Another Obama success story. Have the government take over the entire student loan industry in one fell swoop. Utilize the program as a way to artificially reduce the unemployment rate and to provide Keynesian stimulus to the economy as the “student” borrowers don’t actually go to class, but spend the borrowed money on iGadgets, Xboxes, and nights out at Applebees. Dole out $400 billion in NEW student loan debt in the last four years, bringing the total outstanding to $1.23 billion. This was all done with taxpayer money. When you realize the functional illiterates who got the loans will never be able to pay them back, you start reducing the interest rates, reducing monthly payments and create a brand new loan forgiveness program. Loan forgiveness is a clever name for FUCK THE TAXPAYER.
You then make ridiculous assumptions about the number of participants and the loan amounts to make it seem like a perfectly reasonable government program. Tell the dykes on MSNBC to rave about the wonderful plan and tell them it’s for the chilrun. Then you hire a bunch of unemployed liberal douchebags to market the plan to dumbass students getting degrees in African history and Mural art appreciation. Then you send emails to every indebted student in the country encouraging them to default on their student loans. And guess what? Huge success. Millions of students with no brains or hope for a job are stampeding into this wonderful program.
You the taxpayer are fucked at the rate of $72 billion so far. Obama’s brilliant strategy in controlling the student loan market will now cost you $14 billion per year in loan losses. And this is just the beginning. The losses will run into the hundreds of billions. It’s called math – something these students and Barack Obama have failed miserably.
Who could have predicted this result? Oh yeah, me – The Subprime Final Solution
Do you think Obama’s cost estimates for Obamacare will be this good? I can’t wait to find out.
Flood Of Students Demanding Loan Forgiveness Forces Administration Scramble
“Loan forgiveness creates incentives for students to borrow too much to attend college, potentially contributing to rising college prices for everyone,” is a study’s warning over government plans that allow students to rack up big debts and then forgive the unpaid balance after a set period. As WSJ reports, enrollment in student debt forgiveness plans have surged nearly 40% in just six months, to include at least 1.3 million Americans owing around $72 billion. The administration is looking to cap debt eligible for forgiveness, as President Obama’s revamped Pay As You Earn scheme has seen applications soar and is estimated to cost taxpayers $14bn a year. The ‘popularity’ of the student loan bailout plan surged after Obama promoted it in 2012, and now the administration must back-track as costs have massively outpaced government predictions.
We have been aggresively focused on the government’s blowing of the student loan bubble…
Student debt has nearly doubled since 2007 to $1.1 trillion, disproportionately driven by the growth in graduate-school debt.
And questioned the need to incur such massive credit-fueled costs of tuition only to gain a low-paying job…
there is no point in trying to preserve the old regime. Today’s emphasis on measuring college education in terms of future earnings and employability may strike some as philistine, but most students have little choice. When you could pay your way through college by waiting tables, the idea that you should “study what interests you” was more viable than it is today, when the cost of a four-year degree often runs to six figures. For an 18-year-old, investing such a sum in an education without a payoff makes no more sense than buying a Ferrari on credit.
And while government plans are nothing new, Obama has aggressively promoted them…
The government has offered some form of income-based repayment since the early 1990s, but few studentsfound the terms enticing. But in 2007, Congress allowed borrowers working in nonprofit and government jobs to have unpaid debt forgiven after 10 years, and cut monthly payments for new borrowers to 15% of discretionary income.
In 2010, it cut those payments to 10% for borrowers who took out loans from 2014. A year later, Mr. Obama, through executive action, moved up the date when borrowers could qualify for the new terms, creating a program for those who took out loans from 2011. The White House this year has proposed making the program available to all student borrowers, regardless of when they signed their loans.
The popularity of the programs surged after the Obama administration began to promote them, starting in 2012, on the Internet and later through email to borrowers.
And it seems they are ripe for abuse…
“Income-based repayment can be a way for students responsibly to manage debt, but it should not be a bailout for students who borrow too much or for schools who charge too much,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the Senate Education Committee.
But, as usual, the government screwed up…
The plans’ long-term costs have greatly outpaced the government’s predictions. In the last fiscal year, debt absorbed by the repayment plans from the most widely used student-loan program—Stafford loans—exceeded government expectations from a year earlier by 90%.
…
A report Monday last week from the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank, offered one of the few preliminary examinations of the programs’ impact. The most popular plan could cost taxpayers $14 billion a year if it becomes available to all borrowers as Mr. Obama has proposed, while fueling tuition inflation, it said.
