Student Loan Watchdog Quits, Blames Trump Administration

[cookderosa]

The root problem here is that schools have ballooned their costs to ungodly proportions, which then forces people to get loans to even go to school in the first place.

Which came first, the loans or the price hikes? Probably the loans. The loans came first, then the prices hiked to reflect the new supply, then more loans came out, then... you get the picture.

This is true. While I'm not trying to be political, Obama wanted to make college more accessible to everyone through increased access to funds. We see an improved access to Pell Grants (gifted money that does not need to be repaid if you meet income requirements) the other part of the program included higher lending limits - essentially allowing colleges to go crazy. It's the housing bubble all over again.
I just pulled up the Federal Student Loan page- the borrowing limits are "$138,500 for graduate or professional students—No more than $65,500 of this amount may be in subsidized loans. The graduate aggregate limit includes all federal loans received for undergraduate study."
So, as long as you keep rolling forward, you can borrow $138,500. Assuming it takes you exactly 6 years from day 1 of college until master's graduation, you've also accumulated a BOATLOAD of interest. Add in the grace period where no one repays anything, and now you're probably looking at $150k before you ever get started. Stretch that out for a few years if you're not yet working your dream job (thanks to the Obama "loan forgiveness" program) and you may or may not start repaying within the first few years post-MS. All of this assumes you actually graduated, which you aren't required to do.

Edit- I also forgot that the repayment programs were expanded, this is from 2016 and explains why paying back loans over a longer period of time costs more money (for those who haven't yet taken personal finance 101) https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/30/pf/coll...index.html