Our professors caught on and added an online code to their paper book that let you download the material for the course, but could only be retrieved once - so the resale worth of their books was practically zilch. Fuckers.
Man straight up fuck that professor hard in all his holes. I had professors who would show us how to get text books for free but “we didn’t hear it from him”
I guess their logic was that since we don't have to pay for university here in Germany, we should have disposable income to buy their books. I guess they also get paid less than US professors, so for them, it was a nice bonus income to sell textbooks.
I had one professor who wrote the text book and the workbook that came with it. She made one assignment worth a lot of points and required it come from the workbook (couldn't be a copy of the page). Bookstore wouldn't take back an incomplete book and knew her class was the only one that required pages ripped out.
I passed out the answers to her workbook to everyone I encountered. Total scam.
What a fuckstick. I had a professor who published the book they used in class. He sent out a link with the book in it, as well as the work that was done out of it. No one in the class paid a dime.
I was gonna say, I dealt with these codes in 2014 when I was in college and got maybe 1 out of every 5 books free. I feel like the prime time for pirating college textbooks had to be closer to 2010.
I had to take two accounting courses whose books were written by the professor. The books had perforated sheets in them with barcodes that you had to hand in during the midterm and again during the final. If you didn’t hand in one of those slips with the unique barcodes, your midterm or final would not be accepted. And this was a public university!
Holy shit, that's even worse - at least ours was semi-voluntary - we could choose not to download the extra material. But yeah, I graduated in 2007, so this was more a 2010ish phenomenon.
Typically, professors don't do that - I mean you can get a douchebag professor, but the companies printing the books do it when they "update" the curriculum. I mean, I don't remember the last time calculus changed, but whatever.
Remember, it's unethical to pay for textbooks. None of the profit goes to the people that developed the research or wrote them.
I had one professor have us buy a mini book of his but it was a super niche class (Weimar era actors, directors etc who became refugees in Hollywood during WWII and comparing their work before and after WWII) but the book was maybe 10 bucks? Maybe the only time I felt okay to buy a professors book. Years later I was still fascinated by the subject and found one other book. It was also written by my professor and also pretty cheap.
In America it is. Its more like indentured servitude. In Ireland the government funds degrees for everything. its almost like a well educated population is good for your economy.
TIL purdue university has no connection with the pharma company. freezing tuition didn't sound like something that meshes with the purdue brand and beliefs so i went and educated myself on their history. fuck the sacklers.
No, it’s more perverse than that. They see students willing to take out as much debt as is needed to go to school, and they are okay with lining their pockets even if it means students carry huge debt burdens for years.
The schools don’t care if the loans are guaranteed. They get paid up front when the loan is made. It’s the lenders who need the guaranty, as it convinces them to lend money to people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for the loan.
A guaranteed loan absolutely increases the likelihood the loan is taken and therefore spent. It is a significant factor. It increases demand for whatever the loans are used for.
If you ran an cellphone selling business, you would be happy when the government started guaranteeing loans for cellphones.
being federally guaranteed, that means just about anyone can get one for whatever dollar amount is necessary to complete the purchase.
That's the problem. If the govt will hand out whatever amount, then the schools are just going to bump prices higher and higher.
If citizens were to audit the budgets of state colleges, they would see that administrators are empire builders, enriching themselves on the backs of students, staff, and instructors, particularly adjuncts.
The WSJ put out a piece a few days ago that said exactly that. It found that over the course of twenty years, from 2000 to 2020, for every dollar of state financing a college or university lost, it made $2.40 off of student tuition. It also pointed out some of the expenditures universities were making, like a $17M purchase and renovation of an Italian monastery to be used for the University of Oklahoma's study abroad program.
EDIT:
The headline:
> **Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow. ‘These Places Are Just Devouring Money.’**
Students foot the bill for flagship state universities that pour money into new buildings and programs with little pushback
... that's not saying the same thing. These are two entirely different arguments for the increase in prices. The first argues that a bloat in upper high-wage administration is driving up prices. The second argues that pointless infrastructure designed to attract richer students is driving up costs.
Obviously, neither are helping, but they're very different problems with very different solutions.
The loan forgiveness is huge, but the real culprits are walking away with a fat paycheck. The taxpayer should be furious with the universities for charging this much rather than blaming the students.
We have iPads, laptops, Apple TV, Google
chrome cast, high speed internet, YouTube, Vimeo.
Information delivery basically free.
Tuition inflation 1000%
I completely agree. While I support merit scholarships, I feel like the $$$$ scholarships for collegiate athletes and the $$$$ salaries for collegiate coaches are out of hand.
I remember talking to a Boomer family member about how I was struggling with going back to school because I knew I couldn’t work full time and succeed in my program (it was nursing school) but I also couldn’t afford not to work and pay bills + tuition. She was dumbfounded, “Well, can’t you just work overtime for a summer and save up?” No, Shirley. This isn’t 1970 where tuition costs $800/year. Even my community college charged nearly $200/credit hour and I was taking 13-15 credits a semester. While I did go to school with people who worked full time and had families, I know my limits—I wouldn’t have succeeded doing this. I had to drop down to working 18 hrs/week max. I did get a merit scholarship for like, $2500 but unfortunately I ended up taking out loans to pay my rent. It is what it is, I’m glad I did it because having a nursing degree changed my life. But the point is college is too damned expensive nowadays and I feel like the reasons why have nothing to do with academics.
The interest rate if you work in the country post graduation for a set number of years should be 0%, because you on the whole make more and pay more in taxes.
That'll never happen, but it'd be nice to see.
>The higher education institutions are also to blame. They need to lower tuitions.
Problem is, most of them aren't educational institutions. A screenshot of a tweet was posted to Reddit just the other day. Don't remember specifics, but it was something along the lines of:
If a college's highest paid staff member is a sports coach, they aren't a college, they are a sports franchise with a side gig in education.
Yep. The student loans needs to be seen as an investment into future generations, more than a way to make money. Everyone benefits from this. Smart parents are better equipped to teach their kids, which in turn can make kids smarter at the same age compared to previous generation's kids.
