| 100% in good faith: > I'm curious to know how these loans became such a political issue. It's unusual to take out a loan and then complain about having to repay it. Saddling _teenagers_ with such debt is problematic in many ways. For many of my peers they were not ready/cut out for college but still had the debt + schooling jammed down their throats because "it's what you're suppose to do." Then, there's the cost to quality situation... I got nailed with this one - accredited private college with little oversight with a _horrible_ program for my area of study. We're talking two professors for the entire subject, and most of the courses they had advertised in their catalog hadn't been offered in over _seven_ years. Lots of people's time at school was just jumping through hoops for an "education" with very little value to their eventual career. Cost has gone through the roof - administrative costs for colleges have skyrocketed. I've worked in marketing for schools - they're businesses before they're educational facilities. They're profit seeking through tuition, grants, donations, etc. Don't even get me started on sports... > We don't typically reward people for digging themselves into a hole by bailing them out. They were put through an incredibly profit-seeking system that operates in it's own self interest to get as much tuition as possible. Just like the healthcare industry, we've let administrative costs and middlemen drive the price of an education up while whittling the quality of it down. 100% they were not the only ones digging the hole that they find themselves in. Additionally, I have a hard time nailing 17-18 year olds to the cross for poor decisions in regards to their "digging" activities. > Unless they're large corporations. We bail them out in certain cases. But I don't think that's a popular idea either. And, just saying - yes this happens!! We consistently cut breaks to the interests of capital (large corporations, the rich w/taxes). Regardless of how any of us feel about it, this will continue to happen. So if our corporate benefactors are getting help, why can't a citizen with/seeking an education get some help too? |
So perhaps the solution involves some combination of 1) raising the age at which someone is considered an adult until it does not end with "teen", and 2) not giving loans to people with no plausible way to repay it, and/or 3) requiring a cosigner who is both older and better funded.
Maybe we take away blanket guarantees for student loans, make them dischargeable in bankruptcy, make the interest rate and borrowing limit based on plausible future income, things like that.