“Loan forgiveness creates incentives for students to borrow too much to attend college, potentially contributing to rising college prices for everyone,” the study said. The authors recommend scrapping the forgiveness provisions.
Sure enough everyone piled in looking for their handout…
Enrollment in the plans—which allow students to rack up big debts and then forgive the unpaid balance after a set period—has surged nearly 40% in just six months, to include at least 1.3 million Americans owing around $72 billion, U.S. Education Department records show.
Which means costs are soaring and the administration feels the need to do something to fix what it had broken by intervening once again…
The Obama administration has proposed in its latest budget released last month to cap debt eligible for forgiveness at $57,500 per student. There is currently no limit on such debt.
The move reflects concerns in the administration not just about the hit to the government, but over the risk that promising huge debt forgiveness could make borrowers and schools less disciplined about costs. Colleges might charge more than they would otherwise, leading students to borrow more.
And so is the government about to pop the student loan bubble by spoiling a good thing – unlimited debt forgiveness – for students and trickling down that credit tightening impact on colleges only to happy to raise tuition costs to reflect the credit-forgiveness-adjusted amount of money on the table?
The net result is that the bloated bureaucracies of public universities and empires of useless and vastly overpaid liberal professors will not be paid by the hapless students, but by the taxpayers. The lefties get their magnificent towers of glass and marble, the students get their worthless African studies degree at a sharp discount, and the taxpayer gets a giant red dick stuffed up their ass. Again.
Chump change! The cost of a degree at Embry Riddle in Daytona Beach is about 165K. This doesn’t include flight training. Add another 100K or so for an ATP, which is now required to sit in the right seat, and we’re looking’ at a quarter million to get a shitty $20K/yr entry level job. No wonder no one is learning how to fly. As the dreaded boomers continue to retire, jets will be parked at an increasing rate.
I’m sure those participating in this scam are thinking they’ll have a free ride on the taxpayer’s back. One small problem: When their drinking and partying days are over and they get their worthless degree, THEY become the taxpayers!
There is no free lunch. They’ll end up paying through the nose, and will probably be stuck in part-time, minimum wage jobs too.
Karma’s a bitch.
Geez, we piss away $1 trillion a year on welfare deadbeats, and $450 billion a year on disability deadbeats, and your complaining about $72 billion on student loans? At least most of the kids did something with their lives, like get a worthless college degree from U. of Phoenix. Why doesn’t anybody ever complain about the criminals running the diploma mills, or the cost of college? Or the liberal progressives running our education system into the ground while ripping off students and parents?
And don’t worry about screwing taxpayers….Obama’s already got that figured out. Not only has he increased our debt more than all the previous president’s combines, he’s raising taxes more than any president in history.
Obama Calls for Highest Sustained Taxation in U.S. History
April 21, 2014 By Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) – In the budget proposal he presented to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called for what would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people, according to the analysis published last week by the Congressional Budget Office.
Under Obama’s proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP.
America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/obama-calls-highest-sustained-taxation-us-history
Small U.S. Colleges Battle Death Spiral as Enrollment Drops
By Michael McDonald – Apr 14, 2014
At a Dowling College campus on Long Island’s south shore, a fleet of unused shuttle buses sits in an otherwise empty parking lot. A dormitory is shuttered, as are a cafeteria, bookstore and some classrooms in the main academic building.
“There’s a lot of fear here,” said Steven Fournier, a senior who lived in the now-closed dorm for his first three years. “It’s not the same college I arrived at.”
Dowling, which got a failing grade for its financial resources from accreditors last month, epitomizes the growing plight of many small private colleges that depend almost entirely on tuition for revenue. It’s been five years since the recession ended and yet their finances are worsening. Soaring student debt, competition from online programs and poor job prospects for graduates are shrinking their applicant pools.
“What we’re concerned about is the death spiral — this continuing downward momentum for some institutions,” said Susan Fitzgerald, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in New York. “We will see more closures than in the past.”
Moody’s, which rates more than 500 public and private nonprofit colleges and universities, downgraded an average of 28 institutions annually in the five years through 2013, more than double the average of 12 in the prior five-year period.
Enrollments Fall
Dozens of schools have seen drops of more than 10 percent in enrollment, according to Moody’s. As faculty and staff have been cut and programs closed, some students have faced a choice between transferring or finishing degrees that may have diminished value.
