Every day we hear about the mortgage crisis and the tragedy of home foreclosure, but...

Why do we hear so little about student loan debt? I suspect, in brief, that's it's because these debts are all but inescapable; even if your home is foreclosed and you lose your job and your spouse dies and your children are kidnapped by goblins, you can still expect a friendly reminder from Sallie Mae in next month's mail. That means that the lenders are effectively protected from the repercussions of their aggressive and predatory lending policies. Sure, you can get a deferment and a forebearance and various sorts of temporary amnesties, but when these expire you can expect another gentle note from Sallie.

I've even read here on DU about people whose sole income comes from social security, but not before the student loan provider takes a 15% bite out of the gross.

Credit cards are well known to engage in predatory tactics, but at least these can be mitigated through various measures, of which bankruptcy is only the most obvious. Not so student loans, which are basically indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Even the inadequate measures currently being examined by congress will be of benefit primarily to people who haven't yet been saddled with these loans, locking in this or that interest rate or the like. What about the sizable chunk of the population already laboring to pay off five or six times the actual cost of a diploma, sometimes received decades ago?


Student loans are often incurred even before the borrower is eighteen, all but unemployeed and with no concept of how to interpret pages and pages of obscure requirements and provisos. Contrast that with a prospective homeowner, likely somewhat older than eighteen and possibly with one or two incomes already.

Why are student loans permitted to continue in this manner, especially when the product that they paid for (college education) is becoming increasingly obsolete in our outsourced economy?

And who bears the brunt of this inescapable debt? Well, it isn't the wealthy ruling class, that's for damn sure.

Hell, I'll even give back the diploma, if it'll help.

We basically have two mortgages--the house and the med school debt. At least we can pay it back and have insurance for if anything happens that we can't, but my SIL just graduated with $20K in debt and is going into marketing. She wants to work for a ballet company, and I worry she won't make enough to cover her debt.

credit card debt is no longer erased by bankruptcy. Thanks to good lobbying by MBNA, who lent my Congressman $250,000 when he was caught in a bad divorce, the laws were changed a few years ago.

Student loan debt does not. Additionally, lenders can go after your income directly, with or without your consent; in most cases credit card companies can't do this.

on credit card debt. They can get a judgment against you, enter it, and it's there until it's satisfied.

Reliable (I thought) sources have informed me that after a period of non-payment lasting seven years, the debt is cancelled. I grant that my understanding may be incomplete or that it may apply only in certain states.

What does the judgment against you mean? Is it a lien on your house, or a big black mark on your credit, or is the debt itself preserved until paid?

which means they sued you and you (a) didn't show up to defend, and/or (b) lost, they can put a lien on your house, bank accounts, like that. I don't know that they can garnish your wages, but that probably varies from state to state.

The seven-year thing you were told is the length of time a judgment will remain on your credit history. It has nothing to do with the judgment a credit card company can get on you.

rep. This was on of the resolutions we were working on.
It went something like this, if you come back to Alaska after recieving yor diploma, the state would forgive 10% a year, up to five years on your student loans.
Of course this is only possible because we actually have a budget surplus from high oil royalties.
Our daughter is going to college in the fall and this would be really nice if this was an option when she gets done.

I got my degree in 1978 and 10% of my loan balance was forgiven every year I taught school. Didn't even have to be a public school. Without that program (which was a federal loan program) I could never have afforded to go to college. The program was eliminated by the Reagan administration in the 80s.

I keep thinking this would be an excellent way to address the current teacher shortage. But that makes way too much sense for our current group of representatives in DC.

I still have some friends who graduated in the 70s and 80s who owe on their loans...or defaulted and spent years trying to clean up their credit. Many not only got the loans, but also credit cards and soon worked themselves into holes hoping to pay it back later with a big salary or some other windfall. Nope...they can't repossess your brain, but they sure can ruin getting established, trying to buy a car or try to work their way out of financial servitude.

So a college education is "obsolete"? Well I look at my daughter who graduated last year and is already in the workforce and making a contribution to our society...and that's better than most of her friends who still haven't figured out what to do with their lives and end up working at Best Buys???

Yes...therea are those who are deadbeats who abused college loans and hope never to pay them off, but most the people I know who took out loans did so out of necessity. I'm grateful I earned a scholarship when I was in school that helped pay for it...but my wife had to take out a loan which we were able to repay...but we're the lucky ones. In this day and age, college is still a very valuable asset to have...especially with the challenges facing us in the future of totally rebuilding this country.

It seems corporations see college students as a new market for debt.

Whether it's the loan, or health insurance the predators are out there looking for a quick buck.

They really helped me get through 7 years of grad school, I got a job before graduating, and my first year's raise was about the same as my monthly loan payment.

You're right that some people make stupid decisions when offered "free" money and those people aren't much different from people who screwed themselves with mortgages or credit cards (where there are some remedies).

But on the other hand, if student loans were escapable, too many students would make escaping repayment a part of their "career plan".

We're paying over $760 a month for my two daughters' student loans. We can't save a penny for retirement, even though we live simply, never go out, and buy many of our clothes, etc. from garage sales.

The interest rate on Daughter 1's variable-rate loan just got jacked up. I called to find out why, since interest rates have been dropping. The customer rep couldn't answer me, so she asked a manager, who claimed "the interest rate was higher when the new rate was calculated." I think that its a load of crap.

The consolidation madness of a few years ago was also a huge scam. The loan companies all claimed it would be more convenient to make one payment instead of several smaller ones. We were bombarded with consolidation offers in the mail. Finally I decided to do it, and went through the entire application process, only to learn, at the very end of the complicated process, that the interest rates on the combined loans would all be raised to the rate of the loan with the highest interest.

I should have said "Fuck you" and hung up right there, but I am rather ignorant financially. I should have realized that anything a bank or loan company pushes you to do is good for THEM, but not for you. I also figured out that the combined loan is variable-rate, unlike the original fixed-rate loans. I screwed myself, but I do blame Congress for allowing this kind of scam to happen.

PS - one of my daughters is 5 credits short of a BA and works as a nanny. Doesn't earn enough to pay the loans. The other is going to community college and wants to transfer to a 4-year school for her last two years. She works at a day care center part time and earns only enough to pay for gas and food. There are no other jobs available where she lives in rural Virginia. This is why we're stuck.