"massive taxpayer-funded student debt, with little hope of repayment"

[Liberal_in_LA]

Colleges that profit, students who don't

Thousands of middle-income students who've rushed to for-profit career colleges in recent years have been overwhelmed by aggressive recruitment, loose admission policies, overhyped academic programs, a crippled U.S. economy with few jobs — and, finally, their massive taxpayer-funded student debt, with little hope of repayment.

PHILADELPHIA — To paraphrase Steely Dan, the five years at the college didn't turn out like she planned.

In 2002, Marianne Hicks — bored with her accounts-receivable job and part-time work as a cook, and eager to reinvent herself as an industrial designer — was wooed by a recruiter for the Art Institute of Philadelphia with assurances of job help once she got a degree.

Today, Hicks says, her diploma is about the only thing that she can cling to. Often unemployed since graduating from the for-profit career college in 2007, she's under the gun from collection agencies for more than $90,000 in student loans that she can't repay. She's staying with a brother because she can't afford her own place, and a sister is mad at her because she co-signed one of the delinquent loans.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014724680_profitcollege10.html


Taryn Zychal, who owes about $150,000 in student loans for an industrial-design degree she says has been worthless to her, poses with her dog, Jack, wearing a coat she made from a broken umbrella. She sells the dog coats on Etsy, a website, and works in a convenience store.

[bluestateguy]

1. Any good small government conservative should oppose these for profit schools getting govt. loans

But alas, I'm sure they won't.

[physioex]

2. Its odd....

But after watching that piece on Frontline, I have begun to notice these for profit schools, And a good bit of they are postioned right of the highway in the area that I live. It is also strange that many have state signs on the highway telling you were to take the exit as well as prominent signs on the road.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. Same in Southern California - prominent signs for U of Phoenix and Devry

and their 'campuses' are little more than office buildings, nothing like the size of USC, UCLA, Cal state campuses

[SpiralHawk]

10. They are the modern PTAs

Prole Training Academies

[elehhhhna]

17. Phoenix is owned by the CARLYLE GROUP. Won't happen.

[phleshdef]

23. I went to DeVry in Columbus. Its accredited by the same bodies that accredit Ohio State University.

And I feel like I must have gotten a quality education. I make decent money and I know what I'm doing in my field. If they adhere to the same academic standards as the public universities (such as DeVry Columbus does) then there should be no discrimination towards them as far as their students being qualified for loans.

[coalition_unwilling]

4. The worst part is that these loans are usually not dischargeable

through bankruptcy. So they follow people throughout their adult lives. There is a word for this bullshit -- "indentured servitude" -- and it is a close cousin to slavery. Not that that stops any of the politicos in either party from blaming the victims (student) for letting themselves be preyed upon by predatory lenders. Blame the predators? Puh-leeze. That would be un-American.

As with child poverty and drug testing of welfare recipients, sometimes this country just makes me sick.

[themadstork]

13. Yeah, this has always struck me as particularly insane.

Debt that haunts even the most financially destitute? I feel like Americans start to froth at the mouth when they start talking about debt-collection these days.

[mwooldri]

39. Student loans *are* dischargeable but ...

... a bankruptcy filing on its own will not do it.

http://www.studentloanborrowerassistance.org/bankruptcy/

Summary: file for BK (Chapter 7 or 13 - if you got only student loans Chapter 13 sounds logical), and apply for a separate judgment that states that causing you to repay the student loans will cause undue hardship and paying the student loans means that the applicant for BK cannot maintain a "minimum" standard of living, that you have attempted to get higher paying work to increase your income to pay the student loans, and you have made good faith attempts with the student loan body to repay the loans. Also is totally at the mercy of the court. People have been successful this way, and reading the OP and the article linked into, I believe Ms. Hicks could go BK + petition for undue hardship. Problem is her sister who co-signed would have to BK and petition also.

Mark.

[coalition_unwilling]

44. Thanks. I was unaware of the "undue hardship" provisions in the

BK code. I'm not comfortable with it being "totally at the mercy of the court" (your words). That to me seems like a recipe for ad hoc justice, judge shopping, ad infinitum.

[EmmettKelly]

5. As a favor to an old friend I recently interviewed a young man

with a PHD in Scandinavian Languages from UW-Madison. I really had nothing for him but it was to at least give him some interviewing experience. I couldn't help but wonder 2 things. What were you thinking and who the hell kept approving your student loans. He owes almost $80,000 and I doubt he'll ever be able to repay.