Fournier, an aviation management major who grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut, said he considered transferring as Dowling downsized. With graduation coming in May he said he’s applied for jobs with seven airports, though hasn’t had any interviews, and is now looking outside his intended field.
“This has been very depressing,” Fournier, 23, said.
The number of private four-year colleges that have closed or were acquired doubled from about five a year before 2008 to about 10 in the four years through 2011, according to a study last year by researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, citing federal data. Plus, among all colleges, 37 merged in the three years through 2013, more than triple the number from 2006 to 2009, according to Higher Education Publications Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based directory publisher.
‘Difficult Steps’
“There will clearly be some institutions that won’t make it and there will be some institutions that will be stronger because of going through these difficult steps,” said David Warren, president of the Washington-based National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has predicted that as many as half of the more than 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S. may fail in the next 15 years. The growing acceptance of online learning means higher education is ripe for technological upheaval, he has said.
“I’m not sure a lot of these institutions have the cushion to experiment with how to stay afloat,” said Michelle Weise, a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a think tank the Harvard professor helped establish in San Mateo, California.
Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire, said in January that it would discontinue six majors, said Lisa Murray, a spokeswoman for the school, which has about 1,400 undergraduates.
Ratings Cut
Net tuition revenue fell 14 percent to $30.3 million last year from 2009 as Franklin Pierce boosted financial aid to attract freshmen and keep students from transferring. Standard & Poor’s cut the Rindge, New Hampshire-based school’s credit rating last year to B, five steps below investment grade, from BB. Moody’s reduced its rating to B3 from B1 the year prior.
“Disheartening is certainly a valid term,” said Carl Brezovec, a math professor whose program will no longer be offered as a major, the second time it’s been cut in a decade.
Ashland University, a 136-year-old college in Ohio, reduced tuition by about $11,000 — and direct aid commensurately — for the coming school year, with the goal that a lower-tuition/lower-discount model will eliminate sticker shock and lure students. In November, Moody’s downgraded Ashland’s rating to Caa2, eight levels below investment grade, saying the probability it will default has increased after three years of enrollment declines.
Steven Hannan, an Ashland spokesman, didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Enrollment Targets
Even wealthier schools are working to plug budget gaps. Yeshiva University in New York, which has a $1.2 billion endowment, has been selling real estate around its campus.
Some colleges are looking beyond belt-tightening for more permanent solutions. Morgan State University in Baltimore, a historically black college, is targeting more Hispanic applicants and those of other ethnicities, according to Moody’s. Chatham University in Pittsburgh, whose undergraduate program is women-only, said in February it was considering going co-ed to boost enrollment.
All of the schools in the Vanderbilt study that closed in recent years were small, with fewer than 1,000 students and average assets of less than $50 million. Most had endowments of about $1 million. Many were religious, such as Bethany University in Scotts Valley, California, which shut in 2011. Some folded into other colleges such as Southern New England School of Law, whose assets were acquired by the University of Massachusetts in 2010.
Investment Return
“We haven’t hit bottom yet,” said Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and author of the book, “The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself.” Students are shopping for a less expensive education as the cost of college has increased and the job market worsened, he said.
“It’s a question of return on investment,” Reynolds said.
Declining enrollment has forced many colleges to offer deeper tuition discounts to attract students, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The average freshman discount rate rose to 45 percent in 2012 from about 40 percent in 2008, according to Nacubo.
Moody’s found that expenses are outpacing revenue at 60 percent of the schools it tracks even as many try to slash their way to balanced budgets, according to Fitzgerald.
Vanderbilt Estate
Dowling traces its origins to Adelphi University, a private nonprofit college based in Garden City, New York, that began expanding eastward on Long Island in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Adelphi bought a more permanent home — the remains of a 900-acre estate in Oakdale that the grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt built on the Connetquot River in the 1880s.
That campus became independent in 1968 and was named for Robert Dowling, a real estate planner who gave $3 million to the institution.
Dowling sought to distinguish itself with practical training, targeting Long Island school teachers required by the state to get a master’s degree.
In the 1990s, it built a second campus next to the Brookhaven Airport in nearby Shirley, which includes an aviation and transportation center as well as sports fields.
Smaller Faculty
As the economy went into decline, enrollment at Dowling began to slide, falling 45 percent to 2,438 full-time-equivalent students last year from 2009, according to Moody’s. While local budget cuts undermined the demand for teachers, the aviation center on the new campus failed to live up to its promise of attracting students from around the world.
