Letters: Time to write off college loans?
Regarding letter of Oct. 10 about student loans, I think the writer misses the point ["Wall Street and protesters' messages"]. It's not that college graduates don't want to repay their loans, it's the obscene profits the banks make from them.
As a cosigner of my children's student loans, I have personal experience. Guaranteed student loan interest rates run between 8 percent and 9 percent; non-guaranteed loan rates are in the double digits. Meanwhile, the same company writing the loans will offer me a rate of return on money market investments of 1 percent. With those profit margins, anyone but stockholders would be angry.
Bruce Schoenberg, Smithtown
I was raised by hardworking, blue-collar parents. My father was a New York City police officer, and my mother worked in a doctor's office. They told me not to make the same mistakes they did. They told me to get my education no matter the cost because that would be my ticket out of the constant pressure of living paycheck to paycheck that was their way of life.
So, I listened. I did the right thing. I went to school, got a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, and then even a second master's degree, all without financial help from the government. My parents' modest pretax income was deemed too high to allow me financial assistance.
I took out loans because we were told that if we worked hard, got our education and began a career, that we would live better lives than our parents. That is now the American dream deferred.
I am among the millions of young Americans who might never know the sense of pride in buying my own home, owning my own car or starting my own business. I am crippled by my student-loan debt.
It is time for a student-loan forgiveness plan as a form of economic stimulus to free future generations of potential home buyers, car owners and consumers to pursue the dreams we were promised, and let us see our American dream to fruition.
Carly Jade Everhart, Kew Gardens
I'm a hardworking woman in my early 50s with more than $165,000 in student loans, most of it ballooned from the compounded interest. At the rate of repayment -- I have consolidated my loans and am on an income-contingent repayment plan -- I won't get out from under until I'm well into my late 70s.
I have very little in the way of retirement savings. Like many others who returned to school to learn and further our chances of gainful employment, I am stuck on the repayment treadmill. I think we deserve a break. If not the entire amount, at least the compounded interest could be forgiven and the remaining debt frozen, interest free.
Arleen Lane, Manhattan
Regarding your Oct. 10 letter, the students do not want anyone else to pay off their student loans. All they want is a decent job so they can pay back the loans.
They have worked to get a college degree, and what good does it do them? Did anyone see the pictures on TV of the people who work on Wall Street drinking Champagne while watching the protesters? Talk about arrogance!
MaryAnn Uddo, Ronkonkoma
