America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
My Italian-American relatives seem to get funneled into occupations that seem comically stereotypical (the men do road construction, either unionized or self-employed, run frickin’ pizza restaurants, the women are either schoolteachers or beauticians)
I suspect they’d run into all sorts of mysterious barriers if they tried to get work as college professors or newspaper reporters or something that attracts other ethnic groups, whereas members of other ethnic groups would be scratching their heads about how the Italians make it where they do.
* Starting in 2013 loans carried a repayment amount that exceeded the amount borrowed (interest was catching up to the borrower)
* 2015 saw partial payment plans (presumably exacerbating the problem)
* Around 2019 it became that borrowers were struggling just to pay on the interest
* 2020 saw a temporary halt on paybacks, so interest was not being accumulated
* The article argues wage stagnation and expansion of recipients as the primary reasons
* Blacks and latinos seem to have benefitted the most from the repayment pause
There are no clear recommendations except for one:
> One way of ensuring and backstopping those policy goals could be the creation of a new federal university system
How would this change things at all?
Due to a long period of under- or un- employment, my student loans ballooned from the initial balance of $25K in the late 1980s to $100K today. Only in the past ten years could I finally afford their ridiculously high "income-sensitive" payment, and I will likely just be paying the interest until I die.
That's why we need relief- abuse of the trust of millions of young people- the vast majority of whom likely had never financed a thing before that point- at the hands of a predatory loan system endorsed by higher ed and the feds.