College students protest debt on "Trillion Dollar Day"

Reuters ^

[Sub-Driver]

College students protest debt on "Trillion Dollar Day" 7:15pm EDT

By Edith Honan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - College students held demonstrations in several U.S. cities on Wednesday to mark the day total U.S. student loan debt was expected to reach $1 trillion, with some burning student loan documents and others demanding a right to "debt-free degrees."

The demonstrations for "One Trillion Dollar Day" come as President Barack Obama was visiting colleges to push Congress to extend the low interest rates on college loans to more than 7.4 million students. If lawmakers fail to act, rates on the loans will double on July 1 to 6.8 percent.

Describing his own struggle to pay off college debt, Obama appeared at the University of Iowa at Iowa City on Wednesday to talk to students about his campaign to make education more affordable. He made similar appearances on Tuesday in North Carolina and Colorado.

Several hundred protesters, mostly college students wearing placards noting the size of their debt loads, rallied in New York City's Union Square park on Wednesday.

They set fire to student debt documents and held signs reading "Debt free degrees" and "Education in America: Don't bank on it."

Hadi Nassar, 31, whose eight years of undergraduate and dental school education has left him $186,000 in debt, said he was having to rethink his plan to work at a community health clinic.

"It makes me angry. It makes me not want to do what I set out to do - which was, help people, take care of people," said Nassar, a dental resid

[P-Marlowe]

These fools borrow $30,000 a year for 5 years to get a degree in Humanities that isn’t worth the paper it is printed on and then they want to be relieved of the obligations for their stupid decisions.

If you are going to go into debt to get a degree, then choose engineering or medicine.

If you are going to get a degree in Humanities or Liberal Arts or some other stupid degree, then go to a junior college and then a state college and pay for it yourself. Then when you decide you want a career, you can go to work in the McDonald’s management program or Taco Bell and you won’t have a $2500 a month obligation that you are never going to meet.

[sarasmom]

No.

But since I think I would have been turned down for a loan once, had I applied for it, I expect reparations in the amount of $50K.
I can prove I don't have a degree, so that means I deserve a check!
(Well it works for the PIGFORD non-farmers)

In fact, lets just go ahead and add damages for loss of income, because if I had applied for a student loan, and achieved a degree, it would probably have been in environmental engineering.
I would have invented and patented a new form of energy.
So...just to be fair, up that check amount to 10 Billion dollars, and I will be satisfied.

[sarasmom]

I wish I knew how to set up an Internet betting pool!

I could rake in a few hundred dollars on the odds spread that she is a registered Democrat!

[Darren McCarty]

You gotta be kidding me. She's older than me, and I have a J.D. degree which I got after two stints in undergrad. She also has more debt than me, and law school isn't cheap.

But at least I'm working.

[Mike Darancette]

Hadi Nassar, 31, whose eight years of undergraduate and dental school education has left him $186,000 in debt, said he was having to rethink his plan to work at a community health clinic.

Talking about helping the 1%. Rich kids borrowing money to allow them to earn big bucks. He just doesn't want to pay back the money.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You’d think they’d try to get the government to sue “Big Education” for collusion and RICO violations. But that requires common sense, something not in abundance on college campuses.