I am a second-generation U.S.-born Latina.I SO don't care that you're a "Latina" of ANY stripe. It's utterly redundant.
My parents — a nurse and a police officer — were the first in their families to attend college, though Dad dropped out and joined the Marine Corps during Vietnam. Both baby boomers who attended state universities, they were ill-prepared for their two public-school-educated daughters to attend private universities that left us drowning in debt.Well, for the love of Christ, go to a public school like the rest of us schmucks! If your parents are a police officer and a nurse, they aren't dummies. If you were an honor student, neither are you. You all made this idiotic choice, now PAY for it.
Despite not having the means to pay for the colleges we chose, my parents truthfully answered questions on our financial-aid applications and co-signed our loans from Citibank when our schools determined that their modest means made my sister and me ineligible for any significant financial aid and subsidized federal loans. I remember thinking as a teenager, as I filled out an application on the monstrous desktop computer in our home — via a dial-up Internet connection — “What on earth does this stuff mean?”
Looking back, it’s easy to say that my parents failed. They should have asked more questions and sought counsel. More important, they should never have co-signed the loans or allowed their financial information in our aid applications because they had no intention, nor means, of paying for our pricey educations.Oh brother. What drama. The eeeeevil banks tricked you! Your parents failed you! *sob* Give me a frickin' break. Grow up and take responsibility for your own life, you spoiled brat.
Clarke’s bill proposes forgiving as much as $45,520 of eligible student-loan debt after new borrowers have made 120 payments — equivalent to 10 percent of their discretionary income for 10 years — or would forgive any outstanding debt for those whose loans predate enactment if the borrower has already made 120 payments in the past 10 years. Even better, the forgiven amount will not count as income, so debtors need not fear paying higher income taxes for 2012.No. A thousand times NO. Pay your own way. We lesser mortals are doing just that. My family and I don't WANT to pay for your ritzy education, or your bad decisions, or your entitlement mentality. Get your grubby hand out of our pocket!
Some things shoot my blood pressure through the roof, and this is one of them. Grrr!
Let's open up more money for student loans by forgiving money that should have been paid back but wasn't. While we're at it, let's end hunger by giving people currently getting food at food banks twice as much food. That will leave more for the other people who need it.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone suggested that professors make less money? Or is that only people the left likes are allowed to make money while everyone else pays through the nose?
I have an idea: don't do what you can't pay for. Imagine what would happen to all of these schools is enrolment plummeted because people could not afford to go there anymore. My guess is that the schools would drop their costs in no time.
They may also drop the courses in transgendered albino studies.
Bravo, Matt. Like Aridog said, you are right and that would surely work.
DeleteMatt, no kidding! I noticed ASU Jonesboro is offering a course this fall entitled "Terrorism As Social Movement". WTF?!? We are truly doomed. I guess it goes well with it's companion humanities courses "Rural Socialogy", "Urban Socialogy", and "Minority Groups".
ReplyDeleteI'm CERTAIN that the morons who take these courses will land a job when they graduate, and have no problem paying back their student loans.
Yep.
I paid off my own student loans.
ReplyDeleteI don't have much sympathy.
Hear, hear, lady red. Your comments throughout the article reflect my reactions as well.
ReplyDeleteOkay, who stole the recent comments from the sidebar???
ReplyDeleteL-e-w-y!!! Get in here at once young man and explain yourself!
Great post lady red, dead on. When I left school, hell, long before I left school, I knew that neither I nor my widowed mother could afford university for me. I went to technical college which we both paid for. I worked full time from Friday night until Sunday night every weekend (in a pub)and six days a week during school holidays. Plus I paid rent and board for living at home while attending college.
My heart doesn't bleed for this lot. Sometimes life isn't a bed of roses. Suck it up and get on with it.
Beds of roses are often paid for in advance with tears and hard work
ReplyDeleteI get a lot of gasps when I tell other parents that I will not be paying for my children's college. I will help, yes. But I will not mortgage my home or take out loans on their behalf. And I will strenuously advise against them taking any unnecessary loans on their own.
ReplyDeleteYou have to pay that back. That's the basic thing you really have to understand about students loans - you have to pay it back, and you have to pay back interest for being allowed to borrow it. Somehow, people got the idea that "borrow" meant "keep".
I do not agree with the things college monies are used to support, I think college is too expensive because they have too much crap. *BUT* if you agree to pay it, you agree to pay it. Period.
Sympathy is not going to come from someone who worked full-time midnight shift at Denny's to afford a state college.
You get gasps, afw? You should receive cheers!
