Student starts website to plead for help in paying overwhelming student loan debt: $200,000

[Liberal_in_LA]

Student starts website to plead for help in paying overwhelming student loan debt: $200,000


A recent college graduate has come up with a student loan debt solution: Pleading for help online.

Northeastern University grad Kelli Space, 23, owes $200,000. The New Jersey resident has set up a website entitled TwoHundredThou.com on which she tells her story and asks visitors to make a payment, any payment, to help bail her out.

"Monthly payments just for the private loans are currently $891 until Nov 2011 when they increase to $1600 per month for the following 20 years," she wrote in an effort to elicit funds.

But the response has been lukewarm, to say the least.

To date, she's received $1,811.28 in donations and still owes $198,188.72, according to her website.

Hers is a story familiar to millions of debt-laden college grads.

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Unlike a lot of recent college grads, though, she's lucky enough to have a fulltime job. She is office manager for an Internet company in Manhattan, and lives in New Jersey with her parents

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/11/25/2010-11-25_student_starts_website_to_plead_for_help_in_paying_overwhelming_student_loan_deb.html#ixzz16XAVLG8w

[Iris]

1. That seems excessive.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. Says she fully funded college with loans, probably 50K yr times 4

[cutlassmama]

2. College is an investment in her future. If she's still living at home and has

a job she's much better off then most in this country right now.

[David__77]

3. I rolled my eyes when I read the headline.

Does that make me a bad person?

[rug]

5. Here's an interview with her.

http://crushable.com/other-stuff/interview-how-kelli-space-got-200000-of-college-debt/

[Honeycombe8]

6. This country's failure to fund higher education is holding our country back.

Other industrialized countries help fund higher education for those who can get decent grades, at least. The thinking is that rising waters raise all boats; it's good for the country. It creates a pool of people able to compete in the global market for those highly technical or science or math jobs that other countries are getting (and we are outsourcing or in-sourcing).

If you're really poor, you can get aid up to a point. If your grades are excellent, you can compete for scholarships, but they don't pay for everything, and not everyone can win those, since there's a limit.

So the country now has an educated person, who is out now and working full time, competing with India and China and other countries for jobs that require advanced degrees. And our country didn't think it was worth investing in that.

No wonder we're losing the global jobs war.

[rakeeb]

7. maybe she should have limited those loans to just the $80k

for four years of tuition, and maybe a job to pay rent, move home during summers to save more money...
borrowing $30k a year just to comfortably cover rent, cell bill and beer and not have to work doesn't sound like the responsible choice.

[SheilaT]

8. So where was it she went to

school that it cost her fifty grand a year to attend? Were there absolutely no community colleges or public universities that would accept her? I'm sorry, but anyone who borrows that massively to attend school is an idiot. There are low-cost alternatives. Make use of them.

I'm also appalled that it was even possible to borrow so much money.

[Sheepshank]

9. "'m also appalled that it was even possible to borrow so much money."

what she said!!!

This is worse than the credit card companies. She should pay more than the minimum amount and just deal with her choice to wrack up the bill.

[Posteritatis]

17. The school's named even before the student is in the article. (nt)

[SoCalDem]

10. The IRS will be watching her.. n/t

[Liberal_in_LA]

34. I thought the same

[liberal N proud]

11. There is income leveling available for students

It allows them to base their payment on their income.

And for so many that is very low because they are not able to find a job in the field in which they started school 4 - 5 years ago before the economy when to shit.

Too much, depends on what she financed and what she was going to school for.

[notesdev]

12. what she went to school for

From one of the linked articles:

"In this case, Kelli has a sociology degree, and may want to go into non-profit work"

:wtf:

Does a sociology major make enough over the course of an entire career to pay off a starting debt of $200k? At a $30k salary, she'd end up paying (with interest) over a dozen years of gross income paying this off. Where does she find that money after paying basic survival expenses?

She may want to pursue the possibility that her loan was fraudulent, that for her career it can't be paid off and the lender had to know that.

[pipoman]

14. If the sociology degree

actually can apply their education and not use it to publish useless studies. Proper application in the field of sales, marketing, merchandising, advertising, or any other skilled profession which an understanding of human behavior is helpful or essential could easily pay enough to pay off such a debt. "nonprofit" likely means pro bono in this context...good intentions and all that..entitlement mentality run amok.

