I wonder how they will do this for the self-employed? I imagine tax returns could suffice for the 5%, but the $15/hr part might be difficult to prove if you’re a freelancer.
8 Likes
That would be free public university to anyone accepted to the college, not anything student loan related. That’s what the land-grant colleges were granted land for; the federal government should take the land back if they aren’t fulfilling that original mandate.
The Department of Education administers the student loan program, and the DoE is part of the Executive branch.
18 Likes
the loan servicer has some reasons. including an all expenses paid vacation to a hawaiian summer home i’d bet
1 Like
I am personally really worried how a 300+ billion bandaid for the college educated without really addressing the core problem at all will play in the midterms.
1 Like
“no borrower earning under 225% of the federal poverty level” (equivalent to $15 an hour). So the equivalent amount filed on taxes for self-employed, capped at 5% of earnings over that. It’s pretty fantastic.
11 Likes
Awesome.
Oh, and info for folks who haven’t had to deal with this in a while…
6 Likes
Good take on those grousing about having already paid theirs off. (And it’s nice not to see such grousing in this thread!)
9 mins to listen, probably 3 to read.
So, when I see someone complain that they paid off their crushing student loan debt, so others should have to do the same, all I can think is:
Why would you want others to needlessly suffer just because you had to needlessly suffer?
30 Likes
Still, if people wanted to argue that people who did pay off those predatory loans deserve some refunds now, I could get behind that.
13 Likes
Agreed, though I think the next question would be – where’s the cutoff point? How many years back do you go?
(My humble suggestion would be percentage points based on how much tuition inflation increased unnaturally since their first year of financial aid. The least they should deserve is how much extra one had to pay since universities began to brazenly cash grab via tuition and fees).
3 Likes
“It took both of my parents years to pay off their college debt, and now they’re being told that if they had just waited for a little while it simply would’ve vanished,” said George Washington University student Jackson Hoppe, 19.
Hoppe has his own federal student loans and expects to owe about $18,000 by the time he’s done with his degree. But he doesn’t want forgiveness.
A bailout “places an additional burden on Americans, many of whom didn’t even go to college,” Hoppe said. “Don’t take out a debt that you can’t pay off, and don’t ask other people to pay off your own debts.”
This is so racist, classist, ableist, etc.
If you want to pay it, then pay it, but don’t blame folks for not becoming as wealthy or successful as others when they graduated into an economic system that is systemically stacked against them.
11 Likes
I agree with your main point, but to be fair, public universities have needed to increase tuition as state and federal funding has gradually diminished.
Other problems (like “administrative bloat”) contribute to skyrocketing tuition and other costs, but as new buildings on campus get named after wealthy donors and even corporations (and tuition covers an ever higher percentage of operating costs), calling them “public” universities starts to sound like nonsense.
8 Likes
This is what I hear from people I know whenever this comes up.
If we could do it without help anyone can.
Let’s review what no help means…
Your parents paid your tuition, room and board, you came home in the summer and worked a part job because your parents wanted you to learn how to support yourself living at home until you got a degree and then a job where you remained at home until you had enough money to get a place of your own.
Oh, and you never had to worry about finding and keeping a job because you always had your old bedroom to go home to.
Nothing wrong with any of that but stfu about doing it yourself with no help from anyone.
8 Likes
I was extremely lucky to be able to get through college without much debt. It helped that I grew up within walking distance (literally) of a really good university.
This doesn’t benefit me personally, but I can’t help but feel glad for the people who didn’t have my luck when it came to college. It will make life better for countless people who have had to wear an albatross around their necks for too long.
Count your own blessings before envying the blessings of others.
14 Likes
Attaboy.
16 Likes
Thank you Biden. I owed under 10k, but this helps so much right now. I was dreading the arrival of the 31st, but no longer. Time to celebrate today, then sometime in the next few weeks I can schedule laser treatments. Your days are numbered facial hair!
With that being said, I do wish Biden had just gone full “Dark Brandon” and cancelled all student debt, or fuck it, how about an all around debt jubilee.
20 Likes
Don’t forget “care packages”. Before I attended university I thought care packages were a thing of myth, but I never met so many students who had stuff mailed to them by their relatives on a regular basis.
12 Likes
Collins’ hot take on the topic, from today’s paper:
Collins said Biden’s decision “is inherently unfair to millions of hardworking Americans who chose not to pursue higher education; paid their own way to attend a community college, trade school, or certificate program; or paid off their student loans.”
“Essentially, the president is requiring a hardworking logger to subsidize a graduate of Yale, who is earning far more but has student loans,” Collins said in a prepared statement. “With the stroke of a pen and without congressional approval, the president has added more than $300 billion in new spending.”
Funny she has no such qualms about the “hardworking logger” subsidizing another forever war, or about the billions of lost revenue due to that tax cut for the wealthy she voted for.
17 Likes
Another hot take, this time by Empty G, and also being rebuffed:
ETA: I wanted to verify since, you know, Twitter. It’s legit:
15 Likes
That’s not terribly different from what I went through, and the situation of many Millennials and Gen Z folks. Something like 52% of young Americans are living with family. And I think it’s like 1/3 of people into their 30s.
I’ve still been raked over the coals by student debt.
Most people with a student loan problem I know worked through college. Most had their parents pay, heavily, for tuition. Many of us also had significant scholarships. The fact that none of this is enough to pay for college in this country is pretty gross.
A lot of us have done that living at home because of the burden of student debt. We did it for a long time. We delayed marriages, having kids. Struggled and went broke to relocate. Slunk back with our tails between our legs more than once.
The whole way the debt got bigger, and our credit ratings got worse. Even when we paid.
Paying these off, even the fairly low amount of debt I had initially, takes having been lucky or connected enough to have had a high paying job consistently. The entire time since you finished college. Through the collapse of multiple major employment sectors, the erosion of wages and shifting labor expectations. The Great Recession. Pandemic. And assorted other major societal upheavals.
Apparently there’s a legal limit to what can be done with executive orders and through existing regs. And this is about it. Though it does a lot more on the back end to prevent debt from piling up on people in the future than I expected.
Anything more via executive order was likely to get nuked in the courts, and there will have to be a bunch of legislation to address the rest of the problem.
Also fairly unconcerned with how that “Hard Working Logger” went damn near broke sending their kids to college in hopes of bettering their lives and climbing the socio economic ladder. Only to watch them slip from the middle class while drowning under the debt accrued.
10 Likes
