Well, ER, the people I’m referring to that aren’t paying on their student loans or aren’t paying on them regularly are students who graduated in the last few years … some of my kid’s college classmates and kids of neighbors and a friend. Also, the “professionals” I referred to back in the early nineties were newly-minted attorneys who chose to work in govm’t service, which at that time started them at just short of $39K annually! As I recall, there were several of them over 40 with 12 or more years experience and who had gotten promoted one or more times but were STILL complaining of the strong-arm tactics that were used against them when their student loans were in default. They didn’t get paid for “billable hours” or “client referrals to the firm” as private attorneys did. They just got paid a set salary for however long it took to do the job. Being a worker (working just as hard, I thought) who was making half or less as much as they did, I just had a hard time understanding whey they couldn’t retire their student loan(s) and why they still had them 15 or more years later with a spouse and children when they came to us single, fresh from their bar exam results.
I suppose there are people who DO pay them off in a timely manner but I don’t know any. Everyone I ever knew who has them have taken one or more deferrals and is paying only the minimum monthly payments on them.
In addition, I’ve looked at various online blogs and message boards where student-loan debtors post where 90% of the posters are crying wolf, stating they were “scammed” by their school and so they shouldn’t have to pay or they should be “excused” from paying their loans back. Some of them who already graduated are saying they are a “special case” because they can’t work in their field now because they or their parent / grandparent / spouse / kid is now ill and they have to take care of them. Therefore, their student loans should be forgiven. (Does this mean their degree should be revoked also? How can they officially lose the knowledge they gained from their degree program?) A majority of the posters on these boards are over 45 and a majority of them went to for-profit schools and colleges on student loans, mostly on the internet (meaning they never set foot in a classroom). Often, the colleges they “attended” were hundreds or thousand(s) of miles away from their homes. I completely agree with ER that it is foolish to take out a student loan to undergo an occupational or degree program at the age of 45 or older. Unless the older student already has ironclad connections to get a job in a field or their employer is paying for them to get a particular degree to promote them into a particular position, these older students have no guarantee that they will ever be hired in their degree field or in any job at all if they are currently unemployed.
Also, I think some (not all) of the 12-month trade schools (for both young and older students) are a scam, such as programs to learn dental hygienist, computer networking, medical billing, etc. Some of these schools prey on HS grads from low-income families and load them up on loans during enrollment where they make big promises of eventual job placement. These schools often get the (unsophisticated) parents to cosign on their kid’s student loans so they will have 2-3 people on the hook to pay it back. By the time the student finishes the program, they have had little “real” on-the-job training and receive no placement assistance from the school except a suggestion to go to the EDD (unemployment office) to search open positions or are handed a list of medical offices to call to see if they have any openings. Some of these schools in SD have taken students’ student loan money and shut their doors either before the first class meeting or midway through the program.
Case in point: the well-known Kelsey Jenney College in dtn SD, who filed for BK in 2002 and left several classes of business students stranded three months before “graduation.”
If it weren’t for student loans literally falling from trees, these “internet diploma mills” and local “trade schools” with a less-than-stellar local reputation would be out of business.
