Must-Read: Mike Konczal: Student Loan Distress Goes Beyond Default
**Must-Read: I do not think it is an accident that “student debt activists… put forward people defrauded by the for-profit industry, the media prefers to talk about poetry majors with outrageous debt balances…” The Graham family conglomerate, remember, included both The Washington Post and Stanley Kaplan University–the second-worst for-profit student-loan grifter–before its break-up. I think that mattered…
: Student Loan Distress Goes Beyond Defaults: “Adam Looney and… Constantine Yannelis… [say] that there is no…
…general student loan default crisis. Instead there is a serious, though limited, problem concentrated in for-profit schools and, to a lesser extent, community colleges… made far worse by the Great Recession…. I agree…. Student loans defaults from for-profit schools are a genuine problem, and the media often fails to recognize this. As Astra Taylor notes, when student debt activists in the wake of Occupy put forward people defrauded by the for-profit industry, the media prefers to talk about poetry majors with outrageous debt balances….
For-profits were allowed to expand rapidly in the 2000s, and they’ve done a remarkable job in maximizing their profits…. The yearly net tuition increase for students attending a community college is up around $950 a year between 2000 and 2010. If the public policy is to shift costs from states to individual students, we shouldn’t be surprised when it goes perfectly to plan…. Poor communities have very large debt balances relative to income, forcing such distress that the results are large default rates. But there’s another issue, and that’s the life effects of student debt. And default rates won’t catch this…