While we were busy being horrified by the Harris-Trump race.....

irishmolly72 · 2024-10-30T17:27:35-04:00

Government - While we were busy being horrified by the Harris-Trump race..... (Quote) - Douglas... (88 replies).

Friday witnessed the launch of another shameless, unethical, unlawful Biden student loan policy. Specifically, loans are forgiven in the presence of “hardship,” which is identified by two provisions. The first cancels debt when the Department of Education predicts that the borrower is at least 80 percent likely to default within the next two years. THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION!!! Is there a worse financial institution on this planet, less to be trusted to assess default risk, than the Department of Education?

The second is a real knee-slapper. Hardship is divined by looking at 17 “non-exclusive factors,” including one factor that the Department itself calls a “catch-all” to “preserve the Department’s flexibility” to forgive debt. This is a joke. A blatant, corrupt, wrongful joke.

- Douglas Holtz-Eakin, economist

OK... so the more likely the student is to default, the more likely they are to get free money! YAY! Great incentive for everyone to select a major wisely and become a productive self-supporting citizen.

We recently estimated the President’s new student debt cancellation plan would cost between $250 billion and $750 billion over a decade

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-would-student-loan-hardship-provision-cost?utm_source=American+Action+Forum+Emails&utm_campaign=34696190cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_19_05_40_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_64783a8335-34696190cb-471107068

So, what's $750 billion among friends???? Compared to our ~$36 Trillion in debt it's just chump change I guess.

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whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

Another example of a short sighted profit based solution to a long term public good problem in America. Offer discounts, scholarships and forgiveness to those professiona that are needed in the nation. Teachers, Nurses, doctors. On successful completion.. The country doesnt need more lawyers and political science majors..😷

SomeMichGuy · M

@whowasthatmaskedman

We have had targeted relief for people willing to teach in geographic areas needing teachers (not sure if this program is still ongoing).

It is typically for people willing to teach basic courses in low-income schools, and a fraction of school debt is forgiven over each of a period of years. It is likely most-used by those with undergraduate degrees; people with further education can often make more in their jobs, etc.

The majority of people affected by debt were scouted / marketed to by for-profit schools who were often just fronts for predatory loans. I believe that they were often certificate programs promising easy job placement and big salaries.

In retrospect, I think most of these representations were "inducing conditions", representations made with an eye to making it more likely that students would take out loans, and that these representations were very much like the US armed forces' recruiters telling people for years that they "could study electronics" while working in tgeee forces...yes, some did, but many more did not.

And I didn't follow the info about accreditation and these universities, but certificate programs are usually not academic in nature, so (I think) are not in the accreditation scheme.

whowasthatmaskedman · 70-79, M

@SomeMichGuy Its the usual two step issue with American problems. First, how to get out of the mess you are in.. Second, how to build a system that doesnt get you back into the same problem. Loan forgiveness is part of the solution. Remembering that educting the next generation to enable the nation to compete and thrive is an investment in the future. The skills the country needs, it should pay for or subsidize heavily..😷

SomeMichGuy · M

@whowasthatmaskedman I think no one saw that for-profits would be such a deal. Before DJT, the US Dep't of Education was going after these soul-sucking dreamkillers.

But the National Defense Student Loan (NDSL) program was started in the wake of Sputnik's beeping in near-Earth orbit and scaring the "bejesus" out of most Westerners, and was meant to help college students going into what we now call STEM (perhaps without the 'T').

When I attended college some years later, the NDSL was then the National Direct Student Loan program, and was not as narrow in application, though it was for students of families of more modest means (like mine).

Unfortunately, the US' ongoing model of the 19th century one-room schoolhouse in the early years (K-5) is an ongoing drag on our nation's intellectual prowess. We need to have specialist teachers in Math and Science from the earliest years in order to stop hobbling ourselves in that way. And we need this in every area if we are to make students better prepared for high school and college.