I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt

In My Humble Opinion
21

Part of the attraction of the for-profit schools has historically been easier scheduling: evening classes, weekend classes, online classes, classes starting every month or two rather than just once or twice a year, and so forth. For the “traditional” college student, the 18- or 19-year-old who is going to be going to school full-time, that’s maybe not so important, but for the working adult who is trying to balance school and job and family, that’s huge. The pandemic of course changed everything, and even before that more public colleges/universities were offering online programs, but the University of Phoenixs of the world saw an opportunity.

How would we distinguish between those who scrimped and saved, versus those who simply had the good fortune to be born into families able to pay on their behalf, versus those who relied on grants, scholarships, subsidized jobs, and other forms of financial aid that didn’t need to be paid back?

22

One of the problems as I see it is that the government forces student loans to be repaid. So the lender has no incentive to ensure that the borrower can actually pay back the loan in a reasonable amount of time. They know the borrower can’t default on it.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been working a lot with banks on redesigning their consumer lending processes. One thing I’ve noticed is that they pay a lot of attention to whether the borrower can and will pay back the loan:

  • Is the borrower who they say they are?
  • What’s their credit score?
  • How are they going to pay the loan back?
  • Do they have enough collateral?
  • Do they have enough income or other assets that they could reasonably cover the payments over time?

So on and so forth.

I have no idea if anyone ever does that sort of due diligence to determine if a 18 year old (or 65 year old) will ever earn enough to cover the $300,000 for their Human Studies degree at Bumblefuck U.

But I bet if they could default on it, that loan would be a lot harder to get.

23

As with most things here, if you don’t want to participate in the discussion…don’t. What was the point of your response?

24

Hey, now, Bumblefuck is a fine institution!

25

Did I say I didn’t want to participate? My question is, what was your goal in posting this? To talk about this one specific case or try to use it cast aspersions on all student loan debt cancellation?

26

To talk about this specific case and her request to cancel all student loan debt.

27

And you don’t think the topic of “should we cancel all student loan debt” had it’s well poisoned by start with this one (and again, I repeat myself) case that is in no way representative of the average student loan debt holder?

28

Another person annoyed by this propaganda-style “Here’s one bad example, let’s base our decisions around it.” mentality.

It’s been said over and over here: The plural of anecdote is not data. You can show me a dozen such examples and not only will I not fall for, my stance will harden.

I am disappointed that something like this was posted here.

29

One day, I’m going to start a Pit thread titled, “Fuck caveat emptor.”

I nod my head vigorously at so much of what has been said above. The lady in the linked OP story is a major edge case. The proliferation of the for-profit colleges and universities seems to have done more harm than good.

The economy is also heavily globalized and the days of the ‘universally applicable Liberal Arts degree’ are probably behind us.

Higher ed seems to be fast becoming a free market failure. Its unobtanium aspect also seems to be privatizing profits and socializing loss – something we’re so awfully good at.

I’m torn about the recent debt forgiveness action, tending to think that really specific targeting was probably optimal (but … “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”), but am more focused on how many people probably did get abused in a caveat emptor society and by predatory capitalists.

I also think it’s one of so many band-aid fixes that allows the system to persist basically unchanged (also see: health care).

Education is manifestly one of the “common goods” that many other advanced economies value and support appropriately. It pays cascading dividends.

But an educated, healthy workforce probably narrows the wealth gap appreciably, and we can’t have that, now can we (also see: Communist, Socialist, Marxist … am I forgetting any?).

30

Not as good as Bumblefuck A&M

31

Most of the senior citizens who owe for student loans co-signed for somebody who later defaulted, or more frequently would have had their loans totally forgiven otherwise because they died or became permanently and totally disabled.

32

IMO in her call for cancellation of all student debt, offering herself as an example is not helping, being such an atypical outlier . As Dr.Drake said, it’s such an extreme case that it cannot really guide the larger debate over student loans.

