Forgive student loans

Not sure I'd get my hopes up...

However, the White House announcement doesn't offer much new help for existing borrowers who are already eligible for the income-based repayment plan and who have been able to consolidate federal loans for more than a year, said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org.

"It preserves the cost of the loans," Kantrowitz said. "And existing borrowers who are up to their eyebrows in debt, they don't get the benefit" of the lower payments on the income-based repayment plan.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/25/news/economy/Obama_student_loan/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1

 

/sigh

Well. At least when she passes, the student debt cannot be passed on to my sister's son.

I still think all the "debt out of thin air" needs to stop. Too much of debt is about greed. Usurious rates.

 

Yes...that 8 dollar an hour job is well worth the enormous debt incurred. File bankruptcy, like the best of the "business" people do. Do like Donald Trump does! It's "just business". We only bail out the wealthy though, so...the OPer is probably out of luck...

 

It's amazing how people on the R side never seem to have walked in these moccasins. Frankly - I refuse to believe they're all rich and ignorant. It's like talking to a chorus of grandfathers with tunnel vision. "Uphill! Both ways!!" And if that's not how they experienced it well then by gum, YOU'RE the Problem for saying there's a problem.

 

If you're making $8 an hour after college, you're:

A. Just as worthless in the job market as you were before college.
B. Unwilling to work at a job that utilizes brain power. You probably lost too many brain cells at all the keggers you attended.
C. Lazy and unwilling to use anything you "learned" in college.
D. Scared of work.
E. Still in shock that you actually have to work now instead of being spoon-fed everything like you were promised.

 

The bad thing about the student loans as that at present most people cannot get rid of them through a bankruptcy. They are like the proverbial noose around ones neck here in the States due to changes in the bankruptcy policies which made them non-dischargable... They remain after a bankruptcy and must be paid unless it can be proved that repaying them would cause an Undue Hardship on the debtor or his or her family meaning that it would have to be proved in the court that the debtor had not enough money to meet basic needs and likely had no prospect of doing so in the future. There is a catch though. In order to qualify for an Undue Hardship one has to have made payments towards their student loans. Some of those who are in need of this cannot get it because they have not had a job so they have not been able to make payments. The ding on their credit which results from being unable to make payments on ones student loans does not help most job searchers get jobs so it is a Catch 22 situation. (It should be mentioned that
student loans can be consolidated with other debts in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy but this requires a stable job and most of those who are struggling and needing some assistance in paying off their loans do not have a stable job that will allow them to make regular payments.)

Making the loans a 10 percent of discretionary income instead of a 15% of discretionary income and forgiving loans that have not been paid off in 20 years instead of in 25 years starting in 2012 instead of 2014 when Congress' bill was supposed to take effect does not seem like a big deal.
Consolidating loans from both the Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government into one loan up to a half percentage point less does not seem to be a big deal.
Yet it will help those who are dealing with excessive student loan debt feel less like they are drowning and more like engaging in work when and if it becomes available.

I am still hoping that this bit of legistlation will apply to older student loans as I know of two people, both women in their early 50s and in ill health, who took jobs in social work helping the poor and assisting people with disabilities to obtain needed services, who could really use some debt forgiveness. I was lucky in that my parents funded my Bachelors degree and that my mother helped me out by funding a portion of my Masters degree when I lost my job and was unable to continue paying for it. I feel sorry for those who did not have the kind of support that I had and know that there is no way now that I could, at age 51, working as a part-time independent contractor at a non-profit clinic, afford to go to school to get a doctorate now even though that might be helpful to me.

Those who are suffering now due to their inability to pay off their student loans are not the kind to purchase two cars, to take lots of vacations or to purchase lots of unnecessary stuff. They are struggling to just put food on the table, pay for health care, take care of their families, etc.
There are lots of people who are actively helping people in their communities who could benefit from the bill that Obama signed although it is a pity that more could not be done for those who are overwhelmed by student loans.

The school loan problem was in part caused by the excessive tuitions and fees charged by private colleges and universities... And I believe that these private universities and colleges and even vocational training programs need to be under more government scrutiny as well as scrutiny from consumer watch dog groups as they often have promised good training and jobs to their students without delivering them. The real statistics of the numbers of students that have graduated and the numbers that still remain unemployed, critiques of the educational programs from local businesses who have interviewed or hired graduates from these programs, etc. should all be available to any students who are searching for educational programs. There are enough stories out there about promises broken to suggest that many of the private colleges and universities and training programs out there are guilty of bad advertising and recruiting practices or outright fraud. All too often students have been conned by over zealous recruiters into signing up for programs that cannot deliver on their promises of good academic training programs or jobs. It is understandable that students who graduate from such programs might not believe that they should have to pay their student loans off as they did not benefit at all from their educations. Education should not be a buyer beware enterprise. The government should insure that the schools deliver on their promises prior to providing the student loans to the students... Granting loans without appropriate oversight does not make good economic sense.

Those who question whether or not the Government should forgive any student loans should perhaps think again... It is clear that if there is a global student loan default the economy will not do well. Promising to assist students to pay off their student loans twenty years from now or allowing them to consolidate their loans for only a half of one percent advantage does not seem to be a high price to pay to attempt to avert that problem.

