Chiropractic Student Debt Blog Has Moved

Please check out our new site for new posts and updates.

CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR NEW SITE

The new address is http://chiropracticstudent.wordpress.com/

This site will remain up as an archive.

See What The Future Of Chiropractic Looks Like

Greg Stanley, the president of Whitehall Management, a leading chiropractic management consulting company, recently published an essay in Dynamic Chiropractic called "The Sustainability of Chiropractic".

No big surprise, folks... the outlook for Chiropractic as a career choice looks HORRIBLE.

CLICK HERE TO READ "THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHIROPRACTIC"

I believe the current flow of DCs into the marketplace is unsustainable. In time, we’ll see the price of an adjustment fall to levels that won’t support free-standing offices. In my consulting practice, we get calls each day from doctors practicing in the living room of their mother’s mobile home, wanting to know if we have a consulting program that can save them. Currently, the student loan default rate in chiropractic is twice as high as all other health care disciplines combined.

Am I saying chiropractic is in danger of being eliminated from the health care scene? No, but it’s in the slow and steady process of being changed from its current status as a highly profitable, free-standing, entrepreneurial career to that of a second job for most of the profession.

Please read this ENTIRE article before you even THINK about signing up for chiropractic loans!!

CLICK HERE TO READ "THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHIROPRACTIC"

Remember, I didn't write this... it was written by someone IN THE PROFESSION, and published in one of the profession's most read magazines.

How Much Does It REALLY Cost To Become A Chiro?

Question: How much does it REALLY cost to become a chiropractor?

The answer might surprise you... click HERE for the real story.

Question: And how much can you REALLY earn as a chiropractor?

The numbers are truly depressing. Click HERE if you really want to know the truth.

So if you're thinking about a career in chiroquackery, better think again !!

p.s. Be sure to check out my new Squidoo lens here.

Student Loan Justice Discussion Forum

Here is a link to a great discussion forum for students with loans who want to stay updated on all the latest news; you can also ask questions:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentLoanJustice/

Bad debt pays off in loan industry

Little-known practice called 'dumping' costing taxpayers an estimated $400 million

(click HERE to read full story)

Washington- Alyscia Taylor, a 5-foot-2 Georgia fireball, graduated from chiropractic college outside of Atlanta with an education in treating spines and student loans totaling $53,880.

The debt seemed manageable as she began her career as a chiropractor in suburban Washington, D.C., in 1994. But she had asthma, got recurrent pneumonia and needed to care for parents on a farm near Augusta, Ga. So she moved, eventually left the profession and took sales jobs that paid basic bills but left little for the loans.

That's when the problems began.

Collection agencies called relentlessly. Late fees and interest compounded the debt, churning the $53,880 balance to $134,466 by 2004. By then, many bankers would have figured the loan was uncollectible and declared the matter closed. They would have gotten most of their money back, too, and with interest, because the U.S. Department of Education guarantees the loan industry that it will make up most losses.

But the student loan industry has had a practice, unknown to outsiders, that lets it earn even more money off a bad debt while shifting the problem to taxpayers, a Plain Dealer examination has found. Its official name is Direct Loan default consolidation, and it is costing taxpayers an estimated $400 million.

Insiders in the industry, government and some college financial aid offices have a harsher name for it: "dumping."

What that means is that the borrowers' bad debt, often multiplied because of earlier delinquencies and refinancing, gets turned into a new loan - with interest, late charges and an 18.5 percent handling fee for the industry. But this new, expensive loan is no longer the industry's liability; rather, industry employees convert it into a new government loan, issued under the federal Direct Loan program.

The new loan is shifted from the private sector and dumped on the government.

"The student winds up with a lot more debt, and the taxpayer winds up with more obligations," said Robert Shireman, executive director of the Institute for College Access and Success and a former White House and U.S. Senate education policy adviser.

Department of Education data between 1995 and 2005 put the default rate of these dumped loans at about 34 percent. A department analyst, however, says that over the long-term life of these loans, the default rate could approach 60 percent.

Chiropractor Most Overrated Career

"Chiropractor" has been voted Most Overrated Career by U.S. News & World Report magazine for 2007:

(Click HERE to read the magazine story)

Some chiropractors think their discipline can cure everything from headaches to sciatica, asthma to premenstrual syndrome. But the Federal Trade Commission only allows chiropractors to claim they can treat low back pain. And even so, research shows that mainstream treatments for lower back pain are equally effective. Many chiropractors also devote considerable time to marketing–in part to pay back the cost of chiropractic school, usually over $100,000.

Chiropractor works 2 jobs to chip away at $165,000 in school debt

Here's another recent newspaper feature showing what it's really like after you graduate from chiropractic college (with mountains of student loan debt):

Chiropractor works 2 jobs to chip away at $165,000 in school debt - from USA Today

(click HERE for the full story)
The story is quite familiar to those of us taken in by the chiropractic promise of being a "successful doctor":

Yet despite her two jobs, she's still struggling to pay her living expenses and the minimum monthly payments on her student loan and credit card debts.

She's amassed nearly $165,000 in student loan debt from attending graduate school at Southern California University of Health Sciences in Whittier. She graduated in April 2005 with a degree in chiropractic health.

While at the university, she borrowed for tuition, books and living expenses. (The $165,000 she borrowed is just principal, not interest.) She also has about $9,000 in credit card debt and a $4,000 car loan.

There's even a video. You'll note that this woman is well-spoken, intelligent, and hard-working yet she still can't pay back her loans. The chiropractic colleges make wild claims about how much money you can make after graduation and often claim that chiropractors who can't pay back their loans are "losers". As this story shows, that is not the reality.

Meanwhile, check out this page called Student Debt Alert, which informs us that "nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates now have student loans" and "the number of students who graduate with over $25,000 in loan debt has tripled since the early 1990s":

Student Debt Alert: http://www.studentdebtalert.org/

Thanks to everyone who has supported the blog this year by sending me articles and your own personal "war stories". Thanks for linking to this site and for telling everyone the truth about chiropractic and student debt.

Before you take out student loans....

There have been so many new articles about STUDENT DEBT lately that I can hardly keep up. Here are some links that should be read by students considering loans.

In the case of CHIROPRACTIC student loans, I would recommend avoiding the whole career. For more information on this, please read www.chirobase.org and the ChiroTalk discussion list.

STUDENT DEBT ARTICLES:

Lesson for Students: The Best Debt Is None, Michelle Singletary in the Washington Post

Private student loans pose greater risk, USA Today

Students resort to private loans, staggering debt, San Francisco Chronicle

Project On Student Debt website - "For Americans of all socio-economic backgrounds, borrowing has become a primary way to pay for higher education. The Project on Student Debt works to increase public understanding of this trend and the implications for our families, economy, and society."

Student Loans Are For Suckers - op-ed piece by Ted Rall, archived on the Peace Corps website

Discussion thread about the "Student Loans Are for Suckers" piece

Knee-Deep In Debt, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "With college loans and credit cards to pay off, many young women carry heavy load"