[liberal N proud]

19. Why did a sociology degree cost $200K

[Posteritatis]

21. Because attending the school costs $49.5K a year. (nt)

[liberal N proud]

25. Just put one kid through a private school and it didn't cost $200K

$50K a year for school, you should get a law degree or MD, which takes more than 4 years. A sociology degree costing $50K/year. Someone wasn't paying attention.

[notesdev]

27. yeah that's what I said!

On what planet does it cost $50k/year to teach sociology? We're talking about a discipline which uses almost no equipment whatsoever, and for which there is no lack of qualified teachers. If this can't be taught for $5k/student/year or lower, there's a serious problem with how things are being done.

[Liberal_in_LA]

33. about 10 universities have passed the 50K per year mark. 4 years will cost you 200K

for a BA

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

28. welcome to my (old) world...

I used to work on consumer bankruptcies, once you skim off the medical debts and divorces people like this - the fucking idiots - were well represented. While student loans are not typically dischargeable in a bankruptcy they were no small part of what had brought them there. Basically almost every single kid goes to university believing their degree will get them a six figure salary before their thirty so what is a mortgage sized debt?

This chick won't even be able to keep up with paying only the interest in a few years on her likely salary.

[Iris]

29. For private loans? Because it sounds like that's what she has.

These are not federal loans.

[Incitatus]

13. $200K for college and she's not a doctor?

What degree did she get that she thought was worth 200k?

[AlabamaLibrul]

15. (Pretending I didn't say anything) n/t

[Posteritatis]

16. Northeastern is just shy of $49.5K/yr. (nt)

[AlabamaLibrul]

18. Really? JEEZ! I had a friend who went there back when. I stand corrected in absolute disgust. n/t

[Posteritatis]

20. Yeah; the book fees would probably put it over the $50K line by a hair

American private school tuitions terrify me. I went to an "expensive" Canadian school for my BA and another top-tier one for my MA, and every dollar I put into both combined is less than one year there. Gah. I mean, I'm open to the idea that the place actually is an excellent school, but I can't wrap my head around those kinds of prices.

[KittyWampus]

22. Comment on the news page "Hope she knows this is taxable", regarding the money she's gotten

in online donations.

Made me laugh.

[superduperfarleft]

23. It's not just the tuition, but many students have to use loan money to pay rent, utilities, etc.

While I do think that far too many people go to college who don't belong there (I wish there was more emphasis on technical/vocational schools as opposed to handing out sociology degrees to everyone who asks), it's unfortunate that many qualified students have to pass on higher education simply because of the cost.

One of the things that drew me and many others to Dean's campaign in 2004 was that he was actively addressing student loan costs. There's a whole voting bloc there that's pretty much ignored by everyone else.

[shanti]

24. unfortunately

there are many students in college now simply because there are NO JOBS! many are getting the financial aid not necessarily for the schooling, but for the money to live on. they either finish their studies with a worthless degree and lots of debt, or end up dropping out (with a lot of debt). either way, they're screwed. :(

[Lorien]

26. Yep, I seem to have many of them in my classes. For profit universities screw students

and instructors alike. The classes I teach bring the college about 100k per semester, but they only pay me 18k per so that's a petty hefty profit even after administrative costs.

[tkmorris]

30. 18K? Seriously? The janitor should make more than that

[Trekologer]

31. It is hard for me to feel sorry for her

I, too, grew up in New Jersey. And while I applied to several schools (private and public), I ended up attending Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. While students in other states tend to want to go to their state's university, those in NJ tend to stick their nose up to Rutgers and end up going out of state to a school and end up paying much more (for some reason Delaware seems to be a favorite). If one can afford that and/or get scholarships, fine. But it just doesn't make sense to take out 200k or more in loans for merely undergraduate.

New Jersey even has a program where, if a NJ resident doesn't get into Rutgers, they if they go to a county college for 2 years and earn their associates' degree with a minimum GPA and certain courses, they are guaranteed admission to Rutgers to complete their bachelor's degree.

[Quantess]

32. "But the response has been lukewarm, to say the least."

Yeah, that's because most of us have our own bills to pay. You don't rack up 200,000 student loan debt without being aware of it. Reality has got to set in somewhere. I have student loan debt too, but I would never, ever, consider accumulating that much student loan debt.

It's just not a compelling charity case, such as an uninsured person with brain cancer, or something.

Sorry lady. You're screwed!