[Liberal_in_LA]

31. 80K is about right for a PHD these days... His loan totals probably include undergrad also

[ashleyforachange]

6. That's me....

except it wasn't a career college. It was a regular 4 year college. It wasted my time and I still don't have a degree. Even though I am only 11,000 in debt. it is still difficult to make 6 different totaling $865 when I only make $900 a month. I have others bills to pay too. I am looking for other jobs but it difficult. It really says something when responsible people like me and the ones in the article are so much in debt and people like the ones in Jersey Shore are making insane criminal amounts of money doing nothing but being alcoholics and horrible examples of young Americans.

[Trailrider1951]

19. Hi Ashleyforachange, welcome to DU. You might consider consolidating

your loans with the Dept of Education Direct Loan program. Here is a link to some good information:

https://loanconsolidation.ed.gov/AppEntry/apply-online/appindex.jsp

I consolidated my loans back in 2000, and I am glad I did. My original balance was about $25,000, and under the extended payment plan, my payments are about $237 per month. My interest rate (fixed) is 8%, high, but they may offer a lower rate now. They now offer an income-based repayment plan, so your payments may be much lower than what I pay.

Here is another source of good information:

http://www.studentloanjustice.org/

Good luck.

:hi:

[blondeatlast]

33. +1, definitely. nt

[franzia99]

7. It's not just the for profit colleges. They're just the worst offenders.

[physioex]

11. That's right....

The for profit colleges are responsible for the majority of defaults.

[gtar100]

8. My daughter, a straight-A, advanced-placement student, may not go to college because of this.

She's been accepted at four top design colleges and all four would require that she go into debt for about $100,000 or more after a four-year degree - and that's after about $160,000 in student grants the schools would receive on her behalf. (The four - Pratt Institute, Parsons The New School for Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and California College of the Arts)

The kicker - she's visited three of the four schools and her mom and her both said the dorm rooms were like rat holes. They were small and crappy little rooms they'd have to share. And this money did not cover any expenses for food.

$260,000 over four years ought to give students a first-class, top-notch education with all expenses paid and big thank you from the faculty and staff. But they don't even get that courtesy.

This is so wrong on so many levels. We've got grown-ups exploiting our young. This is far too much money even for these schools. The United States as a nation has lost its way. It cares nothing for its future and it shows. We can lay the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of conservatives (or so-called conservatives to be more accurate).

All student loans should be forgiven. Period. We should have public universities available to students throughout this whole nation. And they should all be taxpayer funded, not-for-profit institutions with teachers receiving good, decent salaries. That would be showing faith in this country. How bad do things have to get before we realize this is not just wishful thinking, it's an absolute necessity for our survival!

[customerserviceguy]

12. Why should student loans be any more forgivable

than either mortgages on houses that people intended to flip, or credit card debt on wild living?

We need to make sure that we only hand out loans and grants for schooling that has a reasonable expectation of training someone for a useful skill, where there is a decent expectation of seeing loan repayment from a career in the field for which a student is supposedly training.

It's not just the fly-by-nights and the online 'universities' that waste government money, it happens in a lot of fully accredited state schools that offer degrees in truly useless things, too.

[coalition_unwilling]

37. Student loans are way less forgiveable than any of the types

of loans you mention (mortgages on houses and credit card debt). Both those types of debt are dischargeable through a standard bankruptcy; student loans as a general rule ARE NOT dischargeable through bankruptcy, hence MUCH LESS FORGIVEABLE. The debt collection people will hound and garnish unpaid student loan debt even when the debtor has retired and is living on a fixed Social Security income.

[customerserviceguy]

42. I was responding to a sub-poster

who thought that student loans should all be forgiven. Nobody let me off the hook for my bad investments, why should student loans for courses of study that have no reasonable outcome of producing income to make the payments be any different?

I'm happy with the fact that Federally-guaranteed student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy, it makes at least a few people stop and consider what some bogus educational institution is offering in exchange for what those diploma mills see as free money.

[coalition_unwilling]

43. If you are happy "with the fact that Federally-guaranteed student

loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy," you are saying that you're fine with a lifetime of indentured servitude for people who may have fallen victim to predatory lenders and\or admissions staff. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the American Revolution and American Civil War were supposed to have ended indentured servitude and slavery.