To stay solvent, Dowling laid off staff, and through attrition and buyouts shrank the faculty to less than 80 from more than 120, according to Nathalia Rogers, executive chair of the full-time faculty. It borrowed from its endowment and sold land to one of its trustees, according to the school’s annual reports.
“We were a training center for people who were no longer being hired and people already employed who didn’t need degrees,” said Norman Smith, who became Dowling’s president in June and is its fifth leader in five years.
Smith came to Dowling after turning around Wagner College on Staten Island. That school almost closed in the late 1980s because of financial troubles, according to its website.
Brookhaven Shuttered
Two weeks before Dowling’s Fall term began, Smith shuttered much of the Brookhaven campus. Before he arrived at the school, much of the aviation program had been outsourced to a local company, which also bought the college’s small fleet of planes. The satellite campus accounts for most of the college’s $55 million of debt, according to Smith, who said he’s currently negotiating with creditors who hold bonds for the facilities.
Closing that campus reduced costs and bought time. Smith then initiated a marketing campaign to target students from beyond Long Island, which is helping to stabilize enrollment, he said. He’s also working to rebuild the Board of Trustees — down to 11 members now from more than 20 in years past — and revive a moribund fundraising operation that has failed to bolster the school’s $2 million endowment.
Moody’s downgraded the college in March to Ca from Caa1, warning of a “higher probability of default.” Two weeks ago, preliminary results of a review by the college’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, found Dowling met standards on 11 points, mostly academic, while failing three, including financial resources.
“It really is a school that should be doing extremely well,” Smith said from his office on the second floor of the old Vanderbilt mansion, whose rich wood paneling and decor belie the financial disorder. “Given time, this school can be very successful, in the top 25 of small schools in the Northeast. We have to retool.”
Money … there’s so much of it to be had when you can Ctrl-P it into existence. It’s so hard to come by when you have to painstakingly earn it at a job.
Finally President Obama has done the right thing. I have been hoping for this ever since I graduated with a degree in Serving Sciences. People told me to go to colledge so I can make good money. Now I am over 20,000$ in debt with a crummy job and no future all because old fucking people ruined my life. But Obama has given me my life back now that I don’t have to worry about paying it all back except what I can. I hope he runs a third time but no matter because I’ll be voting Democrat for the rest of my life.And llpoh can fuck himself if he doesn’t like my message. Boomers and rich assholes deserve to die.
@Steve Hogan “When their drinking and partying days are over and they get their worthless degree, THEY become the taxpayers!”
Wrong Stevie–when they get that worthless degree and can’t find a job, they’ll fall back to the gov with EBT cards and other freebies. Then those of us who have jobs and are productive will be paying for their student loan bailouts AND their handouts!
Stephanie
Nice post (except for the last two sentences). Get a load of this;
“Residents of New Jersey pay an annual total price of $9,394 to attend Union County College on a full time basis.”
——– http://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/new-jersey/union-county-college/price/
We’re not talking Princeton here. We’re talking A COMMUNITY FUCKING COLLEGE …. almost $10,000 fucking dollars ….. holy shit, holy shit.
OK, I graduated college in 1975. Quotes from that year ……..
“Parents are reaching deeper into their pockets this fall than ever before to pay the rapidly increasing costs of sending children away to college. Indeed, the College Entrance Examination Board estimates that the average total costs at a four-year public college will be $2,679 this year, a 12% jump from 1974. The average at a private college: $4,391, a 9% increase. At many top-level private schools, the bill will be much higher, often climbing above $6,000 a year.”
———— Time Magazine, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917782,00.html
.
“College, School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), the Wharton School, the School of Nursing, and the School of Allied Medical Professions (SAMP) Tuition: $3,430”
———— UPenn, http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/tuition/1970.html
“Dole out $400 billion in NEW student loan debt in the last four years, bringing the total outstanding to $1.23 billion. This was all done with taxpayer money.”-JQ
No, it wasn’t.
The Tax receipts prior to this were already insufficient to pay the bills for the Pentagon, Medicaire, Social Security etc. They don’t pay the bills through taxes, they pay them by issuing out more irredeemable debt.
The taxpayer is already tapped out. Even if you taxed at 100% you couldn’t pay off the debt. The only way to keep going is to keep issuing out more debt to pay the old debt.
It works until it doesn’t.
