Student Loan Debt Leading to Suicides and Suicidal Thoughts? (Brown, how much, lobby)
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I know your trying to make this a Republican/Democratic
thing but there is no connection. The student loan fiasco
has been an equal party screwup
You were only allowed to "consolidate once" during the entirety of your loan. Unlike a mortgage, where if a better interest rate came along, you just refinance. The new student loan bill does eliminate some of the abuses in the student loan industry, but it does nothing for those who came before it was enacted - it is not grandfathered.
It was the 100 percent guarantee that the government would pay student loan lenders not only the principle, but all interest that was added to a student's debt IF the loan went into default that became the motivation to give student loans. Many of these loans were almost impossible to pay back by students in a reasonably period of time, simply by how the interest to compound was calculated.
They actually were set up to guarantee a default
Albert Lord of Sallie Mae, is the Bernie Madoff of the student loan industry - he had been stealing from taxpayers for years. Difference between the two, everyone knew Lord was doing it - the ones that were paid off in Congress, the Colleges, the Department of Education - where many past Sallie Mae employees became DOE heads.
The student loan program had become the most corrupt,
abusive, predatory lending, tax payer bailout program
for the rich, I can think of.
I have heard of a lot of horrible practices done by Sallie Mae over the years.
They are loan sharks pure and simple, and the ones running it should be charged with Financial Terrorism and locked up for life.
When they fail, and they will, they better not be bailed out, like the parasitic Goldman Sachs and other banks that were. The banks should have been broken up after being bailed out, and the board members and ceo's indicted under financial terrorism, but that is another topic for discussion....
I'm sorry, but are you blaming those who currently graduated for the faults of those who graduated years ago? Also, some of those business owners who shipped jobs overseas did NOT go to college. Frankly, you should stop accusing innocent people who just graduated for whatever problems you're facing and start blaming the real people
The only bubble you burst was your sense of logic.
No, I am correct. It is "educated"people working in companies that was to find cheaper ways of doing business. It doesn't mater how old these college educated people are, they were the ones who made the proposals to move jobs to other countries. Many people have student loans they have been paying on for 20-25 years. Many of these educated idiots now find they are without jobs now ( and to the ones that promoted moving manufacturing jobs to other countries who are now unemployed and can not find a job, I say welcome to your own posion a-hole) and can not grasp they are at fault or don't want to. Stuck up attitudes, self centered egos, they helped create the issues we face today on jobs so no, I don't feel bad for them now going thru what they have put on millions of us.
As for new college grads, I do feel bad for them, as they were lied to big time by the biggest fraud industry we have today, the education industry.
And the way the schools,(from kindergarden all the way up) colleges prey on our young people is a disgrace. But the politicians always use the mantra "it's for the kids". Now why would I want to call a child a small goat is beyond me, but it's acceptible by idiots that are educated and not educated because the education industry,much like the porn industry has lowered the Nation's standards ON PURPOSE.
In 2005 George W. Bush and the previous Congress, in their great wisdom, decided to serve the interests of the wealthy by making private student loan debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, further cementing, in essence, the existence of an "indentured educated class."
Now throngs of students who made the well-intentioned investment mistake of investing in higher education (perhaps driven in part by a lack of job opportunities in our nation's depressed economy) cannot escape their student loan debt. If you borrow money on credit cards and blow it in Vegas or buy fancy cars you can't afford or go on lavish cruises or buy an expensive house you can't afford you can free yourself from the debt, but not if you do something that seems more responsible such as investing in higher education.
Cryn Johannsen of the All Education Matters, Inc. blog has been writing about this subject recently and even did an Internet radio interview about it. You can find the radio interview and some of her blog posts here. Some of the reader comments are very sad.
So what do you guys think? Is student loan debt driving many people to suicide? Imagine what it must be like to (1) think that you will be permanently impoverished, (2) to feel responsible for making bad educational investment decisions, and (3) to feel like a huge loser. The pressure to throw one's self out of a 27th floor window or to want to strap on a suit of dynamite and just explode must be overwhelming.
Perhaps suicidal graduates should organize a march on Congress and a mass suicide on the steps of the Capitol Building to bring some attention to this issue. Please feel free to share any stories you have about indebted graduates who have committed suicide. I hope that these stories reach the mainstream media.
only you can drive yourself to suicide. This is just another example of "it isn't my fault" it is someone elses. Our grandkids have student loans and so did our daughter 30 years ago. They have all been able to handle the pressures.
I wonder if the "other side" is ever going to stop blaming Bush for what happens in their lives.
only you can drive yourself to suicide. This is just another example of "it isn't my fault" it is someone elses. Our grandkids have student loans and so did our daughter 30 years ago. They have all been able to handle the pressures.
I wonder if the "other side" is ever going to stop blaming Bush for what happens in their lives.
Nita
I agree. What this nation has become is nothing short of irresponsible sissies who blame others for their problems.
