In Sweden almost all university students accepts the official student loan from the state without second thoughts. In fact, you are kind of made to believe that this is the best solution ever. So you accept it, you go on studying, you perhaps go abroad to study, you enjoy life in a way and never really thing about the debt that is accumulating. A debt you will normally spend your whole life paying off.
Today, there's an article about the fact that many Swedes who study abroad have loan for over 400'000 SEK (about 43'000 EUR) and that they will have problems paying them off and will possibly end up paying approximately 10% of their net income if the loan has not been paid off before they turn 50.... 400'000 SEK - I wish! Mine is a lot higher, and I did not go to some fancy expensive American school either, just the fact of having gone all the way to Master level... And yes, it is already a chock every 3 months when I have to pay approx. 900 EUR to pay off the loan. The worst thing of it all - of the total of near 3'600 EUR i paid last year, only about 56% was actually to pay off on the loan. The other 44% - to pay off interest accumulated during the year!!!!
If I had thought it through beforehand, if someone had informed me/us that student loans are great in that they are open for everyone giving equal opportunities etc and in that they allow you to go off in the world to study but that they will be a burden for you once you start to work. Perhaps if I had been informed about this, I would have put in more effort to survive on other means, at least for part of my 7 years of studies... Maybe it would not have changed anything, maybe I would have had to take them anyway, but perhaps it would have allowed me to have only half the amount in debt, meaning that I would actually be spending most of the money paying off the loans rather than the debts and that I would most certainly be able to pay them off before I retire. Maybe... Why not take the chance and inform kids about the real costs of taking student loans? The real cost of being indebted to CSN for life?
3 comments:
This blogg mixes three different languages on a single page... Why?
Anyway, I have more than 1 000 000 SEK in CSN student loans, and I didn't attend any fancy or private school either, just obtained a masters degree. On the other hand, my loans where taken on the condition that they will be written off when I turn 65.
The reason why there is a bit of a language mixture is that I use all 3 languages in my daily life. I try to write almost all entries in English since most of my friends do not speak Swedish, but once or twice I've posted something in Swedish as it felt more natural. There are no entries in French however.
1 million SEK is even worse than my 630'000, not bad... guess that you did your studies a few years earlier than me though, as I only have 2 or 3 years of loans in the old system :(
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