The new face of poverty

I was wondering if anyone else noticed that poor people are often sold college as an experience, promised the American Dream through an educational loan. I have taught at a number of "Career Colleges" and I'm not sure that students know what they are getting. For example I'm not sure that students know that they understand the time to money ratio. That they can get Government loans for the length of their program and that is it. If they fail a class or quit school their money still gets used up and they have lost time. By the end of their education they don't have enough money to cover the time they have left.

Carter G. Woodson and Paulo Feire both talked about how education systems, when misused, create people who are worse off than if they had been educated. My Grandfather would say if you do not know how to do something than education was a waste. Some folks need to learn trades and get certifications.

Any noonday you watch any number of diploma mills flaunting there wears. Many people in poverty have bought the dream of college because our public schools teach that. Plumbers make great money, HVAC folks do very well and school communities don't push or talk about these as viable choices to all students including poor folks.

First of all, nice article Mr. Farrell. Second of all, may I make the suggestion, that pushing higher education (post high school) has been going on since the late 70's, and that the student loan industry has been changing since the early 80's, and it when through a dramatic change in the early 90's when congress had to deal with the ultra high default rates of the predatory proprietary trade schools of the 80's.

For years they have been selling us this dream. The dream of being able to do better than our parents. Well I am generation X, the one they said would NOT do as well as our parents. And I have 2 degrees. One is paid for, the other, is from one of those useless predatory trade schools. I should be making 30 an hour, but due to the economic conditions I make 14 and am thankful that I have a job. Yet it is not enough to pay rent, transportation and the basics.

And where we can post comments on stories like yours Mr. Farrell, I hear the same lame excuses by the industry protectors. "you signed for it," "the terms were clearly spelled out" (no they were not). "if I had to pay why should you get to discharge yours?".

The fact is, Student Loans are the only consumer good or service, in America, that has NO consumer protections. These basic standard consumer protections have been systematically eliminated by acts of congress for what rational reason is any ones guess.

The fact is, that Student loans have become the new tool of enslavement.

"Student loans are (now) the only form of consumer debt lacking standard consumer protections. In 1997, student loan companies such as Sallie Mae successfully lobbied Congress to amend the Higher Education Act (HEA) and remove consumer protections, making defaulted student loans among the most lucrative and easy debts to collect. The loan companies actually have a vested interest in debtors defaulting on their loans, and great leeway to collect on those loans.

In 1991, The US senate recognized a group of students as being victims of proprietary trade school victims, or victims of student loan farming, yet to date they have offered no relief for those students who found themselves with debts they could not pay. Senate report 102-58. After that, radical changes took place, in part, due to lobbying efforts of the loan providers, giving them unheard of powers and little or no oversight. Over time, this has created the most predatory and inequitable banking industry in American history.

There is absolutely NO legitimate public interest served by creating a caste of permanent indentured servants (slaves) who can never get out of debt, never invest in our communities, never have the kind of life this country has promised to those who do all the 'right things.'

Although it seems as if it crept up on us, student-loan indebtedness is not an accident but a policy. It is a bad policy, corrupting the goals of higher education. The world we inhabit is a good one if you are in the fortunate third without debt, but not nearly so good if you live under its weight. Student debt produces inequality and overtaxes our talent for short-term, private gain. As a policy, we can and should change it.

WWW.StudentLoanJustice.org is a good place to start looking for information on how students can become involved in our effort to restore basic standard consumer protections on all student loans, Past, Present and Future.