A Boring Dystopia

This works great up until the point where a collection agency comes for your property and/or credit rating. I'm not saying don't strike, but do it with full knowledge there may be repercussions.

It’s most likely that people won’t have a choice. Many people, anyway, from what I understand of USian wages and cost of living.

Wait, was that all fucking interest???

Also for 150k you better be a fucking doctor, mate.

I wish more people understood no one can stop you if there is no one to stop you.

Try getting an apartment or renewing a lease with a truly shit credit score.

Oops, you don't qualify anymore, anywhere, your options are now homelessness, much more expensive hopping between motels every 3 weeks, or live in your car, hope you're still making those payments.

Fairly difficult to cost-effectively cook and store food when you're in any of those situations.

My only hope is that America slingshots back to Roosevelt era policies. Wild that this exact shit happened and what saved us? Oh social programs and high tax rates on the wealthy.

There are no cheaper schools. There are expensive ones and more expensive ones. There is literally no option for the non-rich except to go into debt or learn to be a plumber.

There are no such thing as cheaper schools. They got rid of that because they were angry college students protested the Vietnam War. So now getting an education means doing business with the worst loan shark you've ever heard of, legally protected from bankruptcy. The thing you have to understand about America is that everything is a scam. Like healthcare or housing or a child care and a bunch of other things I'm not even thinking about

Children are told that they MUST go to college to get a stable and high paying job. This is so prevalent that college degrees are just seen as “the next step after high school” and nobody questions it. These colleges have figured out they can charge almost anything because they are seen as the gate keepers to high paying and stable jobs. So banking on future earnings, bearly emancipated teenagers, with the absolute minimum of a financial education, make life decisions that will put them in debt for the next 20-30 years.

The problem with the whole system is there doesn’t appear to be enough high paying and stable jobs.

As far as going to a cheaper college, I think you identified the issue in your very own comment. Schools have different prestige levels. Yale, for example, is a high prestige school and not only are you paying for an education, you are also paying to connect to rich people. These connections can be worth a lot of money if they are used correctly. So going to a cheaper college also means less valuable connections.

I went to a really cheap school. My master’s was 40k.

Same as in the UK I imagine. No university is affordable. Unless you are rich, you can't go without a loan.

Three things going on:

1. Schools are expensive because the amount of public funding to universities has been slowly shrinking over the past 60 years. College in the US back in th 1960s was very cheap.
2. Student loan amounts due did not change, but income based repayment options did which means people's minimum payments went up
3. Students in the US were told college is the only career path for the past 40-50 years. This obviously isn't true and is why we have trades shortages. In many cases, that's also all the advice people received. There was no coaching for what kind of degree to pursue or what field to angle for, so a number of people got expensive degrees that didn't have good career prospects. To be completely honest, I lucked into choosing engineering because of my interests and the interests of my friends

Hey now you're forgetting that they're also going short on everything and making money on the fucking way down too!

Most people are relying on income-driven repayment due to high interest rates and inflated tuition costs. IDR reduces your monthly payment to a fixed percentage of your income, but it does not scale the interest generated on the principle. The new SAVE plan was intended to scale the interest along with the monthly payment so your debt wouldn't keep piling up due to being on IDR.

Trump is removing all forms of IDR and blocking applications to renew existing plans, which means everyone will be forced to pay their full monthly amount (which is based on a 10 yr payoff plan). A lot of newer student loans are close to ~$100K or more, so imagine trying to pay that off in 10 yrs in the current job market.

Prepare for mass defaults on loans. This is absolutely going to crash the economy, and will very likely be worse than the housing market crash in ~2009.

My mom qualified for, and received, federal student loan forgiveness. Yes, she had to make payments and work in a qualifying job for 10 years but due to her low income the payment amount was adjusted down.

Unless you're in a position that qualifies for loan forgiveness, and you trust that forgiveness will be there when you qualify, income based payment rates are not a good idea. The total amount owed by my mom actually grew over the years because the amount she was paying was less than the amount of interest charged. For a bit when she was 8 years in she had a scare that she wouldn't qualify and was shocked to find this out, despite saying "I've paid thousands!!!".

Your average American isn't very financially literat, or lives in the land of denial, which makes them easy to take advantage of.

My partner was eligible for ~$750 per month repayments under a Biden era plan that Trump scrapped. They now have to pay ~$4300 per month. The headline isn't far off.

You are post world war germany. Namely 1933. Wake up.

I mean... There's a full article explaining the cause for the increases, it's not like there's no reasoning provided.

The fact that it's bad doesn't make it impossible.