Student Loans: Lending Tightens, College Costs Rise - And Educators Worry College Is Out Of Reach For Many

washingtonpost.com:

The upheaval in financial markets did not just eliminate generous lending for home buyers; it also ended an era of easy credit for students and their families facing the soaring cost of a college degree.

To pay for higher education, most Americans had come to rely on a range of financial products born of the Wall Street boom. Nearly all of these shrank or disappeared in the storm that engulfed the stock and debt markets.

 

 

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

Comments

[ResearchtheFacts]

08:44 PM on 12/29/2009

I guess we can look at it in the same manner we look at our financial system. If you can afford to pay for your education or have money, we will hire you or give you a loan. There is a type-cast for every situation and industry in this country why not education? If you live in a certain zip code you are guaranteed better auto insurance rates for example. I'm sure you guys catch where this is going.

With hope I guess we thought it would change, but, it seems to be a continuation of the same. It's amazing student loan debt is the only debt you can not throw into a bankruptcy. Once they own you they own you. What difference does it make that the job they promised you would be able to get doesn't exist? Madoff and Stanford would have a better chance filing for bankruptcy and clearing the slate? Not the either will have much of a future based on their past, but they probably could clean the slate.

[my p0litikal kos]

12:25 PM on 12/29/2009

Lets throw the bums out. We'll start with 1/2 the Obammi cabinet & the fed.
Obama = Obammi until he gets his act together. I'm regretting voting 4 him.

hat tip to: http://iamned111.blogspot.com

[EvilCartman]

02:18 AM on 12/29/2009

College really isn't necessary, since there won't be jobs when they graduate.

[econ1]

06:32 PM on 12/28/2009

College costs are going up nearly as fast as healthcare.

Some of the less elite schools are responding by operating year round (so four years becomes three years), requiring more teaching time by professors and other efficiency measures.

Hopefully that will become a trend.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

03:54 PM on 12/28/2009

Going deeper and deeper into debt to support an out of control cost structure can only have one result. Bankruptcy. We need to get a handle on why the cost of higher education has been rising twice as fast and inflation and 3x as fast as incomes for decades.

[Rayme]

10:37 PM on 12/28/2009

The cost of tuition has risen so quickly due to government subsidies. Tuition needs to be reduced so that students can work during the summer months and a part time job during the year and cover all the expenses and not go into debt.

[vippy]

02:28 PM on 12/28/2009

Welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER!

[jasev01]

01:17 PM on 12/28/2009

Anyone who graduated in the last few years will tell you this. People graduate 100s of thousands in debt and no one wants to hire them because people favor not training but hiring experienced employees. Its going to destroy the country because in the future there will be few well trained employees. Further, people complaint about race in education but they ignore race in the workplace; it doesn't help when a minority has a degree 100s of thousands in debt and no job because no one will hire them. The system is broken.

[sandiegoconservative]

07:04 PM on 12/28/2009

I graduated in the last few years and you are wrong. I pursued a few jobs and took an opportunity with just a decent salary, so I could grow and expand my knowledge. I took that knowledge and went for even more education. I am just fine right now. The system is not broken, quit bringing race into it.

[Rayme]

10:38 PM on 12/28/2009

Always love the one guy/gal that points out that they are the exception.

[EvilCartman]

02:19 AM on 12/29/2009

Keep paying off your 19% interest student loan, you slave!

[Mike Kopac]

12:45 PM on 12/28/2009

I agree with tones about the value of a BA and the jobs available.

Having said that a few observations for debate.

How many highly competitive schools have a student body that is almost exclusively made of upper middle class kids. We concentrate on race discrimination and worry little about class discrimintation. Of course the odd scholraship is help up to propogate the lie that America is a mobile society.. ( Google class mobility figures and see)

In Europe post secondary educaion is merit based. Students take tests for admission to University.

By accepting this injustice we

1) perpetuate the ruling class, foment discontent, and rob America of future greatness.

