Obama's Student Loan Announcement:

Are You Still Paying Yours?

I was REALLY, I mean REALLY fortunate to be in the position I was.  I was the youngest of three and I graduated from high school in 1973.  My brother, the oldest by five years, went to a community college and then a private school in NYC for which he took out a small student loan.  That took a few years to clear.

My sister, older by two years, went to a private school for two years with scholarship help and then got her BS at Columbia with a substantial loan.  Her husband went to Harvard starting with a scholarship which became loans after a time.  He then went to Harvard Law also on loans.  I believe they finished paying off their Student Loans before their two kids started college and they had good jobs pretty quickly.

Me, I had a small scholarship for the community college I attended and then a small inheritance along with a job and a gainfully employed father with no other children to worry about to help me through New York Tech, a private school.

When I graduated I was already payed off!

I am very much aware of what my sister and brother-in-law were saddled with and I consider myself BLESSED That I was free and clear!

Hallelujah indeed!

I can tell you that my children were able to qualify for Financial Aid, in order to receive a college education at the time. And at the time, we were actually homeless during those dark years. But my children, I am proud to say, did remain in school, which kept them from having to think about our problems. School kept them occupied, and they were getting excellent grades in their studies. So I am very grateful we had Financial Aid to help us. We didn't have to borrow money.

I do, however, feel just awful for all the young people trying to get an education, only to graduate and find no means with which to pay off their loans. My son is a Math Major, and after 3 years he still hasn't found a job to fit his education.  Sigh!

I don't get it. You know when you get student loans you will have to pay them back. They give you a nice estimate of what those monthly payments will be to pay them back. It isn't like it is a surprise: here's your diploma-start sending in 680.00 a month. Yes, I had student loans and needed them to a degree. I also wasted some on meals out, living above my future means, and more. I don't think the government should be responsible for bailing anyone out of the stupid decisions one makes as a young adult.

I paid off my student loans a few years ago but even if I hadn't I wouldn't be in favor of Obama's plan. I agree with @drannmaria who made the analogy to a home loan -- education is an investment and if people are making the wrong choices, why must we bail them out? We don't put any onus on college students to understand the investment they are making in their education. Their decision to pursue a degree costs money, and will cost them money that they must pay back. I've read countless tales of people who went to school for four years only to decide to do something else at the last minute. Or those that pursued a degree or even advanced degree and were surprised to find that the resulting career was not worth the investment they made. A few of these are sad situations in which the bottom fell out of an industry. The majority though, are people who "follow their dreams" to do what they want to do, regardless of the fact that their education will cost 10x the average salary they hope to get. So, am I about to make the unpopular and ridiculous declaration that we shouldn't follow our dreams? Of course not. But we shouldn't tell kids that they should go to college no matter what and do whatever it is they want, as if there are no consequences of those years of costs and tuition. And let's not even get started on the many students -- myself included -- who don't use their time/education wisely. They are having fun, finding themselves and deciding what to do with their lives.  All of which is fine by me when it's their own money they are spending. But the minute they ask me to pay for it -- sorry, our government to forgive it -- it starts to bother me. We need to hold people accountable for their investments and decisions. 

The government could really be of assistance here by finding ways to get and keep education costs down and ensure there are jobs out there that make education worth the cost. 

I paid off my student loans years ago. I paid for most of the costs of college for two of my daughters - well over $100,000. I could afford to do it because I got a very good graduate education at a state school where I attended for free on scholarship. They even gave me a stipend to attend. That was over 20 years ago and that same state school costs 10 times the tuition it did then. In addition, the money for research grants to support students is less than it was. With tuition costs several times higher, the same funds can afford to offer scholarships to fewer students.

Student loans are a problem, but one source of the problem is that tuition costs have skyrocketed - and the money is not going to the professors - unlike when I was in school, a large proportion of the faculty are part-time instructors being paid peanuts. Another problem is the value of a diploma in terms of getting a job.

I wonder why there is no analogy to when you get a home loan. If I'm stupid enough to pay $250,000 for a house worth $100,000  the bank isn't going to loan me any more than $100,000 but we give students enormous loans for these useless degrees from for-profit schools.

Some of these responses really agitate me. While I am glad there are some people who can graduate without debt, for some of us it was never going to be reality. I am the first member of a severely dysfunctional family to earn a college degree. My parents were less than helpful in my education, they are addicts, so in addition to working full time and going to school full time, I also raised my three siblings. In the summer, I worked full time and had a second job.

I had NO IDEA how to even apply for college. Everything I did, I did on the advice of other people who knew the system where I did not. I went to the local state college because they approached me and offered me a small scholarship. I took out loans because the nice people in financial aid told me to do so. They told me not to worry about the money, I wouldn't even have to think about paying in back until I graduated anyhow. 

