Loan Forgiveness Programs ???
Hello, fellow law students! Anybody have any legal current events to discuss?
Perhaps someone wants to chomp away at the Congressional narrowing of
habeas corpus? Or does someone want to discuss the potential Constitutional
Amendments either of school prayer, balanced budgets, or prohibiting any
affirmative action as we know it.
In the meantime, tell me about how your school is running your loan forgiveness
program and how you have tried to negotiate a better program with your
administration.
Friends have told me about NAPIL's handbook compiling loan forgiveness
programs at law schools nationally. At NYU there is a group of
dedicated students (I'm not involved but talk with them regularly) who
are pondering petitions and more traditional negotiating tactics.
How's this for going out on a limb with a new topic? I get the feeling
sometimes that this newsgroup is 90% prospective law students and 10%
corporate law students!
loan forgiveness is wonderful, but how about a massive letter
writing campaign to newt et al in favor of making the interest on
student loans tax deductible? this is a far more universal approach,
and doesn't depend on the small amounts of money that schools have
available. and, most forgiveness programs are useless if you're making
over a certain limit. for example, duke's cuts off at $45K, i believe,
and up to that point its on a sliding scale based, not on how much you
*owe*, but on how much you're *making.* thus, a person with an income
of 40k and debtload of 80K gets the same amount of forgiveness as one
with income of 40K and debt of 20K. makes no sense whatsoever. not
that i'm bitter or anything. but seriously, doesn't it make more sense
to make interest deductible (or even better, have a credit for it)?
after all, why is a home mortgage interest deductible, while education
loans aren't? doesn't quite make sense.