re: U.S. poised to forgive $108 billion in student debt

I would be fine forgiving debt for STEM degrees. You can pay for you English lit degree yourself.

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Its not zero, but its also not 2 times what the original balance was.

I'm actually on one of these plans and I'm going to be screwed. After 25 years I will have paid 150% of original amount borrowed and yet will probably still have a balance of several thousand dollars, maybe more. Every monthly payment magically is equivalent to some figured interest amount. Every time I get a raise, my amount goes up accordingly, but no principal seems to get paid still... WTF. My question is at some point will there be principal paid, or does that only happen when I pay extra? Or, in 25 years will I still show 40 grand in debt, yet I would have paid 60 grand already, and then they'll call the 40 grand forgiveness?

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Do you understand compound interest? I am genuinely asking.

The safest, least risky asset in the world is a United States treasury bond. The current 30 year rate is right around 3%. Yes, that means you'll be paying more than double $40,000 over the lifetime of a 25 year loan even with our current very low interest rate environment. The future value of the loan is more than double $40,000 (the present value).

Philosophy or history degree from Yale >>> mechanical engineering from LSU


FACT

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I went through nine years of post grad school and have one law degree and one masters in a well paying field. 75% of my college degree was paid for and my law degree was completely free -- I still racked up 100k in debt.

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Hard to feel sorry for people bitching about money when they stay in school for a decade after graduating.

It's not even necessarily about the alma mater. I know plenty of MBAs and Econ guys that shite on the Engineers at my company.

Hello I'm a Poli Sci/Anthro major (with a J.D.) that easily outearns most engineers my age.

No reason the government should play favorites on whose degrees are "worth" forgiveness:

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STEM is far from the be all end all of valuable degrees. In fact some STEM degrees are significantly less valuable than non-STEM degrees. Please don't let facts interrupt your circlejerk though.

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my former assistant got a degree in bio, didn't make it into pharmacy school, and is now going to some super institution to learn how to do hair

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Ultimately I think we will see some form of forgiveness. I only hope it takes long enough that the people directly behind me don't get the benefit right as my loans are paid off.

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I think that's going to be a hard sell in a country where only about 1/3 of adults have university degrees.

What I think (hope) will happen is less-distorted loan market.

Right now, the very, very high end schools (think top 20 or 25 US News, the top tier business, law, and medicine schools, the really good niche programs like A&M's vet school) are actually probably a lot cheaper than they should be. A school like Stanford or University of Chicago could charge double or triple what it currently charges, and it'd probably still be lower than the marginal value added to the median income over a lifetime for their graduates. On the other hand, for everyone outside the top 150 or 200, tuition would drop, probably significantly.

Well maybe the chemistry classes she likely had to take for her bio degree will help her when she learns to mix hair color

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Do you understand compound interest? I am genuinely asking.

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I get the interest. Why should the government make so much profit off of citizens to get higher education, which leads to higher paying jobs and more taxable income down the road. It makes sense to make money on loans for a house or a car, not education.

The way it is now, the government is writing checks to anyone for any degree. A private bank wont give anyone any loan amount for a car. They assess its value and give a fitting loan amount. Why should the government be any different? In the end, if someone defaults on a private loan, the lender takes the hit. Well guess what, the government never assessed the value of different degrees and now they're taking a hit.

I have a great degree and a great paying job. I will gladly pay it back. I just think there needs to be some massive changes to the way they give out money and to how universities charge people, like out of state tuition. I graduated 5th out of the entire engineering college at ULL, and yet it cost me more than anyone from in state.

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I hate the idiotic millennial stereotype so much, then someone shows up and completely justifies it by making horrible decisions and lacking any understanding of the choice they made.

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Ditto, and I am a Millennial.

I also went six figures into student loan debt for grad school, but it was a calculated risk, and I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew that the likelihood of the marginal value add to my income after graduation would easily make up for it in a few years (and it's looking pretty likely).

That's the biggest complaint of our generation - we were too sheltered from risk, financial or otherwise, to fully understand its implications and to learn how to approach calculated risk. I do tend to think it applies more to the younger half of Millennials (say, born in '91 to '00) than to the older half. The older half knows 9/11 and the Recession well enough to understand some of this.