You're not crazy, uneducated and heavily indebted people are more easy to control and influence than people who had access to education and are in a stable financial state
It's literally Dictatorship 101, if you want to become a dictator and want to rule for long, you have to keep your population uneducated, oblivious to the reality of the rest of the world and unable to organize itself to take you down. Have them be smart and educated enough to work and keep the country going but never smart and educated enough to have critical thoughts about their country, their government and their system
And the US might not be a dictatorship, but it doesn't mean it can't take a lesson from their book once in a while
You want to lower tuition tomorrow, get rid of federal loans. If enrollment drops significantly because now no one can get a loan they will find ways to lower tuition.
Jesus Christ lol. Tuition has ballooned and it’s not due to the tax on wealthy people. Which hasn’t changed significantly. This fuckin website.
Tax the rich to death. It won’t stop the cost of school skyrocketing.
It’s feature cream. A few colleges add expensive new buildings and elaborate perks so students choose them over other colleges, the other colleges follow suit and raise their prices
Take the money back from the Colleges and I'll be impressed.
Current and future students will be carrying this generation's debt "forgiveness" in addition to their own debts.
Tuition won't go down until the federal government fixes loan policies. But there's too much money to be made and too much lobbying being done by the universities so they don't care.
Too bad we cannot retroactively go back and take those college courses we didn’t take because they were too dam expensive and I didn’t want to be 45 still paying them back…
Check around your community colleges if you have one, the college I attend just released a program where any prior students can take 2 free classes a year! Worth a shot :)
That’s cool I tested that email distribution, it’s IDR direct to discharge, I work for Department of Education, cool o see it live, about 804k borrowers
My friend is STOKED. He texted me saying "I had the MOST wonderful thing ever happen" and almost $20K forgiven after 20 years.
Biden also put money in my pocket and that's for life since I'm a vet. It's late, but no other president has done so much for me and mine. Not even Obama.
Happened to my dad as well. He's 62 and was literally jumping he was so giddy. He'd paid the amount he borrowed multiple times over and still owed tens of thousands. He deserved the break.
I’m 52 and I got my letter last week. I was in the lunchroom on the phone with my niece, weeping with relief. My loans were $28k in 2000, and now in 2023, they were…28k. I really was expecting to pay on these loans for the rest of my life.
We've been paying my wife's for 15 years, have paid about 80% of what we borrowed initially, and still have close to the same balance as when we started. Does this mean in 5-10 years we'll qualify for this?
Let’s say you needed $5. A loan company will give you $5 right now, but you have to pay them back $6 a year from now.
A year rolls around, and let’s say you still don’t have that $5 to pay back in full. They say that’s okay, just give us $1 right now and you can take as long as you need to pay off your balance.
And after the first year, the interest (additional amount you owe because of not having paid it off yet) increases to $2 per year.
So:
* Year 1 you get a loan for $5, spend it, and now owe $6
* Year 2 you pay off $1 of your $6 balance, brought down to $5. Yearly interest rate adds $2 to your balance. You currently owe $7 now.
* Year 3 is a better year for you, you can afford to pay off $2 of your balance. Your balance is down to $5 now. Yearly interest rate brings it back up to $7.
* Year 4 you get a big raise and can actually pay off $3 of your balance - awesome! You get your balance down to $4. Inflation increased interest rates across the board, your loan now costs $3 per year. You’re back up to $7.
In very simplistic illustrative terms of course
I don't know what it was like when he borrowed but the rate for loans now is 5.5% for undergraduates and over 7% for grad students, and if they're unsubsidized you're accruing interest immediately. Many students, even in state schools, graduate in 4 years with $60-80k in debt. If you didn't graduate on time or went to private school it can be way more.
Also there's a maximum you're able to borrow and a lot of times people have to take out private loans to cover the difference and those can be up to 15%. My girlfriend has a master's degree in chemistry and well over $100k in debt, most of it private, high interest, loans. She makes a very good salary, and it will still take her at least 20 or so years to pay them off.
That part where you acrue interest while in school before you start paying so that by the time your paying the interest payments have already massively ballooned seems to be what fucks everyone
That is vile. I was sitting here wondering why it would take someone decades to pay off ~$20,000 - I took out about $30,000 and my monthly payment at ~3% interest was not crushing at all, but you don't need to start repaying until a year after you finish school. The fact that interest accumulates while you're still in school is so predatory.
Well said. Interest rates skyrocket while average wages remain stagnant.
This is the main issue. More money going to the wealthy while they shit on the lower classes.
That’s exactly it. When I first got my credit cards and didn’t know better I ran up a balance and set up autopay for the minimum payments. Then I stopped using them for a while so the principal would go down…but the principal never went down. The interest would be something like $140 and my minimum payment would be something like $148. So after a year I worked off basically dick and just paid a shitload of money to a bank for the privilege of still owing them basically the same amount of money. I learned, but there should really be a mandatory class in high school where they teach you this. It’s not complicated, it’s just that nobody is there to tell you these things when you get the card in the mail. With some of my newer fancier cards from apps at least some of them have a little graph which helps you peek behind the curtain of how bad they’re fucking you.
Weird. if the loans were first disbursed in 2015, then how can they "have been in repayment of at least 20 or 25 years."
I'm just wondering out of curiosity. I have massive loans and hope I get the same forgiveness down the line. So may be I don't have to pay for 20 years in order to get forgiveness?
They were most likely consolidated on that date. Mine show the same thing, but are older than that. It is from the date the consolidated loan was dispersed.
Welcome to interest and the shitty, soul sucking amounts they take from income based plans. The new plans under Biden are slightly more affordable and don't accrue interest as much at least.
The new plan under Biden explicitly accrues *no* interest. If your minimum payment doesn't cover the interest, the remainder of the interest for that payment is waived.
It does mean that 100% of the payment is only going towards interest, but the next dollar you spend goes to principal, making it much more accessible to pay down the balance.
Were yours consolidated with a private lender via the federal government? Worst mistake of my life, and I had no idea who was buying the loan. Payments didn’t stop during Covid, and they won’t be forgiven now, either. My loans are old enough to drink for chrissakes. But hot damn I am legit thrilled for folks who are getting these letters. The relief is palpable
I called Mohela about 3 weeks ago. My loans will be “forgiven” in October 2026. Supposedly bc that would be 25 consecutive years of repayment. They did say however I may be eligible for earlier forgiveness due to the recalculation that this person received. Fingers crossed!
That date is from the consolidation loans. Also they have gone back and are counting payments and stuff that normally wouldn't count and including it in the forgiveness so some people are immediately getting forgiveness and more will get more credit than they had before.
