In the good old days when I was young, I was a union carpenter's apprentice. I made a good living while being an apprentice, a damned good living for a young guy. I miss good unions.
Yeah, my niece is graduating from a good private school with $0 in debt, thanks to an extremely generous scholarship and the hard work of my sister to make sure she could live at home (selling her house and moving 22 miles to an apartment across the street from the school.)
In the meantime, her mother my sister still owes about $20K from her undergrad and graduate degrees, and doesn't make enough as a teacher to make more than the minimum payments.
Hey the White House Office of Correspondence just answered my message to Joe about student debt relief. I didn't even have to prove I was a citizen. They didn't say much but it was polite.
I wonder how much of this Biden trying to manage expectations. If he promises $50,000 and republicans pull out all the stops to block it, he looks like a chump. $10,000 might get him under the wire.
I do think though, if the democrats do manage to pass a $50,000 plan through Congress, he will sign it.
A huge chunk of the debt is because of how the for profit colleges have scammed the Dept of Ed student financial aid system. Minority and low income students are their target for their incredibly expensive and worthless degrees, using up all financial aid eligibility and making students take out huge loans for worthless programs. (El Paso was labeled by Forbes Magazine as a for profit school entrepreneur's dream because of our poverty, minority status, large veteran population, and lack of institutional knowledge.) People are throwing away tens of thousands of dollars on degrees that don't get them interviews, much less jobs, because of the slick marketing and intensive recruitment of these for profit schools, like the "University" of Phoenix. They prey on our communities, especially poor, minority communities. Unless there is a crackdown on these companies (which Obama was trying to do and Betsy deVos killed), the loan situation will continue to be a scandal and millions of future students will continue to be ripped off. As it is, these schools are allowed to call themselves universities when all they offer are diesel mechanics and nurse's aide training, valuable vocational training, but fooling students who don't know better into thinking they are attending a university. Their tuition rates are obscene as well, driving students into paralyzing debt for credentials that they could earn at our excellent community college for two thousand dollars a year. Once these students wise up and try to go to a real college or university, they discover that their financial aid is used up and their credits don't transfer. Nationally, the growth of private for profit education companies has sucked up educational funding while not delivering anything of value.
True. Repubs have been cutting educational funding for forty years for public higher education. Even so, I used a CPI calculator to see the difference between what we paid for my education at public ivy and today's tuition at the same school. It was exactly the same in inflation adjusted dollars. Of course, I worked all the way through college to pay for it. I encounter some students who don't think they should have to work while attending our regional university when loans are so easy to take out, but most do work and here they live at home.
I can't be too sure of the numbers, but IIRC when I graduated from HS in the mid-70s, in-state yearly tuition at NC State and UNC-CH was around $900 - $1100/yr.
One of the things that I'd also like the feds to look at is the extortionate cost of college textbooks. Back when I was going to college in the mid-late '70s, you might have to spend 60-75 bucks a semester for books, sometimes less if you could buy used when the course didn't change from year to year. I'm hearing that in these days students are paying 10 to 15 times that amount, when you could easily load a thumb drive with every book a student might need for a semester and charge them a couple of hundred bucks a pop so that the authors could get reimbursed.
My wife went back to school for an associate's degree when she was laid off during the great recession. Her Spanish textbook was... I don't remember exactly, but over $100 at least and the e-text included with it was only good for a semester, and then they locked you out of all the online content for it. And although you could resell the physical text (for a pittance), you couldn't resell the online access, which was easily 30% of the material, or more. College textbooks are a huge racket.
That is a lovely principle, but most people’s decision weren’t so simple and the reality of with in many professional fields (that many people depend on) is dismal. My undergrad (at a state university) was paid for through scholarships & weekend shifts at Cracker Barrel. I took out loans for a MA and PhD (both at state universities) because I could not live on the monthly stipend and tuition waiver, and even adjuncted at a local community college and worked at a gym in addition to my graduate assistantship. Guess what? I now have the career I worked so hard for, with a steady paycheck, health insurance, and a retirement (all things my 78 year off father who was a restaurant manager didn’t have in his profession). I have been in my field for ten years, without cost of living increases or raises from the state (I teach at a...you guessed it: state university). The only time I get a raise on my pathetic starting salary is when I earn a promotion, which I have already earned all the promotions I will be eligible for in academia. I make so little as a full-time professor that I will never be able to purchase a house because of my loan payment and the fact that teachers, professors, social workers, librarians, and other professions that required advanced degrees no longer make a decent wage to live a middle class lifestyle.
I took out loans because I wanted to get out of the working class, have a career that I loved and valued, and have astray paycheck with health insurance. I thought half would be forgiven under Shrub’s PSLF program. I guess taking advantage of federal loopholes is just for the wealthy, though.
In the good old days when I was young, I was a union carpenter's apprentice. I made a good living while being an apprentice, a damned good living for a young guy. I miss good unions.
