Ed Dept brokered 90/10 rule changes

Something definitely needs to be done, that's for sure. The percentage of students who are homeless or unable to afford to eat while attending college/university is too dang high. If students could, as they used to be able to do, earn enough money during summer jobs to pay for their college education, this would be much less of an issue. It's great that students can get help lowering their costs by coming here or to the sister forum to ask about things like CLEP/ACE/DSSTs/etc., but the people who make it here are just a tiny drop in the bucket. Also, this assistance is admittedly not that useful for a lot of students. Someone who wants a very specific degree (such as Microbiology or Computer Aided Design) may be entirely out of luck when it comes to getting an easily affordable degree.

 

Is there something structural about federal student loans that makes them different from private student loans as far as the potential for abuse? Not a rhetorical question. If we abolish federal student loans wouldn't we just have more people receiving private student loans with worse terms?

 

I can’t even imagine what student loans will be like for my kid. I went to a relatively inexpensive state school. It took me about 20 years to pay it off. And it wasn’t anywhere near what we see today. I hope I can convince him to plan smart.

 

That's a mortgage --- with NO house. Yes, I know it costs what it costs - but it shouldn't. I went in my 40s, at night. First CoCo then Uni. I was working, paid as I went. No loans.

My sons had virtually no loans. Each finished up owing $500 (yes, hundred) or less. Government generosity and P/T work during college in both cases. They both finished in the early 90s.

 

I think technically "anyone" can get federal loans, while private loans need some sort of collateral? At least, I remember private loans as being slightly more difficult to get, while Federal loans are given to just about anyone with a pulse. So, people who don't own house have a more difficult time getting the private loans. I don't think that having only private loans would be the whole answer, but it would at least cut down on how many near-poverty students are being tricked into, essentially, signing their life away.

 

Private loans look at credit score and income. I don't think they typically require collateral. If a young person doesn't have a cosigner with a good income and good credit score, they're screwed.

 

I estimate the ROI on my student loans at just over 1,100%, and an annualized rate of just over 16%. That's just for the PhD. Never calculated it before reading this thread.

 

I feel like I'm in a good position to answer this. The big challenge with federal funds is accessing them through FAFSA. I am a first generation college student, and my (then divorced) parents both straight out refused to fill out the FAFSA forms because they did not want each other or me to know what they earned and did not see the point in college. Getting through my undergrad became one of the most difficult things I ever did as a result because I could not access federal funding. I bought a house in my early twenties, and ended up having to use it for collateral on a student loan years later. I think that was after I turned 25. I think a lot of young people struggle and fall through the cracks because they are not show the ropes of how to select and apply to college, cannot access funding, do not receive appropriate advising, etc.

 

I had one of two parents refuse to file these financial disclosures, also in the context of a contentious marital breakdown then divorce. This also disqualified me from FAFSA and the entire main student aid and loan system in the U.S., and from the equivalents in Canada where I'm also a citizen.

 

Parents who do this infuriate me no end. My divorce coincided with my sons' college years and this kind of disclosure never presented any problems to either my ex or myself. Sure, we didn't like each other very much any more, but we had no problems doing what had to be done. They were our kids - not just hers or just mine. These are sad tales indeed - parents taking their acrimony out on their children - and I feel for you and others, placed by parents in the same unenviable position.

We have so many laws - but perhaps we need yet another. Just for these folks who willingly deprive their own children of opportunity. Big props to both Jonathan and Sweet Secret for overcoming the barrier and completing their educations.

 

Sallie Mae didn't require collateral when I applied. I wasn't yet a permanent resident, but I had work authorization, a job, and credit history (about three years). However, I had to have a U.S. citizen co-sign the loan. It was only $3000, and I paid it off

 

Not every parent will see college as what "has" to be done, though.

SweetSecret's parents were non-college and didn't, she writes, "see the point of college."

I get it, from a sort of flip side of the coin.

My father was first-gen college. He became a star student of his hometown and full scholarships determinatively let him to go to college, grad school, and a PhD at 25. Later he taught me precociously. How I spent my summer vacation the summer before grade 4: Performing multiple regressions and other statistical and economic analyses, first by hand, then by writing BASIC programs. The school district identified me as gifted and sent me to a regional program for late elementary and middle school. By high school I shifted to homeschooling.

My father didn't see much point in college for me specifically. He reached the thinking on his own that we now might identify with tech bros that startup-type employers would recruit me for talent with little or no reference to formal credentials.

If I had a child I would make things available in this area that he hadn't.

 

I suspect that some of that was simply to discourage SweetSecret from going to college solely to avoid the financial stuff. Not because they were actually anti-schooling. You know, how some parents tell their tiny children that the ice cream van playing music means that they've run out of ice cream. Just so the parent doesn't have to deal with the kid begging for ice cream money.

 

My father generally opposed gift giving, asserting it was economically inefficient! He might get me something from that ice cream truck if the value over price was compelling, but I learned to keep expectations modest. (There were no holiday or, what surprises people most, birthday gifts in our household. My mom found some leeway in the rules to sneak things in, especially the nice cake she’d just so happen to make at the time of my birthday.)

My father was nonconformist and rejected some cultural norms. He meant well for me. I would do things differently.

Sending young adults to college is a cultural norm. Some parents won’t follow the steps of the norm even for young adult children for whom most people would say college is appropriate.

A system to fund college only for young adults whose parents accept the norm, and the financial disclosures, and the expected family financial contributions attached is a system that leaves some young adults out.

This is where some people will mention the military. But the military has purposes that overall are mutually exclusive with being an employer of last resort. In particular many young adults are ineligible for health reasons.

 

Indeed. I tried to join the Canadian Forces at 19 and was ineligible due to having sufficiently advanced scoliosis that even with the surgery I had, I was outside the common enrollment standard. I'm still wistful, even though there's nothing more I could have done. I've often said that if there were another widespread mobilization here in the US I would try again, even though the answer's likely to be the same.

There's a good dissertation on the topic of those found unfit for service in WWII: https://twu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/11274/325/2013SmithTiffanyOCR.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

 

It's a debt-inducing system, which is wrong as hell, but overall, preferable to no system. I think not having a system would leave many, many more young people out. Other countries, e.g. Germany have managed to keep University (largely) free. And you have to be well-qualified, academically, to go. Those are ideals I think we should strive for, as well as ceasing to "degree-ify" every known occupation. If we don't, pretty soon the guys on the garbage trucks will all need Bachelors' degrees in Mobile Sanitation Engineering. It's gotten truly ridiculous.

 

I don't like the extent of streaming and exclusivity in Germany, though. I don't even like the extent in Canada where it's much less.