College Tuition

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Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):
[b]

If you get a job paying $35,000 per year (not uncommon with a university degree), then you should be able to pay this off in, say, four years.[/b]

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If the person puts off marriage, a family, a mortgage and lives like a Korean immigrant for several years, then I could see paying off maybe the average student loan debt in five or six years time. Sure.

Students in some other rich nations just go to school though. We're short of doctors in this frozen Puerto Rico, and the ideology isn't helping to create more.

Scenario: Student X finishes her/his education at the age of 23 with $23K in student loans. Student X gets a job paying $35K (as a beginning salary). If Student X pays $7K per year, then Student X can both (1) pay of her/his student loan by the time s/he is 27 and (2) live a reasonable life at $28K per year.

Fidel: "If the person puts off marriage, a family, a mortgage and lives like a Korean immigrant for several years, then I could see paying off maybe the average student loan debt in five or six years time. Sure."

I disagree that Student X has to put off marriage. Marriage costs nothing, unless you are suckered in by the marriage industry. If Student X marries someone in a similar position, then Stdent X and spouse can live on a combined income, after paying loans, of $56K per year. And that's to start: presumably wages will increase.

I disagree that Student X has to put off having children, only because I know couples in this situation who indeed have children. They do OK, though it's hard. But we're only talking a four-year period of such hardship, after which they can look forward to the enormous financial and social benefits of a university education.

There's nothing wrong with "living like a Korean immigrant", whatever exactly that means. I live on very little, much much less than $28K per year. I would not be happy to live on this little in perpetuity, but it's really not so bad in the short term. Also, I anticipate a substantial increase in my living standards when I graduate, even though I'll be paying down student loans. (Currently, I certainly do not live on $28K per year.) I anticipate a further substantial increase in my living standards when I finish paying off those debts. Moreover, I currently enjoy the intellectual benefits and lifestyle of a university student; and I will continuue to enjoy the intellectual benefits of having had that education as well as the social and financial benefits, for the rest of my life. It would be a gross display of brattishness for me to fail to see how damn lucky I am, and for me to fail to see that a $23K debt would be a small price to pay for the tremendous benefits I currently enjoy and anticipate enjoying in the future.

Fidel: "What's the average repayment schedule for student loans in Canada, realistically?"

Good question. Dunno.

Fidel: "The median earned-income in 2004 across Canada was just $25,400."

For people with university degrees? (Recall that this particular subthread was in response to the comments made by West Coast Greeny, who is concerned that he'll have $23K in debt after getting his Master's degree in meteorology. Do those folks only earn $25K?)

Fidel: "Young Canadians are not encouraged to seek higher education by stories like these."

Well, it's not stopping me. Maybe I'm overly optimistic about my future prospects, but I really don't spend too much time worrying about a life of poverty. Besides, I'm not doing this degree for purely financial reasons: I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to be able to spend my late teens and early twenties enjoying a luxury I consider much more luxurious than a yacht or BMW.

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Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):
[b]Fidel: "The median earned-income in 2004 across Canada was just $25,400."

For people with university degrees? (Recall that this particular subthread was in response to the comments made by West Coast Greeny, who is concerned that he'll have $23K in debt after getting his Master's degree in meteorology. Do those folks only earn $25K?)[/b]

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$25.4k is for all adult single income earners - i.e. the entire working population in Canada.

Sobering fact, that - 50% of ALL income earners make LESS than $25,400 a year.

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Originally posted by CharlotteAshley:
[b]

In Ontario, they will give you 9.5-15 years.

In Ontario, if you make less than a certain amount of money, they "forgive" all but $7,000/yr of your student debt, 6 months after graduating. [/b]

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Partial loan forgiveness requires that the student be making regular payments up to and including the time they apply for "debt reduction." So the former students in the worst financial shape receive no "debt reduction."

Former students in Ontario struggling financially with student loans and other debt currently have no choice but to wait ten years before student loan debts are wiped clean with declaring personal bankruptcy.

And there are so many trip ups and niggling rules that most struggling former students are bound to break at least one of them in acknowledging the debt by any number of possible ways, like simply filling out interest relief applications or attempting to pay down the loan while living below the poverty line.

Even taking a college class starts the clock running again on statutes barred status of the loan, and the ten year clock starts over at time point zero. Apply for interest relief?: the clock starts over. If they feel flush enough to pay one cent on the student loan, then it's considered acknowledgement of the debt no matter what the financial status of the loan debtor may be.

