Student Loan Fugitives

know1 wrote:

Sorry you feel that way.

For the record, I worked my way through college with very little help from my parents - about $1K per year.

I worked full-time while taking a full load of classes, worked more than full-time in the summers, lived in a single room with a shared kitchen and bathroom (shared with the roaches mostly), ate ramen noodles and didn't party at all. I drove a $500 car that I paid for completely on my own - insurance, gas, maintenance, etc.

I still ended up borrowing about $3000 for school and so I know what pain that was to pay off right after college working 12-hour night shifts on an assembly line in a factory. I'm also helping my wife pay off the $20K in debt she incurred.

I say all that to say this - I have experience with these types of things.

Not everyone can inherit money to pay off these very crippling loans. Perhaps if you hadn't, you might have a different experience.

They are a big mistake!!

But skipping the country to not pay them back is stealing and it raises the cost of school and rates for others.

I started working at 15 (had to get a special work permit) not to save up for college, but to help with my family's living expenses. I earned a full scholarship to college, which required me to take more than a full-time load of classes. I went to the cheapest, local state school. I had zero help fom my parents (who would have loved to have helped me but weren't able to on teachers' salaries with twins in college). I lived next to crack houses in the ghetto (so I could walk to school instead of having to pay for parking) and had many, many roommates. I drove a TOTALED Pinto station wagon that was older than I was. I worked no less than 3 jobs at a time. And I STILL ended up having to take out about $15,000 in loans just for my undergrad degree.

I'm not having trouble paying off my loans right now, with a low interest rate and no family to support. But God forbid I ever have any exorbitant medical expenses.

The fact is that huge medical bills can cause you to default on your student loans regardless of how small the loans are. Even if you don't have student loans, medical bills cause many, many people to be unable to pay their other expenses.

Of course anyone who takes out a loan should try to minimize their costs. But you can't say that no one should ever take out a student loan, and you can't really judge whether total strangers really needed to take out as much as they did. (Not to mention the fact that we don't have any idea how small this guy's loan really was before the interest built up.)

Many, many people must take out student loans to get a college education. And there are plenty of programs that don't allow you to work while you're in school.

Take doctors, for instance. You can't work while you're in medical school. You get paid for residency, but it's very little. In the meantime, you're not only incurring living expenses and medical school bills, but also having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for board exams, travel to interviews, medical licenses, etc., etc. I know very few doctors who have less than $200,000 in student loan debt. I know one doctor who is even still having to take out student loans to complete a fellowship. If her kid comes down with some serious illness, she probably won't be able to pay her student loans either. Should she just never have gone to medical school?

Ya know, what kills me (as I think GTFLYGIRL has already pointed out) is that the folks who are judging the people who default on their student loans are so frequently the same folks who say those who don't make enough money to cover health insurance should have just gotten off their asses and gone to college. On top of that, they fault people for default due to medical expenses and yet refuse to allow for a healthcare system that doesn't cause this kind of thing to happen all the time.

:rolleyes:
Fucking hypocrites.

Luckily for these students our corporations are shipping jobs out of the country so they have no problem putting their degrees to work outside the U.S.

know1 wrote:

Prepare to be blasted for incorporating common sense into your posts!

Yes.

cincybearcat wrote:

Perhaps students loans should be based on what you are studying...you know, making it harder for a music major to get a loan then say a nursing student.

Isn't a fundemental basis of loaning money having a loanee able to repay the loan?

That makes perfect sense.

Then who decides what are justifiable majors to take out student loans for? People seem awfully quick to deem music and art as worthless majors, yet the primary reason we are all post here is Pearl Jam (music). And what if you start out as an biology major and decide to switch to something like fine arts or history. Should your ability to take out loans change?

ReleasH wrote:

Then who decides what are justifiable majors to take out student loans for? People seem awfully quick to deem music and art as worthless majors, yet the primary reason we are all post here is Pearl Jam (music). And what if you start out as an biology major and decide to switch to something like fine arts or history. Should your ability to take out loans change?

I don't necessarily think that music or art are worthless degrees, but I do think that you have much less potential to earn the money to pay your loan back if you have a degree in art compared to a law, business or engineering degree. And I that is how you it would be decided, by the loaner, what is justifible. I mean it is the same with anything. If you are unemployed you are probably not going to get a loan, but if you have a good, high paying job you are much more likely to get a loan.

Plus as far as this being a board about art, I don't think any of the members of Pearl Jam have degrees in music. Kind of hurts your argument about the importance of music education.

ReleasH wrote:

The interest rates changes as the economy changed. You may have been able to lock in the low interest rate during the "golden" years of the early 2000, but now it is much harder to get an interest rate any better than 7%

Makes sense given the changes in the economy of late. I guess I should have said this first but i graduated in May of 05 and didn't consolidate till later that year. I guess I didn't think they would change that much since then.

ReleasH wrote:

umm, Jeff has a degree in art at University of Montana and Stone studied music. If you don't understand the importance of music education, I can't explain it to you. It's part of a well round liberal arts education.

And I know plenty of unemployed people who majored in business, political science or engineering. There may traditionally be less earning potential with art or music major but it really boils down to what you personally do with your education whatever the major. And there is no way for loan companies to determine that before giving you the loan. I really find it hard to believe that people who appreciate Pearl Jam (and thus music) to the degree board members do don't support music and art. Maybe it's not for you, but you can't deny what it contributes to the culture.

I don't think it's just about art degrees. Seems to me like people who don't value the liberal arts in general want to pass judgement that no one should receive student loans to obtain these degrees. I guess in a perfect world everyone would study business...