Debt Dodgers: Americans Who Moved to Europe and Went AWOL on Their Student Loans
vice.com
vice.com
When I read a comment like that I really want to grab this person by the collar and shake some sense into them. I know many people of similar age who are actually responsible and either didn't take loans they couldn't afford, or are paying off the loans they did take out, and yet they don't get written up about, instead we leave the rest of the world with this impression. So sad on so many levels.
But that said, I would hope that people have enough responsibility to only take loans they intend to repay, and to work within the system to repay them, rather than assert after the fact that the system is broken and so the tax payers should bail them out.
I'll add that as an 18 year old, I had no concept of what borrowing the money...a whopping $1500 which was half of one semester's tuition at a private university...meant. I wasn't sober enough to handle that sort of responsibility for another several years.
The system isn't broken. It's become corrupt. Banning discharge via bankruptcy was sold by saying that doctors and lawyers were the primary source of defaults on student loans. That's not the case today, and the student loan industry is largely built on reselling loans and collections.
The system is designed to leverage massive asymmetry at every point. Even down to, "why aren't you taking out a loan to insure your child receives the education they deserve?"
I disagree with you, btw, since much risk on some loans is passed to the US federal government.
It's childish behavior like running away and defailting that cause student loans to be expensive for the rest of us. Man up, it's not a lot of money.
The entire time I was growing up, I was told it was "college or bust". I was never told that it would be "college and bust", but that seems to be the reality.
Kids were told over and over that a college degree would ensure their future success, that they'd be practically guaranteed to get a career that made paying their student loans trivial, on top of a nice house and a car because that's the American Dream, isn't it?
It's easy as an adult to look back on it and say "wow, that was a big mistake", now that I know how jobs and the economy actually work, but first we had to unlearn everything our parents, teachers, career counselors, and college financial advisers told us in the first place.
Now, seeing that the place I could not get into had quadruple the tuition as the in-state and almost double the room and board, I'm starting to believe that perhaps it was for the best that I did not get in that place.
My initial reaction is, fuck these guys. They're leeches. They agreed to pay back the cost of thier tuition and they aren't. It's totally unfair that I paid my loans, but they didn't pay theirs.