If you become unemployed/underemployed and are having a hard time making ends-meat, you might find it "worth it".
How exactly do you make ends-meat? Is it like rump roast?
On topic:
The best I think we'll see for a "bail out" is what we've seen in the past:
- Government takeover of all backed loans. They used to be underwritten / serviced privately, but backed by the government. The terms were not standardized, so some people got really raw deals. I think this is the closest you'll have to what looks like a "bail out" for normal people - most of the so-called mortgage bail out was for banks & financial institutions, and they don't have so much of a stake in student loans any more. The closest equivalent to what got bailed out before is the education department. They'll already garnish your wages if you default on the government-backed loans and it's hard (as I understand) to get them on a bankruptcy, so I'm guessing the student loan write-off rate is very low. Unless the education department gets raped for money by a bad budget, I don't know why they'd need to "bail it out."
- Congress voting to lower interest rates on student loans in the near future. (From when they vote, not from now.) I think there's a reasonable possibility of lower interest rates in the coming years too, but I don't know if it'll come in time for us. Look at prime rate / treasury rates at nearly zero now - they were offering 7-something % back when prime was about the same. Either the education department thinks prime will rebound quickly, or they're trying to bilk money, or there will be negative pressure on those interest rates. I think there's negative pressure, although there are flaws with my comparing student loan rates to prime rate.
- Increased budget funding for Pell grants, other scholarships, etc. Pell grants are the biggest - but they don't really help us graduate students.
- I doubt we'll see an increase in the total amount of government backed loans or a shift towards more subsidized loans vs unsubsidized at least in the short term, but it is a tool they have at their disposal.
- Require more realistic credit counseling (so college students can be more educated consumers). It's a struggle to explain this sort of credit to college kids that may or may not have a good handle on the value of money vs work, expected income, realistic budgeting, and ROI. At least the counseling explains the consequences of defaulting clearly now. I'd like to have the BLS website pimped more when people are trying to make career choices. While money isn't everything, it is necessary to understand how much you can expect to make to understand how much you can afford to be trained. A serious problem is that a lot of the ROI / expected income can be like trying to look through a crystal ball - pharmacy circa 2003 is a perfect example. Nobody really knows what the future holds, especially not a lot of those junior college advisors.
