The College Fix

Judah Belin writes at Minding the Campus:

If you’re worrying about your child’s student debt obligations, you might want to check up on your parents, too. The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that adults over 60 have the fastest growing student-loan debt and that their growing delinquencies are leading the Department of Education to garnish Social Security checks. Stung by the Great Recession, many older boomers went back to school in the hopes of burnishing their resumes. Unfortunately, employers’ reticence to hire older people who are out of work has led to continued unemployment and an average debt of $19,000 for this group.

The piece includes a poignant quote from an unemployed 65 year old, who laments that he “fully expect[s] to die with this [$70,000] debt.” Tragically, though he might die with his debt, his debt might not die with him. True, federally-backed loans are always discharged when then borrower dies. However, this is not the case with private loans: if family members had cosigned for the deceased borrower’s loan, they can be held liable for his unpaid debt. In other words, an unemployed 70 year old woman can be made responsible for her now-deceased husband’s loans…

Stop, people. Please, just stop.

Don’t over-borrow for degrees of little to no economic value. And especially don’t leave Grandma destitute in order to enrich the administrators of our nation’s bloated and increasingly-outmoded higher education system.

Garnishing Social Security checks to pay student loans? It’s time to wise up and put a stop to this madness.

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