The name of the newest student loan repayment program – Income Based Repayment (IBR) – is an Orwellian abuse of language. It implies that student loans will be repaid, but under IBR, – typical undergraduate borrowers will not repay their loans.

And changes to IBR that are going into effect soon mean they will repay even less. We know this courtesy of the awesome calculaContinue Reading »

America’s college completion agenda is more urgent than ever.  As Degreeless in Debt found, rising college prices are putting more students between a rock and a hard place: the things they do to avoid borrowing too much – like delaying enrollment, enrolling part-time, or working full-time – also make it much harder for them to complete their degrees.   While controlling costs and expandContinue Reading »

Recently, my colleague Anne and I wrote about our personal experiences with student loan repayment in order to underscore how confusing loan repayment is to navigate, even for a well-informed consumer. I thought I had the whole process figured out, but within a couple days of my post, I found myself running into more roadblocks. Interestingly enough, much of the difficulties I encountered in coContinue Reading »

Image: Daniel Goodman / Business Insider

Two weeks ago, my colleague Rachel described the “baffling, scary, frustrating, and stressful” process of figuring out how to repay her student loans. Like her, I took out loans to pay for my graduate education. Unlike her, I had never taken out a loan and knew absolutely nothing about the student loan program. But I fillContinue Reading »

I am a member of Generation Debt. The loans I took out for my bachelor’s and master’s combined equate to exactly $62,799 of federal loan debt.  Over my postsecondary career, I’ve taken out nine different federal loans and have consolidated five times. With many interest rates at historic lows, the congressionally mandated rates on my loans range from 3.75 to 7.9 percent.  And while I am ready, Continue Reading »

Along the lines of Kevin’s post below about financial literacy, NPR’s Morning Edition aired a story yesterday about a pastor who’s stuck in the never-ending cycle of default and repayment on his student loans. The pastor took out $15,000 in loans in 1984, owes nearly twice that amount now, and will still be repaying them in 2029. Since I’ve started doing work on student loans, I’ve heard many sContinue Reading »