsidize a product then more people will want to obtain that product. As demand for the product increases the price of the product will also increase. Basic economics.
I have a background in economics and education.I'm not going to blindly believe something when there's no concrete evidence to support it just because many people wrongly believe it to be true.
So if you have a degree in economics do you see how providing cheap money to finance something causes demand to increase? After all isn't that why auto manufacturers subsidize car loans?
Yes I see what you're saying JasonF, but that assumes that programs should be balanced like a business for instance libraries pay a yearly fee to journals so that students can access to them and don't generate any revenue. Universities in general tend to have athletic programs especially football or basketball because they generate a lot of revenue for the school. There are social benefits to programs besides just purely monetary ones.
I understand what you're saying, everyone at the college I went to had to pay a fee that went towards funding student groups and activities such as rec sports. As a result a lot of students participated in some sort of student organization. More importantly, university funding doesn't work the way most people think it does. Because they receive money from the government, from the private sector, or donations, they have to put their money into different channels that serve a specific use. For instance money allocated for recreation can only be used for that purpose. It's not a blank check for the universities to spend however they want. If they don't use it then they lose the funding even if the spending is wasteful. Some programs generally are and only created or expanded for the purpose of being used. So what do you think the universities going to do?
That's what I mean when I say the higher education system needs some reform. It's broken. The students are taking the blame when the universities are raising tuitions, but the universities also have to play by what's written in law. As I stated before, other countries have much lower tuition or education is subsidized completely up to the doctorate/professional degree level and they are much more functional the system in the US.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
