Fall behind on your student loan payments, lose your job.
Few people realize that the loans they take out to pay for their education could eventually derail their careers. But in 19 states, government agencies can seize state-issued professional licenses from residents who default on their educational debts. Another state, South Dakota, suspends driver’s licenses, making it nearly impossible for people to get to work.
As debt levels rise, creditors are taking increasingly tough actions to chase people who fall behind on student loans. Going after professional licenses stands out as especially punitive.
Firefighters, nurses, teachers, lawyers, massage therapists, barbers, psychologists and real estate brokers have all had their credentials suspended or revoked.
[States are: Washington State, California, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia]
There are a lot of anxious graduate students at universities around the country right now.
That’s because to help pay for more than $1 trillion in tax cuts for U.S. corporations, the House Republican tax plan would raise taxes on grad students in a very big way. These students make very little money to begin with. And many would have to pay about half of their modest student stipends in taxes.
“The past week this is what I’ve been talking about with other graduate students, with classmates. I think we’re all shocked,” says Tamar Oostrom. She’s in her third year of getting her Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She and her classmates have been crunching the numbers. “This bill would increase our tax by 300 or 400 percent. I think it’s absolutely crazy,” Oostrom says.
As the majority of research is conducted in universities by grad students, research would take a major hit, too.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has made another sweeping change to the student loan system that consumer advocates claim favors student loan collectors over the American people repaying those loans.
There are currently nine student loan servicers handling these accounts for the federal government.
Late Friday afternoon, DeVos announced the upcoming changes via an amendment [PDF] to the contracting process, which will see the student loan servicing contract awarded to just one of the following: Navient (the servicer spun off from Sallie Mae), GreatNet, or the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA).
Whichever company ultimately receives the contract will be required to build a platform to collect on and service an estimated 32 million federal direct student loans.
Do you see the picture being painted? It is becoming much, much harder to pay off student loans. It is becoming much, much harder to have student loans forgiven. If you don’t pay off your student loans, you can become jobless and therefore homeless. In some places, you can even lose your drivers licence. This would make it harder to pay off student loans and will result in you having a harder time not being homeless or living in poverty. There will be less grad students, less students pursuing higher education in general, because of how big of a financial burden there is. There will be less scientific research being done, and science will take a hit. There will be less educated in this country, and wealthy individuals will be more likely to be educated.
Meanwhile, billionaires will become richer. Income inequality will become more prominent.
This is a class war against the unemployed, the unable to work, the students, the homeless, and those who aren’t born into rich families.
30, She/her. Used to be DreamingPagan a long time back. Multi-fandom, mostly Black Sails these days but with a lot of Tolkien and funny things interspersed. Complete language and history nerd - be warned. I write fic and occasionally I talk about ships.
View all posts by flintsredhair
Meg's Mumbles 