One of my staff at my last position had taken out these types of loans when she signed up for IT courses at one of the ubiquitous proprietary trade schools in Los Angeles as a child of 19. She never got her degree\diploma and so was not able to secure a career in the field of her coursework, but that did not stop the collections folks from hounding her mercilessly, including garnishing her paychecks for 25% of her gross pay before taxes. I was so mad about it when I found out that I wrote Diane Watson (my rep) a letter. Watson gave up her seat and was replaced by Karen Bass in January 2011, and I have not followed up with Karen Bass yet.

In case you missed my point, 19 year olds (like my staff member) should not be able to execute loan docs that consign them to a lifetime of indentured servitude to pay off the debts.

[customerserviceguy]

45. So, would you favor raising the age

at which a student loan can be granted? From my experience, it would need to be raised to about thirty before it would make any difference.

It's all a matter of who's holding the bag for a bad decision, and if it's not the student, then it's all of us. I'd rather see loans and grants for education go through the same process that an application for a business loan would go through. No bank would make a loan to someone who wanted to start a business that the applicant wasn't remotely qualified for, or where the community was already saturated with people already in a similar line of work.

We have de facto adulthood at eighteen, and it's high time for young people to start looking out for preditors who are after their money.

[coalition_unwilling]

46. I actually think loans should be replaced with grants (no repayment

obligation) and work-study for those who financially qualify. When I went to college, you could get emergency short-term loans through the financial aid office, but those were never intended to substitute for grants and scholarships for paying tuitiona and room and board.

I also think that eligibility for grants should be about as broad based and universal as eligibility for Social Security.

[customerserviceguy]

47. Would you give out grants

to anybody? Rich people's kids? People who have shown little aptitude to actually study and get good grades, or complete a program?

Would you give them to whatever course of study the student picked? And how would you stop the fly-by-night operations that give meaningless diplomas for BS coursework that already thrive on ripping off the student loan infrastructure?

[hunter]

49. Student Loans are a "bad investment"

The students invested their time, but got nothing.

Fair's fair that those who invested their money also get nothing.

It's sharing the pain of a fucked up economy. Why should the money lenders get any more from their bad investments than the students did?

Instead, let's go after the real crooks, the ones who looted the economy, the top 1% who devised student loans as just another way to control much more than their fair share of the nation's wealth and political power.

It's past time to tax the wealthy out of existence. Let the poor fuckers live in 4000 square foot houses instead of 40,000 square foot houses, let the miserable rat bastards fly first class instead of in their own private planes. And throw the shit-heads in jail if they bribe a legislator with even a pencil or a gum ball, let alone an expensive lunch or a "date" with a hooker on a yacht.

[themadstork]

15. Living conditions

You raise a good point. I'm one of the nerdy full-scholarship kids here at butler university, which partially means I was automatically excluded from an entire social sphere here (the frat world and it's crazy fees). But most my friends are going in 150K+ debt to be here, and freshman year the men's dormitory was a complete shithole. There were things growing on the shower floor. My window was broken, and drunk-ass frat partiers stumbled through it (and over or on a sleeping me) at all times of the night.

Seems like most Butler's funds got funneled into "business" (ie indoctrination in neoliberal creepiness) and pharmacy. They could give two shits about the humanities.

[exboyfil]

20. Why not consider a design program at a state

school. For example I think Iowa State has a pretty good program in design.

I think government sponsored/susidized/funded student loans should be based on repayment histories for the schools and majors at those schools. I think there still is a role for non-traditional private school arrangements (many vocational offerrings can fit into this category). Whether for or not for profit is somewhat meaningless - what is the pay for the guy running the school for example.

I would also be in favor of a European style meritocracy for reduced price/free education to public schools. No modern democracy allows unfettered access to free tertiary education even more progressive countries like those in Europe. In those countries decisions about a students future is made pretty early in their educational career.

I think students should have some skin in the game. I don't think taxpayers should be asked to pony up $260K for a education that direrctly benefits an individual but only indirectly benefits society. We have gone too far in the other direction, but $8k/yr for public school tuition is still not a bad deal.

You are an adult at 18 years old, and hopefully your public school education has trained you to think for yourself when you make your choices.

