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Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 5:22 am
by Soi Dog
Note : Student loan debt is up to $1.16 trillion.

My view? Honor your commitments and pay your personal debts you deadbeats. By the way..."Wall Street" and "the Banks" who got bailed out paid back all their debt with interest within a few years. Put that on your sign. No one should ever loan you anything again until you are paid in full with interest as you agreed to. No credit cards, no home mortgages.

Their loans should be refinanced and payments postponed/lowered for a reasonable period, but not written off.

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Students protest the rising costs of student loans in Los Angeles.
Student loan recipients go on repayment strike, face default

Sarah Dieffenbacher is on a debt strike. She's refusing to make payments on the more than $100,000 in federal and private loans she says she owes for studies at a for-profit college that she now considers so worthless she doesn't include it on her resume.

The "debt strike" sentiment is catching on.

Calling themselves the "Corinthian 100"—named for the troubled Corinthian Colleges, Inc., which operated Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech before agreeing last summer to sell or close its 100-plus campuses—about 100 current and former students are refusing to pay back their loans, according to the Debt Collective group behind the strike.

They're meeting Tuesday with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government agency that already has asked the courts to grant relief to Corinthian students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans.

The Education Department is the group's primary target, because they want the department to discharge their loans. A senior department official is scheduled to attend the meeting.

Denise Horn, an Education Department spokeswoman, said the department has taken steps to help Corinthian students, but is urging them to make payments to avoid default. The department has income-based repayment options.

By not paying back their loans, the former Corinthian students potentially face a host of financial problems, such as poor credit ratings and greater debt because of interest accrued.

The former students argue that the department should have done a better job regulating the schools and informing students that they were under investigation.

"I would like to see them have to answer for why they allowed these schools to continue to take federal loans out when they were under investigation for the fraudulent activity they were doing," said Dieffenbacher, 37.

Dieffenbacher said she received an associate's degree in paralegal studies from Everest College in Ontario, California, and later went back for a bachelor's in criminal justice before later dropping out. She said she left school with about $80,000 in federal loans and $30,000 in private loans, but when she went to apply for jobs at law firms she was told her studies didn't count for anything.

Dieffenbacher, who works in collections for a property management company, said she was allowed at first to defer her loan payments, but now should be paying about $1,500 a month that she can't afford.

Makenzie Vasquez, of Santa Cruz, California, said she left an eight-month program to become a medical assistant at Everest College in San Jose after six months because she couldn't afford the monthly fees. She said she owes about $31,000 and went into default in November because she hasn't started repayment.

"I just turned 22 and I have this much debt and I have nothing to show for it," said Vasquez, a server at an Italian restaurant.

Many of Corinthian's troubles came to light last year after it was placed by the Education Department on heightened cash monitoring with a 21-day waiting period for federal funds. That was after the department said it failed to provide adequate paperwork and comply with requests to address concerns about the company's practices, which included allegations of falsifying job placement data used in marketing claims and of altered grades and attendance records.

On Tuesday, the Education Department released a list of 560 institutions - including for-profit, private and public colleges - that had been placed on heightened cash monitoring, meaning the department's Federal Student Aid Office is providing additional oversight of the schools for financial or compliance issues. The department said the effort was done to "increase transparency and accountability."

The administration has taken other steps to crack down on the for-profit college industry, such as announcing a new rule last year that would require career training programs to show that students can earn enough money after graduation to pay off their loans. The rule has been challenged in court by the for-profit education sector.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102548218?__sour ... ar=xfinity

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:47 am
by MekongMouse
Well, they owe the money so they should pay it, but these phony schools are a serious problem for all of us. They're eating up grants and loans from the US government and they're not providing a real education. The whole thing is a racket and the government should have done a better job regulating like it is just starting to do now.

So I guess I'm against bailing students out and was against bailing the banks out. And I do have loan debt (from a real school) though I've gotten it down to $5,800. It would be nice if it were gone, but I pay my bill + extra every month and have no problem continuing that.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 7:00 am
by frank lee bent
i think it should be free.

it is an investment in the future.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 7:01 am
by Soi Dog
frank lee bent wrote:i think it should be free.

it is an investment in the future.
Nothing is free. You mean you think other people should pay for these student's higher education by paying higher taxes on their property or income.

I don't see how having the government pay all tuition through higher taxes would solve these people's problems of not being qualified for any real jobs after graduating. They made poor choices and now don't want to be held responsible for those choices.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 10:07 pm
by StroppyChops
Oz is moving to a 'one set of study per qualification level' entitlement model. That is, you can study one Certificate III, one Certificate IV, one Diploma, etc. on nationally subsidized student loans, but if you want to switch careers or take a second qualification, it's all on you. The student repayment component has just blown out by 500%, which seems harsh in a single year. My son's GF is taking a pre-med course at university at the previously capped loan rate. If she fails a single unit, she'll need to re-enrol under the new fees, and pay 5 times the rate at which she first enrolled, for her remaining eight years of study.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 1:01 am
by MekongMouse
That seems fair. I think higher education should be provided for by the state, as it is an investment in the future of your country. However, it is important to make sure people aren't milking the system. I would favor something similar to the model described above.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:06 am
by StroppyChops
Also helps limit the number of 'professional students' who spend their life constantly in school, at tax payer expense.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:32 am
by OrangeDragon
Soi Dog wrote:
frank lee bent wrote:i think it should be free.

it is an investment in the future.
Nothing is free. You mean you think other people should pay for these student's higher education by paying higher taxes on their property or income.

I don't see how having the government pay all tuition through higher taxes would solve these people's problems of not being qualified for any real jobs after graduating. They made poor choices and now don't want to be held responsible for those choices.
No one seems to get this... paying for student education via taxes means you are essentially paying student loans... forever. even if you don't go.

A big step in the right direction would be to limit degree programs to employable fields, which are easily obtained and made available to schools regularly for guidance concealing. If i want a loan to invest in a business, I have to show a plan to pay it back. The same should go for a loan to invest in an education.

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:43 am
by OrangeDragon

Re: Deadbeats or victims with legitimate grievances?

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:07 pm
by StroppyChops
OrangeDragon wrote:A big step in the right direction would be to limit degree programs to employable fields, which are easily obtained and made available to schools regularly for guidance concealing. If i want a loan to invest in a business, I have to show a plan to pay it back. The same should go for a loan to invest in an education.
Agreed - although depending on which political party is currently in power this does happen in Oz. One party seems to like filling the need for doctors, engineers, accountants etc. and the other thinks we need more arts and humanities graduates - the more alternative, or Feminist, or alternative Feminist Lesbian, the better.