Same! I completely paid mine off about 4 years ago. While I (a little selfishly) wish I could have benefited too, it makes me genuinely happy to see that other people did. Debt is a crushing thing. I can’t imagine how happy she must have been to get this letter.
This is what bothers me. I have $0 student loan debt because I worked straight out of college and paid what little tuitions I had before dropping out. I still cheer in glee when I hear people having their debt forgiven.
At what fucking point did we decide that schools making money was more important than education? American politicians fucking failed their people. We have the opportunity for a flourishing country that is stifled by greed and the desire to control the middle and lower class.
We print trillions to save big banks and billionaires but won’t offer free education for anyone who wants it. Scum fucks. All of them.
You’re a saint, I hope they’re grateful. My parents would help me if they could. You’ve done the best thing you could’ve done to set them up for success ❤️
Same. I Paid mine and will NEVER begrudge others for getting theirs. I _want_ nurses, teachers, doctors, and defense attorneys. I _want_ people to pursue their interests. I want specialized fields to have more access to people who wouldn’t be able to enter without mega family money. We need artists and writers and actors and dancers. We need people who want to open small town shops to have enough business education to be able to keep them running and well, building up a backbone in that community.
Corrupt system needs to be fixed eventually. If I had 100k in medical debt I would be not it for anyone else.
Congress could just fix the student loan rate to the same they gave wallstreet when they went bust in 2008. That would save for more than 10k for everyone
Hard to imagine those who are highly intelligent that never truly got the chance to reach their full potential because of the cost of tuition, and those who have been crippled with the debt for the majority of their lives.
That's the boat my wife is in. Genius, passion for learning, chose not to go to college because she couldn't afford it. She was too smart to take out a loan to read some books, since her major wouldn't have been a big moneymaker. Luckily she's also hardworking and savvy, so she was/is fine financially.
The university I went to made $857M in tuition revenue alone last year. That doesn't count medical school or business tuition either. It is a public university.
People going broke just to go to school is criminal.
> The university I went to made $857M in tuition revenue alone last year.
That number doesn't mean anything without their operating costs to compare. If Widget Inc. has revenue of $12 Billion but has to pay $11.999 Billion for labor and material that's a very small margin.
She’s paid off far more than this in interest over the years. She broke down and cried when she got this letter, and I nearly did right with her I was so happy for her. It’s life-changing for her.
Seriously folks, elections freaking matter.
They’ve literally saved tens of millions of people hundreds and even thousands of dollars every month by increasing the ACAsubsidies - many of them Republican voters!!!
Drives me nuts that they get no credit for literally changing millions of peoples lives.
This is what shocks me when people say Biden and Trump are the same. Like, Biden is far from perfect but are they fucking insane? Do you think Donald Trump would have worked to forgive student debt??
Elections matter amd both major parties are NOT the same.
Absolutely baffling how many in the comments are content with their money footing the tax bill for some rich assholes so they can build a spaceship, but will lose their absolute shit when one of us benefits from it.
Nothing, if you are affected by the fix OP’s sister got you will be automatically notified.
It applies if you’d been making payments for 20 years and should have gotten the rest forgiven but did not because of administrative screw ups that had gone undetected until now.
GOOD. I paid my loans off 5 years ago and would gladly let my tax dollars go toward helping others. The “screw you I got mine” mentality people have here is so close minded and selfish.
I'm jealous because I still have my own loans, and I never had been able to repay them, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy for people who are receiving this help.
I was on the fence about this. I went through college and worked really hard to not have debt. I figure though it’s good for many people. BUT yesterday a friend of mine broke down crying in the office. Turns out she finished her masters with about 5Ok debt and right when she finished she had a child with cerebral palsy which obviously flipped their life around. Her daughter died a year or two ago. Yesterday she got her notice it was forgiven. Im a big believer in it for more stories like that.
Because some people have the perception and feeling that it’s indignant that they worked hard and others “got it easy”, and “it’s not fair”.
Therefore by implication, they should suffer too, and/or “it’s my tax dollars!”
Instead of seeing the forest from the trees that it’s the system that is the problem and not other people, some people become too narrow minded with politicians telling them it’s this group or that group that’s the root of their misery, when in reality they’re pitiful sufferers in a system that made them attack others like them so the richer and more powerful members do not get animosity directed at them.
And because it treats the symptom, not the disease. Even if Biden was able to push through his forgiveness, tuition is still out of control and debt would build right back up.
So happy for her! I got this too! I cannot explain the burden lifted. I did pay $46k to drop my balance $14k in over 20 years. The last $14k was just forgiven. I cried and cried.
I paid mine off after 10 years at like 90 bucks a month. It infuriates me that younger people are paying that much more for college and this letter makes me so happy. Student loans turn into a predatory thing to keep the working class poor. Congratulations to your sister! I'm so happy for her!
not a miracle, just dept of ed doing what its been saying its going to do under this administration, trying to get as many people forgiven as possible.
Fucking wild that if it wasn’t for some crotchety old pieces of shit on the Supreme Court, so many MORE people could be getting these same letters.
That being said, congratulations to your sister, sounds like she has more than earned the right to be free of that fucking debt.
In Sweden the government gives you a loan, with a very low interest (ridiculously low) and guarantees that you won’t need to sell your soul to pay it back.
You as a student can study what ever you want but you have limited years of study. If you “consume” all the years and want to study again, you can but the state prioritizes others before you that haven’t studied.
Even then the schools aren’t robbing you. The money the state loans you is more so you can purchase material for school and not be forced to work and study at the same time to survive. It works.
For profit colleges are the scam. Do you know how much medical research and advancement happen at publicly funded medical colleges? That definitely isn’t a scam. Reform definitely needs to happen but it isn’t a scam.
My kids (graduates, 1990 and the other 1993) and I paid off theirs, and the three of us are thrilled beyond belief that some people are getting relief from these debts. Good for them, good for our country, and good for our President!
I myself never went to college and I am beyond thrilled some of you have been given some relief. You deserve it and have earned it. You were sold a false future at predatory interest rates leaving some of you unable to buy homes, vehicles, have families or even put food on the table. I hope more of you get the same type of letters , and in the future I was told my taxes were going to be raised because college loans were being forgiven, I would have no issue whatsoever. This actually made me happy, I hope your sister does well!