Deleteimg:"http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y117/floranista/getupearly.jpg"
ReplyDeleteAnyone who identifies themselves as a "U.S.-born Latina" is not an American. It's interesting to me that the U.S. is increasingly coming to be seen by Latin America's teeming masses as an administrative area that operates under slightly different rules, but it theirs because they have rights.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, on the topic at hand. I could have been working that shift with AFW and count me equally unimpressed. I went to community college in California with an eye towards transferring my junior year to the best public college in the California system I could get into. Unwisely, when accepted by Cal with no scholarship and by U.C. Irvine with a generous scholarship, my pride intervened and I choose Cal. The next 6 years of my life were like something out of a nightmare.
I waited tables at a steakhouse restaurant Wed-Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun nights, typically around 4pm to 11pm. I also waited tables at a then-popular coffee shop chain (very Denny-esque) Sun-Mon-Tue lunch breakfast/lunch shift. I scheduled my classes heavy on Tues-Thurs to allow for as much work time as possible. I had a Toyota pick-up truck, with a monthly payment and insurance, and lived in a studio apartment in Berkeley with a bathroom/shower down the hall.
One evening, I was running from a crazy homeless man who decided to chase me at 1am with a knife when I stuck my foot into a trench that had been dug into the lawn outside Bancroft Hall to install new sprinkler pipes. Broken ankle.
No med ins. Lost both wait jobs. No recourse, nothing can be done.
I found other work, and it was a long year and a half before I was able to return to Cal, but not before having to fight them to stop them from deeming me permanently withdrawn.
Even so, I have great sympathy for an amnesty on certain debts, as it is clear to me that the academic and banking sector consprired to make these too widely and easily availalbe and eagerly over-educate people. Then there is the AWFUL current culture madness over college and sending kids to college.
I don't care for any hyphenated ethnicity. We're all Americans. Lets stop celebrating the differences and try to join together as our parents did.
ReplyDeleteMy husband has dual citizenship but doesn't go around referring to himself as "Irish-American". He just sticks with Irish. Er, I mean American.
:-D
Fay - are you still not seeing the recent comments sidebar? It shows up fine for me.
ReplyDeleteIf it's a help, I can see it as well.
ReplyDeleteLewy, no still can't see any recent comments. On the PC or the Mac.
ReplyDeleteWow. That's a new one. Which browsers are you using?
DeleteUtterly baffled. I usually blame Google's data center issues in cases like this but the weird thing is... (blah blah technical details elided) if you can see the comments themselves you should be able to see the sidebar, because they both get pulled into the browser the same way.
Do you see _anything_ on the sidebar for "RECENT COMMENTS" ? Even just the title with the little crossed wrench/screwdriver icon? It should be just below the list of contributors.
If you do see that title, click on the little wrench/screwdriver widget to get to the template. What do you see there?
If it's _gone_ from the sidebar totally, that's wild. It means different people are seeing different templates, and it's not resolving, even within hours. Totally strange.
Have people been playing with the template?
Lewy, I see "RECENT COMMENTS" in the sidebar but there are no comments showing and the wrench/screwdriver icon has dissapeared completely, it doesn't show up anywhere for me (and yes, I am logged in). I looked at the Recent Comments on the design page and there is code there but comments won't let me post the code here. I'll email you.
ReplyDeleteI'm using IE and Firefox and Matt is using Safari.
Test :)
Delete"Recent Comments?" What are those? The side bar list hasn't appeared for me in weeks, months maybe. I am running Opera on Win XP Pro+.
ReplyDeleteI just figured it was gremlins forcing me to actually carefully read each post & thread, instead of just running off at the mouth ah hoc! :D
RadioMattM said: "Imagine what would happen to all of these schools is enrollment plummeted because people could not afford to go there anymore. My guess is that the schools would drop their costs in no time."
ReplyDeleteBingo! The absurd proliferation of excessive federally backed student loans are nothing but welfare for academia. In this case, a transfer, from whose who haven't got it to those who benefit most from said loans ... but are "loud" in the political arena.
I'm stunned, frankly , that Matt's idea isn't a national campaign ... it fits the KISS principle perfectly.
You know, there's a real easy solution...remove the provision in current law that makes student-loan debt undischargeable in bankruptcy. (No other form of debt has this exemption, save unpaid taxes, court judgments, and child support.) This will reduce the amount of "free money" available for college loans, since lenders, quite understandably, don't want to eat the losses when the new graduates declare bankruptcy since they can't find a job with which they can pay off their loans. This, in turn, will force colleges to lower their costs, if the alternative is going out of business completely due to no one now being able to afford their overpriced "education."
ReplyDeleteAgreed. In other words, re-apply free market business principles to what is most definitely a business. That fits the KISS principle very well.
Delete