[발췌] 소득 연계 상환 방식의 보편적 학자금 융자

※ 발췌 (excerpts):

1. 출처: Forget Elizabeth Warren: A Republican from Wisconsin has the best plan for fixing our student debt crisis (Jordan Weissmann | Slate, June 2014)

With summer campaign season underway, the Democrates are looking to rouse young voters by offering them a break on their student debt. At the moment, liberal favorite Elizabeth Warren is championing a bill that would let borrowers save money by refinancing their old educatio loans at today's low interest rates. By funding it with a tax hike on millionairs, however, the Massachusetts senator has all but guaranteed that the legislation will die should it ever reach the Republican-controlled House.

In other words, the bill is a glorified talking point. As President Obama put it when he backed the proposal this weekend, Warren's bill will force the GOP to decide whether it wants to "protect young people from crushing debt, or protect tax breaks for millionaires." In the meantime, the only real action is coming from the White House, which announced on Monday a series of modest but useful executive actions to help borrowers.

There's a bit of irony here. While Democrats are busy turning America's student debt crisis into campaign fodder, a Republican may actually have the single best plan for fixing it. His solution lacks the populist punch of Warren's bill. But the idea could save millions of future borrowers from financial ruin without costing taxpayers a dime─which means that, it it could get enough attention, it might also stand a small change of becoming law.

Sinc 1983, Tom Petri, a low-key House GOP congressman from Wisconsin, has advocated an idea that education wonks sometimes call "universal income-based repayment." It would completely scrap the convoluted system that former students currently rely on to repay their loans. Instead, college debt woudl work like just tax withholding. A borrower would simply pay a set percentage of her monthly earnings to the government, deducted straight from her paycheck.

Countries incl. Britain, Australia, and New Zealand already take a similar approach. And, as many education experts have agreed, bringing it stateside would likely cure some of the worst symptoms of America's student loan binge. It would ensure that every single borrower's payments stayed manageable and virtually eliminate the risk of delinquencies and defaults.

Think of it as the financial equivalent of putting up gutter rails in a bowling alley─it's a foolproof plan to stop borrowers from veering into trouble.

For ex., let's say a student borrowed $26,000 for college, at an average interest rate of about 4.7%. On a standard 10-year plan, she would owe $272 per month, every month. It might be affordable. It might not. On an income-based plan, however, she might owe 15% of her disposable earnings instead. With an adjusted gross income of $25,000, her bill might come to about $94 per month; at $38,000, it would be closer to $250. And if her earnings fell below a certain threshold, she'd pay nothing at all until her income rebounded.

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To understand why it would be such a sea change to make income-based repayment the default option, we need to talk about the complicated reasons why the U.S. is facing a student debt crisis to begin with. The first cause is obvious: Students are borrowing more than ever for school. Costs have whirled out of control across higher education, while unscrupulous for-profit schools in particular have made a killing overcharging millions of working-class students for possibly worthless degrees.

But the sheer scale of the student debt crisis is more mysterious than it may look at first. Neither the amount of debt that students pack on nor the shoddy job market of the past few years can fully explain why so many Americans are falling behind on their government loans. Of those borrowers who began repaying in 2010, almost 15 percent defaulted within three years, meaning they went at least nine months without paying. Last August the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that 6.5 million borrowers total were in default on their federal education loans—roughly equal to the populations of Los Angeles and Chicago combined.

This is both depressing and a bit odd. Given that student loans generally can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, defaulting on them doesn’t make much financial sense. The government will take you to court, garnish your wages, and demolish your credit rating long before it ever lets you off the hook on your college debt.

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2. 출처: Enroll All Student-Loan Borrowers in Income-Based Repayment, Report Says (Kelly Field | Young Invincibles, Mar 2014)

The federal government should automatically enroll all borrowers in an income-based repayment plan and deduct their payments through employer withholdings, according to a new report by a consortium of five student-aid advocacy and research groups.

The report, produced for the second round of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery” project, is the latest to argue for “universal IBR” as an alternative to the current menu of nine repayment options. Half of the 16 grantees in the first round of the Gates project suggested some variation on the idea.

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Under the most generous income-based repayment program available now, Pay as You Earn, borrowers pay 10% of their discretionary income each month, and monthly payments are capped at the standard 10-year repayment amount. Any remaining loan balances are forgiven after 20 years (10 for borrowers in public service).

But while student debt levels are at an all-time high, enrollment in income-based repayment plans has remained low, at roughly 11 percent of borrowers.

Proponents of universal IBR attribute that pattern to the complexity of the current income-based programs and argue that automatic enrollment would ensure that all borrowers benefited, “not just those who are financially savvy and persistent enough to discover and navigate the programs,” as the report puts it. They add that automatic IBR would virtually eliminate delinquencies and defaults, which have been on the rise in recent years.

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3. 출처: From Income-based Repayment Plans to an Income-based Loan System (Robert G. Sheets and Stephen Crawford, Apr 2014)

Debates about income-contingent loan systems include debates about the student populations that should be eligible for and covered by them. Most current and proposed models, incl. international ones, differ in two important ways. The first concerns whether the system should be "universal." That is, should it cover all students, regardless of income or other characteristics, and should it apply to all the types of institutions and programs covered under the existing student aid system, incl. undergraduate, graduate and professional programs?

The second way concerns whether there should be different icome-contingent programs within larger system for different segments of students and institutions, with diffeent features reflecting different goals and risk factors. This model has been adopted by Australia and is evident in the current mix of income-contingent programs in the U.S. We favor a single, comprehensive income-based system that is universal without segmentation, with the same design features applying to all students across all types of institutions and programs now eligible for federal student aid, incl. those in graduates and professional programs.

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As discussed earlier, income-contingent repayment systems take many forms. Some of the most promising recommendations have been developed by Dynarski and Kreisman (2013) and the New America Foundation (2013). We build on many of their recommendations but with some key differences, especially on loan terms and forgiveness.

# Coverage and Eligibility: The universal and comprehensive loan system we are proposing is intended to be the only federal loan program available to students, regardless of income, type of institution, or whether the program is a graduate one. As described below, this would be an unsubsidized system with all current government subsidies moved to an expanded Pell Grant program. This would greatly simplify the loan application and management processes, and allow closer alignment between federal loan and grant systems, including an expanded Pell Grant program.

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4. 국가장학재단 설립 및 소득연계 학자금 대출제도 도입 방안 연구 (교육과학기술부, 2008.11.)




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