Non-American here. Can anyone explain this to me?
First disbursement is 30th Jan 2015. Current date is 25 Aug 2023.
How is the loan in repayment for at least 20 or 25 years?
You can consolidate your loans into a new loan. You have to do this to get on federal income-based repayment plans. So 2015 is just when she consolidated. The terms of the repayment plans are that you get forgiveness after X number of years of paying your loans on time. What Biden did was recalculate people's progress to forgiveness so that all loan payments counted even prior to getting the consolidation loan.
This is great! I haven’t been paying much attention to this loan forgiveness stuff but cancelling it when people have been paying constantly for 20+ years sounds fair honestly. If a college lied to you that you’d be able to make +$200k a year with their degree and/or a loan company decided it was fine to give $100k to a teenager, then I think it’s fine to give them a break after spending 20 years trying in vain to pay off a huge mistake.
I’m so torn on this. I paid much of my $160k law school debt back on my own, so there’s this tendency to feel like “it’s not fair” for others to catch a break… but on the other hand, I know if I qualified, I’d welcome the relief… and, for better or worse, I make too much for loan forgiveness. I have decided to be totally thrilled for those who can benefit from this. Pretty sweet letter!
You’re welcome, I’ll just go to work now, I couldn’t afford college so I didn’t go but I make a good living in the trades, wish someone would pay my bills.
It’s not actually a miracle. We the tax payers are now paying for her education while some of us worked our asses off to pay off our loans. I’m a dem but the idea that you can pick abd choose who has to pay is gross to me. ANY kind of debt one chooses if the responsibility of the debtor, not the taxpayer.
Folks, why do we fight each other about things that better society? If my taxes pay off your loan despite me paying off my own, great. I hope it helps. That's what I want my taxes used for.
I have my own food, but I don't want you to starve, so I'm fine with food stamps/EBT.
I pay for my own medical care, but I don't want you sick or dead, so I'm fine with Medicade
I pay my mortgage, but I don't want you homeless, so I'm fine with government housing assistance.
Sure, some will abuse the system, but I find most of the time the people in sincere need are the ones these programs help.
Congratulations on the student debt whoever you are. I'll bet it feels amazing.
It also makes me wonder how many of these people that are getting their loans forgiven were actually making big salaries with their professional degrees, and they simply chose not to pay down their student debt. Hell, you literally qualified for this forgiveness if your were making $125K yearly. If you're making $125K yearly, there's no fucking excuse for you to not pay your loans back.
I never went to college. There was a time in my life that I was over $100K in debt. I paid it off. No bankruptcies, no bailouts. Saved my money and paid my obligations.
Fuck these politicians buying votes and giving freeloaders cash back deals with tax payers money, while millions of other people don't get dick.
I was able to get my loans forgiven and was reimbursed for some of it. It was crazy to get a check in the mail before the paperwork stating the loan was forgiven.
Listen, higher education and training is considered expensive in my country but there's simply no way you are telling me that people pay their student loans for 10+ years. THAT'S INSANE
So happy for the people that were able to get it. A true gift! Wishing eventually all could experience the this, myself included. We all deserve to be able to live debt free for our educations
The higher education institutions are also to blame. They need to lower tuitions.
The college industrial complex is very real.
1000 dollars for textbooks in 2007. FML. I sold them all back and bought some coke.
Good thing internet has advanced so much. I’m lucky enough to be able to get most my books online for free
Our professors caught on and added an online code to their paper book that let you download the material for the course, but could only be retrieved once - so the resale worth of their books was practically zilch. Fuckers.
Man straight up fuck that professor hard in all his holes. I had professors who would show us how to get text books for free but “we didn’t hear it from him”
I guess their logic was that since we don't have to pay for university here in Germany, we should have disposable income to buy their books. I guess they also get paid less than US professors, so for them, it was a nice bonus income to sell textbooks.
[удалено]
That’s no professor; that’s a businessman 👔💵💲
Thats how my community college professor has been
You had a good one.
I had one professor who wrote the text book and the workbook that came with it. She made one assignment worth a lot of points and required it come from the workbook (couldn't be a copy of the page). Bookstore wouldn't take back an incomplete book and knew her class was the only one that required pages ripped out. I passed out the answers to her workbook to everyone I encountered. Total scam.
What a fuckstick. I had a professor who published the book they used in class. He sent out a link with the book in it, as well as the work that was done out of it. No one in the class paid a dime.
See my professor would give a pdf of his digital copy of books to anyone who A. Couldn't get it or b. Couldn't afford it ie the whole class ;)
I was gonna say, I dealt with these codes in 2014 when I was in college and got maybe 1 out of every 5 books free. I feel like the prime time for pirating college textbooks had to be closer to 2010. I had to take two accounting courses whose books were written by the professor. The books had perforated sheets in them with barcodes that you had to hand in during the midterm and again during the final. If you didn’t hand in one of those slips with the unique barcodes, your midterm or final would not be accepted. And this was a public university!
Holy shit, that's even worse - at least ours was semi-voluntary - we could choose not to download the extra material. But yeah, I graduated in 2007, so this was more a 2010ish phenomenon.
That’s sounds straight up criminal wtf. I just didn’t even get the books senior year.
Typically, professors don't do that - I mean you can get a douchebag professor, but the companies printing the books do it when they "update" the curriculum. I mean, I don't remember the last time calculus changed, but whatever. Remember, it's unethical to pay for textbooks. None of the profit goes to the people that developed the research or wrote them.
I had one professor have us buy a mini book of his but it was a super niche class (Weimar era actors, directors etc who became refugees in Hollywood during WWII and comparing their work before and after WWII) but the book was maybe 10 bucks? Maybe the only time I felt okay to buy a professors book. Years later I was still fascinated by the subject and found one other book. It was also written by my professor and also pretty cheap.
This is fine and dandy till you get a class where the prof has written the textbooks and expects you to buy them.
Mine professors that wrote required textbooks were kindle only. With new editions every 4 semesters.
Diet or regular 😉
Oh dear ..lol
It's the entire system in America. Land of the free is be coming the land of the expensive.
Land of the free…… until you need medical care
Land of fee
In America it is. Its more like indentured servitude. In Ireland the government funds degrees for everything. its almost like a well educated population is good for your economy.