 

I would strongly suggest that you are somewhat out of touch with the job situation in many parts of the Country. Here in California, for example, many older people are not retiring because their retirement accounts have been depleted and they cannot afford to retire. The middle aged people do their best to hold on to their jobs in the face of more and more lay offs due to budgetary cutbacks. Because of these factors, finding anything but a minimum wage job is not easy even for someone who has graduated from college.

There are many people who are unable to find even minimum wage jobs in this area as these jobs are often taken now by older people who have had to return to work to supplement their social security checks and by middle aged people who have been laid off from their jobs who are doing their best just to put food on the table for their families and to survive. (Add to that the difficulty that English speaking non bilingual people have getting jobs in industries such that often are only seeking Spanish speaking employees and you really have a minimum wage job shortage.)

In this kind of job enviroment a recent graduate who can find a minimum wage job can feel justified in having some pride and a feeling of gratitude. Insulting recent graduates who are lucky enough to have found and to be hired for the $8 an hour jobs when often they have had to stand in line with 100 or more other people to even get interviews for those jobs and when they have had to fight to even get these jobs is in poor taste.

 

I would suggest that in some areas where there is not an adequate public transportation system to get people to and from their jobs, areas such as Southern California for example which is very spread out, a car is a necessary purchase for the majority of job seekers and workers. I would hope that those who are given some money would spend some of that money on a car as otherwise they may be unemployable. And I would also hope that if they are unemployed and need clothing for job interviews or need to look good for work in order to retain their jobs that they do in fact spend that money on clothing.

 

I am hoping that you received a great job!

 

Of course, that may have nothing to do with you at all. You know like when the entire economy tanks between you starting school and graduating school.

 

You see the problem is the student loan program has increased the supply of college graduates. Making a BS degree's economic worth comparable to a HS diploma 50 years ago. So if you are going to college you need to come to terms with the idea of getting a master's or at least a degree from a field that offers reputable professional certification afterwards (CPA, etc).

 

On the other side of the coin....I'm in management for a company that employees approx 350 people. The company is highly regarded in the community, pays well & offers a very nice benefits package yet we still have difficulty finding good people in both white collar & blue collars positions, with recent college grads being among the worse. No one really seems to want to start at the bottom & work their way up. Sure, candidates pay you plenty of lip service, but the work ethic is really lacking. I told a story here a few months ago about the difficulty we had hiring a maintenance mgr even though a local plant had just closed down. The people losing their jobs were set to receive something like 2 years of unemployment and we couldn't attract a qualified candidate from that pool.

 

It's rich OR ignorant. The ewalthy know exactly what they are doing. The ignorant, well, they are ignorant after all.

 

That's such a funny story. My friend is a recruiter and she said that for every one job opening they get, they have to cap the applications at 500 so that they aren't overwhelmed with candidates. And these are people with advanced degrees applying for some pretty low-level positions. Why do your stories never make any sense?

 

This is about the most negative post I have ever seen in this forum. What pathetic view of humanity you have. Maybe it's because you are in your 60's and retired and can sit back and judge other people without any knowledge of the situation you are judging from atop of your pedestal. Maybe you need more contact with human beings. Not that they'd benefit from the encounter.

 

Any one know what the unemployment rate for graduates is at the moment ?

 

I thought the far left storyline claims retireees, in their 60's, are eating dog food & sleeping on benches? If OKC has been able to endure & somehow find himself "on a pedestal" perhaps you should be listening to what he has to say?

 

Perhaps, if you take a moment to read you wouldn't come across as so foolish. I didn't say we didn't attract applicants, now did I? Why would your "friend" cut off applicants if she was getting good, qualified folks? That seems silly. And we haven't even discussed the importance of job fit but maybe this so-called "friend" recruiter doesn't know about this stuff? If my stories don't make sense to you it can probably be explained by the vacuum in which you live. I realize Maddow, Michael Moore & Roseanne Barr are telling you there are no jobs out there but there probably are a few out there, you think?

 

I am wondering when this was, the type of company you are (what it does), how many people you interviewed for that position, what exactly you were looking for and expecting, the availability of good schools in the area, the income level of the surrounding area, and if the company is well regarded by its workers or just by others who look at it from the outside... All of these could be factors in your inability to find quality people.

In regards to "no one really wants to start at the bottom and work their way up"... Of course not! No one ever did in the past either. People may do so but that doesn't mean that they want to do so. Starting at the bottom rung of anything isn't easy especially if you have just graduated and have been led to believe that you should be in demand because of your degree. It probably feels like such an insult to think that you are only seen as being worthy of a bottom rung job, which I am guessing does not pay all that well, after all of your hard labors and all of the money that you have been forced to invest in your education.

 

Yep, this pretty much sums it up. Take our engineering dept for example. Staff of about 15 (engineers, not support staff) including 1 dept head & 2 supervisors each responsible for a team of about 5 or 6 engineers. Our dept head has been with the company approx 20 yrs, the supervisors probably 10-12 years each. How in the world could a kid out of college expect to waltz in & supplant the dept head or one of the supervisors? Coming into a well-respected, professional company as a "staff" engineer is an insult? In what world? The beginning salary for this position is like $42k with annual raises based on performance & an incentive aspect. Gotta be better than McDonalds or the unemployment line, right?
We get degreed and on-the-surface qualified folks inquiring but their demands & expectations seem to get crazier & crazier.