Goodbye Student Debt, So Long America!

There are sayings like, “Living under a rock,” or “Have you been living in a cave?” to make the point that maybe you’re oblivious to recent news or events. Sadly, and kind of weirdly, those sayings could have a new meaning: Escaping student debt.

According to recent lending data published by CU Times, Bloomberg News and other news sites concerning lending trends, student loans have seen almost 157% in cumulative growth over the last 11 years. To put that into perspective, auto loan debt has grown 52% in the same time frame, while mortgage and credit card debt oddly fell 1%.

To zoom in a bit more on those student loan numbers, according to reports by NBC News, “outstanding student debt in the U.S. has tripled over the last decade and is projected to swell to $2 trillion by 2022. Average debt at graduation is currently around $30,000, up from an inflation-adjusted $16,000 in the early 1990s.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education, half of the student loan borrowers have not paid $1 toward their debt’s principal after five years into repayment.

During my weekly look at student debt news, I found a couple of online/social media groups that absolutely sucked me in like a trashy novel.

The posts on the Facebook group “Student Loan Justice” did not give me a lot of hope and sunshine feelings for what’s ahead.

One post read (typos included), “My loan is now 75% interest. It grows by about $15,000 a quarter. I cannot afford the $1,500 a month IBR. No one is listening on how unfair the interest in alone is.”

And this leads me back to the new meanings of the old rock/cave sayings.

According to a story reported by CNBC, there’s a 29-year-old college graduate, Chad Haag, who has a student loan balance of roughly $20,000 from the University of Northern Colorado. He graduated, couldn’t find a job that paid enough to live and therefore, couldn’t afford the student loan payments.

At first, he considered living in a cave in the Rocky Mountains to escape the debt and interest piling up. He told the news agency that he knows a friend who’s doing exactly that.

Instead, Haag left Colorado and is currently living in a remote village in India for $50 a month.

After reportedly taking on several minimum wage jobs in Colorado, he realized just how financially messed up he was.

According to the story, Haag said, “I have a higher standard of living in a Third World country than I would in America, because of my student loans.”

Back in this country, I have a son. Actually, I have two, but my oldest son graduated high school, got into a university and left home to take on his freshman year with the help of student loans.

After his first year and moving back home for the summer, he bluntly said to me, “Dad, I’m not going back.” We talked for a bit about why and it really came down to this statement for him: “I already have $7,000 in student loans and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or how I’d pay back tens-of-thousands more by the end of school.”

As a parent, you support your kids as best you can financially and emotionally, and you provide a lot of food … a lot. As a college graduate in massive student loan debt myself, I could completely understand and support his decision.

For now, he’s going to work as a waiter and applying to get an entry-level job at a credit union so he can get some kind of financial and business experience.

Out of all my son’s 12 close high school friends who all left to go to college, only one returned for their sophomore year. The rest have dropped out because of one reason: The cost. All of them who are back home are either doing what my son is doing or going to the local community college while working a part-time job.

Like the unnamed guy who’s living in a cave and Haag who literally left the country, my son and his friends almost immediately felt the financial weight of what student loans can do to a person.

Is college really worth it? I don’t know if that’s the right question, because I do think education is so critical to our future whether it’s for a career or just to improve ourselves as humans.

There’s a Reddit called r/legaladvice I stumbled into, where I found more examples of college graduates basically hiding and, some might say, running from their student debts.

One user posted, “My brother graduated from law school in 2008 with hundreds of thousands of debt and couldn’t find a job. He left the country and taught English in Asia, then married French girl, and now they both live in Corsica or some kind of island. I don’t actually know where he lives.”

Pop over to the r/studentloandefaulters Reddit and you can feel the financial panic of college graduates. One person said they’ve lost their professional licenses because they’ve defaulted on their student loans. Others have been evicted, lost their cars or homes, and most appear to be living with family members at least temporarily.

What is the value of going to college? According to the Federal Reserve’s 2016 data, it’s estimated that the average millennial with student debt had 75% less net worth than their debt-free peers.

So, the value of going to college and graduating with the help of student loans is that you’re now worth -75% of your wealthier classmates who are able to go to school without the financial worry. Awesome.

This is a social and economic disaster.

And if you or your college grad kids are thinking about leaving the country as many others have done to escape their student loan debt, as of last year, the IRS has the power to revoke your passport for unpaid taxes and “seriously delinquent debt.”

Haag is thankful he did what he did, saying this, “I’ve put America behind me.”

Michael Ogden is executive editor for CU Times. He can be reached at mogden@cutimes.com.