I'm so VERY weary of the "I did it; why can't you?" argument.
I was lucky: I had a four-year, full-tuition scholarship. The dollar value of that scholarship in the mid-'60s was $4,396. That amount of money wouldn't cover a SEMESTER at the same school today. My parents paid for room and board, but after I moved away from home and went on to grad school, I took student loans, which totaled $3,000 by the time I earned my M.A. It took me five years to pay that off, at a subsidized interest rate.
I'll be happy to support anyone who wants to get the slimiest for-profit colleges off the loan-eligibility list, but when Obama's Education Secretary tried to do that, Orrin Hatch and other GOP legislators screamed bloody murder. Strange how anything "for-profit," no matter how vile, is 100% good from their point of view.
The Democrats' proposed "pay-for" for keeping the loan interest rate at 3.4% was something most Americans would probably support. A few million people, filing as S corporations or personal or service corporations -- mostly doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc. -- cut their taxes by understating "salary" and overstating "dividends." (Some "salary" may be taxable at 28% or 35%, while "dividends" are taxed at 15%.) But the GOP opposes ending this form of tax evasion.
Look! I am so sick of this notion that these loan rates are going to have some major effet on anything! I worked 50 hours a week to support my wife and two kids while I took 18 hours of college. I then worked full time while I finished my master's degree. I then completed a disssertation for my Ph.D while working full time! The reason these kids have so much angst about student loans is they want the socialists like Obama to "take care" of them instead of them having to "earn" something. Where else can you get a loan for anyting at 6%. I am tired of paying for your education! Get a job!
Where do you propose we get a job? Specifically as a TV/Film major, where do you propose I get a job in NJ...where there are little to no jobs available here because people with more experience have them. And in what way am I not "earning" my degree. I am going to classes six times a week...I do all the extra curricular stuff (like raise money for Relay for Life, volunteer for animal shelters, work as an E-board member of our film club and work as a member of our TV network, all things that should HELP me get a job), get good grades, and job search literally every day. You don't know because you already had a job and some money (I'm sure you must have had some money to start with considering you worked 50 hours a week and supported a wife and two kids) so you don't know what it's like coming out with nothing but debt, nowhere to get jobs (I can't even get an unpaid internship at this point...and I've interviewed for four of them for the summer term). I understand your anger as a taxpayer, but don't tell me I'm not earning it. I'm doing everything I can. Getting a job isn't as easy for us as it was for you when you went into your career.
It is obvious that you were working so much that you did'nt pay much attention in class. If you did, you would know that if the rate goes up, with so many people out of work, the interest accumulated is going to pile up on the principal. Congress need to step up and do something and stop playing politics with our young people. Republican solution to everything is to take from the poor. If it is left to the republicans, they will dump all the poor people in the ocean.
truthseeker94, sorry, but I find that hard to believe. My wife's mother worked full-time while attending college, didn't party, and could only get enough homework and studying done to make C's toward her elementary education bachelor's degree. That is, she barely passed one of the easiest majors in college because she spent so much time working.
Our federal government shouldn't be involved in education. Period. That includes student loans. I worked my way through college. I owe zero. And I don't have credit card debt either. That's the old-fashioned way. Works great. Try it. Stop whining.
Work your way through college, and it'll take you so long that your classes will become outdated (classes are good for 5 years in Florida) and the college administration will require you to take them over again. Yeah, I knew some kids that were *trying* to work their way through college; they were lucky if they managed to get their 2-year degree.
Herman was right (extremely). The problem as I see it children when they are born pick the wrong parents. They should make it a point to pick rich parents like the Romney boys did.
For those who are eager to have Romney economics support the recovery of educated jobs and the rest of the job market please think about this. We are a market driven economy, people buy, people produce labor goes up. Now as we offshore under Romney economics, the production goes up but our economy does not go up half as fast, why, because the laborers and thus the earners are now offshore also. This we have a growing economy with corporate profits going through the roof, but maintain stagnant employment. That brings me to the discussion of education, the great surge in American productivity was the education of the soldiers who came back from WWII and went to college under the GI-Bill. That brought a new level of expertise in manufacturing, research and development. We need the educated as much now as then. So to say lets charge interest rates at 10 times what a company can borrow for is wrong.
manufacturing, research and development... --- Right, and how many of these walking debt bombs have those degrees? If you are going to borrow $100,000 kids, choose your major wisely.