[Johonny]

21. I sort of agree

We use to have good state schools that offered "free" or at least cheap rates. That allowed the 50s young middle class to get college degrees. I know so many retired people that got their education from the government either from good not expensive state schools or from college programs like the GI BILL. Sadly we decided to remove these and replace them with a for profit government loan program and big tax cuts to the wealthy. We don't need such a massive college loan debt program had we gone back and funded our state schools and re-invented our college programs of the 50s.

[PVnRT]

22. Plenty of state universities have design departments

The bonus being that they will cost much less, usually.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. As a general policy we do not hire grads from these "schools"

I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody, especially in a state like California with an excellent community college system would even look at these places, we hire about half a dozen kids out of Orange Coast College every year and almost without exception they work out. Before we stopped hiring out of the "career college" world it was really hit and miss. Some people worked out after significant training and mentoring and might as well have been hired out of high school and others were just completely worthless but "bought" their worthless certificate and shown the door.

[JHB]

16. Because those "schools" aggressively advertise, and no one counter-advises...

...their prospective students fleece-ees before they sign up and get into debt.

[xchrom]

14. Recommend

[ck4829]

18. These for-profit schools need to be regulated in a vise

But with the rise of charter schools and injecting pseudoscience into schools, this may be a glimpse of the future of America's education system.

Charter schools get bloated on taxpayer dollars while students fail to thrive when they find out that 'intelligent design' will provide them no skills at all.

[Xithras]

24. A significant part of the problem can be traced to the students, parents, and society.

This may not be a popular opinion, but teaching thousands of bright eyed (usually...some are suspiciously red-eyed) college students for a decade certainly qualifies me to offer it.

We have a term for students like the young woman in the OP article...they're called "zombies". They have no real goals or long term plans, but simply wander from class to class looking for "braiiinnsss" ;) While the term is a bit tongue in cheek, it does reflect a real problem among college students. There are a LOT of people going to college today who have no real plans other than "getting a job". While their desire for employment is understandable, college has never really worked out well for students like that, and very few of them find long term success.

The problem today is that society has reversed the degree-seeking process. Until relatively recently, a kid would grow up saying "I want to do X when I grow up". When they graduated high school, they would go to a college that offered a degree to help them achieve job X. The purpose of their college experience was to gain the education needed to achieve the career goals they already possessed.

Nowadays, kids are told that the career is unimportant. My daughter, who will be starting college next year (UCLA, woo!), has a LOT of friends in this position. If you ask them about their career goals are, they'll just shrug their shoulders and tell you that they don't know. Despite this, every one of them plans on attending a university or college of some sort. They are told by their high school counselors, by their parents, and by society, that college is a goal in and of itself. They plan on pursuing degrees simply because they sound "interesting", with no real plan as to what jobs or careers they might lead to. The process has been dumbed down to "Get to college. Get a degree. Worry about employment afterward."

This system cannot work in the long term. A college education should be a stepping stone to achieve your life-plan, and not a destination in and of itself.

Successful students, who find value in their degrees, can almost universally answer one simple question. My kids know this question, I've repeated it to my daughters friends, and I've asked it in my classroom more times than I can count. It's one of the single most important questions that you can ask an 18 year old, and it should be asked AND ANSWERED before that kid takes a single class and earns a single credit.

"What do you want to be doing when you're 30?"

Such a simple question, and yet I've had classes where less than half the students could offer an answer. The rest were simply generating debt toward a degree with no real idea as to whether that degree would have ANY relevance to the lifestyle they wanted to live. They were zombies. They wanted brains, but had no particular purpose or plan in mind for them. That's a recipe for personal disaster and crushing debt.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

25. Zombie? That's me!

:rofl:

I rattled around a couple of universities, milking the GI Bill, until it was ready to run out. Then I added up the hours, picked the major I was closest to graduating with, and wrapped up that diploma.

This was, however, a few decades ago, when tuition was affordable, and books were "almost" affordable.

I'm now almost ready for retirement, and still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

Zombie, indeed! I want braaaiins!

:hi:

[physioex]

26. Correct....

So what you are essentially saying is that education is a life long process that does not begin when a student signs up for your course and ends with a grade. You have to spend your life being inquisitve and thinking about society as a whole and how you see your role. That is a failure of the parents, school councilors, and high school teachers.

But the problem here is that you have paid recruiters that prey on such students with with unforgivable government backed loans combined with bad governmental policies.. In this dilema the student and society as a whole end up with the short end of the stick.

