Which I do question the accuracy of his claim, because the average student loan interest rate is 5.8%.
So it’s possible he had a loan at a higher rate, but I’d put that unlikely.
His claim is his situation of $120,000 in debt is reason to support cancelling student loan debt.
I don’t really want to debate that idea, but would rather get into the issue of him going $120,000 in debt in the first place.
The average film major graduates with a salary of $27,800 a year.
The film major for more experienced grads produces an average income of $57,000 a year.
So let’s just run with $120,000 in debt and say he had to pay 10% of his income into that with no interest.
That’d still take 21 years to pay back.
Now, let’s do $120,000, with an interest rate of 5.8% paid over 21 years.
$207,999
Which $57,000 over 21 years, comes to just under 1.2 million in income, putting this at one sixth of those earnings.
For this guy, it seems like his loan is around, 11%, which would be $308,000, over 25% of his total earnings.
Looking at this, I feel bad he’s in this situation, because I’m not really sure how we’d create a system this type of loan could happen.
This case a person can just go in and get that type of loan on a major that doesn’t make much is insane.
I’m for some sort of relief, but before discussing bailouts, free tuition and other ideas, it should just be questioned if it’s okay to ever give $100,000 for something that just doesn’t make money and cheaper options for those skills exist.