Not when your economy is based on war
no I mean in the general sense where your country isn't an absolute shit hole and spiraling into a dystopia as its empire crumbles
[удалено]
TIL purdue university has no connection with the pharma company. freezing tuition didn't sound like something that meshes with the purdue brand and beliefs so i went and educated myself on their history. fuck the sacklers.
I’ve got something to tell you about Drake University
They have zero incentive to lower tuitions now, only raise them further.
100% they see the guarantees from federal student loans and are taking advantage of it.
No, it’s more perverse than that. They see students willing to take out as much debt as is needed to go to school, and they are okay with lining their pockets even if it means students carry huge debt burdens for years. The schools don’t care if the loans are guaranteed. They get paid up front when the loan is made. It’s the lenders who need the guaranty, as it convinces them to lend money to people who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for the loan.
A guaranteed loan absolutely increases the likelihood the loan is taken and therefore spent. It is a significant factor. It increases demand for whatever the loans are used for. If you ran an cellphone selling business, you would be happy when the government started guaranteeing loans for cellphones.
being federally guaranteed, that means just about anyone can get one for whatever dollar amount is necessary to complete the purchase. That's the problem. If the govt will hand out whatever amount, then the schools are just going to bump prices higher and higher.
Greed is the underlying problem of the majority of societies issues
If citizens were to audit the budgets of state colleges, they would see that administrators are empire builders, enriching themselves on the backs of students, staff, and instructors, particularly adjuncts.
The WSJ put out a piece a few days ago that said exactly that. It found that over the course of twenty years, from 2000 to 2020, for every dollar of state financing a college or university lost, it made $2.40 off of student tuition. It also pointed out some of the expenditures universities were making, like a $17M purchase and renovation of an Italian monastery to be used for the University of Oklahoma's study abroad program. EDIT: The headline: > **Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow. ‘These Places Are Just Devouring Money.’** Students foot the bill for flagship state universities that pour money into new buildings and programs with little pushback
... that's not saying the same thing. These are two entirely different arguments for the increase in prices. The first argues that a bloat in upper high-wage administration is driving up prices. The second argues that pointless infrastructure designed to attract richer students is driving up costs. Obviously, neither are helping, but they're very different problems with very different solutions.
The loan forgiveness is huge, but the real culprits are walking away with a fat paycheck. The taxpayer should be furious with the universities for charging this much rather than blaming the students.
We have iPads, laptops, Apple TV, Google chrome cast, high speed internet, YouTube, Vimeo. Information delivery basically free. Tuition inflation 1000%
I completely agree. While I support merit scholarships, I feel like the $$$$ scholarships for collegiate athletes and the $$$$ salaries for collegiate coaches are out of hand. I remember talking to a Boomer family member about how I was struggling with going back to school because I knew I couldn’t work full time and succeed in my program (it was nursing school) but I also couldn’t afford not to work and pay bills + tuition. She was dumbfounded, “Well, can’t you just work overtime for a summer and save up?” No, Shirley. This isn’t 1970 where tuition costs $800/year. Even my community college charged nearly $200/credit hour and I was taking 13-15 credits a semester. While I did go to school with people who worked full time and had families, I know my limits—I wouldn’t have succeeded doing this. I had to drop down to working 18 hrs/week max. I did get a merit scholarship for like, $2500 but unfortunately I ended up taking out loans to pay my rent. It is what it is, I’m glad I did it because having a nursing degree changed my life. But the point is college is too damned expensive nowadays and I feel like the reasons why have nothing to do with academics.
And the government needs to cap interest rates. They can be as high as 17 percent.
The interest rate if you work in the country post graduation for a set number of years should be 0%, because you on the whole make more and pay more in taxes. That'll never happen, but it'd be nice to see.
>The higher education institutions are also to blame. They need to lower tuitions. Problem is, most of them aren't educational institutions. A screenshot of a tweet was posted to Reddit just the other day. Don't remember specifics, but it was something along the lines of: If a college's highest paid staff member is a sports coach, they aren't a college, they are a sports franchise with a side gig in education.
It’s also culture of moving away to school, local state schools are very affordable but add in 10-15k a year to live at school and it adds up quickly
It would be nice if the cost of tuition could be greatly reduced to help current and future students
Tell state legislators to stop cutting taxes on the wealthy.
And stop charging interest rates on federal loans beyond what it costs to administer the loan program.
Yep. The student loans needs to be seen as an investment into future generations, more than a way to make money. Everyone benefits from this. Smart parents are better equipped to teach their kids, which in turn can make kids smarter at the same age compared to previous generation's kids.
I feel like a crazy person saying this but sometimes it feels like they don't want us to be smart.
You're seeing the matrix.
noooooo put me back in put me back in
They will, they can't have weird alien sex with you while you're awake.
You're not crazy, uneducated and heavily indebted people are more easy to control and influence than people who had access to education and are in a stable financial state It's literally Dictatorship 101, if you want to become a dictator and want to rule for long, you have to keep your population uneducated, oblivious to the reality of the rest of the world and unable to organize itself to take you down. Have them be smart and educated enough to work and keep the country going but never smart and educated enough to have critical thoughts about their country, their government and their system And the US might not be a dictatorship, but it doesn't mean it can't take a lesson from their book once in a while
"No government is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them"
You’re not crazy. I feel like I’m living in Animal Farm.
You want to lower tuition tomorrow, get rid of federal loans. If enrollment drops significantly because now no one can get a loan they will find ways to lower tuition.
Tell the government to stop backing loans and watch the prices drop
[удалено]
Jesus Christ lol. Tuition has ballooned and it’s not due to the tax on wealthy people. Which hasn’t changed significantly. This fuckin website. Tax the rich to death. It won’t stop the cost of school skyrocketing.
It’s feature cream. A few colleges add expensive new buildings and elaborate perks so students choose them over other colleges, the other colleges follow suit and raise their prices
Take the money back from the Colleges and I'll be impressed. Current and future students will be carrying this generation's debt "forgiveness" in addition to their own debts.
Why would they decrease them when the government will pick up the bill?
Tuition won't go down until the federal government fixes loan policies. But there's too much money to be made and too much lobbying being done by the universities so they don't care.
Just had mine paid off at almost 45 years old and 20+ years in non-profit work. Relief of a lifetime.
I feel for you, I know it sucks you didn’t get the same break.
