STUDENT LOANS

A blog from FOX, quotes from a new report from Institute of International Finance that specifies some of the expected fallout from the millions of college students who now hold overly large student loans.  Examples are that recent graduates, once prime movers of the new homes market, can be expected not to be able to qualify for loans to buy. The immense effect of such locking out of the nation’s intelligentsia from home ownership is hard to imagine. The expected necessity of the student-loan-strapped graduates to put all sorts of parts of their lives on hold for substantial periods is dismaying, too.   http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/03/14/real-estate-market-and-college-debt-holding-back/       

Nothing significant is being done to stop all this.  Remember that huge amounts of principal and interest are expected as income by the lenders. Please help American Association of Student Loan Borrowers. http://lowerstudentloans.net

Posting in a LoanSafe blog, Alex Ferraras describes the few, drastic solutions currently available for forgiveness of a federal Stafford loan. http://www.loansafe.org/federal-stafford-student-loan-forgiveness

Just to describe the few forgiveness routes currently available serves to get across the extreme need to broaden forgiveness opportunities.  AASLB does not oppose the idea that the taxpayers may require that the borrower make some public contribution as quid pro quo for writing off money owed to the taxpayers, but those loans are so overly high that a drastic increase in available modes must be instituted.  Join us in bringing this about.  http://lowerstudentloans.net

According to a Help Desk blog, on an opinion from an accounting firm, for a co-signing parent to pay off the balance on a student loan is not a gift to the student, because it had been equally an obligation of that parent (an unpleasant side effect of co-signing)  http://helpdesk.blogs.money.cnn.com/2012/11/05/is-paying-off-co-signed-student-loan-gifting/

High costs of US public and private colleges have driven increasing numbers of US high school graduates to opt for school in Canada or the UK, which compare favorably with costs of college in the US, even with extra charges for international students added, according to Renee Schoof in a Seattle Times blog.  http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019608278_canadacollege15.html

This deplorable situation is a rational response to the overly high charges by the US colleges, which never should have happened, AASLB (American Association of Student Loan Borrowers) believes.  Please join us to strengthen our hand in turning things around.  http://lowerstudentloans.net

A new report by the College Board, owner of the SAT, shows that charges by all kinds of colleges keep going up higher.  http://press.collegeboard.org/releases/2011/new-college-board-trends-reports-price-college-continues-rise-nationally-dramatic-difference

AASLB firmly believes that the colleges are going to keep doing that unless and until the public puts enough heat on the people causing that to happen to make them start moving prices the other way.  We all know that whose ox is gored on this is the student loan borrower.  Please join us to help rectify this terrible situation.  http://lowerstudentloans.net

Danielle Kurtzleben, posting in a U.S. News blog, reviews findings in a new report by the Association of University Women due to be released tomorrow. With a significantly less amount of compensation than counterpart males in many areas, women are struggling proportionately more with their student loans than those male counterparts, as one should expect arithmetic to show.  http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/10/23/study-women-suffer-more-with-student-loan-debt

This is a deplorable event, but one that people bringing about the need for overly high loans ought to expect.  We hope that women will look to us at AASLB as a way to try to solve the problem overall.  http://lowerstudentloans.net

Lyn O’Shaugnessy, posting on a CBS MONEYWATCH blog, describes a new tool by a new company, for people shopping for colleges to get their net prices. Those using the schools’ own websites had experienced difficulties in working through them.  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57536803/a-great-new-tool-for-comparing-college-costs/

Undoubtedly, shopping as carefully as possible is one near-term protection against the awful overcharges that colleges are making.  Over the long haul, though, something big has to be done.  Please join AASLB to help make it happen.   http://lowerstudentloans.net

Douglas A. McIntyre, posting in a 24/7 Wall St. blog, comments on the recent report on the growing amount of student loan debt and concludes that the problem has no solution because, as in the case with home mortgages, the banks won’t forgive the debts and the taxpayers ought not (for the direct federal loans).  http://247wallst.com/2012/10/18/as-student-debt-jumps-again-a-problem-without-answers/

AASLB (American Association of Student Loan Borrowers) believes strongly otherwise.  A fair and equitable expansion of forgiveness programs can be worked out by allowing the student loan borrowers to work off their loan balances by providing public service (federal, state and local) at a value of, say, federal minimum wage.  Taxpayers will get dollar-for-dollar value back and student loan borrowers will have the option of working down loan balances that are too high to be practical to pay down out of their pay.  Please help us in this fight by joining us today, free.   http://lowerstudentloans.net

In a Seattle Times blog, Elizabeth Wiley, a product of Washington public schools and colleges and masters student at UW gives a good layout of just how severe the plight of student loan borrowers is and is likely to continue to be.  http://blogs.seattletimes.com/uwelectioneye/2012/10/18/the-cost-of-higher-education/

In the view of AASLB (American Association of Student Loan Borrowers), whose blog this is, Ms. Wiley is quite correct that nothing is cooking on the scene of national politics that will really correct and rectify this terrible situation that keeps getting worse.  Please join us today to try to band student loan borrowers together to change all that. http://lowerstudentloans.net

The official blog of the Department of Education has a primer, with the five things they say a student should know about student loans.  http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/10/five-things-to-know-about-your-student-loans/

Learn lots more about student loans, including how borrowers can attempt to rectify the situation.  Please join us today, AASLB.   http://lowerstudentloans.net