Is there statistics on loan payback per school/degree?

Day time TV is filled with ads for "schools"

- Cooking
- Video Game programming (nope, not kidding)
- "medical assistant"

.. the list goes on..

The government subsidized student loans, making them available to anyone with a pulse. Artificial demand for a college education was created as a result of the ready availability of money that could be used for that purpose. Tuition increased at a rate far in excess of inflation as all that money found a home. Turns out we don't need as many highly educated administrative assistants as we once thought. Unemployed graduates default in large numbers. Caring people log on to fatwallet.com to let us know we have created a permanent underclass. People call for government to forgive the student loans.

The circle of life in the people's republic of america.

nycll said:greling said:When I borrowed Direct Loans from the federal government, I was given entrance and exit counseling and clearly read my terms and it was understood just how much I owed, at what interest rate, and that I would have to pay them back. When I approached Sallie Mae for a private loan, they wouldn't even tell me the interest rate. They just wanted me to sign and bragged about how much "Cash Back" I'd get. Thank goodness I decided to pass. I later found out they wanted me to pay 16.9%. And with a 710 FICO!Something doesn't add up. Private student loans generally price in between secured consumer borrowing (such as car loans) and credit card. Ball park figure is Libor + 5%-6%. Even when Libor was 7%, that would only make the rate 12-13%.l It might be some sleezy sales people trying to take advantage of you, or you didn't do comparison shopping.

Hmmm.... I got quoted waaay before LIBOR was even being offered an option for student loans. I was offered Prime + 8.9% with a FICO of 710, at a time when credit was so easy to obtain that people were doing AOR every week on FW and piggybacking their kids like crazy. Thank God I turned them down and accepted direct loans at a variable rate of 8.75. I now have them locked in at 6%.

Oh, and some of my private student loan debt (most definitely not from Sallie Mae!) was transferred to credit cards at low fixed rates. I did the responsible thing. However, I know some students for whom such is the only option available for them to get a fair deal. And such balance transfers are becoming more and more common each day.

But not all students can even do that. Some have stilld pre-payment penalties.

That is a different scandal. All FFELP lenders competed to get on the financial aid officers' preferred card. It is as much the fault of the colleges as the lenders. At the end because of the competition students still got better loan terms in FFELP loans than ED direct loans.

B.S. You must work for Sallie Mae to say this. Every "competitor" at my school was either a subsidy owned by or was Sallie Mae. Nelnet, Nellie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America... All of these companies outsources their loan programs to Sallie Mae. You had a choice between like seven different lenders who all serviced through Sallie Mae. You didn't hear about direct loans unless you pressed for it and asked for them. Financial aid officers were being eagerly pressed to offer you expensive private loans instead.

And before Congress got pressured and passed a law, some lenders had originally made it impossible for you to even consolidate your loans outside of them. So much for "competition"!

No, it is the best lending program in the US history...

Hmmm.... "Best lending program in history", eh?

If we truly want to stimulate the economy, we can start by reforming the student loan industry.

Student loans are the only form of consumer debt lacking standard consumer protections. In 1997, student loan companies such as Sallie Mae successfully lobbied Congress to amend the Higher Education Act and remove consumer protections, making defaulted student loans among the most lucrative and easy debts to collect.

The loan companies actually have a vested interest in debtors defaulting on their loans and have great leeway to collect on those loans.

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article as saying that "student loan debt collectors have power that would make a mobster envious."

The student loan companies can garnish or seize Social Security and disability payments, and even raid personal bank accounts without a court order. A number of people have actually been driven to suicide by their collection tactics.

The only people benefiting from this situation are the CEOs and corporate officers of companies like Sallie Mae. The outrageous profits they make would be better off circulating in local economies.

You're better off paying for school with a credit card or even a payday loan! At least you'd know your lending terms upfront and be offered borrower protections.

Lesson learned: Reform is badly needed.

My generation (Y) is getting screwed over in more ways than one. First you guys start running up the national debt to the moon. Then you guys declare multiple wars (that we and not you have to fight) and put us into an endless spiral of deficit spending. Then you wreck the Social Security system to the point that there's going to be nothing left by the time we see it. Then you destroy the environment, the water and the air we breathe. Then you inflate the hell out of the real estate market to where even a small rural home becomes unaffordable in most places. Then you prey on us with credit cards before we can set foot on campus. Now you ruin college financing and force us to carry on a more burdensome debt than you've ever known in your lifetime, all the while wrecking the economy into an oblivion and outsourcing every entry-level job there is.

You say to us, "You're smart. You guys have degrees. You'll figure something out. You'll invent something to fix it all... Something betta than that computer!"

Just you wait... I want you to explain it all years later to that 40-something art history grad with no chance of retiring in her lifetime, as she tucks you into bed at that luxurious retirement resort. I want you to tell her why everything happened to her the way it did, and do your best at convincing her how THANKFUL she should be and why she shouldn't put that pillow over your face....