RE
The student loan train wreck, running side by side with the Federal debt time bomb train wreck, while the unfunded liability meteor is going to wipe out all human USSA life as we know it.
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I especially like the first sentence in the Zero Hedge post.
“Loan forgiveness creates incentives for students to borrow too much to attend college, potentially contributing to rising college prices for everyone,”
Fuck these people. Potentially contributing? Square that with the gobs of cheap credit at the FED being fire hosed onto the economy like Bernanke’s money shot abso-fucking-lutely contributing to rising prices. For decades. But this is going to raise the cost. What a crock of shit.
lets look at the cost of tuition since the law was passed that students could not discharge it in bankruptcy, the complete opposite of debt forgiveness. What happened?
It’s true, this isn’t debt forgiveness, all it will do is change who pays the loan. More liabilities for the government. Real debt forgiveness, like allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy… That I could get behind.
Doppelgänger alert. I am the real Stephanie. Believe, it.
Damn, how am I supposed to know who to abuse?
PS – I suspected a doppelganger.
Llpoh, I have made peace with boomers, and now recognize that just because I am somewhat frustrated by my lack of prospects, it was wrong of me to direct my venom towards the elder statesmen of tbp. You more than any other have helped me home my craft, and I am a far better writer, nay, better person, for having traded wits with you, my friend.
Hmm, it appears I am the most popular doppelganger target of TBP.
I don’t care about student loan forgiveness, it doesn’t solve the problems. This doesn’t examine the loan problems or the Universities pushing the loans. While many scoff at the students themselves, nobody can expect an 18 year old with thousands of loan opportunities to realize the financial implications. As a former student, I took out loans before the 2008 crash. How could I have known at 21 years old, the money I started borrowing 3 years prior, would not be able to be repaid in an economy that no longer exists 6 years later? The entire economy has drastically changed since 2000 before the bubbles started bursting and growing larger.
I instead support letting student loan borrowers bankruptcy protection. I don’t think all (or even a majority) of students expect a free ride. Instead they need consumer protections. They need protection from their own mammoth sized Universities. Most of the money bloat is going to the Universities. They need consumer protection from their Dean’s, professors, and administrations. The student borrowers are merely a scapegoat in all this fraud.
Reverse Engineer says:
“Dole out $400 billion in NEW student loan debt in the last four years, bringing the total outstanding to $1.23 billion. This was all done with taxpayer money.”-JQ
My calculator cannot figure out this new maf.
Treason, treason, I do no know who that woman is. I am the real deal.
Correction: home should be hone above.
Bill Cosby on the Johnny Carson show in 1983.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVFy4ynwoPI
Hahaha. I put ‘home’ on purpose to make it look like I’m a real live grammar retard.
Stephanie said “nobody can expect an 18 year old with thousands of loan opportunities to realize the financial implications. As a former student, I took out loans before the 2008 crash. How could I have known at 21 years old, the money I started borrowing 3 years prior, would not be able to be repaid in an economy that no longer exists 6 years later?”
Do you seriously believe that. If you do please do not vote as you lack the skills to think logically. I am not someone who is in the genius category and yet it was very obvious to me that getting into debt in order to get a college degree was foolish. This is at a time when I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or how the world really worked. Still, one thing that was clear to me is that student loans are a horrible idea.
I don’t think you know who yer messing with. Are you published? Does your writing get posted elsewheres?
AWD, “Why doesn’t anybody ever complain about the criminals running the diploma mills, or the cost of college? ” Actually that’s what this post is about. Student loans feed the diploma mills. That’s why the costs have gone up so much. Student loan forgiveness only compounds the problem, inducing students to take on more debt, secure in the knowledge that they can get forgiveness. Moreover, it incents more people to work for the government, since many of the student loan forgiveness schemes are only available to the government-employee “caring” professions, such as Medicaid abortionists, child indoctrinators and copfuks. Next up will be complete student loan repudiation for anyone who works for Organizing For America registering illegals to vote.
Iska Waran says:
“Moreover, it incents more people to work for the government”
shades of Stephanie Sheepdog!
Anyway, the farce is up, the government is now paying off the stupid bankers who were somehow incented to lend morans more cash than they could ever pay in one decade.
You cock-gobbeling dopplegangers can lick my clit. I HATE ALL OF YOU! Hate. hate hate. Except El Coyote who I’d really like to blow some day. I’m not paying off my student loan. You baby boomer jackasses can do it for me. Enjoy working your dumb asses off while I live on Easy Street.
