Posted on 09/30/2014 1:59:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Today’s students are being crushed with John Bunyan’s proverbial burden on their backs – student loan debt. Until relatively recently this debt could have been discharged in bankruptcy.
Then all that changed when Sallie Mae, the Student Loan Marketing Association, was privatized in 2004. Albert Lord, the new CEO, and his lobbyists went to work to change the laws so that student loans could not be discharged in bankruptcy. Today the cumulative student loan debt is more than $1 trillion.
While a generation ago a high school diploma was considered sufficient for a decent middle class entry level job, today it’s a college diploma even if the job itself could be easily accomplished by a person with just a high school education.
In Sallie Mae annual reports, CEO Albert Lord has boasted that the company’s extraordinary financial growth could be attributed to fees collected from defaulted loans, as well as loan origination growth. Lord, who personally invested hundreds of thousands of dollars (on the books) in politicians and PACs involved with education legislation is probably the largest individual beneficiary of student loan privatization.
In 2001, US News reported that Mr. Lord’s compensation for the year 2000 had skyrocketed to over $33 million. From 1999-2004, Sallie Mae’s top two executives, Al Lord and Tom Fitzpatrick, received compensation worth $225 million and $245 million, respectively. Both men have regularly topped Fortune Magazine’s list of highest paid CEO’s in the Washington D.C. Area. Albert Lord also put in a bid to purchase a major league baseball team, the Washington Nationals, with the wealth he extracted from defaulted borrowers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sandiegofreepress.org ...
and the Democrats Ace in the Hole for when they desperately need to pull out an election.
The USA has a public debt of over $17 trillion, of which one trillion is school debt.
My son will have his student loans paid off at the end of next year. He went into the marines for 4.5 years, then judo and UCLA. After he ran out of GI Bill (is it still called that?) most everything was student loan.
Next year at age 35 he’ll marry and probably buy a house. So his work is finally paying off.
how did student loans get included in government spending? Isn’t it private debt?
You can’t discharge government, criminal, tax, lawsuit and many other debts in BK, either, IIRC. Also, I do believe that student loans have been unforgivable for some time now.
Wrong!
You cannot discharge a Tax Lien, for unpaid taxes, from the Feds either or the State of California.
Ditto
and if it’s property tax they will auction the property to recoup the balance due and interest.
Explained in This Article in Forbes.
I had student loans.
Silly me, I thought a promise to repay was a promise to repay for my degree in Business Administration.
Nowadays it is a promise to think about replaying and hoping OPM will pay for my useless “Womyn’s studies” degree.
When I entered college at age 18 I knew what I was getting into. I guess today’s generation are just too stupid to know the same?
Idiocracy, I guess.
thanx
I just paid mine off a couple years ago...about 15 years after graduation. I was not in a terrible rush - it was my lowest interest rate by far of any loan. I didn’t have a tremendous.
The Progressive agenda is to make you a servant of, and dependent on, the government.
I feel so sorry for these poor unfortunate deadbeats.
I just paid mine off a couple years ago...about 15 years after graduation. I was not in a terrible rush - it was my lowest interest rate by far of any loan. I didn’t have a tremendous amount of debt.
No one told them to take out loans in such huge amounts. Many people work their way through school and take as many classes as they can afford each semester. No sympathy from me.
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