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BumRushDaShow

(144,524 posts)
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 01:36 PM Sunday

Americans struggling with student debt expect 'much worse' under Trump

Source: The Guardian

Sun 29 Dec 2024 09.00 EST


Joe Biden has pushed during his presidency to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans. Now Donald Trump, who has branded such efforts “vile”, is preparing to succeed him – leaving borrowers at risk of losing relief they received, or had been waiting for.

Mary Ann Rockwell, 72, is a librarian in upstate New York. She has grappled with her student loans for years, as interest ballooned while she often struggled to afford to make payments.

“I’m entitled to be forgiven,” she said, having completed thepaperwork for loan forgiveness through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. But she is still in “limbo”, waiting for it to happen.

“It’s taking so long to happen that I’m afraid, when Trump gets in, everything will change on day one,” said Rockwell, a member of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. “I’m very nervous about it. I feel like I can’t retire. I can’t even think about it to function. I’ll be facing a house payment of student loans.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/dec/29/student-debt-relief-trump



Key note that needs to be emphasized here over and over and not buried in the article -

Biden’s bid to make higher education “a ticket to the middle class” by forgiving loans worth hundreds of billions of dollars has faced significant resistance. Federal courts blocked his administration’s attempts to administer student loan forgiveness to millions, incited by Republican-led lawsuits to block the plans.


EVERY "attempt" got a GOP loon lawsuit.
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Ocelot II

(121,600 posts)
1. Somebody explain to me why forgiving some student loans on the ground of hardship
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 01:59 PM
Sunday

is such anathema to the GOP. I get the notion that nobody should expect the government to pick up the entire tab for their expensive education, but that's not what this is. This is people who have been paying back these loans for years, even decades, and they're farther behind than they were to start out with because of the interest. They are being impoverished because of these loans; how does making people poorer benefit society at all? Student loans can be dischargeable in bankruptcy under some circumstances but that discharge requires an adversary proceeding and it's not a sure thing at all. But why should people have to file bankruptcy and lose almost everything else before even getting a chance to get out from under an onerous situation. "You should have thought of this possibility before you took out the loan in the first place," they say. But what if the alternative was being unable to get that education at all, so you have to choose between giving up on going to college vs. gambling on repaying the loan. Or, they say, "I repaid my student loan; it's not fair that you don't have to repay yours." That's a false comparison. I repaid my student loan, but I took it out almost 40 years ago when higher education was a lot cheaper, and I don't resent the fact that other people might get a benefit I didn't get. It's a crap situation; education has become far too expensive and people have become too damn mean.

IzzaNuDay

(707 posts)
2. The US is an anathema
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 02:18 PM
Sunday

Health care and education guaranteed only for the privileged. Based on what I read, these are the two areas that can bankrupt US families.

Callie1979

(307 posts)
3. There needs to be a law preventing student loans from being predatory.
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 02:37 PM
Sunday

The loan should be set up just like a mortgage; make your payments & after X years you're done.
And people need to quit going into 6 figure debt for a degree too. Go to cheaper colleges or go to a technical college. Or join the military & get some free college from them

Ocelot II

(121,600 posts)
4. Maybe colleges and universities could stop spending so much money
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 02:45 PM
Sunday

on sports. Football coaches are often by far the highest-paid members of a university's faculty. That's money that could go for scholarships or to pay real teachers. In the meantime, untenured adjunct faculty, hired as independent contractors or part-time employees with no benefits and at effectively the minimum wage, do a lot of the actual teaching.

Callie1979

(307 posts)
5. Depending on the school, some bring in millions more than they cost.
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 03:15 PM
Sunday

Look at TV revenue alone. Each school in the SEC got 50 million from TV revenue this yr. Thats huge for weaker schools
UGA sports brought in over 200 million; FAR more than their expenses.
Schools could also tap their enormous endowments. Harvard's is 50 BILLION. With a simple 5% return they could provide EVERY student 100k per year. But they dont.

C0RI0LANUS

(1,994 posts)
6. Without a loan, how is this young man able to afford NYU which costs between $60,000 to $80,000 per year?
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 07:53 PM
Sunday

NickB79

(19,677 posts)
8. And millions of them abstained from voting, or voted MAGA
Sun Dec 29, 2024, 09:04 PM
Sunday

More than enough to have denied Trump and the GOP the White House and House.

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