| To annikasorrensen: Thank you for your post. My family has made a similar college financing plan (although my daughter presently has no savings, but will be working part-time during the school year and full-time during summer breaks). Like your family, my family will now need a back-up plan.
To BCEagle91: Thank you for your most recent posts. As I was looking up the financial terms you mentioned, I heard the term "naked short selling" uttered on television. I've had CNBC on since early this morning, and I watched and listened to the Senate Banking Committee hearing. The participants' comments were often too technical and too complex for me to understand, so I had to rely upon the CNBC anchors' analyses for clarification. At one point, the CNBC anchors excitedly commented that Sen. Jim Bunning had just challenged Treasury Secretary Paulson with the statement, "Can I believe what you're telling me about the GSEs?" The CNBC anchors commented that statements as openly confrontational as Bunning's are out of the ordinary, and therefore, significant.
To Atana: Thank you for your most recent posts. You hit on one reason this situation is such a cause of concern for me. I am fifty-five years old; my "fuzzy memories" pre-date Sallie Mae's privatization. I was an undergrad between 1971-75, and each undergraduate year, I used federal Work-Study, a National Defense Student Loan, and a state-guaranteed student loan (administered by my hometown bank) to supplement my school-awarded merit scholarship. (My parents, who despised college-educated people, were financially able but unwilling to contribute to my education--an ugly story, the details of which are not pertinent to this thread.) I graduated $10,000 in debt, deferred repayment while in grad school, and then--with an unanticipated string of low-wage jobs--managed to both support myself and repay my student loans in full and on time. (I repaid the NDSL in about half the allotted time.) Those repayment-phase years were financially tough, and in retrospect, I would probably be in better financial shape today if I had started working full-time after high school instead of going to college. College and grad school haven't yet paid off for me, and I don't want my daughter to find herself in my financial position when she's fifty-five. Regardless, I'd rather have my daughter attend college/grad school, and then graduate with "reasonable" federal student loan debt (which I intend to help her repay), than have her federal student loans curtailed or cancelled, leaving her unable to afford to complete her education.
The information you provided about the corporate/political wheeling-and-dealing involving Sallie Mae adds to my concern. Clearly, it's a bad time to be a financially needy college student. |