In Germany, riding the subway without buying a ticket is called schwarzfahren—quite literally “riding in the dark.” While it saves you money on the ticket, you’re always riding the train with a lingering fear that a fare inspector is going to discover you and slap you with a massive fine. Defaulting on your student loans is pretty much the millennial American version of schwarzfahren. You can’t ignore your student loans into going away (even declaring bankruptcy won’t get rid of them).
WASHINGTON — Virginians struggling with student loan debt have a new place to turn for help.
Scott Kemp is the state’s first student loan advocate.
He works within the Office of the Qualified Education Loan Ombudsman, which was established by The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) at the direction of a law passed last year in the General Assembly.
Mounting student loan debt is a serious challenge for many Americans – and individuals in some areas of the country are having a harder time repaying that debt Opens a New Window. .
Outstanding student loan debt surpassed $1.5 trillion in 2018 – second only to mortgage debt – doubling over the past decade.
It's no secret that student loans are a hot topic in the United States nowadays. They are mentioned in the news, both in a positive and negative light, almost every day.
With all of this news circulating around the internet, television, and in print - it is natural to become curious about the numbers behind student loan debt.
Some student loan borrowers will get another chance to qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Congress has set aside $350 million to help fix what lawmakers have called a "glitch" in the enrollment process.
Teachers, social workers, public defenders and others who work for the government or non-profits can qualify for student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of payments. But many who thought they were on track for forgiveness have since found out they were in a repayment plan that makes them ineligible for debt relief.
In October, I wrote a column about Jed Shafer, a teacher in Oregon who found himself on the wrong end of the student loan repayment bureaucracy.
Mr. Shafer thought he was following the rules to qualify for the public service loan forgiveness program, and spent years communicating carefully with the loan servicers who collected his payments on behalf of the federal government. But it turns out he hadn’t been doing it correctly after all.
ANN ARBOR, MI - The University of Michigan is paying the full tuition of around 1,700 in-state students this semester who qualified as the first recipients of the Go Blue Guarantee initiative the university approved last summer.
I am sure that numerous readers of this column have already seen articles about how the Trump Administration may make it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. Many of us already know that student debt is extremely difficult to erase through bankruptcy. This, of course makes sense, since student loans are typically not backed by any type of collateral, so it seems reasonable that this debt would be difficult to discharge.
Students and their families have struggled to build their dreams on top of student debt. Since the start of the Great Recession, student loan debt in the United States has doubled, with every graduating class owing more for their college degree than the class before. More than 44 million people — or the population of 20 states combined — owe a total of $1.4 trillion (more than the nation’s credit card debt) for their college educations.
When President Trump rolled out his recent budget proposal, it made some cuts that were always going to cause controversy. For one thing, his plan would slash subsidized student loan repayment plans, and let the government crack down on missed payments. To left-wing politicians who think the state should hand out more subsidies, this might as well have been Armageddon.
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"Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans."
– Robert Reich
"There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt."
– P. T. Barnum
"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going."
– Irwin "Professor" Corey
The road to success is always under construction
– Lily Tomlin
"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
– Marie Curie
“What I would like to do... once I take care of all my kids' student loans, is buy a red 1965 Mustang and fully restore it.”
– Mike Quigley
“This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt.”
