Lost for Words

[vernon]

Student debt isn't real debt.

You are kidding yourself.

 

[Adasta]

You are kidding yourself.

Nope. There's no obligation to pay it off. Don't be scared by the word debt.

Should I pay off my student loan?

Now millions are paying interest, it’s hardly surprising that I have been bombarded with emails from people with spare cash asking if they should use it to pay off all or part of their student loan.

So you may be surprised to read that, for most people, the answer is a firm. No.

Source

 

[Archie_tect]

Every student debt not repaid is a debt paid by taxpayers since the universities get paid up front for every student they give places to.

So, £3000 per year will become £9000 per year from 2012... universities paid by the government just triples the debt we as taxpayers have to fund indefinitely.

Education for people who deserve places should be free... it's just the universities cashing in.

 

[marinyork]

My point is that higher education opens up opportunities that lead to greater career potential , i believe that these should be paid for by the person who will benefit from it rather than just another freebie.Universities have grants and bursuries for those would not be able to otherwise afford it in the case of gifted students who cannot otherwise afford to study ( how do you think my brother got to where he is ?)
If you believe differently then of curse you are entitled to your opinion but i think you are going off on a tangent or are you just being facetious?

I'm not being facetious, I made a very similar point to a head of a university department who repeated the same unimaginative tripe to me and hadn't bothered to have a detailed look into earnings and payback and boasted that fees were great as it'd make brits spend more on postgrad. Well it's a fair enough point of view, but you could say the same thing about all other spheres in life, which is my point and in some ways more interesting and potentially fairer. Your rather strange viewpoint seems to derive from the "I'm all right, Jack" of your brother which is a view I hear often. A bit of a strange idea for basing the potential misery of a whole generation of students on and well rather selfish to say the least.

As for grants and bursaries they were very rare until the top-up fees system came in - I don't know where you get this misguided idea from. I would have got a 5k a year bursary from some unis had I gone slightly later than I did, so let's not get ahead of ourselves with the egos thing (yes, I'm from a poor background and yes I did a demanding subject and no it hasn't enhanced my career). All men are greeks and all that. A bit of thought required sometimes .

 

[marinyork]

If folk benefit from their degrees they pay back through enhanced taxes from their enhanced income.

You can't get a simpler payback system than that.

If they don't earn a lot they spend longer paying it back.

Works just like the current system.

Except you may have no enhanced income and pay back anyway (well not pay it back, as you don't stand a chance, but make contributions). Not really true in the long term about not earning 'a lot' either. The £15,000 threshold for example was fixed and was slowly going down year by year in real terms. If they'd not changed the system not a great deal of time in the future a lot more people would have been making contributions than was the case in the first year of its being that rate. A point I've made about the new so called higher threshold that may come in in 2016/12 being 'higher' - if you factor in inflation it's not much higher than the original £15,000. At least they indexed it this time though.

And it doesn't work just like the current system, the goal posts moved to 30 years from 25. Can you think of a reason why 5 years at the end is not a like for like comparison for early years of earnings .

 

[vernon]

Nope. There's no obligation to pay it off. Don't be scared by the word debt.



Source

It is a debt even if you can't be bothered to pay it off, others i.e. tax payers, will do so on your behalf and not thank you for it.

 

[cyberknight]

I beg your pardon?

I only use my brother as a case in point , you seem to take my views as a case in point it has nothing to do with i am all right jack mentality .I have 1 child and another one on the way and i knwo what my choices mean to me and my family should they show the academic worth to go to university.

If my views do not mesh with yours then fine but please do not put words in my mouth and stop taking it so personally .
I will now stop watching this topic as i feel offended by your attacks and can no longer be a part of a topic that has descended from an exchange of views into a mud slinging match.

 

[Adasta]

It is a debt even if you can't be bothered to pay it off, others i.e. tax payers, will do so on your behalf and not thank you for it.

What a ridiculous notion. You're levelling your anger at the student and not the government?

Since your generation has done little but spend us into economic decline, forgive me if I don't run to pay off my student loan because you think I should.

Leave your son alone. The "debt" is his; let him deal with it like an adult.

 

[gb155]

Vernon - tell them to pay their loans off mate - only way. PT Jobs for them, Student loan, and some hard work.

Why should you be in debt....? Really !

+1

 

[Adasta]

+1

Why did you plus-one this? Is it because you believe that "debt is bad"?

 

[vernon]

Leave your son alone. The "debt" is his; let him deal with it like an adult.

And I'll leave you to whinge about your unemployment while fantasising about utopian business ethics.

I think I have a firmer grip on reality than you.

One day you'll get to grips with the economics of having earn a living.

I hope it's soon and above the payback threshold as I resent shouldering the costs, no matter how insignificant they are, of deferring your debt repayments to the pool of money that funded them that in turn was funded by my income tax.

 

[vernon]

+1

With respect gb155, you don't not appear to have read the entire thread or, more specifically what I have written.

I'm not railing against the iniquity of loans or even suggested that I would repay my son's loans. His debts are his debts. The loans simply do not allow students to survive solely of the loans and they need supplementing.

 

[Adasta]

And I'll leave you to whinge about your unemployment while fantasising about utopian business ethics.

I think I have a firmer grip on reality than you.

One day you'll get to grips with the economics of having earn a living.

I hope it's soon and above the payback threshold as I resent shouldering the costs, no matter how insignificant they are, of deferring your debt repayments to the pool of money that funded them that in turn was funded by my income tax.

Then your problems are clearly with the supposed realpolitik of the governments you have elected that allowed a defective business model to propagate itself so rabidly over the past few decades.

It's strange that you are angry at students who don't (read: can't) pay back their student loans when they are but a drop in the ocean compared to all those glorious members of the working fraternity, whom you seem to valourise, who spent obscene amounts on credit without the means to pay any of it back. Am I my brother's keeper?


Earning a living is all well and good, but if your values have now become replaced with your interests, then that is a very sad thing. The problem with "reality" in this context is that it is subjective. In fact, you have no grip on my reality at all. 20% of people in my age group are unemployed. This is also somewhat of a misleading statistic, since this doesn't mention how many people are actively applying for jobs after leaving uni, merely those who are in work now; they could've been in that job for 5 years, before the crisis.

I find your ad hominem attacks distasteful. If you want to feel bitter about my loan situation, then go ahead. But your bitterness is misplaced. If I had the ability to pay off that loan, I would. But I never, ever will, since the capital received via the loan will have to, one day, be used to reduce another even greater debt, such as a mortgage. I probably won't be able to afford one of those for another 5-10 years, but that's another story.

The loans simply do not allow students to survive solely of the loans and they need supplementing.

This is totally correct. I had to have jobs during uni to sustain myself. I'm not complaining about it; it is often the case that people need to get jobs as well as receiving financial support from relatives. The only people I know who didn't do this were people who received bursaries because they came from single-parent families, for example.

 

[vernon]

Having expended five hundred quids worth of words on a fifty pence argument I think you need to evaluate if you need to contribute any further to an issue that was sidetracked from the implied statement that I am am faced with supplementing the loans of my offspring.

We are essentially agreeing violently on the issue that student loans are not enough to sustain life.

 

[Red Light]

Education for people who deserve places should be free... it's just the universities cashing in.

With half of school leavers going on to university these days the difference between free education funded by the taxpayer and education paid for through student loans is in the former the half that didn't go to university are paying through their taxes to subsidise the half that did. Is that right?