How many great thinkers are born in the ghetto and never contribute to our society?

[Oxonian2001]

11:18 PM on 12/29/2009

Agreed. There was an article back in the NYT back in 2006 showing that elite universities (public and private alike) were attended primarily by upper middle class students. If memory serves me correct, a substantial majority of students at U. of Michigan were from families that earned more than $200,000 a year. The same article also reported that there was less social mobility here than in England and in some of the Scandinavian countries.

Does that say something? It's as if we 've moved back in time to 18th-century England where only the elites attended the best universities, extending their sway for the next two centuries. It's a vicious cycle of the elites enjoying the best education (learning to con the rest of the sheeple) and the best career opportunities, while hobnobbing with the well-connected--all to be passed down to the next generation. Or not--if you're poor or middle class.

Sad too that the difficulty of acquiring loans and grants will also have an impact on university education itself. Students will now have even less time to study any subject rigorously: all of which will also have an impact on our future as they fail to learn critical thinking skills. What kind of citizenry will we have?

[tones]

11:51 AM on 12/28/2009

Its best that every person isn't able to afford college. First it will bring down the price and 2nd it will make having a BA meaningful hopefully.
When I talk to people from out side of the country they are amazed that college is considered a necessity to get a crappy $15/hr job behind a desk. In most countries a BA is very coveted here in the US its the equivalent of a high-school degree. If you want a job get a cert in a field and avoid a BA. BA's don't mean anything. Schools will tell you that they will open doors(they wont). They tell you that because College is a HUGE business and they have to sell their product. The amount of people i know that are my age early-mid 20's working as waiters or at Starbucks with a BA is huge. I know very few people with legit jobs that they got from their BA.

The sooner you older people get it through your head that a BA is nothing more than 100k out of you pocket and not a guaranteed job you may think twice when your son or daughter tells you they don't want to waste time with college and will accept that instead of feeling embarassed that your child isn't getting "more educated" (the amount of stupid people in college is amazing it rarely educates any one).

[silverstreet]

01:20 PM on 12/28/2009

It depends on what college you go to. My daughter had three job offers when she graduated with a B.A. The day she earned her master's degree, she received a job offer.

[yakmeat]

11:36 AM on 12/29/2009

And this is another facet of the problem. I'm not sure what school your daughter went to, but the trend seems to be this:

Those who can afford to pay for an expensive and prestigious school are offered jobs (high-paying ones, even) and those who cannot are likely to end up waiting tables to pay off their student loans while they wait for their careers to begin.

It would be very interesting to see some data on occupation vs. education in regard to how well the two are matched. I know a lot of people whose jobs and careers have nothing to do with what their degree is in. In my own family I've got people with geology degrees who sell insurance and people with education degrees who manage grocery stores and work for the postal service. All went to state universities. Does this happen to people with Ivy League degrees as well?

[comicpro]

02:28 PM on 12/28/2009

I agree on some of your points but its not us "older people" who always push our kids to school. A lot of the chicldren of my friends had other options that they decided to undertake. I personally look at college as a runaway cost that has been inputted into American society as a necessary eveil for the betterment of man/woman. In actuality its a crock. Thousands of well educated "service people" who are struggling to be an upstanding contributor to society because they are crippled by debt they can ill afford to pay back. Then they fall behind and their credit is destroyed. Its a vicious cycle that is hindering more than its helping. Luckily the Government(Air Force) paid fopr my undergraduate and grad school. It was my way of getting my schooling paid for. I feel your pain though trust me.

[mytradespa]

10:12 AM on 12/28/2009

it's not a recovery until every able bodied American who wants word can find work and we have universal healthcare & affordable education.
good articles: http://iamned123.blogspot.com

GDP figures are nonsense

[vippy]

02:29 PM on 12/28/2009

Figures the government churns out are not to be trusted. Since the USA abandoned the gold standard government knew the people would not take lightly to the true figures. They have been
manipulated ever since. We have proof now, otherwise we would have seen a fed flag before the collapse.