Our Liberal governments of the recent past sold old student loan debts for so many cents on the dollar to private enterprise for collection, who then turn around and attempt to collect the original principal amounts on student loan debts with interest. And the legal elbow room Liberal governments provided those collection agencies to harass and cajole struggling Canadian former students would be the envy of loansharks everywhere.

That's oppressive when you consider that former students struggling with loan debts and bad credit are treated on the same level as deadbeat dads and OJ Simpson. In several other rich countries and not so rich countries, there are no tuition fees or several thousand dollar book costs with GST, and student loans in those countries go to cover cost of living for lower income and out of town students who have no choice but to move away for college and university. It's the ideology in this Northern Puerto Rico, and it stinks. It was time to ditch the two old line parties in Ottawa decades ago.

[url=http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/845348.html][b]Report: Overhaul student loan system[/b][/url]

[ 06 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[b]Former students in Ontario struggling financially with student loans and other debt currently have no choice but to wait ten years before student loan debts are wiped clean with declaring personal bankruptcy.[/b]

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That's the other thing... as far as I can tell, you are not allowed to declare bankruptcy on these loans at all anymore. That ended just before I got into university, maybe ten years ago.

But given the timeline above, I'm not especially clear on why the majority of students would have trouble paying back $200/mo. Which, BTW, you don't need to start paying until you have been out of school for 6 months so you have plenty of time to find *some* way of making money.

Don't get me wrong, I think the government should be subsidizing post-secondary education *much* more than it is (and I think universities should be allowed the charge whatever they feel like), but I also don't see the current system as being completely prohibitive.

I entered university at 18, having left home a year earlier and severed ties with my parents completely. I had a small scholarship and then worked every minute of my university career. I got out of school with less than $2,000 in loans. And my parents had virtually nothing to do with it.

Charlotte

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Originally posted by CharlotteAshley:
[b]But given the timeline above, I'm not especially clear on why the majority of students would have trouble paying back $200/mo. Which, BTW, you don't need to start paying until you have been out of school for 6 months so you have plenty of time to find *some* way of making money.[/b]

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I'm sure there are more than [url=http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/StudentLoanFairness/petitionsignature... student loan debtors who who diagree. \

There have been actual Nazis and other war criminals who've lived out the rest of their lives in this country and were never harassed and harangued by the feds and debt collectors like ordinary Canadians trying to access higher education in this Northern Puerto Rico with unparalleled natural wealth being siphoned off by marauding multinationals.

The two old line parties are violating Canadian's [url=http://www.universityofthepoor.org/schools/labor/economic_human_rights.h... rights[/b][/url] as outlined in the UN declaration Ottawa signed on to several decades ago. It says access to higher education should be based on merit not ability to pay. And there are thousands of Canadians who qualify for PSE and have been denied student loans.

[i]"No replastering. The structure is rotten"[/i] - Paris 1968

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[QB]

There is [b]no forgiveness[/b] for federal student loans, only debt reduction. And the person's loans can not be in default in order to qualify for debt reduction. Check it out. It's no wonder students are complaining. [QB]

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Ah, the program I was referring to above is the Ontario Student Opportunity Grant:

"The Ontario Student Opportunity Grant is available to help students reduce their annual Canada-Ontario Integrated Student Loan debt by limiting a student's repayable debt to $7,000 for a two-term academic year and $10,500 for a three-term academic year. It is available at the end of each of your academic years."

Info available at [url=https://osap.gov.on.ca/.]https://osap.gov.on.ca/.[/url]

Charlotte

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Originally posted by CharlotteAshley:
[b]

Ah, the program I was referring to above is the Ontario Student Opportunity Grant:[/b]

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Yes, and Canadian students are still in hawk for more than $10 BILLION dollars worth of student loan debt!. Here's an anectdote of my own: I don't know any student loan debtors who have had their federal student loan debts, the largest proportion of their personal debts, either erased or reduced by any such overly-generous federal government any time recently.

$10B represents more than half of the national debt accumulated by Ottawa between the years 1938 and 1974 as a result of spending their way through world war and laissez-faire induced economic depression. And since bailing out the private banks in 1991 and Liberal cutbacks to the provinces, and slashing and burning federal programs, the Liberals still only managed to pay down a fraction of national debt racked up since Mulroney's time in the sun. The provinces went on to pile up another $400 billion dollars worth of debt since the rest of the money supply was privatized. Next to the very politically conservative U.S. and perhaps Brazil pre-Lula, Canada's two old line parties have racked-up some of the largest national debts in the world while slashing social program spending.