Obama and the democrats are vote buying.
While I appreciate the sentiment, my little buddy is retired. Second, I do not consider any female under 45 to be doable by me. Finally, I do accept donuts, Steph, they are the perfect substitute; they are sweet, look great and they have a hole. heh.
Hmm, it appears I am the most popular doppelganger target of TBP. — Stephanie Shepard
You wish. LLPOH was once doppled by 3 curs and one troll all at the same time. Beat that record you salad parsing twerk.
Instead of a Master of Medicine, etc., I bought a Master of Reality.
Much cheaper, worth about the same in the job market, and it’s a great Black Sabbath album.
Small U.S. Colleges Battle Death Spiral as Enrollment Drops
By Michael McDonald – Apr 14, 2014
NOW I know what Michael McDonald’s been up to since leaving the Doobie Brothers!
My neighbor, in her 80’s now, used to babysit a couple of the Doobie Brothers when they were kids or so she said. I doubted it but three times in the last twenty years the Doobie Brothers tour bus showed up at her house for dinner.
Am I suppose to be offend by that?
“…nobody can expect an 18 year old with thousands of loan opportunities to realize the financial implications.”
Sure, their parents can, if they love them and aren’t afraid of being honest with them about what college is really about.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-22/mary-willingham-the-fake-classes-whistleblower-at-university-of-north-carolina-resigns-after-meeting-with-chancellor
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-22/mary-willingham-the-fake-classes-whistleblower-at-university-of-north-carolina-resigns-after-meeting-with-chancellor
Recap-
Colleges are full of students who are functionally illiterate (but don’t have to pay to go because, football) When someone at the University talks about this, they are forced to resign. When the head of the department that handles the functional illiterates is found to be teaching courses where no one has to attend in order to receive grades that keep them on the team and is in fact indicted on felony charges relating to being paid for non-existent “courses”, he is allowed to keep his six figure salary.
Colleges, for the most part, are a grift. The degrees issued by them are meaningless. The courses taught there are worthless and the money extracted from those who attend are nothing more than criminal proceeds. Any human being with an IQ on the right hand side of the bell curve who sends a child to a college without knowing at least this much is the person you should direct your anger towards. Unless one of my children had a burning desire to be an oncologist or an orthopedic surgeon I would do everything in my power to dissuade them from attending one of these continuing criminal enterprises.
My 17 year old has close to six figures in savings based on his efforts and skills and plans on spending his Summer hiking the mountains of Europe before embarking on his future- which definitely does not include college. I expect he will do quite well whatever he chooses to do. I know he will be an asset to whatever venture he pursues and no “degree” or lack thereof will help or hinder him.
If America really gave a damn about its youth- which it clearly hates as much as its elders- it wouldn’t allow anyone under the age of 21 to enter a college and anyone at any age without at lest two years real world work experience to enter at all, ever.
You are mad because you never guessed the salad perpetration specialist in your local Olive Garden had such a rich and vibrant internal thought life.
“Colleges, for the most part, are a grift. The degrees issued by them are meaningless. The courses taught there are worthless and the money extracted from those who attend are nothing more than criminal proceeds.”
Disagree with this, for the most part. Yes, there are plenty of worthless degrees offered at today’s universities, and an entitled youth that was sold a bill of “going to college will make you richer” took the easiest way out they could by majoring in simple subjects for which there is no demand in the real world.
Those of us who became scientists, engineers, doctors, pharmacists, etc. — who took coursework that would never be possible at a high school level — have, for the most part, benefited from a college education. Without one, we’d be relegated to service-industry jobs or trades which are all fine, but there’s only so much demand for those jobs, as well.
In reality, we’d do better to screen students in high school and channel those who have interest and the ability to excel in college into that path, while those who would not be capable of a higher education could be steered into learning a trade. Students and their parents still get a choice, but a realistic evaluation could prevent those who just don’t have higher-ed abilities from taking out loans and going to college, only to fail miserably. If they choose to do it anyway, they pay, period, just like those who succeed at it.
Not everyone is capable of a higher education, and we shouldn’t expect that of them, no matter how much Obama wants to place a label on the U.S. of “more college graduates per capita than any other country.” That’s all fine and good, but without a jobs market to support it, it’s a stupid idea, especially when education is dumbed down to meet those goals. College was always for the talented, the exceptional, and those standards meant that those who went on to higher education got something worth paying for.
