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Student debt revolt
Some debt ridden students decide to not pay their student debt, legally, by buying unpaid student debt for pennies on the dollar and eliminating it.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/student-debt-revolt-begins
On Monday, Heiney and fourteen other people who took out loans to attend Corinthian announced that they are going on a “debt strike,” and will stop repaying their loans. They believe that they have both ethical and legal grounds for what appears to be an unprecedented collective action against the debt charged to students who attended Corinthian schools, and they are also making a broader statement about the trillion dollars of student debt owed throughout the country.
The debt strike is at once an unusual and obvious protest strategy in response to the Corinthian debt. The current and former Corinthian students participating in the strike, who call themselves the Corinthian Fifteen (Heiney is among their most outspoken members), are publicly refusing to pay both their federal and private debt. With respect to the federal debt, they plan to file legal documents with the Education Department and with the servicers of their federal loans that assert the little-known right Warren and her colleagues describe in their letter. The strike is the result of an alliance between the students and an offshoot of the Occupy movement known as the Debt Collective. Last year, activists affiliated with the Debt Collective became acquainted with Corinthian students through a campaign to buy and “abolish” large amounts of private student debt.
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/student-debt-revolt-begins
On Monday, Heiney and fourteen other people who took out loans to attend Corinthian announced that they are going on a “debt strike,” and will stop repaying their loans. They believe that they have both ethical and legal grounds for what appears to be an unprecedented collective action against the debt charged to students who attended Corinthian schools, and they are also making a broader statement about the trillion dollars of student debt owed throughout the country.
The debt strike is at once an unusual and obvious protest strategy in response to the Corinthian debt. The current and former Corinthian students participating in the strike, who call themselves the Corinthian Fifteen (Heiney is among their most outspoken members), are publicly refusing to pay both their federal and private debt. With respect to the federal debt, they plan to file legal documents with the Education Department and with the servicers of their federal loans that assert the little-known right Warren and her colleagues describe in their letter. The strike is the result of an alliance between the students and an offshoot of the Occupy movement known as the Debt Collective. Last year, activists affiliated with the Debt Collective became acquainted with Corinthian students through a campaign to buy and “abolish” large amounts of private student debt.
Replies
George Will
Nope, it's in a '75 Chysler Cordoba
Moved to Montana, gonna be a dental floss tycoon.
So if this idea spreads, can it relieve students of their overwhelming debt?
http://rollingjubilee.org/
Rolling Jubilee
Build the Debt Collective
We have raised $701,317.00
and abolished $31,982,455.76 of Debt.
A bailout of the people by the people
Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Our latest project The Debt Collective aims to build collective power to challenge the way we finance and access basic necessities such as housing, medical care and education. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
When you take out a federal student loan, you may not be required to make payments on that loan while you are in school, but you are required to repay the loan—including fees and interest—when you graduate or stop attending school at least half-time.
Before you can receive a federal student loan, you will be required to sign an MPN. The MPN is a legal document in which you promise to repay your loan and any accrued interest and fees to your lender. It explains the terms and conditions of your loan, for example, the loan repayment requirements, and the types of deferment and cancellation provisions available to you. The MPN also explains your rights and responsibilities as a borrower.
If you don’t make your loan payments, you risk going into default. Defaulting on your loan has serious consequences. Your school, the financial institution that made or owns your loan, your loan guarantor, and the federal government all can take action to recover the money you owe.
The consequences of default can be severe:
Sounds like a great idea to not repay student loans. :rolleyes:
Not as far as I am concerned. Education should be free and a right of citizenship, not a mechanism for corporations to profit from. The outrageous costs of education today are a function of the money system that should be abolished along with the money system itself.
Perhaps a huge collective debt strike by students would precipitate a new attitude toward education.
I think of it as a seller financed home sale. If the seller doesn't provide the home, do you have to pay the loan off?
Money from the government is a different thing.
Maybe this makes me a middle class rube. I don't know.
Rationalize it any way you like. Its stealing.
there's an argument to be made that government loan programs don't make college more expensive, not less.
Suggestion: stop spending trillions on illegal foreign wars and use that money to provide free education for all and rebuilding our decrepit infrastructure, that would eliminate what admittedly is civil disobedience stealing by debt ridden students.
No question that the cost of higher ed is being driven by easily available loan money. I don't dispute that. But my issue is less with the system viewed at 30,000 feet, and more looking at my own responsibility.
I feel like I live in a different country than the one I grew up in sometimes.
This process is called "factoring." It goes on all the time, so theoretically yes.
But in reality...Where's the money coming from? Does the government and/or private banks going to want to sell their loans? At what price would they be willing to do it?
Civil disobedience is the breaking of an unjust law followed by a willingness to accept the legal consequences. If you can somehow make the case that not paying off one's debts is somehow moral, that requiring people who borrow money to pay it back is oppressive or unjust, feel free. But don't expect me to buy into it.
I don't get your issue...Corinthian loans you $10,000 to go to Everest. Everest goes belly up and you don't complete your education, or you get a **** education unlike what you were promised. Morally, should you have to pay Corinthian back? Corinthian didn't provide the promised service.
See post # 14.
Should that be "make college more expensive, not less"?
Mike
Be kind. He went to Berkeley.
Huzzah!
Don't want $200k in loans? Don't go to private school.
Yeah. That's one bad sentence.
Is the education the contract or is it the loan?
You contracted for the loan. If you went to say, Berkeley, borrowed 200,000 and got a degree in Women's studies and then tried to get a job at some downtown white shoe insurance firm, and you didn't get one. . .do you have to pay the loan back?
Its a separate question. You spent the 200,000 right? I mean, what does it mean to get a **** education? Does that mean you were promised a first class education and when you didn't get one, you don't owe the money you borrowed?
Mike
No. I got the best **** education in Women's studies that a man can get!
So, you promise that you'll defend me. I can't pay you, but you say we'll work something out. You show up to my trial, hungover with ketchup all over your suit. You can't even stand up, and I go to jail. I should pay you because you defended me? Ef that.
Now if Joe offered to front me the money to pay for you, I'd still owe Joe. Of course, I'd try to sue your **** to pay Joe back, but win or lose my suit against you, I still owe Joe.
As noted, in my view, it depends on who made the loan and what you were promised.
This is one of the few things I know a little about.
You're not promised anything other than money to pay tuition. Government backed student loans have no completion restrictions. You just have to be registered as of your school's census day. You can drop all of your classes after that - the money is still yours (until you pay it to the college).
I guess I'm old fashioned that way. When you borrow money, you have an obligation to repay it.. You shouldn't be looking for ways to wiggle out of that commitment.
Mike
You're going to need to explain to me why I am morally obligated to pay Sherb in my example.
Maybe this is what you're not getting. Sherb didn't give me money. Corinthian didn't give those students money.
Those students were promised a decent education. Corinthian allowed these students to pay for this over time for servicecs rendered. Services weren't rendered as promised. Why should the students pay Corinthian for services that weren't rendered by Corinthian?
Edit. Need to read more.