But General Turgidson (played by George C. Scott) is not concerned. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops."
Betsy DeVos is our modern day General Turgidson. The student loan program is shattering the lives of about 20 million Americans. But in DeVos' mind, that's a small price to pay for a program that enriches her buddies in the for-profit college industry.
And so without further ado, I will summarize the Department of Education's most recent report on the student-loan debacle.
Income-Driven Repayment Plans. As DOE reports, more and more distressed student borrowers are being herded into income-driven repayment plans (IDRPs). As of June, 7.1 million people are enrolled in IDRPs, a 20 percent increase from just a year ago.
Student borrowers in IDRPs are America's new serfs. They pay a percentage of their income for 20 or 25 years to repay the student loans they took on to attend some raggedy-ass college that didn't prepare them for a job.
Of course, IDRP monthly payments are generally low. In fact, IDRP participants who live below the poverty line make monthly payments of zero. But virtually everyone in these plans--7.1 million suckers--will die without ever paying back their loans. In fact, for most of them, their loan balances are going up with each passing month due to unpaid accruing interest.
Borrower Defense to Repayment. According to DOE, 166,000 student borrowers filed so-called "borrower defense" claims. These claimants are seeking loan forgiveness on the grounds they were defrauded by the colleges they attended. Thousands of these claims were filed by people who attended just two for-profit institutions that went bankrupt: Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech.
As of June 30, two thirds of these claims are still pending, and only 80 percent of the processed claims were approved. Meanwhile, borrowers who have pending claims are still obligated to make their monthly loan payments.
Delinquency Rates. Delinquency rates are down slightly, DOE assures us, but almost a quarter million borrowers defaulted on their student loans during the third quarter of this year. That's 2755 people going into default every day. A high percentage of these defaulters attended for-profit colleges. But apparently those casualties are acceptable to Betsy DeVos.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
Hundreds of thousands of student debtors have taken jobs in the public sector in belief that their student loans would be forgiven after 10 years under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF). It now seems they were deluded.
PSLF was enacted by Congress in October 2007, so the first people entitled to PSLF relief became eligible in October 2017. So far, 28,000 people have applied for PSLF relief, but only 300 claims have been approved and only 96 people have actually had their loans forgiven!
If Betsy DeVos and her gang of former for-profit-college hacks continue to refuse to implement PSLF in good faith, hundreds of thousands of college borrowers who relied on PSLF will suffer incalculable hardship. For example, thousands of people have graduated from third- and fourth-tier law schools with six-figure debt, and they can't find law jobs in the private sector that pay enough to service their student-loan obligations. As Paul Campos pointed out in his book Don't Go to Law School (Unless), PSLF is these people's only viable option for paying off their law-school loans.
Conclusion: The Student Loan Program is in Fine Shape: "10 to 20 Million Casualties, Tops!"
DOE's own data shows us that the federal student loan program is a disaster: high default rates, income-driven repayment plans that don't allow people to pay off their loans, borrower-defense rules that DOE administers incompetently, and a PSLF program that DOE refuses to implement in good faith. Meanwhile, the for-profit gang is getting rich.
Literally, there are at least 20 million casualties. Betsy DeVos must think 20 million casualties is acceptable, but I do not. Why don't our politicians--Republicans and Democrats-- begin to behave like grownups and impeach Betsy DeVos, who is running DOE like a character in Dr. Strangelove.
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| 10 to 20 million casualties--tops! |