Speaking of condoms and debt, girls like this model student from the attached video is part of the reason I went to school. She could convince me to spend foolishly.

greling said:My generation (Y) is getting screwed over in more ways than one. First you guys start running up the national debt to the moon. Then you guys declare multiple wars (that we and not you have to fight) and put us into an endless spiral of deficit spending. Then you wreck the Social Security system to the point that there's going to be nothing left by the time we see it. Then you destroy the environment, the water and the air we breathe. Then you inflate the hell out of the real estate market to where even a small rural home becomes unaffordable in most places. Then you prey on us with credit cards before we can set foot on campus. Now you ruin college financing and force us to carry on a more burdensome debt than you've ever known in your lifetime, all the while wrecking the economy into an oblivion and outsourcing every entry-level job there is.

You say to us, "You're smart. You guys have degrees. You'll figure something out. You'll invent something to fix it all... Something betta than that computer!"

Just you wait... I want you to explain it all years later to that 40-something art history grad with no chance of retiring in her lifetime, as she tucks you into bed at that luxurious retirement resort. I want you to tell her why everything happened to her the way it did, and do your best at convincing her how THANKFUL she should be and why she shouldn't put that pillow over your face....

My Gen Y little brother had a job in engineering within 3 months of getting his degree, lives frugally, in fact lives with Dad, but...bro pays most of the bills for for disabled Dad. Dad is one of "you guys" who, despite frugality, barely managed to afford to house, feed, and clothe us. Dad could not afford to pay for our college. Less than a year later little bro's got enough saved to pay off about half of his 22K (Direct) Student Loans.

Whiners blame other people for their problems (Generation Yner?), winners make lemonade.

ZenNUTS said:Is there statistics on loan payback per school/degree?DOE keeps track of defaults 1 year after graduation/termination of student status by school.

Day time TV is filled with ads for "schools"

- Cooking
- Video Game programming (nope, not kidding)
- "medical assistant"

.. the list goes on..I am sure the list goes on but DOE guarantee only extends to "title IV" educational institutions. One of the eligibility requirement is to have a cohort defautls rate not out of line.

dblevitan said:
I agree on the first two, but condoms might be one of the most financially responsible decisions made. Much cheaper to spend $10 on condoms than thousands in child support, as we've heard in the recent thread
This brings me back to my point about students not being thrifty. Many colleges have student health clinics or relationships with Planned Parenthood which provide condoms for free. These programs also sometimes provide heavily discounted hormonal BC. Students can save $10-20 per month just by using the resources their tuition provides.

What a man with big student loan checks might spend in hopes of using those free condoms is another story entirely.

greling said:I was offered Prime + 8.9% with a FICO of 710, at a time when credit was so easy to obtain that people were doing AOR every week on FW and piggybacking their kids like crazy. So you did know better. And if you really looked you would have found Prime+3% type of private loans from the like of Citi and BofA. The P+8.9% is not representative.

B.S. You must work for Sallie Mae to say this. Every "competitor" at my school was either a subsidy owned by or was Sallie Mae. Nelnet, Nellie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America... All of these companies outsources their loan programs to Sallie Mae. You had a choice between like seven different lenders who all serviced through Sallie Mae. You didn't hear about direct loans unless you pressed for it and asked for them. Financial aid officers were being eagerly pressed to offer you expensive private loans instead.

And before Congress got pressured and passed a law, some lenders had originally made it impossible for you to even consolidate your loans outside of them. So much for "competition"!Your school's financial aid office is rotten.

I don't work for sallie mae or any lenders. But I can tell you sallie mae doesn't service nelnet, Wells, bof A's FFELP student loans. More importantly, the privately offered FFELP loan terms (Stafford) are generally better than ED direct loans. The former usually has less fees and features of ACH rate reductions, etc.

Hmmm.... "Best lending program in history", eh?

If we truly want to stimulate the economy, we can start by reforming the student loan industry.

Student loans are the only form of consumer debt lacking standard consumer protections. In 1997, student loan companies such as Sallie Mae successfully lobbied Congress to amend the Higher Education Act and remove consumer protections, making defaulted student loans among the most lucrative and easy debts to collect.

The loan companies actually have a vested interest in debtors defaulting on their loans and have great leeway to collect on those loans.

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article as saying that "student loan debt collectors have power that would make a mobster envious."

The student loan companies can garnish or seize Social Security and disability payments, and even raid personal bank accounts without a court order. A number of people have actually been driven to suicide by their collection tactics.

The only people benefiting from this situation are the CEOs and corporate officers of companies like Sallie Mae. The outrageous profits they make would be better off circulating in local economies.

You're better off paying for school with a credit card or even a payday loan! At least you'd know your lending terms upfront and be offered borrower protections.

Lesson learned: Reform is badly needed.I assure you the vested interest of the student loan lenders is not to have higher defautls. Here is one of the smaller lender going out of business.

Sallie Mae is hurting. It couldn't sell itself to a group of PEs. If you want to start a grassroot movement, you should start by pushing transparency at your school's financial aid office(s). Since most schools are non-for-profit organizations, I don't know why there are no full and big font disclosure of the exact terms of the relationship between the school and lenders.

staci86 said:What a man with big student loan checks might spend in hopes of using those free condoms is another story entirely. Whether free or not, the condom is the best medical breakthough in human history. It must have saved more lives and money than penicillin.