Tag Archives: student loans

Older Americans Pushed Into Poverty as Feds Garnish Social Security for Student Debt

‘Hard-earned Social Security checks should not be siphoned off to pay interest and fees on student loan debt,’ says Elizabeth Warren

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-21-2016

“We could have hundreds of thousands of American seniors living in poverty due to garnished Social Security benefits if this trend continues,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. (Photo: Kate Gardiner/flickr/cc)

The federal government is garnishing Social Security checks to recoup unpaid student debt, leaving thousands of retired or disabled Americans below the poverty line and setting the stage for an even bigger problem, according to a new report.

The data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), compiled at the behest of Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), showed that people over the age of 50 are the fastest-growing group with student debt, outpacing younger generations—and compared to younger borrowers, older Americans have “considerably higher rates of default on federal student loans.” This leaves them open to having up to 15 percent of their benefit payment withheld, in what’s called an “offset.” Continue reading →

Warren Blasts Dept of Ed. for ‘Hounding’ Students Defrauded by For-Profit School

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Investigation by the senator’s staff found that nearly 80,000 former Corinthian College students are being forced into debt collection

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-30-2016

“Instead of adding insult to injury,” Warren wrote, the Department of Education “should stand up for these students as it promised to do for more than a year and immediately halt all collections on these debt.” (Photo: Mystery Pill/cc/flickr)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is taking a stand for the tens of thousands of students who, first, were defrauded by the now-defunct, for-profit Corinthian College system and now, according to an investigation by her own staff, are being “hounded” by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to pay off those debts.

In a searing letter (pdf) to DOE secretary John King on Thursday, Warren said that the department’s student loan bank is pushing nearly 80,000 former Corinthian College students into some form of debt collection, despite assurances that they would be eligible for loan discharges. Continue reading →

No More Excuses: Sen. Warren Lambastes DOE on Student Loans

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Democrat from Massachusetts says US Department of Education goes to ‘extraordinary lengths’ to protect student loan companies—at borrowers’ expense

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 3-4-2016

In January, Elizabeth Warren was among a group of Senate Democrats who unveiled a legislative package to address college affordability. (Photo: Senate Democrats/flickr/cc)

Can the U.S. Department of Education be trusted to protect the millions of Americans with federal student loans?

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has tussled with the federal agency before, isn’t so sure.

She said as much in a letter (pdf) sent Thursday to acting Education Secretary John King Jr., in which she describes an independent audit published this week as “a stunning indictment of the Department of Education’s [DOE] oversight of student loan servicers, exposing the extraordinary lengths to which the Department will go to protect those companies when they break the law.” Continue reading →

From Original 15 to More Than 80, Student Loan Strike Numbers Grow

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‘It’s been a month since 15 former students of the failing for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges said they would not pay a dime of their student loans because the school broke the law.’

Written by Jon Queally, staff writer for CommonDreams. Published March 31, 2015.

Photo from Flickr (user thisisbossi)

From an original group of 15 individuals no longer willing to pliantly suffer under the crushing financial burden created by the costs of higher education, the movement challenging that nation’s student debt epidemic has now grown to more than 80 people who say they will stop making loan payments in protest of the predatory practices of for-profit colleges and the larger student loan model.

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A Better Educational Model

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Office lab building at Hannover Medical School. Photo by ChristianSchd (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, the German state of Lower Saxony abolished tuition fees for its universities. This means that all of Germany’s universities are now tuition free, as Lower Saxony was the last holdout.

However, this isn’t a first for Germany; they didn’t start charging tuition until 2006. In that year, the German Constitutional Court ruled that limited fees and loans were not in conflict with the country’s commitment to universal higher education. This proved to be a very unpopular decision, and the states that had instituted fees started dropping them.

Dorothee Stapelfeldt, Hamburg’s senator for science, said; “Tuition fees are unjust. They discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany.”

The average student here in the U.S. would have been happy to pay what Germany was charging. Tuition averaged around $635 per semester, and students received other benefits such as cheap or free transportation through and between cities. Compare that to the $33,000 debt that the average U.S. college graduate in the class of 2014 carries in student loans.

Student debt in the U.S. totals $1.2 trillion dollars. That’s almost one and a half times the total credit card debt in the U.S. Furthermore, ever since the privatization of the Student Loan Marketing Association (more commonly known as Sallie Mae) in 2004, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The latest estimates say that there will be 414,000 fewer houses sold this year to younger families because the money that would normally be spent on buying a house is going towards paying student debt instead. That’s $83 billion dollars a year in lost home sales.

The government spends around $69 billion subsidizing college education and another $107.4 billion on student loans. Tuition at all public universities comes to much less than that; around $62.6 billion in 2012. If the public universities were made free of charge (and by the above numbers, that’s easily doable), the private colleges would be forced to lower their cost to compete for students. And, you’d have a boost in the economy due to people having more to spend. That sounds like a win-win to us.

Working Together

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Photo By The U.S. Army (Warrior Transition Brigade) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

America employs the largest volunteer military force in the world. In order to accomplish this without conscription, the government promises to take care of troops when they leave the service, including any injuries suffered while serving the nation.

Most men and women serving in the military do so out of a sense of duty and nationalism; family tradition, patriotic spirit or belief in the future of the country might all factor heavily in the individual decision. Regardless, they are recruited with not only the promise of education and specialized training, but also the benefit of health care.

The current backlog for veterans applying for disability benefits after returning from war is staggering. Some have waited as long as 1 or 2 years, and in 2013 it took an average of 378 days to process a claim, according to the annual report released by the VA.

Washington and the Pentagon seem to throw their hands up in despair, claiming they are doing the best they can. Yet we have heard no discussion about solutions that could actually get results and serve our veterans with less shameful failure. These men and women fought for our country. They shouldn’t have to fight for their own benefits. They shouldn’t die while waiting for paperwork.

To begin with, many veterans are looking for work. Why not use some of their understanding of veteran issues to expand the VA services personnel to accommodate the backlog? These men and women already have a working knowledge of “governmentesse,” the language used by the military. The vast usage of acronyms alone is enough to offer a multi-volume set of books. Veterans are better qualified than those who have never served to be able to complete this process of application efficiently and accurately.

Chuck Hagel answers questions at a town hall style meeting for disable veterans. January, 2014. Photo By Staff Sgt. Christopher Carwile [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Secondly, we could reassign people already working within the government that are experienced with disability claims. The Department of Education has their own disability division, which refuses to accept the disability claims approved through the Social Security Administration’s more than thorough disability process and determination. Their purpose is to make it virtually impossible for disabled students to qualify under their guidelines and prevent the discharge of remaining student loans if someone becomes disabled before those loans are paid off. With a bit of retraining to understand that the veterans DESERVE the benefits and it is the purpose of the VA to provide them, these people could assist the VA with the backlog.

The Department of Education needs to accept SSA disability determinations that entitle discharge of student loan debt to disabled students. This “way of doing business” is discriminatory and a waste of taxpayer money. It is belittling and humiliating to the disabled student. I would know – I am one they are doing it to.

I don’t know about you, but I happen to think caring for our troops is far more important than punishing disabled students.

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The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: student loans

A Better Educational Model

Working Together