Sunday, July 2, 2017

There's no business like the loan shark business: Federal student loan rates jump 18.4% effective July 1

The 10-year Treasury pays barely 2.3% but the Feds will now gouge students over 93% more than that.

From the story here:

For new loans disbursed from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, undergraduates will pay 4.45 percent. That's an increase from this year's rate of 3.76 percent. ... [Graduate students] will pay 6 percent for a direct unsubsidized loan — which begins accruing interest as soon as the borrower takes out the loan — an increase from 5.31 percent this year. Finally, rates on direct PLUS loans, which both graduate students and parents of undergrads can use, will rise to 7 percent from the current 6.31 percent. ... Last year, the average college graduate owed $37,172, up 6 percent from 2015, according to data from Student Loan Hero. ... Total student debt in the United States is now over $1.4 trillion — the majority of which is from federal loans.