We Don’t Need No Education

Will SoFi Take Sallie Mae’s Best Customers?

"After the financial crisis proved the government would spend tens of trillions of dollars to keep banks from going belly up, you would think that nothing will kill them. But now the ineffable forces of Stanford-branded reinvention are going after their customers. Do investors in publicly traded lenders need to get out before it’s too late? A case in point is student lending giant, SLM – formed as the Student Loan Marketing Association — which is in the cross-hairs of a San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending powerhouse, Social Finance, Inc. (SoFi). As CEO Mike Cagney, a graduate of Stanford Business School, explained, SoFi is growing fast." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWill SoFi Take Sallie Mae’s Best Customers?

New York Fed Massively Disagrees With DOE’s Student Loan Default Data

"How high those delinquencies rates actually are, though, is an open question, which is turning into confusion on how to fix the problem. The most dire assessment is that one in three borrowers trying to repay student loans was late by 90 days or more at the end of 2012, according to The Federal Reserve Bank of New York in April. The U.S. Department of Education only publishes default statistics, and the official number of borrowers who default within two years of entering repayment is currently 10 percent. The default rate after three years is 14.7 percent. The default rates have been widely criticized for not giving an accurate picture of the number of student loan borrowers in distress." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNew York Fed Massively Disagrees With DOE’s Student Loan Default Data

Congrats grads! That’ll be $29,400

"The Class of 2012 graduated with an AVERAGE financial hangover of $29,400. In more expensive parts of the country like the Northeast, four-year degree students owed even more – almost $34,000. We’re not just talking about a handful of students, either. More than 7 in 10 graduates had at least some debt when they got their degrees. The growth in debt is far outpacing the growth in income, too, rising at a rate of about 6 percent per year over the past half-decade. All told, student loan debt now totals around $1.1 TRILLION. That’s almost quadruple the level of a decade earlier. It’s now the single biggest category of consumer debt outside of home mortgages." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCongrats grads! That’ll be $29,400

Bill Bonner: College is a con

"Gradually, making things in the US became less and less profitable. So, if you wanted to earn a good salary you had to go somewhere else. Finance, administration, accounting, law, education, or health care. The good jobs in these industries required college. That’s why you’re here. But wait, there’s more to the story. Unlimited credit also made it easier to support zombies and parasites. Government connived with industry to create quasi-monopolies, cartels, subsidies, guarantees and price supports. And the feds could add bureaucracy, controls, rules and regulations. For example, the education industry added few teachers, but lots of ‘educators’ and policy coordinators." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBill Bonner: College is a con

ObamaLoans Up by Almost 3 to 1

"The official goal of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act was to make college more affordable. How? By making loans to students. The effect has been to lure millions of students into long-term debt for the purchase of liberal arts degrees that do not lead to high-income jobs. ObamaLoans took loan-making decisions away from banks and placed this into the hands of federal employees at the Department of Education — bureaucrats with job tenure. The amount of student debt owed to the U.S. government in 2009 was $120 billion. Today, it is $675 billion. In July 2010, ObamaCare was passed. That’s when the loans began to multiply." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObamaLoans Up by Almost 3 to 1

Students Banned from Passing Out Constitutions on Constitution Day

"Modesto Junior College in California told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013—Constitution Day. Captured on video, college police and administrators demanded that Robert Van Tuinen stop passing out Constitution pamphlets and told him that he would only be allowed to pass them out in the college's tiny free speech zone, and only after scheduling it several days or weeks ahead of time." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingStudents Banned from Passing Out Constitutions on Constitution Day

Principal, sheriff’s deputy sued after arresting student having seizure

"A vice principal at an Upper Kanawha Valley high school and a sheriff’s deputy assigned to it are accused of falsely imprisoning and arresting a special education student. Andrew Johnson, vice principal at Riverside High School, and Cpl. Richard Lane are named as co-defendants in civil rights suit filed by Betsy Frame. In her suit, filed Sept. 10 in Kanawha Circuit Court, Frame, 41 and a Belle resident, alleges Johnson and Lane illegally detained and arrested her daughter nearly two years ago when they mistook her reaction to waking up from a seizure-induced nap as an act of aggression." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPrincipal, sheriff’s deputy sued after arresting student having seizure

Are Government Schools a Form of Child Abuse?

"Two seventh-grade students in Virginia Beach, Va., were handed long-term suspensions Tuesday that will last until the end of the school year for playing with an airsoft gun in one of their front yards while waiting for the school bus. WAVY-TV reports that 13-year-old Khalid Caraballo and Aidan Clark will face an additional hearing in January to determine if they will be expelled for 'possession, handling and use of a firearm' because the guns were fired at two others playing in Caraballo’s yard. The school’s so-called 'zero-tolerance' policy on guns extends to private property, according to the report." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAre Government Schools a Form of Child Abuse?

Gun gesture leads to suspension for Calvert sixth-grader

"A sixth-grader in Calvert County was suspended for forming his hand into a gun on his bus ride to school, an incident that adds to a string of recent high-profile cases involving punishments for children who gesture with imaginary weapons. Carin Read, mother of the 11-year-old student at Mill Creek Middle School in Lusby, filed an appeal of the suspension late last week, after a principal denied her request to remove the alleged infraction from her son’s school records. The boy had already served a day-long in-school suspension, and Read argued that he should not have a permanent record over the matter." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGun gesture leads to suspension for Calvert sixth-grader

Charges dropped against parent arrested for speaking against Common Core

"The Baltimore County state's attorney's office dropped assault charges Monday against Robert Small, who had been led out of the Thursday night meeting in Towson by an off-duty police officer. Small interrupted education officials, complaining that new standards were aimed at sending children to community colleges. 'It was clear that Mr. Small violated the rules of the meeting and disrupted the meeting. It was also clear that the officer acted appropriately and did have probable cause to make an arrest on both charges,' the state's attorney's office said in a statement. A YouTube video of him being escorted out of the room by the police officer has been viewed more than 500,000 times." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCharges dropped against parent arrested for speaking against Common Core