I have heard of a lot of horrible practices done by Sallie Mae over the years.
They are loan sharks pure and simple, and the ones running it should be charged with Financial Terrorism and locked up for life.
When they fail, and they will, they better not be bailed out, like the parasitic Goldman Sachs and other banks that were. The banks should have been broken up after being bailed out, and the board members and ceo's indicted under financial terrorism, but that is another topic for discussion....
Oh yes, Sallie Mae will ask for a bail out. I think they
did already, right after their stock price plummeted.
I didn't have to take out student loans to go to college, but knew many that did. To see their loan balances double, triple in size because of interest accumulation was staggering, especially for med students.
I can't believe what students today are paying for undergrad or what they are borrowing to do so. I have my son's college paid for with our State Prepaid College Plan. When he graduates H.S. I know he won't need to worry about taking out any loans, just whether there's a job when he graduates
To have both student loans and uncertainty in the job market has to be more than unsettling to be sure. And I think it is rare for a student to commit suicide because of a student loan, but when it happens it is very tragic and
is not something anyone should make callous remarks about e.g. irresponsible sissies.
What I do find rare, is that students seem to be as isolated about the issues with student loans as we were.
They have the power to unite and end all the student loan abuses. They are a voting block that should be reckoned with Most of the student loan legislation of the past was passed without any scrutiny or without us having knowledge it was even done.
My advice to students today: Open your mouths, loudly.
Contact your representatives. Make this an issue, similarly,
like the elderly holds everyone in Congress captive with Medicare. You should fight for fair, affordable loans, with an equal playing field. Demand it. And make folks like Sallie Mae, Inc that used to be Student Loan Marketing Association (a government sponsored enterprise) extinct
Anyone on this thread, that does not realize the importance of educating our young people at an affordable
price, and making them productive members of our
society, are the same people that should not expect them
to work their ass off to pay for your Medicare, Medicaid,
or Social Security.
"I went to law school specifically to study environmental law so that I might work in the public interest to save our resources for future generations. "
Ironically, if you focus on environmental law it's more likely that you'll find employment that involves helping businesses pollute.
I know the garbage you're talking about. They're $60,000 in debt yet oddly it only cost $3,200 per year at University of Cincinnati so a 4-year degree would be $13,200.
Where did they other $47,000 go? They drank it away, or partied it away, or were sitting in Starsucks looking cool, or frittering it away on useless electronic gadgetry.
You do need some place to live during all of that time. If it costs $10,000/year just to live as a student, you'll need an additional $40,000 over those four years.
Also, a great many schools are more expensive than the bargain price of $3200/year and graduate and professional school is much more expensive.
Quote:
Hopefully they do, because weak people like that are a drain on society as a whole.
Are you suggesting that society might benefit from constructing death camps and gas chambers for people who are a "drain on society as a whole"?
Perhaps if people had easier access to higher education, they would be able to tend to their own care and upkeep. You act as though its easy to escape poverty, but it is not. How can you expect a poor person to escape poverty when we deny them things like education?
Not really; we would just end up having a large oversupply of people with higher education who are either unemployed or underemployed. We already have a large surplus (which is the reason why people are having difficulty paying off their student loan debts).
What we do need are more solid working class and middle class jobs. That's what our government needs to focus on. (That's hard to do when you allow corporations to send manufacturing and knowledge-based jobs overseas, to import foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas to displace Americans domestically, and when you import millions of impoverished immigrants to put downward pressure on wages and to displace lower class Americans from their jobs.)
only you can drive yourself to suicide. This is just another example of "it isn't my fault" it is someone elses. Our grandkids have student loans and so did our daughter 30 years ago. They have all been able to handle the pressures.
Student loans were much more manageable 30 years ago. If you attempt to better yourself by pursuing graduate or professional study your student loans could become very large.
Quote:
I wonder if the "other side" is ever going to stop blaming Bush for what happens in their lives.
Probably not simply because he was one of the worst presidents in American history. Under his watch it became very clear that our nation had a large problem with global labor arbitrage and he wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the problem. He didn't do jack s*** to address the problems of foreign outsourcing, H-1B and L-1 visas, and mass immigration. He actually wanted to give amnesty to illegal aliens (probably because his wealthy business owner friends know they can earn higher profits by driving down wages for the lower classes).
To have both student loans and uncertainty in the job market has to be more than unsettling to be sure. And I think it is rare for a student to commit suicide because of a student loan, but when it happens it is very tragic and is not something anyone should make callous remarks about e.g. irresponsible sissies.
I posted about it because, aside from being very tragic, it is evidence that our society and our higher education system is malfunctioning. It's not a good sign when ambitious young people feel that their prospects for a good life are now so slim and that they will live lives of indentured slavery and poverty and private shame that they commit suicide.
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Most of the student loan legislation of the past was passed without any scrutiny or without us having knowledge it was even done. 