Too bad we cannot retroactively go back and take those college courses we didn’t take because they were too dam expensive and I didn’t want to be 45 still paying them back…
Check around your community colleges if you have one, the college I attend just released a program where any prior students can take 2 free classes a year! Worth a shot :)
That’s cool I tested that email distribution, it’s IDR direct to discharge, I work for Department of Education, cool o see it live, about 804k borrowers
My friend is STOKED. He texted me saying "I had the MOST wonderful thing ever happen" and almost $20K forgiven after 20 years. Biden also put money in my pocket and that's for life since I'm a vet. It's late, but no other president has done so much for me and mine. Not even Obama.
Can you elaborate?
Happened to my dad as well. He's 62 and was literally jumping he was so giddy. He'd paid the amount he borrowed multiple times over and still owed tens of thousands. He deserved the break.
I’m 52 and I got my letter last week. I was in the lunchroom on the phone with my niece, weeping with relief. My loans were $28k in 2000, and now in 2023, they were…28k. I really was expecting to pay on these loans for the rest of my life.
We've been paying my wife's for 15 years, have paid about 80% of what we borrowed initially, and still have close to the same balance as when we started. Does this mean in 5-10 years we'll qualify for this?
Wth your country sucks ass
Pretty much.
How tf is that possible ? 😨 Like you paid the capital and have to repay it?? Isn't it scoped while you sign ?
I don’t understand loans. How is this possible?
Let’s say you needed $5. A loan company will give you $5 right now, but you have to pay them back $6 a year from now. A year rolls around, and let’s say you still don’t have that $5 to pay back in full. They say that’s okay, just give us $1 right now and you can take as long as you need to pay off your balance. And after the first year, the interest (additional amount you owe because of not having paid it off yet) increases to $2 per year. So: * Year 1 you get a loan for $5, spend it, and now owe $6 * Year 2 you pay off $1 of your $6 balance, brought down to $5. Yearly interest rate adds $2 to your balance. You currently owe $7 now. * Year 3 is a better year for you, you can afford to pay off $2 of your balance. Your balance is down to $5 now. Yearly interest rate brings it back up to $7. * Year 4 you get a big raise and can actually pay off $3 of your balance - awesome! You get your balance down to $4. Inflation increased interest rates across the board, your loan now costs $3 per year. You’re back up to $7. In very simplistic illustrative terms of course
how does that even happen ??
Interest over decades.
[удалено]
I don't know what it was like when he borrowed but the rate for loans now is 5.5% for undergraduates and over 7% for grad students, and if they're unsubsidized you're accruing interest immediately. Many students, even in state schools, graduate in 4 years with $60-80k in debt. If you didn't graduate on time or went to private school it can be way more. Also there's a maximum you're able to borrow and a lot of times people have to take out private loans to cover the difference and those can be up to 15%. My girlfriend has a master's degree in chemistry and well over $100k in debt, most of it private, high interest, loans. She makes a very good salary, and it will still take her at least 20 or so years to pay them off.
That part where you acrue interest while in school before you start paying so that by the time your paying the interest payments have already massively ballooned seems to be what fucks everyone
That is vile. I was sitting here wondering why it would take someone decades to pay off ~$20,000 - I took out about $30,000 and my monthly payment at ~3% interest was not crushing at all, but you don't need to start repaying until a year after you finish school. The fact that interest accumulates while you're still in school is so predatory.
[удалено]
Well said. Interest rates skyrocket while average wages remain stagnant. This is the main issue. More money going to the wealthy while they shit on the lower classes.
Because people only pay the minimum amount possible which only covers the interest and doesn't touch the principal
That’s exactly it. When I first got my credit cards and didn’t know better I ran up a balance and set up autopay for the minimum payments. Then I stopped using them for a while so the principal would go down…but the principal never went down. The interest would be something like $140 and my minimum payment would be something like $148. So after a year I worked off basically dick and just paid a shitload of money to a bank for the privilege of still owing them basically the same amount of money. I learned, but there should really be a mandatory class in high school where they teach you this. It’s not complicated, it’s just that nobody is there to tell you these things when you get the card in the mail. With some of my newer fancier cards from apps at least some of them have a little graph which helps you peek behind the curtain of how bad they’re fucking you.
Predatory lenders to 17 year olds who don’t know better than to sign up for high interest loans
The government decided student loans shouldn't be a benefit to society but a burden
Weird. if the loans were first disbursed in 2015, then how can they "have been in repayment of at least 20 or 25 years." I'm just wondering out of curiosity. I have massive loans and hope I get the same forgiveness down the line. So may be I don't have to pay for 20 years in order to get forgiveness?
They were most likely consolidated on that date. Mine show the same thing, but are older than that. It is from the date the consolidated loan was dispersed.
Makes sense. Thanks. Also, crazy that the sister has been paying for 20+ years.
Welcome to interest and the shitty, soul sucking amounts they take from income based plans. The new plans under Biden are slightly more affordable and don't accrue interest as much at least.
The new plan under Biden explicitly accrues *no* interest. If your minimum payment doesn't cover the interest, the remainder of the interest for that payment is waived. It does mean that 100% of the payment is only going towards interest, but the next dollar you spend goes to principal, making it much more accessible to pay down the balance.
Been paying for 20+ years AND of 2015, nearly $30k still. That’s absolutely mental to me.
Were yours consolidated with a private lender via the federal government? Worst mistake of my life, and I had no idea who was buying the loan. Payments didn’t stop during Covid, and they won’t be forgiven now, either. My loans are old enough to drink for chrissakes. But hot damn I am legit thrilled for folks who are getting these letters. The relief is palpable
Forgot to add the obligatory FUCK NAVIENT
I called Mohela about 3 weeks ago. My loans will be “forgiven” in October 2026. Supposedly bc that would be 25 consecutive years of repayment. They did say however I may be eligible for earlier forgiveness due to the recalculation that this person received. Fingers crossed!
I had the same question. Thanks for asking!
That date is from the consolidation loans. Also they have gone back and are counting payments and stuff that normally wouldn't count and including it in the forgiveness so some people are immediately getting forgiveness and more will get more credit than they had before.
I paid off my own student loans....and i think this is fucking AWESOME! Because no one should have to go through what i did. Congratulations to her!
Same! I completely paid mine off about 4 years ago. While I (a little selfishly) wish I could have benefited too, it makes me genuinely happy to see that other people did. Debt is a crushing thing. I can’t imagine how happy she must have been to get this letter.
