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There Are 101 Americans With Over $1 Million In Student Loans
2018 May 26, 4:02pm 2,030 views 10 comments
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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!
It's Trump's fault!
9
lostand confused
2018 May 27, 11:52am
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
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.
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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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.)