[edited out]
If the person that is borrowing $12k is to pay $180 for every month for 2.5 years that's two years and five months, the total money he would have repaid would be around $5,220 with a balance of $6780 plus the compounding interest that will be counting, i believe it will take him close to 3 years or even more for him to totally repay the entire sum.
I gave a general overview that might not have been 100% accurate in all regards, yet I was attempting to describe a kind of loan in which there would be obligations to pay monthly (at 1.5% of the outstanding balance minimum), and that at the end of 2.5 years (which is 30 months), the guy would have to pay the totality of the loan - and surely if he did not pay it, then there would likely be additional penalties that would be described in the loan contract. In other words it is not going to take the guy 3 years because the loan does not provide such option to take longer to pay. Of course, a person might be able to negotiate some differing conditions for the loan, yet for normal peeps, it can sometimes even be difficult to get loans that are as long as I mentioned with those kinds of terms, and surely there can be different possible loans that might depend on collateral (such as equity in a house or equity in a car), and there might be other kinds of loans that are more personal loans, or even student loans might mostly be based on future earning power, and student loans might have longer terms since they might be sponsored by governments, and so there can be various kinds of loans that may or may not be negotiable and may or may not allow for longer terms than the example that I had mentioned.