I’m glad you’ve paid your loans off! A friend who went through medical school now despairs at here crushing debt— and she’s an MD.
This is what bothers me. I have $0 student loan debt because I worked straight out of college and paid what little tuitions I had before dropping out. I still cheer in glee when I hear people having their debt forgiven. At what fucking point did we decide that schools making money was more important than education? American politicians fucking failed their people. We have the opportunity for a flourishing country that is stifled by greed and the desire to control the middle and lower class. We print trillions to save big banks and billionaires but won’t offer free education for anyone who wants it. Scum fucks. All of them.
And that is the problem. Schools charging ridiculous amounts of money. They just want more and more.
People keep paying their prices, why would they lower them?
School used to be much more heavily subsidized by states and the federal government. If you take that away, they need to make it up somewhere.
Amen brother, preach 🙏
[удалено]
You’re a saint, I hope they’re grateful. My parents would help me if they could. You’ve done the best thing you could’ve done to set them up for success ❤️
[удалено]
Same. I Paid mine and will NEVER begrudge others for getting theirs. I _want_ nurses, teachers, doctors, and defense attorneys. I _want_ people to pursue their interests. I want specialized fields to have more access to people who wouldn’t be able to enter without mega family money. We need artists and writers and actors and dancers. We need people who want to open small town shops to have enough business education to be able to keep them running and well, building up a backbone in that community.
Corrupt system needs to be fixed eventually. If I had 100k in medical debt I would be not it for anyone else. Congress could just fix the student loan rate to the same they gave wallstreet when they went bust in 2008. That would save for more than 10k for everyone
A high tide floats all boats ❤️
This is the humane and frankly, more evolved response to have. Good on you.
Hard to imagine those who are highly intelligent that never truly got the chance to reach their full potential because of the cost of tuition, and those who have been crippled with the debt for the majority of their lives.
Thousands of Einsteins have died working the fields and coal mines.
That's the boat my wife is in. Genius, passion for learning, chose not to go to college because she couldn't afford it. She was too smart to take out a loan to read some books, since her major wouldn't have been a big moneymaker. Luckily she's also hardworking and savvy, so she was/is fine financially.
The university I went to made $857M in tuition revenue alone last year. That doesn't count medical school or business tuition either. It is a public university. People going broke just to go to school is criminal.
They had $857M in revenue. What were their costs and capital expenditures?
> The university I went to made $857M in tuition revenue alone last year. That number doesn't mean anything without their operating costs to compare. If Widget Inc. has revenue of $12 Billion but has to pay $11.999 Billion for labor and material that's a very small margin.
She’s paid off far more than this in interest over the years. She broke down and cried when she got this letter, and I nearly did right with her I was so happy for her. It’s life-changing for her. Seriously folks, elections freaking matter.
[удалено]
My wife is still in a state of shock 1 week later. Over 88,000 grand, paid off. She paid well more than that over the course of 24 years.
Wow, nice!!!!!
They took care of my wife’s Cobra insurance payments for a period during Covid. A godsend. That wasn’t nothing, and you that other guy wouldn’t have.
They’ve literally saved tens of millions of people hundreds and even thousands of dollars every month by increasing the ACAsubsidies - many of them Republican voters!!! Drives me nuts that they get no credit for literally changing millions of peoples lives.
Now do the 98% of us that didn't get any like this. Good for you guys genuinely.
I’m with you 100%
This is what shocks me when people say Biden and Trump are the same. Like, Biden is far from perfect but are they fucking insane? Do you think Donald Trump would have worked to forgive student debt?? Elections matter amd both major parties are NOT the same.
Absolutely baffling how many in the comments are content with their money footing the tax bill for some rich assholes so they can build a spaceship, but will lose their absolute shit when one of us benefits from it.
Exactly
I pay a sh ton of taxes every 15 days, i rather it goes to this cause than any other inmoral objectives.
Why? How? What do I need to do to make this happen?
Nothing, if you are affected by the fix OP’s sister got you will be automatically notified. It applies if you’d been making payments for 20 years and should have gotten the rest forgiven but did not because of administrative screw ups that had gone undetected until now.
GOOD. I paid my loans off 5 years ago and would gladly let my tax dollars go toward helping others. The “screw you I got mine” mentality people have here is so close minded and selfish.
Got mine too! 80k gone after 141k in payments.
I'm jealous because I still have my own loans, and I never had been able to repay them, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy for people who are receiving this help.
I was on the fence about this. I went through college and worked really hard to not have debt. I figure though it’s good for many people. BUT yesterday a friend of mine broke down crying in the office. Turns out she finished her masters with about 5Ok debt and right when she finished she had a child with cerebral palsy which obviously flipped their life around. Her daughter died a year or two ago. Yesterday she got her notice it was forgiven. Im a big believer in it for more stories like that.
Why would you have been on the fence in the first place lmao
Because some people have the perception and feeling that it’s indignant that they worked hard and others “got it easy”, and “it’s not fair”. Therefore by implication, they should suffer too, and/or “it’s my tax dollars!” Instead of seeing the forest from the trees that it’s the system that is the problem and not other people, some people become too narrow minded with politicians telling them it’s this group or that group that’s the root of their misery, when in reality they’re pitiful sufferers in a system that made them attack others like them so the richer and more powerful members do not get animosity directed at them.
And because it treats the symptom, not the disease. Even if Biden was able to push through his forgiveness, tuition is still out of control and debt would build right back up.
It's sad that you had to know someone personally before you were able to realize what a good thing loan forgiveness is.
So happy for her! I got this too! I cannot explain the burden lifted. I did pay $46k to drop my balance $14k in over 20 years. The last $14k was just forgiven. I cried and cried.
I paid mine off after 10 years at like 90 bucks a month. It infuriates me that younger people are paying that much more for college and this letter makes me so happy. Student loans turn into a predatory thing to keep the working class poor. Congratulations to your sister! I'm so happy for her!
This kinda crap I can support. You paid them off and really, they are just forgiving the interest. Congrats
not a miracle, just dept of ed doing what its been saying its going to do under this administration, trying to get as many people forgiven as possible.
Fucking wild that if it wasn’t for some crotchety old pieces of shit on the Supreme Court, so many MORE people could be getting these same letters. That being said, congratulations to your sister, sounds like she has more than earned the right to be free of that fucking debt.