I graduated early because I had a job lined up. I could have stayed another year and gotten some more marketable qualifications but the amount of loan debt was starting to bother me and I had a JOB, a real job in my field. A job with the state museum for whom I had been working full time for the past two years while going to college. Ten days after I graduated the state cut the funding of that institution back to the level in had been at in 1975. All new positions were frozen, including my job, it still is. To ice the cake further, they started laying people off. I made it to the third round of layoffs before I had to go. The staff there is now 1/6th of what it had been. I ended up taking a job that was not in my field, because jobs in my field are hard to come by without that additional year I would have needed. 

Did I make bad decisions? I don't think so. I worked through school I still work. The problem is, I was born white trash and therefore, in the opinion of some, I should have never gone to college in the first place. I couldn't afford it right? 

Am I the norm? No, but there are a whole lot more students out there like me than there are students with trust funds. 

I'm down to a number left that allows me to see a light in the distance. I worked hard to find that light. I had a half scholarship, my parents then paid half of my half and I got loans for that last quarter remaining. It's still a LOT of money when you factor in that it was a private college. Due to my experience, I'm very pro-public-university! :)

You know it takes longer to pay off a credit card if you only pay the minimum.  I haven't done the math but suspect that people might be paying more, even if they get forgiven after 20 years.

I have it and will be paying for a long, long time.

i pay about $400 a month, and my remaining $28,000 in private loans are stuck at 6.5% interest. there is no way i would have been able to do what i do for a living having gone to a state college-- i would have ended up as a high school english teacher, which is great, but just not for me. (i would make a terrible, terrible teacher.)

i worked all through college to pay as many of my bills as i could at the time, but here's the problem i have with student loans: if parents or students can pay tuition at the time of going to school, tuition is 100% tax deductible. meanwhile, only a *percentage* of my student loan *interest* is tax deductible, if i make *less than a certain amount* each year. this 100% benefits people who are wealthy and is detrimental to people who are middle class or poor.

THAT's the rule I want to see done away with. my payments on my student loans (maybe minus the interest that i pay?) should be tax deductible, as if i had paid for my tuition outright. it would help a lot, considering my student loan payments are 16% of what i make every month.

I think this doesn't do much to address the real problems: the skyrocketing cost of education and the high rate of unemployment/underemployment for 20-somethings. College costs far outpace the rate of normal inflation. This year, the cost of tuition and fees at private institutions increased by 4.5%, at public institutions by 8.4%. By contrast, the general inflation rate for 2010 was 1.6%. These inflation numbers have held pretty true for the last decade. At the end of the 2011 school year, only 56% of college grads had had at least one job offer, compared with 90% of college grads in 2007. Starting salaries have also fallen off, from an average of $30,000 to $27,000.

You do the math. It is increasingly difficult for average American families to afford a college education without relying heavily on loans, and for teens and 20-somethings attempting to pay their way through school on salaries with little more than their high school diplomas recommend them, a college education is all but an impossibility unless they turn to loans. To add insult to injury, most college grads upon graduating find a bleak economy where few jobs are available, and the jobs they do find typically pay abysmally and often provide no benefits. How do we expect them to pay back their loans when they barely make enough to cover rent and groceries and are completely unable to pay for things like basic health care?

Until these other factors are addressed, any "solution" put forward barely qualifies as a band-aid.

I did not take out loans. I paid as I went, I worked for the university so what I earned was tax free, I earned fellowships with my grades. As quaint an idea as it is if I did not have the money I did not attend. Now those who did not have the money but took out very low interest loans to cover their education costs now earn an income based upon that education (generally speaking those with degrees are employed at a far higher rate than those without them) and they may get to walk away from their debts. C'est la vie.

This bothers me for several reasons. I had a choice when selecting a university: I could go to Northwestern and graduate with $75,000 in student loans or I could go to a state school and graduate free and clear. Even as an irresponsible 18-year-old I chose the state school AND worked the entire time I was in college. I was lucky my parents could pay for a state university. I knew my intended major (journalism) would not pay off those student loans. Is it "fair" I had to go with a state school because my family is not wealthy? No. But life is not fair. You deal.

My husband went to a state school and still had loans. We worked to pay them off in 10 years as his payment schedule required. Now his brother, on the other hand, spent 7 years in a private college (for a P.E. degree), has been out of college 20 years, defaulted dozens of times, and takes vacations and buys televisions instead of paying off his ridiculous loan. Should his be written off? No. That's not fair either. But I guess the taxpayers will have to deal with it.

I owe about $45 K for two undergraduate degrees and a year of law school. It is not horrible for me, but it still kind of annoying and each time I get ready to pay off a loan something catastrophic occurs and I am back at square one.

I paid everything off for under grad and grad school. Now onto my doctorate....and I will owe about 68K when done.

That is...if I can find a job - which given the several months of all out rejection letters, it is looking less and less likely.

So sure. Hit me with a percent of an income I don't have. In 25 years, I'll be 66. Won't that be a treat to have my loan forgiven and my retirement begin.