Seniors encouraged to take college loans in 2010, and blamed in 2012 for doing so

One could get whip lash reading about senior citizens and college loans.  Is is a good idea or not?

In August 2010, this article appeared in USAToday. "There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them," says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.

Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over.”

Yes, in 2010, before the news about the next bubble burst, people were being encouraged to borrow money for college.  But in today’s USAToday, Washington Post and other sources buying the boilerplate from the NY Federal Reserve research, there’s a different story, although much overblown, since the small print says 5.8% of the college loan debt is for seniors, and 10% are in arrears.  That’s a pretty small portion of college debt.

“New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans 60 and older still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.

The fact that even seniors remain saddled with student loans highlights what a growing chorus of lawmakers, economists and financial experts say has become a central conflict in the nation's higher education system: The long-touted benefits of a college degree are being diluted by rising tuition rates and the longevity of debt.”

Think Progress, a leftist bloggity news/opinion site, uses the phrase “crushing America’s Senior citizens.”  Anything to avoid talking about what a bad job this administration has done with the economy, and to suck more people into a mentality of victimhood to be saved by BO. Obama is taking credit for an economy that could have rebounded in spite of the him, faster and healthier, by dragging us further trillions into debt.