By Professor Doom
YouTube is such a fine resource for
learning things. It’s only drawback (beyond the way how it supports pedophilia and censors counter-narrative views) is the one common to
any learning tool: if you don’t know what you should know, you’re unlikely to
learn it. Today I’ll highlight a couple stories which strike me as fairly
typical.
A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic
--attributed to Stalin.
Student loan debt in this country is now around $1.5 trillion. When I started this blog 5 years
ago, it was under a trillion dollars, but it can only head up, because these
loans, in many cases, simply cannot be paid back. Trouble is, numbers this
large are just statistics, they don’t register for most people.
YouTube to the rescue, as it has
individual testimonials, “single deaths” of people from student loan debt. I
want to highlight a few, because what we’re doing to our next generation with
these debts is positively criminal…though in today’s generally lawless society
(at least for those at the top), no charges will ever be filed.
“It was my lack of experience, and my naivety, that put me in this
position…”
In order for a student to qualify for
student loans, the student must go to an accredited school. Accredited schools
certify, in writing, that they will
act with integrity…but many accredited schools regularly exploit lack of
experience and naivety in kids as they come out of high school, signing them up
for a mountain of debt.
So, yes, there are those who point and
laugh at this art student for foolishly getting so much debt for an art
degree…but I find this as unsettling as pointing and laughing at a baby for
crying when an adult rips candy from the baby’s hands.
“…I owe over $100,000, and that number will continue to grow…”
It didn’t start out this way for her. She
graduated with a “mere” $16,000 in debt, and even got a job. So what happened?
“…in 2009 I went back to school to get an MFA in art so I could be an
art professor…”
The above is how many get smashed by
student loans. After they get their bachelor’s and see that there’s not much
available, they go back to grad school. Now, yes, at this point perhaps the
schools are no longer taking advantage of kids right out of high school but we still
have a problem. The schools know full well they’re offering graduate degrees in
fields that can’t pay back what they’re charging, as only the schools are
hiring those graduate degrees (and moreover the schools flood the market with
people for these scarce jobs)...they set the pay, you see. There’s an obvious
conflict of interest here as the schools once again knowingly engage in hurtful
behavior.
By 2011, she graduated with over $90,000
in debt, got another job and started making payments. Trouble was, the payments
were too much based on what the school was paying her, so she asked for help.
She got reamed.
“…I got in an IBR repayment plan…”
Most student loans are in default, or
would be if they were being honestly accounted. One trick is “IBR” repayment, “Income
Based Repayment,” which lowers your payments based on your income. There are
many variations on IBR, but they all screw you. Even if you’re not being paid
much, you’re making payments, so it’s all good, right? Nope:
“…my loan hadn’t gone down…my loan went up $4,000…I’ve been paying every
month…”
Yes, you’re making payments, but you’re
not covering the interest, so your loan goes up, now there’s more principal on
the loan, so you owe more interest you can’t pay. It’s a death spiral. She
didn’t know what she was signing up for.
“…you shouldn’t have to get a degree in finance to get a degree…”
She had no idea how she was being screwed,
but she’s not alone, there are 40,000,000 people with student loans now. Many
of them are being tricked into this abyss.
Our schools have millions and millions of
dollars to pay the coach of even a badly losing team, and millions more to pay
the coach after he leaves the school. But they have no money at all available
to stop this, even though these scams have been screwing over their students
for years now.
She’s already figured out her job as a
professor will never pay back the system that indebted her to become a
professor, and she’s learned, too late, that even though she’ll be effectively
bankrupt forever, she can’t clear her student loan through bankruptcy, even
though she was taken advantage of every step of the way to her mountain of
student loan debt.
I assure the gentle reader, this
particular student is very far from alone. She has some good advice, too late to help herself with it…but I doubt any prospective student
will ever hear her words of wisdom freely available on YouTube, because how
would they find her?
My next student accrued over $200,000 in
debt, again getting suckered into the “go get a graduate degree” trap.
“…at the community college it was
like, here, take this free money…I was not fiscally wise…”
So many kids are cheated like this in
community college, it’s pathetic. Some 28% of students with loan debt
don’t even know it.
How could that possibly happen in a system acting with integrity? Doing the
math that means well over 10,000,000 of our kids with student loan debt had no
idea they signed up for it until after school. The vast majority of community
colleges should be shut down, plain and simple.
“…undergrad, I accrued about $45,000 in…debt.”
She immediately went back to grad school,
spending another 6 years getting her Ph.D. She didn’t have to make payments
while in grad school, and thought that was great…but once again the interest on
that loan simply compounded.
“…over $200,000 accruing at 5.8% every month…I just don’t think about
it.”
When she finishes paying this off (if she
does), she’ll have paid over $750,000 for this loan. The actual cost to the
school for educating her was probably around $10,000. How is this not
exploitative? She wasn’t dealing with a sketchy fly-by-night loan place,
either:
“…this is Sally Mae. They just got handed
billions of dollars!”
It really is demented how our country’s
system creates money from nothing, and uses it to enslave, rather than help,
the citizens. I sure look forward to a time when I’m not so alone in wondering
why we have such an evil system.
“…work in a field where I make nothing…”
I again point out: the schools charging
so much for graduate degrees know they’re trapping the students into a deadly
system, because they know how much professors will make.
“…how ridiculous higher education has become…”
Well, at least she learned something in
her ordeal. Too bad finding these types of videos is too tough to expect kids
to see them before stumbling onto campus.
“…the thing that makes me the
saddest…I wanted to be a parent….the more we make the more we pay in student
loans.”
She’s now heading towards her late 30s,
and is doomed. By the time she pays off that debt, assuming she can, she’ll be
close to 60. So, theoretically, at the age of 60, she’ll be able to afford to
have a child. Higher education didn’t just enslave her, they’ve effectively
sterilized a generation, and in many cases they’re taking the most intelligent
of our population out of the gene pool.
“…they sell you this dream world with
no intention of following up.”
The schools have a very bloody hand in the
carnage they’ve wreaked on a whole generation. I shouldn’t be alone in seeing
that higher education has a real problem here.
More importantly, I shouldn’t be alone in
seeing how to fix it: end the student loan scam.
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