Where I live now it’s two installments and since the lender gave a better interest rate for having the escrow account, they’re paid from escrow and I don’t recall the timing. But I know from doing taxes for others that the amounts usually differ but don’t always. There’s the flat amount that’s the same for the first & second halves. But then voters can approve stuff that only tacks onto one of the “halves”. It’s usually rinky-dink stuff. I want to say on the house I’m in now the first “half” is $6.07 higher than the second “half”. But that $6.07 is like 3 separate line items of stuff that ranges from like $1.47 to $2.73.
I don’t agree with the characterization of duly earned public service loan forgiveness as a “handout.” I’m guessing that the same people complaining about this “handout” are also complaining about teacher shortages and/or teacher quality. You can’t have it both ways: If you’re not going to treat me like the professional that I am, you better at least give me something for my public service sacrifice so that people know that public service is some form of worthwhile. (Yes, I do it for the kids, but I also like to eat once in a while.)
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Article - “The Biden-Harris Administration has worked relentlessly to fix our country’s broken student loan system and address the needless hurdles and administrative inaccuracies that, in the past, kept borrowers from getting the student debt forgiveness they deserved,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
The bolded is a little much.
I don’t have a problem with this carve out. But at the same time I would like to see a fix to the public pension sector where the guarantees are not even close to sustainable and are gamed (sometimes) by the players.
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Even in the context of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that was promised to them when they signed up for their debt, and then they fulfilled the terms of the deal but got screwed out of it by government fuckups?
Feels counterproductive to publicly signal, “We will make promises to public servants, but we’ll back out of it, so if you enter this industry you’re screwed.”
You say you don’t have a problem with it, but I’d say the bolded is 100% accurate.
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Yeah, I don’t like general student loan forgiveness as a policy, BUT…
When they’re using the PSLF program as a recruitment tool then they need to actually honor it for the folks who qualify. They’re basically treating it as deferred compensation.
I haven’t followed super closely, but the loans forgiven were all part of PSLF, were they not?
What makes public servants any better than Native Americans?
from the government perspective that is 
The “Northern Exposure” deal seems like the right way to go here, though it would probably be taken advantage of by rich white people (like in “Northern Exposure,” come to think of it).
Just don’t think the Federal gov’t should step in to just give free money away. That causes inflation, in a macro sense.
I don’t think I understand your question.
If you think of it as deferred higher ed support, it stings a bit less.
I think the entities that benefit more directly should pay.
The kids that now have a teacher?
A so rich folks that have an educated work force to exploit?
The article says that many of them are PSLF, then the article and Biden both go on to talk about how this will go to public servants.
I can’t say that every one was PSLF - maybe there were some other snafus that they corrected at the same time.
That’s a reasonable take going forward, but I do think the government should fulfill their promises to these public sector workers.
Prior to these Biden-era fixes to the program, I would have looked at teaching as a major and said, “Nope, absolutely not, if the government’s going to back out of their promises.”
If I’d known that after 10 years of payments and work I would get the loan forgiven, I’d be more likely to go into a high-stress, low-pay job.
I stand corrected, but only for those who actually qualified under the PSLF and have been unnecessarily delayed. 3 years of non-payments has been counted toward the 120 payments required. And prior to this announcement, there were already many whose loans had already been discharged under this program. Too much credit is being given to “The Biden-Harris” administration.
I’m not an expert on PSLF, but I think the requirement is that you must make the minimum required payment on the loan.
Well if the minimum required payment is $0.00 then I think you’d be hard-pressed to claim that anyone didn’t make them.
But then I think there was a snafu over whether that should count. In hindsight they probably should have dropped everyone’s required payments to $0.50 a month and then (nearly) everyone would have made their payments and there wouldn’t be a question.
But to penalize someone for failure to make a $0.00 payment hardly seems like the correct course of action.
I’d add that we can certainly debate whether Covid-era loan payment holidays were the right course of action for Congress to take.
But given that they did in fact go that route, it seems blatantly unfair to penalize the PSLF candidates for it.
Horse bolted, just closing the barn door now.
I can buy “I don’t like loan forgiveness”, and I can buy “they should still have to pay 3 more years that they didn’t pay anything.”
However, anybody saying PSLF people want handouts or are lazy (which wasn’t claimed here in such strong terms but it frequently is said) can be immediately disregarded as either not understanding the clear terms of the agreement, or as just a cruel person.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with counting the 3-year COVID gap for PSLF folks. Yes, I did not initially understand the 10-year provision.
Spring testing season: 
it’s the least, wonderful time, of the year…
My lab location has a good handful of kids for whom sitting still, let alone while focused, let alone for that long at a time, must be absolute torture. Why? Why standardized testing? Why do this to children?
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(I already know that a system that’s set up to fail teachers and students alike is a gravy train for testing and textbook companies and their lobbyists, as well as district administrators.)