"Median annual earnings among recent college graduates vary from $55,000 among engineering majors to $30,000 in the arts. Education, psychology and social work majors have relatively low unemployment, but their earnings are also low and only improve marginally with experience and graduate education. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/not-all-college-majors-are-created-equal/2012/01/12/gIQAfz4XzP_story.html
Unfortunately, even Obama and the Democrats like off-shoring; it isn't just a Republican thing. They did nothing to curtail it during Obama's first two years in office when the Dems had a majority in Congress.
The only political leader who wanted to do something about off-shoring was Buddy Roemer, and he got shut out.
If the Republicons would do anything to create good American jobs (they have not lifted a finger yet), the young might have a future in America. This is exactly why Occupy started and why it will come back 10 times stronger if Robmee gets selected.
while I empathize with those students who are having trouble with student loans, they made the clear choice to borrow the money in the first place. I had to pay my own way through school as many people do. It took me 10 years to finish my undergraduate degree. I didn't want to graduate with a huge pile of loans to pay off so I worked 30+ hours/week while going to school. It meant I didn't have much in the way of "fun" time hitting the bars with friends or hanging out with the sorority set, but my debt level was less than $5,000 when I graduated. It can be done. I don't think Congress should just forgive these debts - you borrow it, you pay it back.
John.... You are arguing with morons who probably never seen the inside of a college even though they say they did. It's like the woman's issue that the conservative were trying to frame to look like they wanted free health care when in reality all they wanted was for their insurance companies to cover their needs.
10 years? After 5 years, your courses become outdated in Florida, and you have to take them over again. Not sure about other states.
P.S.: "Many" people don't *successfully* work their way through college, and trying to do so today would be a joke since the tuition costs have jumped.
"This is all about the economy, whether we are going to have the best-trained, the best-educated workforce in the world," he said. "Higher education... is an economic necessity for every family."
---
But aren't these people with all that crushing debt ALREADY the beneficiaries of this higher education. Obviously many of them have been sold a bill of goods. The only people getting rich off this are the folks working the scam at a university near you.
What they all think is that Degree = Job. It doesn't. Entry level is all you get to start with and college grads are pretty much like infants when they start out. Granted, a grad may mature into a higher paying position more quickly than a non-college grad, but this by no means a given.
All a degree tells me is that you can stick with a project and see it through to completion, not much else. And if that's all it tells me, then maybe it's not worth $100,000.
realtimecoffee, I agree. Here's some ideas: 1. Take all the fluff out of bachelor's and master's degrees; maybe save it for doctor's. 2. Courses that contribute to lesser-payed majors should cost less for tuition than courses that contribute to higher-payed majors.
by WHAT-IS-HE-SMOKING June 21, 2012 4:23 PM EDT by hillzhavays June 21, 2012 3:26 PM EDT
So let's see the whole object of getting a higher education is to get a better paying job. But in order to pay for your education you want only one section of the working population to pay for it. Yea, you sound like a nitwit. _______________________________
LMAO!! They aren't paying for it you nitwit. Tell me you are just being purposely ignorant and you're not that dumb. It's still their money. It goes to their retirement. They are just getting less of a free ride is all. They are being brought closer to the rest of us who are paying an average 7.14 times their federally mandated contribution. You libbies all scream about "Fair!" when it's someone you don't like, like the rich guy who contributes more to the wonderful comforts and services you so enjoy than you will in 200 lifetimes. But not Federal employees, god forbid such a thing.
It's your tax dollars going to them - I'd think you'd be more worried about that. But I guess not since your contribution is probably so pathetically small that it won't make much difference anyway.
