Oct 27th, 2008
Fleeing Overseas Due to Student Debt
I had no idea things have gotten quite this bad. Even “good” debt–student loans–are getting to the point where people are heading overseas to avoid payment.
CNNMoney.com has an article on “Student loan fugitives”: United States citizens who take out student loans and, when they realize that the difficult to discharge loans are too much, default and go abroad to avoid collection agencies.
While this appears to be a small percentage, it is true that higher education costs are high and constantly getting higher and when students get out of college, they’re typically not very ready to deal with debt. Compound that with the fact that many students pile up other kinds of debt (can you say credit cards?) during their college years and we have a recipe for potential disaster.
Still, it seems to me that going overseas to avoid paying is quite extreme. I hope it’s not getting more common, but if it is, that may just be an indicator of how bad things have gotten with debt.
I considered fleeing to Japan to escape my student loans.
Thank goodness I didn’t.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/27/japan.working.poor.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest