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I have just exhausted my interest relief and will begin repayment of my federal loan (almost $30,000) next month.
Interest is accrueing at almost 6$ per day! There is $170 of interest per month! How is it legal for someone to profit off of my educational loans like this?
It would be bad enough if it was just the actual debt that one had to repay - but such exhorbitant interest? 5-6$ a day depending on interest rates since I graduated in 2005 is insanity.
I just needed to vent and rant about that. Thank you.
I feel your pain. My interest is about $200 a month, and I've never thought to calculate it per day, but now that I have, my head hurts! I just filed my taxes this week and was looking at almost $2500 of the money I paid back this year going toward interest. It's baffling really. You feel like you're really putting a dent in your debt until you receive a statement that shows you've hardly brought it down at all.
I feel for you. I really do. I went back to UNI as a mature student a while back and managed for a couple of years without getting any loans. I only took a few courses at a time. It takes a loooong time that way. It came to a point where I felt that I needed to decide to either get go the loan route and get the durn thing done or take another course of action. I actually was given an opportunity to skip finishing the bachelors and go right into a particular Masters program because of convergance of life experience and other factors, but the cost financially was big. I started crunching numbers and in the end decided that I just couldn't go into that much debt. I already knew what it was like paying off huge debt from my previous business life and just couldn't stomach going through that again.
So I ended up just stopping so I have yet to get the piece of paper that indicates that I have at least part of a brain.
What I'm doing now doesn't need a degree, I'm self employed, but I still have some regrets of not getting it. I still run into people who place a certain amount of status on the thing which is annoying. I still do plan to get it done...just cause but it will be done as finances allow by distance education.
I expect with the way things are going now I should have it done by about age 50. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
lol, that is one option - although I think that would interfere with my home ownership plans!
ElizaQ, I hear what you are saying.
My irony is that I realized after I was done and was practising that I could not continue working in child welfare (due to a myriad of reasons that I am sure may babblers are aware of) and sleep at night until there was policy change etc.
So now i am going on a different path, but taking school one course at a time very slowly while working full time and not getting any more loans. Wish i would have done this from the start.
I hear what you saying about the importance people put on that piece of paper - but from the sounds of your lifestyle in the food and farming threads you are living a pretty sweet life so who cares about the piece of paper?
ps I signed the petition
For what it's worth, I don't believe they can stop you from taking out a mortgage. First-time home buyers going through CMHC need 5% down payment, and you're home. After that, keep an eye on your ten years from "end of studies date", and then see where your finances are at that point. According to Michalos and Hoyes, the ten year waiting period will be reduced to seven years by end of 2008. They can't touch RRSP,s, so I would definitely be stashing away your 5% down payment(or more) until then.
Oh really? One other note: with CMHC insurance you actually can do 0% down payment.
That does not surprise me - they seem like the highest rates in the world.
Yes, I am not waiting - hoping to get a house by the fall [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
What are the interest rates on a loan taken out today?
According to Student Loan Fairness, about 8.5% at this time. I've paid as high as 11% on my loans. Sven, Canada has been even more NeoLiberal than the U.S. in certain regards. Because we've got the oil and gas and massive amounts of hydroelectric power and minerals and timber, and next to the USSA, the next-largest low wage workforce to prop up a debt-based NeoLiberal economic experiment.
That link says that the rate on "federal loans" are about 8.5%. Are there "non-federal loans"?
The other significant lender of student loans are provincial schemes, prime plus one percent or locked in at fixed prime plus five percent, and they can actually choose the poison. Then come bank lines of credit, and leg-break interest on credit card debt. Most students say government loans aren't enough to cover all expenses.
A salient point that the NDP points out to us so pointedly, is that there are two general price tags for accessing higher ed: one for richer and one for poorer. Basing access to PSE on ability to pay and not merit alone is no way to dole out what used to be considered a basic human right in Canada. There was no scarcity befer we bailed out deregulated banks in the 1980's and most infamously in 1991. This is all because private banks needed bailing out for their gambling losses around the world and for activities which are essentially incompatible with banking. http://bankslovedebt.com/
I tried to verify this. According to chart 5 of the OCUFA report, bottom quartile students make up 20% of college and university students and top quartile students make up 31%.
ETA: Oops, this data was already cited in the third post of this thread.
[ 14 June 2008: Message edited by: PB66 ]
In colleges, students from families in the bottom and top income quartiles made up 22% and 24% of the student body respectively. At universities, it's 16% and 37%.
I think we should have grants for students and no tuition. That's the position of the CFS. It's reasonable to ask if lowering or eliminating tuition is a fair and effective first step. This data suggest to me that it is.
I think that it's also an issue of equity. Why should poor people have to fill out all sorts of applications and beg for a "targeted grant" when rich can slap the cash down on the table and have money for beer.
This is already what happens with OSAP in Ontario. It's a pretty extensive application process that includes, in some cases (most probably), getting your parents tax return info.
At the school that I went to there was also a fee for being on OSAP. Because OSAP pays you in two installments (probably what the targeted grants would do too) and the school has an "installment fee" of something like $65 it basically amounts to a poor tax.
I wish somebody would do a Human Rights challenge of that fee based on discrimination on source of income.
We can argue all day about whether students should be treated as independent adults, whether we want to create a generation of successful students who feel a loyalty to equal access or hereditary wealth, the justification of social programs that might only stop the middle class from falling far behind the wealthy, and the distortionary economic effect of means-tested programs, but it's not changing the fact that when tuition is two thousand dollars lower, as it is at colleges relative to universities, students from the bottom income quartile have much closer participation rate to those of students from the top income quartile.
Note: The above is what I said on Sept. 21, 2007 in this same thread. Whoever has the last word on this topic wins. I can't believe anyone would spend years on this board arguing AGAINST free tuition, without even realizing that the same argument would apply to elementary school, health care, etc.
Bullshit. Rich kids attend university in greater numbers due to a variety of regressive roadblocks that prevent others from more modest backgrounds from doing the same. True progressive change would not leave these roadblocks in place - inadequate housing, lack of coverage for prescription drugs, bigotry, etc. So you are essentially attacking a strawman: you attack the idea of accesible education for all as if it would occur in a vacuum. But in reality, it would just be one of many progressive measures that together could make our society far more just and equitable. Attacking universality is an attack on many of the institutions which Canadians have come to cherish.
And by the way, does your reasoning in opposition to free education extend to the public school system as well? Why/why not, Mr Gordon? [img]confused.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 14 June 2008: Message edited by: Kevin Laddle ]
Uh, i believe student loans cannot be included (if that's the right word) in bankruptcy. I looked into this awhile back pretty extensively, and I'm almost positive that they were exempted - so even if you had enough debt from other sources to factor in, your student loans would remain even after declaring bankruptcy. I'd be very happy to be proven wrong though
The same reasoning does apply, but since the facts are different for the public school system, the conclusions are as well. To the extent that funding rules for K-12 roughly allocates equal amount of money to all students regardless of income (which is emphatically not the case with PSE), then K-12 universality is neutral. And to the extent that
1) Governments target schools with relatively high numbers of at-risk students (who are more likely to come from lower-income households), and
2) Rich parents opt out of the public school system, leaving more money for those who remain,
then K-12 universality will be progressive. Not as progressive, perhaps, as targeted transfers, but I'm willing to live with the argument that it is easier to maintain support for a mildly progressive universal program than for a strongly progressive targeted program.
Like free health care. And free water. Yeah, I know, we're just a regressive buncha dinosaurs here. We just wanna make everything free for the rich. yeah, right, let's continue this debate some more, I'm almost convinced. One more post and you'll have recruited me. Just one more.
Graduates who don't secure good paying jobs for whatever reasons - like a poorly performing economy - should not be unduly punished with mortgage-sized debt loads and bad credit. Taxing graduates at the "backdoor" after graduation makes more sense than holding them up at the front door. This isn't free education either, but it makes more sense than leaving the front door wide open to repressive and ruthlessly inefficient Liberal-fascist bureaucracy demanding a pound of flesh upon pursuing a better life. Freely accessible higher education and advasnced democracy go hand in hand. A well informed and educated public is democratic power, and sadly, that's not been their public policy goal today in Ottawa.
I support free, universal K-12 education because it's a progressive policy.
I oppose free, universal university education because it's a regressive policy.
The fact that universality is progressive in some cases does not mean it's progressive in all cases.
[ 14 June 2008: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]
As my first act of repentance, I'm sending a form letter of condemnation to all student associations in Canada for wasting decades of time and youthful energy fighting for free tuition, bursaries instead of loans, and decent living stipends, when all the idiots had to do was read a few paragraphs by some renowned economists to realize the folly of their ways.
Thank you for helping me see the light.
My next project: User fees for watching the sun rise. The rich have been getting free peeks for long enough. Make the rich pay!
How are Nordic countries able to afford universal PSE ?
You can point to higher PSE enrollment rates here in N.America, but I think it's because there is no honest choice between becoming a low wage slave and attempting a better life. People in Nordic countries can live on their lowest wages and incomes, therefore pursuing PSE really is a life choice in those countries. PSE has become a gamble in North America.
There is no real guarantee of a good job and higher income attached to PSE anywhere in the world. Nowadays, an advanced degree might be closer to a job guarantee than a three-year B.A. The rich, and that narrow band of middle class income earners in the income distribution and their children can afford six and twelve years' worth of PSE while everyone else below them has to deal with the repressive bureaucracy in order to access what should be a unversal right to higher learning based on merit not ability to pay at the front door.
Your idea may be a good one, Stephen. But it's an efficient solution piggy-backed on to a pile of spaghetti of pre-existing ineffiency and would be twirled into something entirely different by political power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few in this country and leaning toward American-style PSE. We're also at risk for having American-style health care forced on us. NeoLiberal economics and democracy are incompatible, and that's why Canadians will not have a choice in the matter.
Oh, don't be so hard on yourself. There are lots and lots of people who think that policy analysis is something you do to justify supporting a policy that will make you popular with your friends.