They sort of have shareholders in their Board of Trustees whose goals are to see the school grow. They also have shareholders in the form of their upper administration whose goals are usually to increase their own salaries. (Private universities are their own thing and have actual investors and shareholders and don't really count imo)
Really the problem with (public) universities though is the lack of any market pressure with no regulation to back it up. Student loans are federally guaranteed to never default, which means universities are guaranteed payment as long as students sign up. Incoming freshmen do not have the initial barrier to entry with loans, so their demand has zero response to price increases.Thus universities have zero market incentive to actually reduce any costs or optimize efficiency as a result, because fuck them kids, they're gonna get paid no matter what. It creates a poor feedback loop where the school's budget balloons, tuition is raised to make up the difference, students take out more loans, rinse, repeat.
Garnish wages, keep your tax return, take social security benefits and destroy your credit rating. They pardon the super rich for basically stealing our tax dollars and yet they will also destroy the financial lives of their citizens who have to make the decision of having the gas to get to work the next morning or having more than sleep for dinner. I'm of half a mind that if they are going to steal my money then they will have to pay to take more of it
You'll get a harsher punishment for not paying back a loan than some get for stealing LITERAL BILLIONS from people, and not even through tax loopholes, just regular old confidence schemes on a commercial level.
The only way that could conceivably work out is if everyone collectively protested their student loans together since it's such a massive problem for so many people. Even then, the government would probably buckle down and try to destroy half the country's financial viability before they caved and admitted this toxic industry preyed on kids that didn't know what that debt meant when they signed up for it.
Apply for the SAVE income driven repayment, you could possibly end up with a $0 payment. Plus there is an “on-ramp” for 1 year in which you’ll be accruing interest, but you can not make payments without falling delinquent. Which is only recommended if you expect your financial situation to improve significantly within the next year.
First of all, I’m not in the US so I can’t say anything about how it works there, I only know the rules that applied to me (I live in a small European country).
If you can’t afford to pay your monthly payment, you submit an income statement. If they agree you make too little then they either lower the monthly amount or don’t have to pay at all, depending on income. If your income increases you have to start paying again. The payments (if you can afford it) are so that the loan is paid back in 15 years. After 15 years whatever is left of your balance is forgiven. The loan also had a 0% interest rate. Also, part of the loan would be converted into a gift if you managed to graduate within a certain time frame.
Same here in Germany. But let's see, how long that will be. Wiith CDU and it's little dirty and stinky brother already waiting for their turn to come and destroy everything which makes the future seem not completely damned. Alongside with all welfare-goodies (leftover from the nineties).