The American student loan racket Part one

By Nancy Hanover
3 November 2010

This is the first of a two-part series on the history and predatory policies of the student loan industry. This specialized wing of the finance industry is bankrupting a generation, unabashedly profiteering from the determination of young people to learn, be productive and secure a college degree.

Today’s young adults face a lifetime of diminished expectations, if not outright poverty. A majority of those attending college find themselves caught in the vise of a scissors crisis--low wage jobs and astonishing levels of student loan debt.

This financial strain is leading to rising incidences of depression, broken marriages, the postponement or abandonment of child-bearing, and even decisions to permanently leave the country.

The majority of the parents of college students, after decades of stagnating wages, had only one asset, home equity--a resource that has either vanished or become a punishing debt load under the impact of the housing meltdown. Now the younger generation has mortgaged its future in the form of student loan debt.

The two pillars of the much-touted “American Dream”--home ownership and a college education--have become the means by which the financial aristocracy is plundering both the present and future resources of the working class.

The problem is escalating. In June of this year, US student loan debt exceeded credit card debt for the first time. Now totaling nearly $850 billion, student loan debt is growing at the rate of $90 billion a year. [1]
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