So tell me, which part of this DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? This is what the republicans want to do to paty for the extension.
"McConnell noted that Republican congressional leaders sent a series of proposals to the White House a few weeks ago on possible ways to pay for the extension, which included upping the contributions federal employees would pay toward retirement"
Then again, like you have told people to do l, we could just defer their payment. What a nitwit.
By the way, the republicans also wanted the federal employees to help pay for the highway bill.
"Federal employees would pay more toward their pensions and new employees would receive less generous retirement benefits under a House Republican plan to pay for highway programs."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/federal-pensions_n_1263733.html
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I was lucky: I had a four-year, full-tuition scholarship. The dollar value of that scholarship in the mid-'60s was $4,396. That amount of money wouldn't cover a SEMESTER at the same school today. My parents paid for room and board, but after I moved away from home and went on to grad school, I took student loans, which totaled $3,000 by the time I earned my M.A. It took me five years to pay that off, at a subsidized interest rate.
I'll be happy to support anyone who wants to get the slimiest for-profit colleges off the loan-eligibility list, but when Obama's Education Secretary tried to do that, Orrin Hatch and other GOP legislators screamed bloody murder. Strange how anything "for-profit," no matter how vile, is 100% good from their point of view.
The Democrats' proposed "pay-for" for keeping the loan interest rate at 3.4% was something most Americans would probably support. A few million people, filing as S corporations or personal or service corporations -- mostly doctors, lawyers, consultants, etc. -- cut their taxes by understating "salary" and overstating "dividends." (Some "salary" may be taxable at 28% or 35%, while "dividends" are taxed at 15%.) But the GOP opposes ending this form of tax evasion.
---
Right, and how many of these walking debt bombs have those degrees? If you are going to borrow $100,000 kids, choose your major wisely.
"Median annual earnings among recent college graduates vary from $55,000 among engineering majors to $30,000 in the arts. Education, psychology and social work majors have relatively low unemployment, but their earnings are also low and only improve marginally with experience and graduate education. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/not-all-college-majors-are-created-equal/2012/01/12/gIQAfz4XzP_story.html
The only political leader who wanted to do something about off-shoring was Buddy Roemer, and he got shut out.
P.S.: "Many" people don't *successfully* work their way through college, and trying to do so today would be a joke since the tuition costs have jumped.
---
But aren't these people with all that crushing debt ALREADY the beneficiaries of this higher education. Obviously many of them have been sold a bill of goods. The only people getting rich off this are the folks working the scam at a university near you.
All a degree tells me is that you can stick with a project and see it through to completion, not much else. And if that's all it tells me, then maybe it's not worth $100,000.
by hillzhavays June 21, 2012 3:26 PM EDT
So let's see the whole object of getting a higher education is to get a better paying job. But in order to pay for your education you want only one section of the working population to pay for it. Yea, you sound like a nitwit.
_______________________________
LMAO!! They aren't paying for it you nitwit. Tell me you are just being purposely ignorant and you're not that dumb. It's still their money. It goes to their retirement. They are just getting less of a free ride is all. They are being brought closer to the rest of us who are paying an average 7.14 times their federally mandated contribution. You libbies all scream about "Fair!" when it's someone you don't like, like the rich guy who contributes more to the wonderful comforts and services you so enjoy than you will in 200 lifetimes. But not Federal employees, god forbid such a thing.
It's your tax dollars going to them - I'd think you'd be more worried about that. But I guess not since your contribution is probably so pathetically small that it won't make much difference anyway.
"McConnell noted that Republican congressional leaders sent a series of proposals to the White House a few weeks ago on possible ways to pay for the extension, which included upping the contributions federal employees would pay toward retirement"
Then again, like you have told people to do l, we could just defer their payment. What a nitwit.
"Federal employees would pay more toward their pensions and new employees would receive less generous retirement benefits under a House Republican plan to pay for highway programs."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/federal-pensions_n_1263733.html
Even then, some around here will still keep their blinders on and feel their one-liners can be twisted to fit any condition in reality...