[Xithras]

27. That problem doesn't exist with students who have properly formulated career goals.

Do these companies prey on zombies? Of course, but my campus has been educating zombies for the better part of a century, giving them degrees that are just as useless. While the for-profit's have refined their recruiting to a science, they didn't invent this problem, and their elimination wouldn't fix it.

What would? Require that ANY student receiving federal financial aid, or any federal loans, define their career goals as part of the application process, and REQUIRE them to meet with a career counselor PRIOR to beginning classes. That counseling appointment should inform the student of the number of openings in their selected career on a state, local, and national level, the typical pay for the position, AND the number of people who seek degrees in that field annually.

This alone would end most of the abuse.

[physioex]

28. To some extent....

If you watched the show Frontline, I think they mentioned that the highest percentage of defaults come from the for profit schools. There was also a mention of how some students went to nursing school but could not sit for the exam because their school was not accredited, which is outright fraud.

[forty6]

36. Well, as a person with experience teaching at college and with two M.A.'s

I simply find your solution too "cookie cutter" and simplistic.

When I was a Freshman at college, I wanted to be a teacher of foreign languages. When I graduated, I became a social worker, (less pay, but much more "rewarding" than teaching French to high school kids).

I also studied a bit of physics and some logic and math and computer programming as an undergrad, (not the typical social worker or French teacher curriculum), and spent time in Europe, before and after graduation.

Later on, when Reagan was cutting social spending, emptying mental hospitals, and "Laugher Curving" our economy, I became a computer systems manager. After that, I taught computer science and logic at a large urban major non-profit university, WITHOUT a Ph.D. My students learned some German words and a bit of philosophy along with the programming for linear equations. I think they liked that, too!

I never taught French, Spanish, nor German, (I was only certified in one.) but I read and speak two of those rather well, even 40 years after college. I enjoy travel in places where English is not the first language, and I help friends and family enjoy those trips, too, since I can survive well, (if not fluently)in 4 languages.

I entered the work force in the 70's, retired recently. The jobs were available then, in teaching and in computer science, and social work. Those jobs simply are not very plentiful today. I was fortunate, but my goals changed well after entering college, my career choices as well. If the kids today prepare in ONLY one area where they THINK they will find jobs, they may well wind up like the young woman in the article, or worse. At least she's creative and industrious in her design work, even if she can't land a six figure salary with her college degree.

College, to me, is not a trade school, not a place one goes to get just enough skills to enter a chosen profession. College SHOULD be a place where we polish off many of our talents, as many as possible, in language and communication, critical thinking, research, and, yes, a few areas where we could enter a career and use what we've practiced and polished as our skill set. I have met many like myself, who started out on one path, and wound up on quite another. French teachers leading travel agencies, computer scientists who work as librarians or even police investigators. I roomed with someone studying art (and theatre arts) who wound up leading a major U.S. Charitable organization whose name we all would recognize.

Let's not make simplistic plans for our children's educational opportunities. Practically every person graduating from what we would call high school in western Europe can read, write and speak rather fluently in English. I dare to say fewer than 4% of American college graduates born in the USA speak a second language fluently,(excepting those from dual language families). That's a HUGE disadvantage we are ALREADY handicapping our college grads with; they simply CANNOT work in a predominantly non-English speaking country. As for computer science, we all know where THOSE jobs reside, not in the USA. That's a big handicap to earning and career potential for our college grads right there.

Where will we find well schooled American journalists, if they don't know some science, some other languages and customs, something about economics, psychology, medicine? Who will we have inform us of the goings-on around us in the world? We need well-rounded, multi-talented, multi-dimensional college grads, not automatons geared only for the most likely highest paid jobs available. And how will we know what the best jobs for them will be ten years from now? We cannot.

Teach to the highest possible achievement. Challenge those students to do EVERYTHING THEY CAN DO well, don't cripple their potential before they even get their degree.

My ten cents on this matter.....

[Xithras]

38. You had a goal. You may have changed it, but you're still fundamentally different than the zombies.

You may not have followed your original path, but you entered your university with a plan to obtain a degree that would help you to achieve your life goals. You completed your degree, and though your life goals changed, you still posses a degree which would allow you to seek employment in a field that you hold at least a passing interest in. Goals change, that's life, and it's not a bad thing. Not having goals? When you're racking up $10's of thousands of dollars a year in debt? When you're potentially displacing others who DO have goals and really WANT that lecture seat? That IS a bad thing. We do students no favors when we allow them to bury themselves under a mountain of debt, when we know full well that the student will find it difficult to impossible to find a job in any field remotely related to their major...and then fail to disclose that knowledge to the student.

