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bad analogies for the promotion of imaginary concepts...,
2009-02-10 18:02:35
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the swedes had it so easy...,
2009-02-11 11:34:35
we are being eaten alive by our minds:
There was a chapter in David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch where he was talking about the viscous mugging a sizable segment of the graduate population was taking at the hands of student loan lenders that I had a pretty hard time believing, where they were being charged the kinds of interest rates you expect on defaulted credit card debt. Nicole Colson has heaved a lot of the background into one place here that deserves attention, considering one of the most obvious things to do when you're laid off in a recession is to go back to school:
College costs have risen more than 400 percent since the 1980s. In 2008, the average student graduated with more than $20,000 in loan debt. Additionally, the amount of unregulated private student loans that families have taken on has more than tripled in the past five years, and nearly one in 10 college students has loans with interest rates that are as high as 20 percent.
Better have saved during the boom, because you won't find accruing that massive pile of usurious debt so easy anymore:
According to Finaid.org, a Web site that tracks the student loan industry, some 60 private lenders provided $19 billion to students in 2008. In the wake of the economic crisis, however, 39 of those have now stopped lending to students--and the remaining lenders have made it harder to borrow. According to Mooney:
Though money is still available--only 25 of the top 100 lenders, although responsible for 91.5 percent of loans, have dropped out--increasingly, there are conditions attached.
Lenders are pulling back from the community college and trade school markets--where there are higher default rates, lower graduation rates and lower job placement--at the same time that community colleges are seeing an increasing number of applicants seeking an affordable education option.
And so on. Read the whole thing if you aren't depressed enough already.
:: posted by buermann @ 2009-02-11 09:25:14 CST |
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