Yeah, my niece is graduating from a good private school with $0 in debt, thanks to an extremely generous scholarship and the hard work of my sister to make sure she could live at home (selling her house and moving 22 miles to an apartment across the street from the school.)
In the meantime, her mother my sister still owes about $20K from her undergrad and graduate degrees, and doesn't make enough as a teacher to make more than the minimum payments.
Hey the White House Office of Correspondence just answered my message to Joe about student debt relief. I didn't even have to prove I was a citizen. They didn't say much but it was polite.
I am trained in assessments and it's what I wanted to do with my career. I'll definitely email you.
I wonder how much of this Biden trying to manage expectations. If he promises $50,000 and republicans pull out all the stops to block it, he looks like a chump. $10,000 might get him under the wire.
I do think though, if the democrats do manage to pass a $50,000 plan through Congress, he will sign it.
A huge chunk of the debt is because of how the for profit colleges have scammed the Dept of Ed student financial aid system. Minority and low income students are their target for their incredibly expensive and worthless degrees, using up all financial aid eligibility and making students take out huge loans for worthless programs. (El Paso was labeled by Forbes Magazine as a for profit school entrepreneur's dream because of our poverty, minority status, large veteran population, and lack of institutional knowledge.) People are throwing away tens of thousands of dollars on degrees that don't get them interviews, much less jobs, because of the slick marketing and intensive recruitment of these for profit schools, like the "University" of Phoenix. They prey on our communities, especially poor, minority communities. Unless there is a crackdown on these companies (which Obama was trying to do and Betsy deVos killed), the loan situation will continue to be a scandal and millions of future students will continue to be ripped off. As it is, these schools are allowed to call themselves universities when all they offer are diesel mechanics and nurse's aide training, valuable vocational training, but fooling students who don't know better into thinking they are attending a university. Their tuition rates are obscene as well, driving students into paralyzing debt for credentials that they could earn at our excellent community college for two thousand dollars a year. Once these students wise up and try to go to a real college or university, they discover that their financial aid is used up and their credits don't transfer. Nationally, the growth of private for profit education companies has sucked up educational funding while not delivering anything of value.
True. Repubs have been cutting educational funding for forty years for public higher education. Even so, I used a CPI calculator to see the difference between what we paid for my education at public ivy and today's tuition at the same school. It was exactly the same in inflation adjusted dollars. Of course, I worked all the way through college to pay for it. I encounter some students who don't think they should have to work while attending our regional university when loans are so easy to take out, but most do work and here they live at home.
Ta, Dok.
$50k is a good start, but for some degrees at some schools, it's not even close to enough.
I can't be too sure of the numbers, but IIRC when I graduated from HS in the mid-70s, in-state yearly tuition at NC State and UNC-CH was around $900 - $1100/yr.
One of the things that I'd also like the feds to look at is the extortionate cost of college textbooks. Back when I was going to college in the mid-late '70s, you might have to spend 60-75 bucks a semester for books, sometimes less if you could buy used when the course didn't change from year to year. I'm hearing that in these days students are paying 10 to 15 times that amount, when you could easily load a thumb drive with every book a student might need for a semester and charge them a couple of hundred bucks a pop so that the authors could get reimbursed.
My wife went back to school for an associate's degree when she was laid off during the great recession. Her Spanish textbook was... I don't remember exactly, but over $100 at least and the e-text included with it was only good for a semester, and then they locked you out of all the online content for it. And although you could resell the physical text (for a pittance), you couldn't resell the online access, which was easily 30% of the material, or more. College textbooks are a huge racket.
Agreed!!!!!
That is a lovely principle, but most people’s decision weren’t so simple and the reality of with in many professional fields (that many people depend on) is dismal. My undergrad (at a state university) was paid for through scholarships & weekend shifts at Cracker Barrel. I took out loans for a MA and PhD (both at state universities) because I could not live on the monthly stipend and tuition waiver, and even adjuncted at a local community college and worked at a gym in addition to my graduate assistantship. Guess what? I now have the career I worked so hard for, with a steady paycheck, health insurance, and a retirement (all things my 78 year off father who was a restaurant manager didn’t have in his profession). I have been in my field for ten years, without cost of living increases or raises from the state (I teach at a...you guessed it: state university). The only time I get a raise on my pathetic starting salary is when I earn a promotion, which I have already earned all the promotions I will be eligible for in academia. I make so little as a full-time professor that I will never be able to purchase a house because of my loan payment and the fact that teachers, professors, social workers, librarians, and other professions that required advanced degrees no longer make a decent wage to live a middle class lifestyle.
I took out loans because I wanted to get out of the working class, have a career that I loved and valued, and have astray paycheck with health insurance. I thought half would be forgiven under Shrub’s PSLF program. I guess taking advantage of federal loopholes is just for the wealthy, though.
Why would anyone forgive debt on the basis of private sector work? Did you mean public?
He won't. Bankers might spank