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There Are 101 Americans With Over $1 Million In Student Loans


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2018 May 26, 4:02pm   1,955 views  10 comments

by MisterLefty   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

Escalating tuition and easy credit have yielded a class of student-loan borrowers with spectacular debt they may never pay back

DRAPER, Utah—Mike Meru, a 37-year-old orthodontist, made a big investment in his education. As of Thursday, he owed $1,060,945.42 in student loans.
Mr. Meru pays only $1,589.97 a month—not enough to cover the interest, so his debt from seven years at the University of Southern California grows by $130 a day. In two decades, his loan balance will be $2 million.

He and his wife, Melissa, have become numb to the burden, focused instead on raising their two daughters. “If you thought about it every single day,” Mrs. Meru said, “you’d have a mental breakdown.”

Due to escalating tuition and easy credit, the U.S. has 101 people who owe at least $1 million in federal student loans, according to the Education Department. Five years ago, 14 people owed that much.
More could join that group. While the typical student borrower owes $17,000, the number of those who owe at least $100,000 has risen to around 2.5 million, nearly 6% of the borrowing pool, Education Department data show.

For graduate-school students especially, there is little incentive for universities to help put the brakes on big borrowing. The government essentially allows grad students to borrow any amount to cover tuition and living costs, with few guardrails on how the final sum will be repaid.
More than a third of borrowers from one of the government’s main graduate school lending programs have enrolled in some form of federal loan-forgiveness plan.

“These are choices. We’re not coercing,” said Avishai Sadan, dean of USC’s Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry, where Mr. Meru went to school and one of the most expensive in the U.S. “You know exactly what you’re getting into.”

Even the best planners might not have anticipated the sharp increases in tuition and student-loan interest rates from 2005 to 2012, Mr. Meru’s tenure as a student. While the Federal Reserve was reducing interest rates to near zero to combat the recession, rates for grad students were as high as 8.5%.

Dental school is the costliest higher-education program in the U.S. Private nonprofit schools during the 2015-2016 school year charged an average of $71,820 a year, the Urban Institute found. The USC program now costs $91,000 a year, and $137,000 when living expenses are included.

For Mr. Meru, tuition at USC first went up during his second year. Interest rates followed. Halfway through dental school, he said, he started to worry about the soaring cost of his education.

“I’m sitting here saying, ‘Holy crap! Should I really be doing this?’ ” Mr. Meru recalled. “ ‘Should I drop out?’ ”
Mrs. Meru, 35, said she and her husband decided it was too late to turn back. If he quit or transferred to a cheaper school, he still owed for the loans he had already taken.
Mr. Meru’s financial records—provided to The Wall Street Journal—show he borrowed $601,506 to attend USC—a debt swelled to more than $1 million by fees and interest.

http://archive.is/50SEV#selection-787.0-1198.0

(Texas A&M/Baylor dental school in-state tuition: $15,300.)

Comments 1 - 10 of 10        Search these comments

1   HeadSet   2018 May 26, 6:13pm  

The USC program now costs $91,000 a year, and $137,000 when living expenses are included.

Take away the ridiculously easy credit student loans and these prices would fall like rocks.
2   RWSGFY   2018 May 26, 6:45pm  

MisterLefty says
“I’m sitting here saying, ‘Holy crap! Should I really be doing this?’ ” Mr. Meru recalled. “ ‘Should I drop out?’ ”
Mrs. Meru, 35, said she and her husband decided it was too late to turn back. If he quit or transferred to a cheaper school, he still owed for the loans he had already taken.


The first law of holes: "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging".
3   Malcolm   2018 May 26, 9:00pm  

People glamorize being doctors and lawyers. Those people spend their whole lives as slaves. Terrible, because it makes them act unethically just to get by.
4   RC2006   2018 May 27, 7:20am  

1m, I think I would just take PE classes at JC for life and just keep loans in deferment till I die.
5   theoakman   2018 May 27, 7:32am  

TrumpingTits says
And old saying:

If you owed $100,000 to the bank and cannot pay, then you are in trouble.

If you owed $100,000,000,000 to the bank and cannot pay, then the bank is in trouble.


The difference is, they can't default on these loans. The bank is making out like a bandit here.
6   Goran_K   2018 May 27, 7:43am  

lol $1 million to become an orthodontist. He probably votes Democrat too.
7   Tenpoundbass   2018 May 27, 7:56am  

You want me to cry for Ivy League Graduates?
We're talking about 101 Skull and Bones members, who when they get a gig it will be a life long Job, making 10's of millions a week.

I'm not a big enough putz to cry over that shit.
8   MisterLefty   2018 May 27, 8:00am  

Dude chose USC, a private school, for his own reasons. Likely was accepted into other programs. Decided to start a family while in school. Wife seems to not have a career.

It's Trump's fault!
9   lostand confused   2018 May 27, 11:52am  

He could have become transgender and go on welfare and be on welfare for life and live the same lifestyle and never work a day in CA. Plus if he self identifies as an illegal immigrant, he becomes eligible for free healthcare, can commit any crime and never be convicted.
10   Ceffer   2018 May 27, 1:15pm  

I knew a guy who had student loans he just never paid back or even tried to pay back into middle age, to the tune of cumulative $350K. He had nasty collection dudes showing up and harassing him at home, telephone and office constantly.

He eventually hired a law firm to re-negotiate and paid back something like 20 cents on the dollar. He was a general debt turd, and part of the ploy was he was going to declare bankruptcy, anyway, in a year or so, so the creditor should take whatever. Being a hard core dead beat can eventually wear down the creditors, who just want to get the bad loan off the books.

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