Posted on 03/29/2011 9:46:30 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
I don’t understand why a student can’t attend a regular community college for two years and then transfer to the state school. Normally if you complete the community college with decent grades (2.0), the state school will accept you pretty “automatically”. However, you would probably have to attend one of the satellite schools throughout the states and perhaps not main campus. But it still seems smarter to do than what these folks have been doing.
If all student loans were privatized, people majoring in marketable degrees like nursing and engineering would be paying about 3%. People majoring in women's studies and similar fluff would be paying about 30%. The market would build in the risk of default according to the value of the degree and price the loans accordingly.
I don’t have the source. I have read it here from other Freepers whose children have been caught up in loans. One her daughter is dying, they took her house, but the mom states that this is the case. Another is a Freeper whose mom got a loan when he was 17. His mom dies many years ago. This year the IRS took his refund to pay for his mom’s loan.
Apparently, death does not discharge the obligation.
If you find it, it would be good to have. But I find it hard to think more than one person here would just dream this stuff up.
See post #23
The law-school scam is far bigger than anything these for-profits could dream of. Tuition approaching 40k a year at third tier schools and lies by nearly everyone of the law schools about salary and employment percentage.
Also, my understanding of my loans (grad plus loans) is that unless I die, the only way out is repayment, so I do not know what these “defaults” are.
Colleges, by and large, are a scam. You place an overworked & underpaid TA in front of a bunch of dull undergrads, while some faculty talks and talks about a topic that he has recycled from years past.
Each undergrad is worth 10’s of thousands of $$ in tuition, per year, a number the administrative staff can multiply by as many as the admissions committee allows them to. Nothing tangible is produced, at the undergraduate level.
Your post 16: “In fact, they now will fall unto any children the borrow[er] has, until it is ALL paid back.” implies that the borrower’s children are liable for their parent’s student loan. That is not correct.
Also, a parent is not responsible for a child’s student loans unless the parent cosigned for the loan.
“she is far from the graphic design job she studied for”
Ok there are somethings you can learn online UOP style and some you can not. Graphic Design, creative type courses=fail...
Besides fields like ‘graphic design’ are as useful as majoring in piano. Yes there are jobs out there but few and far between.
If I ever get bumped out of the IT space by all the out sourcers and need to ‘re-tool’ I will look into education, a heath care field, or a trade (pipe fitting)... None of them get you rich but its usually doable to find a job..
There is little doubt that these schools (like UOP) are nothing but paper factories and that, in and of itself, is a bit scummy. But it’s not illegal..
Chances are for the same amount of money this Girl could have enrolled part time in a local community college or university and gotten a better education for less.
Easy Answer: Make universities with a default rate of more than 15% over three years co-sign for loans until they fix the issue..
Let’s put UOP on the hook for taking students who have no business working toward a masters..
They aren’t? A huge % of their loans end up falling on the tax payers!
HTR I did one year of UOP when it was on the company dime... It was a joke! As soon as I left for a company which did not pay I hug it up.
Most of these places *especially the online ones* are scams. And if they want to scam people for a piece of paper thats fine but no federal student loans should go out to places like this.
Let them self fund or co-sign private loans for their students.
They write this as if this only happens with for-profit vocational colleges.
Every democrat is out there (and some republicans) talking as if college is a right, and it will solve everyones problems.
I know a lot of people that are in debt to plain old liberal arts colleges, including state ones.
The problem is our entire educational system is broken. College has been taken out of the place it should be (as a place to truly educate) into some sort of cure-all for an unhappy life.
Also by privatizing loans deals can be worked out.
Being in hock for a student loan is worse than being in hock to the IRS. They never let you off the hook.
Have to disagree with you there, at least in the degree is from a good school like Rhode Island School of Design, Art Center, or a good public school. Ad agencies, design firms, architects, industrial design consultants, and companies that design in house all need graphic designers. If my business continues to pick up I'll need to hire one. Not sure how great the job market is right now for recent grads, but overall your comparison= fail!
I remember being a computer science student, sitting in C++ class, thinking, “gonna work hard, make money, own a house”...whoops, looks like those programming jobs went overseas!
Along with everything else. Companies figured out they could get away with murder in China/India/Mexico, so they expanded there, downsized here.
Such heroes.
If we got the government out of the loan guarantee business this problem would be solved.
Lenders would only lend if they had a reasonable chance of being paid back.
“Students” with poor prospects would have a hard time getting a loan. They’d have to forego their crummy college or save up to go.
“Universities” that don’t give a quality, marketable degree would rapidly fold.
So, whose the “predatory lender” now, eh> Why it’s the education industry.
This article has what I think are a few misrepresentations. One is that taxpayers get stuck with the bad loans, at least for the federal student loan program. That was the case for a very long time, but within the past 10 years or so, the law was changed so that those students will, at some point in their lives, have to pay them back. They are loans that do not go away. The govt will collect if they have to garnish any income the student makes.
I also found the industry rep’s story about a community college student having $90K in loans unbelievable. That is $45K/year for a 2 year program? Most community colleges charge @ $100/credit. Few students carry more than 15 or maybe 18 credits in a semester. So, let’s say a student is carrying 18 credits for three semesters, and let’s say s/he attends a more expensive community college that charges $150/credit. That’s $8100. Throw in $1200/semester for books and another $1K for activity fees. You’re up to $12,700. But the govt is lending this student $45K ?? That’s a pretty healthy amount left over for living expenses.
I think there ARE restrictions on how much the govt will lend a student, based on the school’s tuition and costs. They also require that the studies be concluded within X amt of tim, something like 150% of the time it takes under ideal conditions (full time, no dropping classes, changing majors, etc). So that $90K debt from community college story just doesn’t add up.
Given the offerings at Community Colleges, I can’t imagine why a student would go to one of these expensive for-profit programs in any case. At least our community colleges offer an enormously broad program of studies. And in VA, and most other states I’ve heard of, the state universities’ 4 year schools will accept a graduate of the community college, with certain requirements that the four year college sets. Some of the 4 year school require a higher GPA than others; some are fussier about which credits they will transfer, etc. But it sure sounds like a community college grad will have better prospects after completion than the students featured in the article
So many of the schools really are scams. Drag some student in that can barely read and help them get loans and grants. When the money runs out suddenly the “student” read “mark” has failing grades and it’s out the door with no more money, no training, no job and none on the horizon.
But the debt lives on and on and on.
My nephews daughter just finished her work and had a job before she graduated, starting at about 80,000 per year and they have agreed to pay her school costs after four years. It is all in what you get that degree in.
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