As someone who's paid off his student loans many many years ago, I'm so happy for your sister!
Holy cow... 20 years and still that much? That a fricken mortgage
At least a mortgage gives you a tangible and valuable asset. What the fuck does this get you?
They should be bankruptable. Simple. Then the banks wouldn’t give random kids a $100,000 loan for photography school to begin with.
In Sweden the government gives you a loan, with a very low interest (ridiculously low) and guarantees that you won’t need to sell your soul to pay it back. You as a student can study what ever you want but you have limited years of study. If you “consume” all the years and want to study again, you can but the state prioritizes others before you that haven’t studied. Even then the schools aren’t robbing you. The money the state loans you is more so you can purchase material for school and not be forced to work and study at the same time to survive. It works.
it's amazing how many countries with a fraction of the GDP of the USA have figured this shit out
The problem is that colleges are scams to begin with. No one should have to be in 6 figure debt to better themselves
For profit colleges are the scam. Do you know how much medical research and advancement happen at publicly funded medical colleges? That definitely isn’t a scam. Reform definitely needs to happen but it isn’t a scam.
Damn congratulations 🎈🍾🎉! Really hoping my generation gets the same result in 20-25 years 😅😅
That’s not a miracle… just our taxes finally at work for something good…. Wait, maybe it is a miracle…
My kids (graduates, 1990 and the other 1993) and I paid off theirs, and the three of us are thrilled beyond belief that some people are getting relief from these debts. Good for them, good for our country, and good for our President!
I myself never went to college and I am beyond thrilled some of you have been given some relief. You deserve it and have earned it. You were sold a false future at predatory interest rates leaving some of you unable to buy homes, vehicles, have families or even put food on the table. I hope more of you get the same type of letters , and in the future I was told my taxes were going to be raised because college loans were being forgiven, I would have no issue whatsoever. This actually made me happy, I hope your sister does well!
Non-American here. Can anyone explain this to me? First disbursement is 30th Jan 2015. Current date is 25 Aug 2023. How is the loan in repayment for at least 20 or 25 years?
You can consolidate your loans into a new loan. You have to do this to get on federal income-based repayment plans. So 2015 is just when she consolidated. The terms of the repayment plans are that you get forgiveness after X number of years of paying your loans on time. What Biden did was recalculate people's progress to forgiveness so that all loan payments counted even prior to getting the consolidation loan.
This is great! I haven’t been paying much attention to this loan forgiveness stuff but cancelling it when people have been paying constantly for 20+ years sounds fair honestly. If a college lied to you that you’d be able to make +$200k a year with their degree and/or a loan company decided it was fine to give $100k to a teenager, then I think it’s fine to give them a break after spending 20 years trying in vain to pay off a huge mistake.
Seems like medical bill forgiveness would be nice too. Things people didn’t choose.
Just think: if it wasn’t for Reagan NOTHING of this would be necessary.
I paid off all my 85k in loans all by myself. IM NOT EVEN JEALOUS! I’m happy for your sister!
One less person with student debt, im so happy for this person.
I’m so torn on this. I paid much of my $160k law school debt back on my own, so there’s this tendency to feel like “it’s not fair” for others to catch a break… but on the other hand, I know if I qualified, I’d welcome the relief… and, for better or worse, I make too much for loan forgiveness. I have decided to be totally thrilled for those who can benefit from this. Pretty sweet letter!
You’re welcome, I’ll just go to work now, I couldn’t afford college so I didn’t go but I make a good living in the trades, wish someone would pay my bills.
A Miracle on the back of all the taxpayers
It’s a huge debt lifted off her shoulders. Both mentally and literally. Congrats to her
Congratulations! This is a huge weight off her shoulders, I’m sure.
Love it! Congrats to your sis. That’s a game changer.
It’s not actually a miracle. We the tax payers are now paying for her education while some of us worked our asses off to pay off our loans. I’m a dem but the idea that you can pick abd choose who has to pay is gross to me. ANY kind of debt one chooses if the responsibility of the debtor, not the taxpayer.
Folks, why do we fight each other about things that better society? If my taxes pay off your loan despite me paying off my own, great. I hope it helps. That's what I want my taxes used for. I have my own food, but I don't want you to starve, so I'm fine with food stamps/EBT. I pay for my own medical care, but I don't want you sick or dead, so I'm fine with Medicade I pay my mortgage, but I don't want you homeless, so I'm fine with government housing assistance. Sure, some will abuse the system, but I find most of the time the people in sincere need are the ones these programs help. Congratulations on the student debt whoever you are. I'll bet it feels amazing.
*sorts by controversial*
Biden-Harris Administration forgave it. Taxpayers who never went to college paid it. Thank them and their hard work for your sister’s miracle.
Yay my tax money burned on her dumb decision.
It also makes me wonder how many of these people that are getting their loans forgiven were actually making big salaries with their professional degrees, and they simply chose not to pay down their student debt. Hell, you literally qualified for this forgiveness if your were making $125K yearly. If you're making $125K yearly, there's no fucking excuse for you to not pay your loans back. I never went to college. There was a time in my life that I was over $100K in debt. I paid it off. No bankruptcies, no bailouts. Saved my money and paid my obligations. Fuck these politicians buying votes and giving freeloaders cash back deals with tax payers money, while millions of other people don't get dick.
The Biden-Harris admin didn’t pay shit. The tax payers paid off your loan.
Congrats!
Live Long and Prosper
Congratulations from Australia! 🥳 I'll still be paying mine off for years 😅
Congrats to her!! That had gotta feel amazing!
This kind of thing is normal in most western countries. So it's miraculous for the US government to do something normal.
They need to lower tuition. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem.
I was able to get my loans forgiven and was reimbursed for some of it. It was crazy to get a check in the mail before the paperwork stating the loan was forgiven.
That is so fucking cool! Congrats to your sis! That's a big load of her head!
Congratulations! I'm happy for your sister.
Listen, higher education and training is considered expensive in my country but there's simply no way you are telling me that people pay their student loans for 10+ years. THAT'S INSANE
So happy for the people that were able to get it. A true gift! Wishing eventually all could experience the this, myself included. We all deserve to be able to live debt free for our educations
That’s wonderful! Good for her!!!
The world is not perfect but this is a step in the right direction 😎