Student Loan Quotes & Sayings

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt. — Meghan Daum

You can use the [Barack] Obama administration as a recent example. For seven years they've been unopposed. The Republican Party's not trying to stop 'em on a single thing. Much of Obama's agenda has been a success. He has been able to attack various traditions, institutions, and taken over the health care system in this country. They've taken over the student loan, they've taken over the education system, and everybody in it is miserable and unhappy. — Rush Limbaugh

More than ever, a college diploma unlocks economic opportunity, provides students with a wealth of new skills and knowledge, and encourages innovation and growth. But more than ever, it also comes with a mountain of student loan debt. — Mark Pocan

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. — Alan Collinge

I strongly support extending current student loan interest rates and increasing the college tuition tax credit for students and their families. — Scott Howell

We must fundamentally restructure our student loan program. It makes no sense that students and their parents are forced to pay interest rates for higher education loans that are much higher than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages. — Bernie Sanders

Indentured servitude is banned, but what about students seeking to sell shares of their future earnings in exchange for money up front to pay for their college tuitions? — Robert B. Reich

These days, the phone only carries bad news. It's all "your student loan is past due" and "your uncle Chris is in the hospital." If it's anything fun or exciting, like an invitation to a party or a secret project in the works, it will come through the internet. — Robin Sloan

This book argues that the history of federal student loan policies is best understood as a series of messes in which attention became focused on some particular aspect of a larger problem and well-intentioned policies were devised to address each narrowly defined concern. — Joel Best

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman. — Valenciya Lyons

War at home is matched by a war on youth. I wrote about this recently. Young people graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt, and they are the ones saddled with it. Youth have become indentured servants and that turns them away from public service. — Henry Giroux

If you have credit card debt and credit card companies continue to close down the cards, what are you going to do? What are you going to do if they raise your interest rates to 32 percent? That's five times higher than what your kid is going to pay in interest on a student loan. Get rid of your credit card debt. — Suze Orman

We live in a world with serious class complexes. It is one thing to be a college student with loan debts and another thing to be just dirt poor for your entire life. The challenge is to come up with more complex understandings of where we are, more global awareness of what connects Americans with what is happening with suffering and oppressed people all around the world. — Bell Hooks

It's a good idea to revitalize community colleges, to cut back, to modify the student loan program so it doesn't go through banks. — Noam Chomsky

We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble - and that's where the real bubble is - and the tuition bubble, we don't have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic. — Mark Cuban

bought one of the software programs, and worked the system. That particular software covered more than 300,000 available scholarships. She narrowed the database search until she had 1,000 scholarships to apply for. She spent the whole summer filling out applications and writing essays. She literally applied for 1,000 scholarships. Denise was turned down by 970, but she got 30, and those 30 scholarships paid her $38,000. She went to school for free while her next-door neighbor sat and whined that no money was available for school and eventually got a student loan. — Dave Ramsey

The most important loan to pay is your student loan. It's more important than your mortgage, car and credit card payments. You cannot discharge student loan debt in the majority of cases. — Suze Orman

After finishing grad school, the Little Mermaid started a nonprofit to fight for the rights of mercitizens. She decided at that moment that she would never measure her success by financial gain, but instead only by how much good she contributed to the world. Money was irrelevant to her.

Later that day she got her first student loan bill. — Tim Manley

Pay off your student loan. Even if you don't have a job ... Because when you finally get a job you're going to be one of us. — Bill Cosby

The American Dream is not being dependent on the federal government for your health care, for your automobile, for your college education, for your student loan on and on and on. — Marsha Blackburn

Rising student-loan debt is an economic emergency. — Elizabeth Warren

The fact that you have government-guaranteed student loans has created a whole new sector in the American economy that didn't really exist before - private for-profit universities that sell junk degrees that don't help the students. They promise the students, "We'll help you get a better job. We'll arrange a loan so that you don't have to pay a penny for this education." Their pet bank gets them the government-guaranteed loan, and the student may get the junk degree, but doesn't get a job, so they don't pay the loan. — Michael Hudson