As discussed elsewhere, what the President announced is about as much as is politically doable at this point (I doubt her claim that Biden could wipe it all out by fiat), and it’s just a partial relief to a limited range of persons. Student debt relief is reasonably to be focused primarily on the norm. It is not meant for people in her position.

(Full disclosure, I find for-profit technical schools or professional institutes perfectly cromulent. But for a doctoral degree…? BTW, hey, HR departments and professional associations: stop inflating the degree this or that job requires! Not everyone needs to be a “Doctor Of Whatever”.)

As she describes her experience, sounds to me like she got ripped off. As mentioned elsewhere, these outfits grab people by offering the ability to “walk in” into a degree program, then as she herself narrates, they string you out to maximize how much they’ll have you on the hook for, and then you get into Sunk Cost territory and if you back out you wind up with neither money nor degree.

Her real problem is that an original $75,000 debt has ballooned so that she owes $300,000 after 12 years regardless of how much she has already paid. That’s like an interest in the mid-teens percent at a time when interest rates were dirt cheap. I, too, would want to know what type of loan was it she took. Is she paying to the bank, to the school, to a loan consolidator, to collections? I suspect that for-profit schools may not participate in more favorable loan programs.

The reality is that our society as a general rule does not indemnify as a society a competent adult who is ripped off, but at most will impose restitution or civil damages on the person(s) doing the ripping off. Which does not help her if the ripoff stayed in the bounds of legality.

33

Reading the Guardian article in the OP, she graduated with “only” $75,000 in debt but it grew to $300,000 (presumably as she wasn’t able to pay it down).

And she says, “I was not comfortable advising my children to achieve the highest level of education when I myself didn’t.” Well, that’s a dumb argument. A PhD isn’t necessary for many professions. She got one in human resources management; in my experience, HR pros where I’ve worked haven’t had PhDs. For many professions a bachelor’s or a master’s degree is sufficient.

34

She did mention it in the article. After she started, the school changed the length of the degree program to 6 years from 3. And she did complete the degree.

35

I always like when they get the stupidest people to make op-eds, it’s like the news sites are deliberately making us NOT want to support their decision except so many major sites like CNN do it all the time.

Like you’ll see all the time an OP-ED “Prisoner on Death Row opens up about how Inhumane the Death Penalty is” but then you see his crime was murdering 3 people in a home invasion gone wrong and you’re like “Well I’m okay with him dying”.

Or "POC high school students want more than GPA to be factored into College Admissions " and then you read and they want “Political Positions and Activism” to be a major part of college entrance criteria.

36

NPR does a lot of stories about people who got insane medical bills. Most of the time, it’s the result of incorrect coding, or some other thing that is easily remedied.

37

Was she trying for a PhD in economics? :slight_smile:

38

I’m tired of renting and have decided to purchase my own home. I’ve found the perfect house for $300,000, and I’m going to go to Wells Fargo and get me a mortgage loan. The bank is going to take a close look at not only my ability to pay off the loan, but also the property itself to make sure it’s actually worth $300,000. If I explain to the bank that I make $30,000 annually and I only have $3,000 for a down payment, odds are good they’re not going to loan to me because the odds I’ll default are pretty high.

When making a student loan, does anyone check to see what they’re majoring in? Somebody made a decision to allow institutions to make these loans regardless of whether the student will likely be able to pay it back. There’s no accountability on those who make the loans. Why not? Because we’ve set it up so there doesn’t have to be any accountability as the debt cannot be discharged.

And the consequences of going into debt shouldn’t be peonage for the rest of your life. Bankruptcy is a course of action that should be available for student debts.

39

Insane medical bills for a check up may be the result of incorrect coding. Insane medical bills for major diseases are par for the course, not some coding problem.

40

True, although the “for-profit institution” part of it is still highly boneheaded.

In any case, as many other posters have remarked, this sort of edge case should not be, and AFAICT is not, driving policy decisions. The recent student debt forgiveness proposal is designed to get small monkeys off a lot of people’s backs because their debt burden is having a significant impact on the nation’s economy. Devoting those resources to getting much larger debt monkeys off many fewer people’s backs would accomplish much less.