My 17 year old has close to six figures in savings based on his efforts and skills and plans on spending his Summer hiking the mountains of Europe before embarking on his future- which definitely does not include college. I expect he will do quite well whatever he chooses to do. I know he will be an asset to whatever venture he pursues and no “degree” or lack thereof will help or hinder him.
Well – now I feel like failure as a parent.
hardscrabble farmer says:
My 17 year old has close to six figures in savings based on his efforts…
______________________________________________
…at selling drugs. Ain’t no other way a 17 year old kid could attain it.
@Stephanie: You went to college? It’s $20,000 not 20,000$
The Obama administration covers reality with programs and lies.
Unemployment? Just put them on disability, or stop counting them after benefits run out.
Social problems? Extend SNAP, give kids breakfast / lunch / dinner at school.
Makes sense to ‘give away’ student loans – since there are no jobs out there, keep the kids in school. It looks better than having more unemployment stats.
I know several professors at the U of Minnesota. The pay, the benefits, the work schedule – is beyond belief. This entire higher ed industry is self-serving and corrupt.
The kids are screwed. As our economy continues to slowly implode, they’re incomes will continue to drop. And another recession is on the way shortly, if we’re not already in one now. If you don’t work in the parasitic financialization industry (banking, accounting, insurance, lawyer), then all that’s left is the service industry. They don’t need engineers and PhD’s to flip burgers and re-stock the buffet food troughs.
If kids think the job market is bad now, just wait till millions more lose their jobs in the recession/depression. People are scared, and are trying to save money nowadays. There is going to be massive student defaults, and the collapse of the student loan bubble. Why doesn’t the government cease and desist giving our more student loans? How and when did they give themselves the authority to become a massive usury/fraud bank? Why do they continue to give out $1 trillion a year in free shit to worthless welfare recipients, while indebting students?
The millenials are truly a “lost generation”, they’ll never get out of student loan debt, never be able to buy a house, buy furniture, buy a new car, start a family. Nope, only the FSA can afford cars, kids, and section 8 housing, because it’s all handed them on a silver socialist platter for free. In 50 years, this country will be a third world shithole like Mexico or Africa, and the average IQ will be 70. But it won’t matter, there won’t be any jobs, or anybody to work them.
Another Federal Budget Buster: Student Loan Forgiveness Costs $14 Billion/Yr.—Helps Harvard Grads The Most
by NCPA • April 23, 2014
Existing student loan repayment programs may be four times more costly than they need to be, say Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos, fellows at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy.
Federal loan borrowers can use income-based repayment programs, meaning that their monthly loan payments are not set at a fixed amount, rather they depend on their earnings. How well do these repayment schedules work for student loan borrowers?
•The point of an income-based repayment program is to protect borrowers from being faced with unaffordable monthly payments.
•Six months after student enrollment ends, borrowers must begin making payments on federal loans.
•The first income-based repayment program for new student loan borrowers was established in 2007.
•In 2010, the program was made even more generous, lowering the fraction of earnings to be spent on repayment to 10 percent.
•The time period before loan forgiveness was shortened, from 25 years to 20 years.
Akers and Chingos calculate that the current Pay As You Earn (PAYE) program may cost up to four times as much as a more limited payback program that could still fulfill the goal of protecting borrowers from unaffordable payments.
•Extended repayment — the core component of these income-based payment programs — accounts only for one-quarter to one-third of the total program costs.
•This means that a $14 billion annual cost of PAYE could save $10 billion by scaling the program back to include only extended repayment.
Akers and Chingos also find that the vast majority of program benefits go to borrowers that attend more expensive schools. The concern is that income-based repayment programs incentivize students to attend more expensive colleges. Eliminating forgiveness provisions could solve this problem.
Source: Beth Akers and Matthew M. Chingos, “Student Loan Safety Nets: Estimating the Costs and Benefits of Income-Based Repayment,” Brookings Institution, April 14, 2014.
For more on Education Issues:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=27
My loans will never be repaid, I pulled out only enough to pay for classes and materials (books etc). I was responsible and got a degree in Chemistry even though I would have much rather chased degrees in Music or History.
The government only subsidizes stupidity, and they do it by draining the productive intelligent members of society dry.
My “new” house? 67k with 20% down, it was a foreclosure that was move in ready. We qualified for home loans well past 250k. We did the responsible thing. Many of our friends and coworkers have bought new houses in the last 3 years, all but one using FHA. All of them with payments so massive they struggle to pay the bills.