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan, and credit without a card. We — Dave Ramsey

Even if you were to fall into extreme financial hardship and file for bankruptcy, you need to understand that your student loan debt will not be discharged in bankruptcy. It is the Velcro of all debts. — Suze Orman

Student loan debt is crushing young people. And so they're not doing the things we would expect them to do. They're not moving out of their parents' homes in as big a numbers, they're not saving up money for down payments, they're not buying homes or cars or starting small businesses or doing any of the things that help move this economy forward. — Elizabeth Warren

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff. — Jesse Jackson

Government's running the student loan program; what in the world could be wrong with it? If the government's running it, if Obama's taken it over, and he's got a lot of compassion, a big heart, loves people, what could possibly be wrong with it? And then the subject of tuition came up, and how come tuition never gets cut? Why does tuition always go up? Guarantee, folks, when you subsidize something, if you run a university and the government's gonna subsidize parts of your operation, why in the world should you cut anything? — Rush Limbaugh

selling my soul for student loans and an education. — Shareca Cole.

Debt is always negative, no matter how positively you try to look at it. The "minus" sign in front of your bank balance is a dead giveaway, despite what you might think about leveraging or whatever. It's even worse when it's a credit card or a student loan, and you can't even remember what you've bought or learned with it. Sure, the minimum repayments will eventually cancel it out, but by that time you will most likely have dentures and be peeing anywhere you damn well please. — Ana Spoke

depletion and climate change. For the older generation it's easy to misunderstand the word 'student' or 'graduate': to my contemporaries, at college in the 1980s, it meant somebody engaged in a liberal, academic education, often with hours of free time to dream, protest, play in a rock band or do research. Today's undergraduates have been tested every month of their lives, from kindergarten to high school. They are the measured inputs and outputs of a commercialized global higher education market worth $1.2 trillion a year - excluding the USA. Their free time is minimal: precarious part-time jobs are essential to their existence, so that they are a key part of the modern workforce. Plus they have become a vital asset for the financial system. In 2006, Citigroup alone made $220 million clear profit from its student loan book.2 — Paul Mason

Remember that in most cases, student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So you continue to pay it off anyway. Those who have very low interest rates (2-2.5 percent) on student loans and know everything is secure, great. — Suze Orman

Just like credit card companies, or those student loan people. Now there's evil for you. — Jim Butcher

The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you're going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you're doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all. — Suze Orman

Law firms can create environments for abusive relationships. This is especially true if an attorney has no self-direction, has no independent means of financial support, and has massive student loan indebtedness. You've basically made yourself an indentured servant. — Robin D. Hart

If we wanted a program to help the majority of the population, we'd offer loan guarantees to help poor people get access to reliable cars so that they could have a better shot at getting - and keeping - a well-paying job ... A small amount of capital could make a much bigger difference in their lives than extra student loan relief for middle-class college kids would. — Megan McArdle

Believe it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage. — Michelle Obama

If you already have the student loans or don't want to get a loan in the first place, look into the "underserved areas" programs. The government will pay for school or pay off your student loans if you will go to work in an underserved area. These areas are typically rural or inner-city areas. Most of these programs are for law and medicine. If you are in nursing, work a few years in an inner-city hospital with the less fortunate, and you will get a free education, courtesy of the federal government. — Dave Ramsey

The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities. — Gail Collins

Students are suffering under incredibly high tuitions and high student loan interest rates. They graduate from school, and they're having a very difficult time finding a job. They don't feel as though there are honest leaders who are listening to them, and who will be a part of the solution. — Tulsi Gabbard

Student loan debt is the reason I don't advise students who want to become entrepreneurs to apply to elite, expensive colleges. They can be as successful if they go to a relatively inexpensive public college. — Vivek Wadhwa

The problem is that nobody talks about what they make. It's shame disguised as humility. Screw that. I'm a thirty-two-year-old assistant and I make $30,000 a year. — Camille Perri

Learn how to prioritize all your debt. And did you know student loan debt is the most dangerous debt any of us can have? — Suze Orman