Thread by @DrEricDing

My jaw dropped when I saw student loan rates… So I realized student loan payments due again—I just checked my #studentloan interest rate: 7.76%! And that’s a federal *subsidized* loan. Other friends with private students loans are now paying much more: ➡️15% interest! My god.😢

2) I attended college 2001-2004, and finished my doctorates in 2007. So my loan balances were 15-22 years old. I still once owed over $70k in debt. I can’t imagine how much kids today owe in loan debt 💸… we have honestly failed our kids when they carry 100k-300k in debts.

3) Credit card debt and student loan debt are not the same — you CANNOT compare them. CC debt can be discharged in bankruptcy. Student debt can NEVER EVER be discharged by bankruptcy. ➡️George W Bush WH and GOP Congress codified that “never discharge” of student debt into law.

4) “How the Bush Administration Pointlessly Screwed Over Student Borrowers”. So yeah… student loan debt was once dischargeable. But not after GW Bush came along.

By @JHWeissmann.

slate.com/business/2015/…

5) STUDENT WERE NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF BANKRUPTCY AT ALL—stop saying that: “Although the 2005 bankruptcy reform appears to have reduced rates of bankruptcy overall, the provisions making private student loan debt nondischargeable do not appear to have reduced the bankruptcy filing or default behavior of private student loan borrowers relative to other types of borrowers at meaningful levels,” the authors write. “Therefore, our analysis **does not reveal** debtor responses to the 2005 bankruptcy reform that would indicate widespread opportunistic behavior by private student loan borrowers before the policy change.”

6) I was fortunate that AP credits carried into college and grad early. And I did my degree programs at Harvard at record pace relatively quickly (save that story for another day)—& science programs have scholarships. But most others not so lucky. We need to fix student debt now.

7) “So the 2005 bankruptcy bill effectively made life a bit more miserable for hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to deal with an imaginary scourge. Worse yet, it may have encouraged the sort of risky private student lending that mirrored the subprime mortgage boom, with financial institutions shoveling debt at marginal students who were poorly positioned to ever pay it back but had no recourse in the bankruptcy courts.”

8) “during the Bush administration… Major private lenders claimed they needed Congress to stop their customers from filing opportunistic bankruptcies. Despite the notable lack of evidence that this was actually happening, lawmakers listened, and inserted a clause into the 2005 bankruptcy reform bill making private student loans nondischargeable unless someone could demonstrate they posed an “undue burden” on their finances—a vague standard which the courts have subsequently interpreted as an incredibly high bar.”

(So technically it can be discharged but Bush WH made it very very difficult).

9) Fortunately- “Biden Announces an Additional $9 Billion in Student Debt Relief for 125,000 Americans”

The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing it has approved:
•$5.2 billion in additional debt relief for 53,000 borrowers under Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs.
•Nearly $2.8 billion in new debt relief for nearly 51,000 borrowers through fixes to income-driven repayment. These are borrowers who made 20 years or more of payments but never got the relief they were entitled to.
•$1.2 billion for nearly 22,000 borrowers who have a total or permanent disability who have been identified and approved for discharge through a data match with the Social Security Administration.

10) The Department of Education is also releasing state-by-state totals of debt relief approved under the Biden-Harris Administration through fixes to IDR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Visit this link to see the state-by-state breakdown. ed.gov/news/press-rel…

11) The Biden-Harris Administration earlier this year launched the most affordable student loan repayment plan – SAVE – which makes many borrowers’ monthly payments as low as $0 and prevents balances from growing because of unpaid interest. The Administration secured the largest increase to Pell Grants in a decade, and finalized new rules to protect borrowers from career programs that leave graduates with unaffordable debts or insufficient earnings.