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Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Student Loan Forgiveness for Public Service is a sham

99 percent of applicants have been rejected but more than that in a few.

I know I am going to hear it, you took the loans and you knew you would have to pay them back. That is true but when I took the loans things were a lot different. I am in year 18 as a teacher, when I started as a teacher an 18th year teacher was making an inflation adjusted 5 grand more than I am making now. 5 grand.  You extrapolate that out over the last ten years when teachers salaries started going backwards in the terms of actual dollars, that could be as much as 30 thousand or a huge dent in the student loans that at this rate I will never be able to pay back.

To share my tragic story, I borrowed 55, paid back over 20 and now owe 63. I just turned fifty, and this is a debt I will never ever repay, unless I received some loan forgiveness and as somebody who has spent 18 of the last 19, the last 13 straight in inner city classrooms working with disabled children, you would think I would be a prime candidate, sadly however it turns out nobody is a prime candidate.

From Forbes,

 According to data released by the U.S. Department of Education, only 96 borrowers have qualified for public service loan forgiveness as of June 30, 2018. Only 1% of applications for loan forgiveness have been approved.
A total of 28,081 unduplicated borrowers submitted a total of 32,601 applications for public service loan forgiveness. Some borrowers submit more than one application because the forgiveness is per loan, not per borrower.
Of these applications, 28,913 (89%) have been processed and 3,688 are still pending.
Now they will give you a lot of reasons for the applications being declined but why do they make it so difficult?

Teach for America teachers get close to ten grand for two years service, which is only ten grand more than I have gotten for 18 years and who wants to bet their hoops are a lot easier to get through.

The teaching profession is being beaten down not that I think they are the only ones that should be eligible, the police, firemen, the military, social workers, and many, many others, lets put them all in the program and make it a lot easier too. Hell we give so much to millionaires and billionaires its time the people doing the work making sure society doesn't go off the rails, get a piece of the pie.

Right now it's nothing but a sham.

3 comments:

  1. I totally concur!!! I have received heaps of junk mail and spam email that promises to connect me with student loan forgiveness. One challenge is that 120 on-time payments must be made in order to be eligible. So their message to us is that in order to qualify for student loan forgiveness, we must prove that we don't need student loan forgiveness. Miss one month? Out of luck. It's a giant Orwellian mess. Where is the forgiveness if one is so stingy with such forgiveness?

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  2. I got my Masters in Reading and regret each and every dime that I paid for it. Working for Duval County showed me that it doesn't mean much so my choices are to either move to a state that actually recognizes the fact that I went the extra mile or look for another career because my monthly payments for my loan would double if I applied for the loan forgiveness.

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  3. This is ridiculous. I just hope I am right and that the pendulum is swinging back to right itself. My husband teaches and every year he is expected to do more with less. I have masters in Education but I don't teach. Because I see how they treat teachers. No thanks.

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