“… If people groaning under the weight of student loans simply said, “Enough,” then all the pieties about debt that have become absorbed into all the pieties about higher education might be brought into alignment with reality. Instead of guaranteeing loans, the government would have to guarantee a college education. There are a lot of people who could learn to live with that, too.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/why-i-defaulted-on-my-student-loans.html?_r=0
Wow. I googled the author. He went to Columbia and is the same advancing age as me. We went to college at a time where I could earn the whole year’s tuition with a summer of work. I managed to finish school with no debt and bought my first house at 24. Did the world really owe this guy a free private school education? I can’t even think about the morality of someone who can default on a loan that his mother cosigned. I owed my parents better than that.
^ This. I attended a service academy because we could not afford college. The author not only went to Columbia undergrad but for a masters as well, apparently all paid through loans.
Apparently it’s fine for institutions to pay for the author’s education but not himself.
“By the end of my sophomore year at a small private liberal arts college, my mother and I had taken out a second loan, my father had declared bankruptcy and my parents had divorced. My mother could no longer afford the tuition that the student loans weren’t covering. I transferred to a state college in New Jersey, closer to home.”
Doesn’t sound like Columbia?
So much wrong with this guy and his point of view, can’t figure out where to start.
Siegel’s statements in the essay about his education don’t match what is reported elsewhere: that he got his undergrad from Columbia.
I agree that loans can be difficult to pay back. But the tone of entitlement suffusing the essay is very annoying.
He didn’t find that reckless borrowing but it was.
This is the Lee Siegel I was commenting about. He’s a cultural critic at the NYT and has written five books that I have not read. (I do read a lot). I agree that Columbia is not a small LAC, but does the NYT really have two writers with the same name? Has he “exaggerated” his curriculum vitae?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Siegel_(cultural_critic)
He did say in the article that his father declared bankruptsy so I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Agh. I have read lots of his reviews:
Siegel presents his situation as binary-either attend an expensive private college and graduate school to pursue his dreams, or exist in misery in a soul-sucking minimum wage job, wasting his copious talents.
Sorry, but that just bogus. He had many options in the middle. Attend a state college from the start and wait for graduate school until he’d paid off his undergraduate debt. Work part-time during the school year and summers so that loans were unnecessary. Spend the first few years out of college working at a high-paying but unsatisfying job or work weekends at that shoe store while pursuing his writing. Tuition at Rutgers in 1990 was less than $3,000/year. It must have been considerably less in 1975 when the author entered college. No one forced him to take on pricey student loans. As fine a writer as he may be, the idea that it would have been such a great loss to society for Siegel to do something other that write for a few years that we the taxpayers should foot the bill for his education is ludicrous.
Didn’t he get the bachelor’s degree from Columbia School of General Studies, the division for non-traditional students? Also, the time frames he mentions span about ten years. So that may not be inconsistent, though the details are incomplete.
Of course, he attended college when all colleges were much less expensive than they are now, and “working one’s way through college” (without parental support) was much more doable.
There were some articles not too long ago about a promising assistant professor in English at Yale who died. His bachelor’s degree school was California State University - Bakersfield.
With the country’s new “bailout” mentality, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit of mass student loan defaults start occurring with regularity.
Wasn’t it Mark Cuban who predicted that this would be the next bubble to pop similar to what happened in 2008?
Let’s see - let me calculate the exit tax for emigrating to Costa Rica while I can…
Unrealistic thinking!
“… Instead of guaranteeing loans, the government would have to guarantee a college education.”
Do not default on the Federal Student Loans!
Does he think that the gov’t owes him a free private school education? He seems to think that he had “no choice” but to rack up that much debt.
I guess he’s “lucky” that his mom has already passed, otherwise she’d be hounded.
There’s no reason for him to be in default now, except that he knows the government can’t come after him (see 4th paragraph).
In 1997 defaulted federal student loans became eligible to be consolidated (without first being “rehabilitated” for 6 months with the lender/bank). Before then, there was no relief and no help. Borrowers in distress were at the mercy of the banks and the banks didn’t give a rat’s patootie what hardships people were having. If you couldn’t pay the full amount demanded many (if not most) refused to take what you could pay. It was a really bad time for borrowers then.
With consolidation, at finalization the loans are immediately/instantly out of default. While filling out the consolidation application the borrower chooses the best repayment method, of several, that suits them. The government has a cap on how much of your income it will take in repayment of your student loans under these repayment plans.
There’s no need for him to do what he’s doing now but he continues because nobody can find the promissory notes to verify the debt, and without that, for all intents and purposes, the debt doesn’t exist anymore and they can’t pursue him to make him pay. He’s home free.
But, he has an awful entitlement attitude and I hope he made his payments long enough to activate the co-signer release clause (if it was available back then) on his loans to get his mother off of them. If not, then he’s a donkey’s butt.
Why can’t the author repay his loans NOW? It doesn’t sound like he’s hurting for money now. .I wonder if he has other large debts as well - which points to poor money management, not greedy colleges.
I also raise an eyebrow at his story. Columbia fits neither the “small private LAC” or “public state school” he says he attended. He’s a bit older than me; there were many students who financed their entire education (with some loans) at Penn. I remember they graduated with about $25,000-30,000 in loans, which was a lot of money in early 1980’s. All paid them off in ten years. Some were engineers but others were “management trainees” at Macy’s.
I agree college tuitions are obscenely expensive in 2015. In 1975-1980? I’m not so sure it was so out of reach, especially at state universities back then. The author is using the current situation to justify his past actions.
What a pig! I’m disgusted by his disdain for being “district manager at the Wild Pair”. That’s a honest job, last time I checked. No shame in that.
^^^Yup! I’d love to know how such a bum and such a snob can co-exist in the same body. He’s reprehensible. Here’s the money quote:
Yes, maybe you should have, and worked your way up, and paid off your loans. That’s far more honorable than being “too good” for retail, dismissing the work it takes to become a district manager as beneath you, and then defaulting.
Or gone to comm college if that’s all you can afford. Plenty of people do.
From the article:
I suspect if he’d have stayed at the Wild Pair or state college he might actually have gotten to know quite a few high character folks who came from less than privileged backgrounds. Funny how that works.