Student debt and payday loans

There is a fundamental difference between the actual student debt in US and the so-called student debt in UK. In UK there is effectively a capped graduate tax for those that have borrowed. No-one is made bankrupt due directly to official student loans in UK. Of course you can argue that the additional tax leaves the ex-students with insufficient income to live on that may lead to excessive financial hardship. In addition, some students do take on actual (ie conventional) debt in addition to available government backed student loans that will need to be repaid. In US there are limited programs for reduced repayments and forgiveness, but these are a minority. generally the debt needs to be paid within 10 years after an initial deferral during the study and a short additional period. In addition, it is not automatic for student debt to be cancelled even on bankrupcy in US and most bankrupt borrowers continue to have their student loan liability afterwards. I assume that this drives up the irrecoverable debt.

In addition, in US there is much more awareness of the need for parents to support their children in College. A high proportion of middle class parents build a fund to pay for a first degree, this reduces the debt required to get this degree. Also, there is a huge difference between the fees charged at public and private universities. While I do not know the extent of the 2, most of the most respected are in the more expensive private universities. I would assume that the career prospects of these are much better and so while their alumni may have much higher debt, they have the best prospects to repay it so the amounts alone don't necessarily tell the story of an inevitable debt crisis. The highest 6% of borrowers owe more than the maximum federal amounts and so will also owe private debt. As a result the amount that could be borrowed will have been influenced by their actual or expected ability to repay the debt.

They are called students, but so are eg accountants who are definitely employees. I agree that watching and listening to the hospital staff isn't working for the hospital, but performing those tasks for the need of patients sounds like work rather than tuition to me in the absence of anything specific in guidance. I'm sure that a court would throw out an equivalent defense in other areas ("those sweat shop people were learning how to do their jobs so are students and outside employment protection legislation!). There must be some reason as for internships, but I would be interested to know how it operates.

PS: www.gov.uk/employment-rights-for-interns HMRC guidance provides a get out for less than 12 months as a student or for statutory bodies. So I guess this is the opt out!

Forgive me for dredging up an old  post, but a "like" notification took me back to an old thread.

In answer to your question: no, not normally. However, in the context of talking about student debt and food costs when trying to eat "healthy", which I believe was the context of that particular set of posts, then the assertion that to eat healthy requires you to eat organic is, umm, erroneous, wrong, mistaken, and ummm just ********. And yes the line that you need to eat  organic and superfoods to "eat healthily" annoys me because it becomes an excuse as to why too many of the population are eating unhealthily rubbish and doing themselves and their kids no favours at all. When instead we should be focussing on access to healthy foods, and food/diet education.

To the extent that I did actually think your post was probably tounge in cheek.