My new car? A ford escape, which we bought using her father’s “A” plan as a ford retiree. No bells and whistles, we got the model one step up from “motorized chassis”. Many of our friends and coworkers have bought new vehicles in the last two years. Sports cars, super trucks and motorcycles. They pay top dollar and pull out massive loans to do so.
Again, all of them with payments so massive they struggle to pay the bills. Just the meeting the downpayment for these purchases empties their bank accounts and forces them into credit cards for a couple months until their finances stabilize.
What the fuck is wrong with people these days, its like they can’t even do basic arithmetic and realize that their lifestyle is a complete fraud.
“…at selling drugs. Ain’t no other way a 17 year old kid could attain it.”
A couple of his ventures-
Sells split/dry cordwood for $250 per cord, This year he sold out by January just shy of 120 cords.
He sells piglets @ $125 each. Approximately 10-12 per litter, two litters per year X 5 sows.
He shovels snow off of flat roofs for six accounts. Not sure what he charges each customer but he has to do it every time we get 6″ or more and this year we had just under 120″ of snowfall. I do know he pays his two helpers $15 per hour so knowing him he’s getting twice that at minimum.
He gets a cut of our maple syrup production based on time he puts in. This year he earned about 4K and it was a rotten year. Last year he earned 12K.
Funny thing is it sounds like I am bragging- and I am proud- but its simply a fact. To be fair he doesn’t pay room and board, we still buy his clothes and provide for medical and dental, but everything else he wants or desires he pays for including his vehicle, his activities, his entertainment expenses. he’s frugal like a Scotsman, but he works as hard as anyone I have ever met and he is responsible. I can’t tell you how many nights I have listened to him get up at 2 am in the middle of a snowstorm to go out and shovel roofs in the dark because he said he would and he believes in being a man of his word.
The advantages we have given him have been access to the resources of the land we own, a work ethic that began with daily chores when he was 6 years old, payment for work above and beyond chores, and all the encouragement and praise we could provide when he accomplished a task or goal. My wife wanted us to control his earnings until he reached adulthood and I said that would be counterproductive (I don’t want to reinforce the idea that what’s his is better left in the hands of others) and that if he lost some, wasted it or invested badly it would be every bit as valuable a lesson than if he only saw profit.
So as hard as it is to believe in today’s day and age, it is entirely possible for an ambitious and hardworking teenager to enter adulthood not only debt free, but capitalized enough to choose whatever course he selects in life. I wish it would be to remain on the farm as a partner, but that’s his decision to make, not ours.
@Zara – I’ve known many a farm kid who had 20-30k in the bank easy by the time they graduated high school. Six figures isn’t that big of a stretch.
Apparently there are still some massive fiscal advantages to growing up on a farm – and it’s good to see that big-agri hasn’t extended its tentacles everywhere.
I know a (rightfully) proud parent when I see one.
In all honesty I didn’t really wake up until after the 2008 financial crisis and by then my city-raised kids were fucked.
20/20 hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Dutchman says:
“@Stephanie: You went to college? It’s $20,000 not 20,000$”
20,000$ makes more sense.
HS farmer’s figures for his son’s earnings sound reasonable to me. around here, a 16 year old kid with initiative, hard work, and some resources can make quite a bit of money as a fisherman, lobsterman, even beginning as a stern man. these guys never say how much they make but when the new $50k truck appears in their driveway, it’s easy to draw conclusions. recently, there was a newsworthy story about a guy who didn’t pay taxes on $700k worth of baby eel sales. so there you have it.
even so i don’t remember how much energy i had as a teenager. is it safe to assume that HS has a skidder and wood splitter? that’s a lot of wood!
120 cords!?
Hard Scrabble, your son is a mad man. He must have a processor, yes? That is an impressive amount of wood to deal with.
This student loan forgiveness pisses me off. So, idiots getting useless degress can catch a break because they can’t find a job? Their problem. What about students who get a degree they know they can use? I had a parent pass away leaving me just enough to pay for college, thus, denying me the chance to receive any help from the government. Can I get any of that money back? Nope. I’m on my own. My parents are gone. Just because it was there, I’m expected to pay out right. I know so many kids with two, well earning parents, who received help. How about considering special circumstances?
Student loan forgiveness is a great idea. The Minnie’s will have more money to buy tattoos with.