The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday the interest rates on federal student loans for the 2024-2025 academic year.

The interest rate on federal direct undergraduate loans will be 6.53%. That’s the highest rate in at least a decade, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. The undergraduate rate for the 2023-2024 year is 5.5%.

For graduate students, loans will come with an 8.08% interest rate, compared with the current 7.05%. Plus loans for graduate students and parents will have a 9.08% interest rate, an increase from 8.05% now. Both of those rates haven’t been as high in more than 20 years, Kantrowitz said.

The rise in interest rates could complicate the Biden administration’s efforts to get the student loan crisis under control and relieve borrowers of the pain of interest accrual, experts say. Even as millions of people have benefited from recent debt relief measures, new students will be saddled with more expensive loans for decades to come.

  • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    But Biden is canceling student debt for another 4327 people, somehow none of which are still anybody I know.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      6 months ago

      Only the ‘deserving’ can have cancellation. That way the worst excesses of the system are kept out of the press, while the oppressive system itself can continue to exist.

  • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    The rise in interest rates could complicate the Biden administration’s efforts to get the student loan crisis under control and relieve borrowers of the pain of interest accrual, experts say.

    He’s the one DOING this! What do you mean his “efforts to get the student loan crisis under control” he’s actively making it worse. Big “Biden isn’t doing enough to restrain Netanyahu” energy. Every bad thing this motherfucker does is framed as him not doing the opposite, good thing, enough.

  • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Jesus Christ 8% people will never get out from under that

    I have paid more in interest than my principal and I’m locked in at 5%

    It’s fucking criminal that they charge at all for education but the interest rate spread between the 30 year Treasury note and student loans is extra egregious because these loans are federally backed. It’s a naked wealth transfer from low and middle income students to finance capital.

  • Mokey [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    As someone who paid off their student debt, student debt should be illegal and everyone who is in complicit in its existance should be lined up and shot no questions asked

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      6 months ago

      Or at the very least interest should be 0 or close to it. A lot of people are stuck paying interest without even making a dent in the principal.

      But yeah, education should be free in principle.

  • UrsineApathy [none/use any]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    I started my undergraduate just after the worst of the '08 market crash when rates were also at this level. Saddling a teenager with paying off tens of thousands of dollars at 7.5% interest literally crippled me. These rate increases are just kicking the can down to road to a future generation so that they can espouse headlines that they’ve done something beneficial while doing nothing to help fix the problem. All of the “forgiveness” pieces we’ve been seeing are just them fixing the broken promises through the 10 year repayment forgiveness and PLSF programs anyway.

  • KoboldKomrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    6.5% is (edit) nearly higher then mortgages. (Looks like Mortgages are about 6.5-7% right now. lol) Might be cheaper to become a landlord then to go to school. Really pushing the downfall of society with this one.

    Nearly 10% is getting into loan shark territory.

    • it’s absolutely cheaper to be a landlord.

      the barrier is having a pile of cash or some asset worth a pile of cash. if you have a pile of cash and you are current on any debts / have a co-signer, you can borrow against your existing assets to buy more property and collect rents to cover your payments/interest, cost of maintenance, and a personal income for yourself.

      even if you don’t want to handle any of the lease signing, tenant issues, maintenance hiring, etc, you can hire a “property management” company and pay them 10% of the rent collected to handle all of it. large/significant improvements would have to be financed by you, but if it’s a livable structure that meets code, you can just sit back and do nothing while taking in 90% of the rent.

      additionally, in our ongoing housing crisis / property hoarding situation, even though you haven’t paid off the loan to buy the residence, it’s net worth will grow beyond the original purchase price and let you access more credit to purchase another property.

  • the coolest thing about the federal student loan program, besides how the servicing of the loan has been privatized since god knows when and is naturally rife with complaints and scandal, is that for as far back as i can remember, the “subsidized” rate that the federal government will loan a qualifying (low-income) college student money has always been higher than the interest rate someone can get from a private loan to buy a house. and of course the loans at the subsidized rate are not enough to cover costs at an in-state school, so you also have to take out “unsubsidized” loans from the federal government, which are like double the interest rate of the subsidized loans. and, those are not often enough either, to cover housing, so then you get into private loans.

    and none of these can be discharged due to bankruptcy, specifically due to the efforts of the senator from MBNA, Joe Biden.

    • UrsineApathy [none/use any]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      and of course the loans at the subsidized rate are not enough to cover costs at an in-state school, so you also have to take out “unsubsidized” loans from the federal government, which are like double the interest rate of the subsidized loans.

      Thank you for saying this because people always conveniently forget this part. I went to a “budget” state school and subsidized loans only covered maybe half of any given semesters tuition and nothing else. If you needed to make rent, eat food or pay for the rest of tuition you needed to find money elsewhere. I worked full-time through school and still barely was able to to survive and had to take additional loans.

    • KoboldKomrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Its insane what they can do too. Mine was -sold- to another company, who bungled my birthdate and made it extremely difficult to do anything. Eviliest country in the world where your debt can be sold to some other ghoul without your permission.

  • EffortPostMcGee [any]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    I just graduated and most of the people I was going to school with agreed that, regardless of if we pay these loans or not, the crisis is so bad that they’ll have to forgive us all eventually anyway. So the only people even entertaining the idea of paying these things off are people with internships to ghoulish corporations or non-profits. Otherwise, we are all just acting like they simply ✨ do not exist ✨

    • Babs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      “Student loans? Yeah didn’t Brandon say he’d be taking care of that? I’m sure he’s good for it, go ask him.”

    • take_five_seconds [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Pretty much where I’m at with mine. COVID pause did its thing and once payments restarted I just… Stopped paying. I eventually put some bullshit into the income calculator and it put me on the SAVE plan and it told me to not pay anything monthly… So I kept doing that.

  • roux [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    “You can’t afford to pay back your loans? Well, how about we make the bullshit made up number increase over time arbitrarily faster? That sweeten the deal a bit?”

    Bunch of fucking brainworms.