Fleecing Students

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A student gave an oral report on financing of student debt. Turns out it’s an 85 billion dollar a year business.   Not exactly chump change.  She decided to look into the topic because she will be graduating in a matter of days with 45,000 dollars in debt on her back as she walks down the aisle. She had to finance her own education she said.  Her parents had managed to help her two older brothers but by the time it got to her and her younger sister, the larder was bare.  So she had to take out student loans, and she had run up credit card debt, and she had to start working.  Well, her attendance in my class has been irregular.

Mostly her report focused on hearings in New York on the collusion between college and universities across the country and the major lenders, like B of A, and Citibank.  Seems that when a student goes to get a loan at the school, he or she is given a list, created by the school, of preferred lenders.  Lenders the school prefers for whatever reason.  Turns out the reasons have to do with outright kickbacks, payoffs, as well as free vacations to some exotic spot for the whole damn financial aid office.  So for these perks, the lender gets put on the preferred list, that sometimes has only two or three lenders listed, and as it turns out 90% of the time students pick one of the lenders on the list given to them by their school.  They make the mistake in other words of trusting the people at the college of their choice.

This is fairly disgusting. 

I really don’t know where to direct my anger.  At the fact, companies and colleges have systematically set about fleecing students, or the fact that student have to take out such huge loans at all. 

 

 

 

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This page contains a single entry by Nick Tingle published on June 5, 2007 2:47 PM.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Nick Tingle published on June 5, 2007 2:47 PM.

Global Warming and the Writing Instructor was the previous entry in this blog.

Educational Inequality is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.