marketwatch

Borrowers who are in default on their student loan can get out of default in two main ways: through consolidating their debt into a new loan that they repay or to rehabilitate the loan, involves making nine on time payments in a period of 10 months. These payments can be tied to your income.

As for student loan lawyers, a lot of times if you contact your local bar association, they have recommendations for attorneys that work on student debt. In addition, Legal Aid and other organizations that serve low-income clients often work on student loan issues.

This obviously depends on the country, but I’ll highlight a few differences. In many European countries (perhaps most famously Germany), the government subsidizes college at levels that are much higher than in the U.S., allowing students to go for free or at a very low cost. In these countries, the college experience maybe a bit more bare bones than what we’re used to here.

Other countries use a student loan system like the U.S., but it can have different features. For example, in Australia, borrowers pay back their loans as a percentage of their income that’s automatically deducted from their wages, like a payroll tax here.

This is an interesting idea and there has been lots of controversy over the ways universities use endowments, particularly after the pandemic when students were sent home, but tuition still stayed the same.

In the past, some lawmakers have proposed taxing university endowments differently to encourage schools to spend them in ways that support students or lower tuition.

As discussed in the previous question, the question of fairness to those who have already paid off their loans is probably one of the more thornier issues in the student debt cancellation debate. Polling indicates that there’s support for the idea of cancelling student debt even among some who already paid off their loans. But of course there’s a wide range of views on this issue and the question of fairness of a given policy can be a sticky and subjective one. I’d point you to the article I included in the above reply for a sense of how advocates and critics of student debt cancellation are thinking about this question!

Hi!

Excited to get started! Right now the federal government does cap the amount undergraduates can borrow. The limits depend on a few things, including your year in school and whether you are a dependent student -- essentially lived in your parents’ household right before entering college, -- or an independent student. Even if students borrow up to the limit -- at $31,000 for dependent students and $57,500 for independent students -- they still may not be able to pay for a four-year degree (for example, the College Board found that the average annual tuition price at a four-year public college was $10,560 for the 2019-2020 academic year, or ~$42,000 for a four year degree).

Some have wondered whether the PLUS program, which allows parents and graduate students to borrow up to a program’s cost of attendance, has fueled a major uptick in student debt. The Trump administration proposed limits on these loans, but some consumer advocates have worried that capping them would force students to take on private loans, which can have fewer protections than federal.

One big point of concern for advocates and borrowers has actually been the interest on the debt, -- which in some cases can be higher than mortgages or other types of consumer loans and can’t be refinanced through the government, -- and how quickly it can accrue for borrowers struggling to afford minimum payments.