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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If students can only take out $6k in loans a year why are all of these people walking around with $100k in student debt? I don't understand where they're getting this money. [/quote]

Here's just one example:

[quote]Debbie Baker
I returned to college in 1996 to fulfill my dream of becoming a public school teacher.

At the time, Oklahoma offered financial assistance to teachers but the program ended when I was halfway through my studies.  My husband and I decided to continue with my studies since I was halfway through my four year-plus degree.

We decided to take out student loans to finish the degree required for my teaching certificate and planned on repaying the debt within 10 years of graduation.  Even with two small children at home, we lived modestly and knew we would be able to repay the debt.

Having previously worked in the mortgage loan industry, I had ample information regarding lending and each year I would ask my financial aid office what my monthly payment would be upon graduation. Each time I was told “about $50 per loan”.

I assumed that my total monthly payment would be $200, but upon graduation I discovered that the figure was for each loan (subsidized and unsubsidized). That meant my payment was close to $400. After receiving my teaching certificate, I immediately went to work in the Oklahoma public school system with a beginning salary of just over $25,000.

That’s when the nightmare began, soon after my 1999 college graduation, when I graduated with approximately $35,000 in student loan debt.

Less than 90 days after graduation, I received a letter from Sallie Mae saying my loan was being placed in forbearance, as I still didn’t have a teaching job.

I was told by my loan administrators that I had “no options” for lower loan payments and that I could not make partial payments. By 2004, I contacted Sallie Mae again and told them, in no uncertain terms, that I needed to start paying my loan off. They agreed to a consolidation loan through the Federal Family Educated Loan Program (FFELP).

By that point my student loan debt had grown to $52,000 and I was really getting worried.

In 2007, I inquired about Public Service Loan Forgiveness relief.

[Editor’s Note: The PSLF Program, which was established under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, permits Federal Direct Loan borrowers who make 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan, while working full-time for a qualifying employer, to have the remainder of their loan balance forgiven. PSLF is not available for loans in the FFEL Program.]

I was told I couldn’t qualify for any PSLF relief until 120 payments on my loan had been made. Instead, I was put on an Income-Based Repayment loan relief plan and I began filing paperwork as instructed on an annual basis.

While that represented progress, I continuously had problems with submitting income verification forms with Navient and Sallie Mae. Again and again, both institutions made errors that caused processing delays and caused my student loan debt to keep mounting in forbearance. It was frustrating to wait for them to fix the errors to no avail.

For example, I told Navient their IRS 4506-T forms were incorrectly put together, yet they continued to insist borrowers use those forms.

This back-and-forth scenario caused delays in processing as they changed the corrected forms I sent them. They would do what they needed to do to cause more delays, as my debt total grew. At this time, I had begun caring for my critically ill adult son and started teaching at a low-income school.

Eventually, I applied for PSLF in 2017 only to discover that all 10 years of my payments were forfeited and none of them counted toward program eligibility. I had to start my payments for PSLF all over again and I had lost $36,000 in payments.

I was really feeling boxed in.

Had I stayed in a regular payment program the forgiveness would then have been considered taxable income so I had no choice but to go another route. After all, the tax bill on $100,000 of forgiveness would be astronomical and we didn’t have enough equity in our home to pay that kind of tax bill.

Things were getting worse. After caring for my son for seven of the 10 years that I was dealing with Navient and Sallie Mae, my son passed away in the summer of 2018. They stole precious time I could have spent with him. Meanwhile, my student loan account balance has grown to $81,000 – even as I had faithfully paid on time every month.

I have sought legal advice, filed several complaints with the U.S. Department of Education, wrote letters to President Trump, President George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, celebrities, my senators, congressmen, state attorney general’s office, and reached out to media outlets. (I’ve had my story featured on CNN, CBS and Fox News.)

In July 2019, I sued Betsy DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education with the help of the American Federation of Teacher (AFT).

Today, I continue to teach in a public school system and continue to make payments of $300 per month.  Almost 20 years after my college graduation and 16 years of on time payments I now owe over $81,000.  It is unbelievable to me that no one at the federal level wants to help people like me.

With no bankruptcy protections, no truth-in-lending disclosures and no statute of limitations these federal loan servicers are able to run amuck and abuse college students.  The price of college tuition continues to rise because these universities have their hands in the free-flowing stream of government subsidies known as the federal student loan system.

Now, I am in my 19th year as a public school teacher.

At 57 years-old, I hope to have the loans forgiven at some point in time before I reach retirement. That said, I have little hope that this will ever be resolved. I currently pay $300 a month on a loan that should have been paid off long ago and I don’t see any way out of the situation.[/quote]

https://www.savingforcollege.com/article/night-of-the-living-debt-five-real-life-student-loan-horror-stories[/quote]

To answer the PPs question about how students wind up with so much debt, the link she provides above is an adult returning to college so able to acquire her own loans. For undergrad students, 17-22,  it’s much more regulated[/quote]

Also I think the loan limits changed at some point in the last 20 years? The person in the story initially graduated in 1999 with $35k in loans, which does not seem an unreasonable amount. But if you keep putting off payments the interest grows and grows. [/quote]

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