The Illegitimacy of Student Debt 

Prominent among the concerns of occupiers worldwide is the extent to which educational debt has truncated their possibilities and, in effect, tied them to a certain way of living in a way that is structurally not unlike what faced an 11th Century European serf.... the comparison of contemporary student loan debtor to medieval serf is more than mere hyperbole....

If the debt is to the federal government, at least it takes several months of missed payments to be considered in default. If, however, it is a private loan, one single payment can be sufficient to throw the borrower in default. What happens in default? There are still limits to the amount of money that can be extracted at a given time, but it can and will be taken eventually, along with any federal benefits, tax refunds and wages that can be garnished. In some cases, professional licenses such as those in law, medicine and teaching can even be revoked....

Hence the singular importance, for the system of neo-peonage, of the non-dischargeability of this non-collateralized debt: not one of your possessions—car, house, computer, etc.—but your very educated self is the “property” that is owed back.... I would suggest that existential debts in areas such as education and medicine provide a coherent focus for protest.
............... David J. Blacker

Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student  Debts

It seems that Congress has removed nearly every consumer protection from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting rates as high as 18-20%. At 20%, debt doubles in just 3-1/2 years; and in 7 years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs...... a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is held by senior citizens, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable...

According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2% is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.....
                                                                 ............... Ellen Brown

The Real Cost of a College Education

Last week, the total amount of debt emanating from student loans in the U.S. reached $1 trillion. With the Great Recession still present in the daily lives of the middle class, salaried jobs for college graduates are tough to come by. Many have had to settle for low wage positions stocking shelves in retail stores or serving coffee at the local Starbucks. According to the Associate Press, three out of five new graduates are unemployed. The dissatisfaction these Bachelor’s Degree holders have with the lack of jobs manifested into last fall’s Occupy movement....

This is to be expected however since many economic departments are staffed with neo-Marxists; often describing themselves as Keynesians.... As college is incrementally being pushed to be the next mandatory step after high school, the real goal is to keep young minds infatuated with the state. As Freeman editor Sheldon Richman points out, the purpose of public education is not to aid in the development of a learned populace but to produce unthinking workers. Based off the educational system of 19th century Prussia, America’s public schools were originally designed to condition children toward a sense of “obedience, subordination and collective life.”

 

Creating an orderly citizenry incapable of critical thinking makes sense for the ruling class. Control and order are the bread and butter of the state. Creative intelligence poses a challenge to central planners. It makes it harder to tug at the marionette strings.

                                     ................ James E Miller

The higher education bubble 

caglecartoons.com

students are really the perfect choice of victim for the educational financing machine: they are typically naive about money, and a combination of incredibly hopeful and incredibly thoughtless about their futures – if they think about the future at all, they project themselves to be as successful as some chosen role model, against all odds.... More generally, the existence and price of college itself is a perfect trap for students. It’s been a growing assumption in the past few decades that one needs a college education to get a good job, and certainly in a poor job market like the one right now that is certainly true. And yet, the student debt load is increasing faster than the opportunities higher education provides.....

                                           The Student Debt Crisis



I hope it’s not too hard now to understand why student debt has just surpassed $1,000,000,000,000 in this country, ahead of credit cards. On the banker side of the room, these student debts are being bundled up and securitized and sold to investors just like old mortgage-backed securities (which, as you recall, couldn’t fail because the housing market always goes up) who are being told there’s very little risk since students can’t discharge student debt through bankruptcy. There’s a strong analogy with the previous housing bubble and the current education bubble: even ignoring the individual’s goal of becoming an educated citizen and qualified worker, there’s the demand side from the banking system itself which feeds on the fees of securitized products that seem riskless....  Is it a certification process that people should pay for? Or is it a part of what we offer our citizens as their right?

                                                              .................................. mathbabe

 3 Ways to Fix the Student Loan Debt Crisis 

U.S. student loan debt is surging above one trillion dollars, surpassing credit card and auto loan debt. The average student loan debt is approximately $25,000, which is up 25 percent in the last ten years... The majority (80 percent) of student loans are government-guaranteed, with 30 percent of these government-backed loans past due 30 days or more. That means the taxpayers are on the hook should the loans default.... The real problem we’re facing is not the amount of student loan debt. Ultimately, the real problem is that the U.S. has an under-employment crisis, meaning we have people who are trained for jobs that are going away or are trained to do things that there aren’t jobs for because they need retraining or more education. So this isn’t just about fixing today’s student loan debt problem today. It’s about fixing tomorrow’s underemployment problem today and tomorrow....
                                ................. Business strategist, Daniel Burrus

Since the housing bubble burst spectacularly in late 2007, many analysts have been actively seeking out the next likely explosion. Rest assured, it will be related to debt in some way. US Treasuries, credit cards, and potentially another disaster on Wall Street thanks to over-leveraging have all been mentioned as potential leading candidates. However, there is another bubble out there and it too is debt related. This one, in my opinion, has far greater consequences because it involves a group that is the least financially able to deal with the ramifications. I’m talking about student loans and the massive bubble that has been expanding for at least the past decade...
                                                                      ............. Andrew W. Sutton

My Two Cents - " The Next Bubble"

A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Chelsea Grove, working 3 jobs, owes $70,000,

“I will be paying this forever”.

ADA, Ohio — Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter....

...State schools are bloated, antiquated and don’t do a good enough job graduating students or training them for the work force. Some complain about the salaries of football coaches and college presidents, like Mr. Gee, who has a     compensation package of $2 million a year as president of Ohio State...

                              .......... Andrew Martin & Andrew W. Lehren