No student should ever be refused an educational path. If someone really wants to major in Art History, that's their prerogative. The school SHOULD, however, be required to sit down with the student at least once and discuss their choice, it's future employment possibilities, and the reality that they WILL be expected to pay that money back at some point. Too many young people are wandering through college without any real goals, and find themselves unemployable and buried under crushing debt after graduating.

I am a fierce advocate of the comprehensive degree, and agree that we aren't running trade schools. Our job is to educate people, and to improve their understanding of the world around them. Most importantly, our job is to provide them with the tools and resources they will need to achieve their goals in life. If we provide them with a useless degree with a pricetag they can't hope to repay, we're failing at that job. When we have students DREADING graduation because they fear a life of underemployment and garnished paychecks, we have completely failed in our duty as educators.

[forty6]

41. Excuse me, but I find calling college students in the USA "Zombies" rather

biased, and insulting.

I know there are jocks and groupies in many colleges whose life revolves more around Saturday night after the game, juicers, parties, and meet-ups. I know some percentage of college students do NOT take the gift of the finest intellectual opportunity in their lives, the finest intellectual challenge in the world worth their attention.

But NO, I'm not going to be in front of a lecture hall of 100 students and consider even ONE of them a "Zombie". If I did, the President of the college should DEMAND my immediate resignation, due to a totally unintellectual, totally biased, non-evidence-based crippling and personally damning conclusion about the worth and potential of one or more of my students. In short, you missed my ENTIRE POINT, and retreated back to your bias and prejudices. When I was a freshman, I would be one of your "Zombies", and not one of your students is EVER one of those either!!!

I am proud of my life;s accomplishments, yes, as you are probably proud of what you have accomplished, but I NEVER deny the chance for another human being to rise higher than I did, to learn 5 languages instead of four in four years as an undergrad, to program moon-shots instead of simple linear equations with some new programming code system or "language".

If a young person hasn't formed life goals and ambitions by the time they are 18, Freshmen, Sophomores, or whatever....don't you think it's YOUR job to try your hardest to give them a chance to do that?

Stated another way: Career counselors, the best ones I have seen are good teachers doing the best, most energetic most stimulating teaching possible for each and every student they meet up with. No "Zombies" allowed in my classes. Like Santa Claus, and Gods or Goddesses I simply don't believe there are any!!!

[hunter]

50. Kids would be dropping out of school all over if there were good jobs.

Who'd want to attend a crappy trade school and stack up student loans if they could get a good union job that paid well? The kind of job that would pay for a nice car, a nice house, nice vacations, and good health insurance?

Kids used to get those kind of jobs when they graduated from high school.

Now their are no jobs unless you have a college degree, and most of those jobs suck.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. +1000

[chaska]

29. STOP PAYING. If we're ever to get control of the gov't/banking situation...

we have to starve the banks.

I refuse to pay another damn dime. I paid off the ones I had co-signers for and fuck the rest. Fifteen years with it only growing larger and my credit long ago ruined - they can kiss my ass.

[physioex]

30. Won't solve the problem.....

I prefer a top down approach. Banks make their highest margins on unsecured debt of the poor like credit cards, payday loans, and student loans. They know a certain number of people will default, but make huge profits on those that continue to pay even if the loan isn't fully paid back. Because of fees and penalty charges, you will have paid several times more than what was intially borrowed.

The real solution comes when we regulate this industy and provide proper governmnet funding to lower the cost of a college education.

PS. I take the other approach when it comes to the banks. Using some discpline, I make all my purchases with my credit card and pay off all my balances at the end of the month. This gives me nice perks like cash back rewards, and this is something that I would encourage others who are also able.

[Matariki]

34. With no Statute of Limitations on the debt and the IRS as collection agency

these poor kids could very well be screwed their entire lives :cry:

I wish we lived in a civilized country.

[blondeatlast]

35. Interesting that in my area these colleges are targeting TV ads to older students; 30-45 years old.

One has 30 years to pay back a student loan--these "schools" don't give a damn whether the loans get paid back or not.

[jtuck004]

40. Might be time for a really large jobs program. Still. eom

[RegieRocker]

48. More b.s. to make more b.s. cuts. Lies.