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************************************************* Hey Everyone, Just wanted to give you all an update. StudentLoanJustice.Org been up and running for 1 year now, and we now have members (or victims as it were) in the hundreds. This is without doing any advertising really. Remember there are between 3-5 million defaulted borrowers out there, so we're only scratching the surface here. Accomplishments since last email: We published an OPED in the Baltimore Sun, to which Sallie Mae quickly responded: I (the author) am a deadbeat who has been leeching off government subsidies, and need to repay my debt. I leave it to you all to read my story on the "victims" page, and judge for yourself. I don't care much what they say about me personally...BUT...This is the attitude that we are fighting. It is a convenient argument for those who are extracting vast personal fortunes at our expense to make, and hard to change, particularly with a republican Congress running the show. The Sun, to their great credit, has given me (us) an opportunity to publish future pieces, and I fully intend to do this. Also NPR contacted me yesterday about a story they're working on regarding Sallie Mae's purchase of non-profits (They are currently trying to acquire the Missouri Agency, and the Illinois Agency). I sent them 3 borrowers who had been screwed when their lenders were acquired. If you are one, please let me know and I will forward your contact info to the producers as well. Senator Dick Durbin had his office call us, and invite us to meet with him. Also, he gave a couple of talks last week at various Universities in Illinois, and urged them to look at the website. The link to the story is on the "media" section of this website. It is my hope that a couple of Republicans will come around and see how they're selling out their principles of free trade to Sallie Mae. So..the word is starting to get around, but as I've said before, this is truly a grassroots deal, and we as individuals need to figure out how we can get Congress to give us relief by way of an Amnesty Amendment, and restoration of standard consumer protections to the student loan industry. Those of you all who haven't had a chance to speak with your representatives would be amazed at how little they know, and how much they actually do care. Other than that, there are a couple-three class action lawsuits in the works. I will probably end up putting them all in one place on the website in the near future. Anyhow, I will try to check back like this every couple of weeks or so. Keep me posted as to how things are going on your end! Don't Give Up- Alan ps. I got this submission after the Baltimore piece ran. I think It's important. First_Name: Name Withheld My sister was the first in our family to attend college. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and did really well for awhile. In her early 30s, she became ill (breast cancer) and was unable to work. I am not sure how she was paying her loans, but I know the student loan representatives were hounding her. I spoke with several on her behalf and little if anything was ever accomplished. My sister was out of work for a very long time as "chemo" made her very ill. She was repeatedly called by student loan represtatives even when told how ill she was. I do not want to go into a great deal of detail, but I will say that my sister took her life as she said she simply did not want to live anymore. What is interesting is that my sister was not terminally ill. Her cancer was in stage 2...and her prognosis were very good. What ultimately led to my sister's death is the way she was repeatedly hounded by collection agencies regarding her student loans. I wrote to a Maryland Senator myself and stated that something has to be done about this. People are being penalized for going after their dreams of becoming educated. Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? My sister's life has been an inspiration to me. I have decided to go back to school. I promised her that I would not obtain any student loans...I am doing it the old fashion way....I am working 3 jobs to finance my education. I will be somewhere in my early 40s when I finish, but at least I won't have to be concerned about being literally worried to death over student loans....
Hey Everyone, Hope you all are well. Its been a busy couple of weeks, but I wanted to give you all an update: The day after the 60 Minutes piece on student loans, Sallie Mae sent an email to all of their participating universities (which is pretty much all of them). It was fraught with gross exaggerations, huge inaccuracies, and the usual corporate drivel that their grossly overpaid executives spit out on a daily basis. No surprise there. Sallie Mae's Stock actually went UP by 3% the day after. Great. What WAS surprising was this: Ralph Nader published an extremely poignant essay on this issue. At the same time, the Adam Smith Society (an extremely conservative, free market organization) published an equally scathing (but from the opposite point of view) piece about Sallie Mae and the student loan industry. This was heartening. There are a couple of very interesting media-type things happening as well, and I will be sure to tell everyone about them when appropriate. ...So...I've received over a thousand emails in the past two weeks. I've answered them all personally. Its been pretty overwhelming, but I've been awestruck to read about all of your situations. Suicides, wrecked families, destroyed lives, being forced to leave the country, living "underground"--I've heard about all of these in the past two weeks. All because of Student Loans. STUDENT LOANS. How in God's name did this country get so badly off track? I would say that at this point, this is a bonafide grassroots movement, and you are the first members- Here's what I'm doing: 1. Posting all of our stories on the website This is a not a "watch it happen" type deal unfortunately. We have to stick up for ourselves-because no one is going to fight for us. There are a couple of interesting things happening in Congress, but I'm not holding my breath. Now really is the time for each of you to consider your own situations for a moment, and think of how YOU, as an individual, can do. This could mean calling your local electeds A MILLION TIMES to make sure they feel your pain. It could mean getting something published in your hometown newspapers. It could mean protesting the Sallie Mae bus tour when it comes through your town. I don't know...Thats the cool thing about a grassroots movement- we all, individually, have complete freedom to do whatever what is right for us. The only advice I have is this: Be creative, know that we are doing the right thing, and keep me posted. Obviously, anything that I can do to help...I am here for you all.
Alan SLJ
Hi Everyone, Hope everyone is doing well. Here is an update: 1. Sen. Clinton has introduced a student loan "Bill of Rights" into Congress. I am pasting a summary of the proposed legislation below. It looks pretty good. Among other things, it puts a cap on the amount a student pays back over 10 and 15 year payment horizons, reduces the collection fees allowed to be put on the debt, and allows for refinancing. I have been saying (and still believe) that some sort of amnesty is in order, whereby citizens who have been forced to live in a default situation for an extended period of time (say, 5 years) whould be allowed to repay their original loan amounts, plus a nominal amount of interest. I still believe this, but I think this, or something similar, is achievable through this legislation, depending on what sort of maximum repayment caps come out of it. You
can download the full text of the bill by going to thomas.loc.gov .
Type in "S.3255" in the search box, select "Bill Number" and click 2. We have rolled out one state "breakout group" so far- Wisconsin. The others will be following in the coming weeks. Please be patient on this. 3. Attorneys needed! I think it would be useful for us to have a collection of local attorneys who are competent and well practiced in this field. If you have an attorney who has been doing good work, please have them send us an email, and we will begin referring them to local borrowers on an as-needed basis. That's it for now. Remember not to be ashamed or intimidated from sticking up for yourself in a public way on this. WE ARE NOT ALONE!!!!!!!!!
Alan THE STUDENT BORROWER BILL OF RIGHTS SENATOR CLINTON
1.. A Right To Shop In A Free Marketplace To encourage greater competition in the student loan marketplace, the bill requires lenders to report comprehensive information to credit bureaus, including both positive and negative information, and to identify student loans as student loans. The bill eliminates the anti-competitive single-holder rule, allowing borrowers to consolidate loans with whatever lender they wish. It makes it easier for borrowers to consolidate into the Direct Loan program. It allows borrowers to reconsolidate.
2.. A Right To Timely Information About Loans The bill urges the Department of Education to produce and to distribute to organizations that help people having trouble repaying their loans a manual describing the rights of people in delinquency and default, and the Department's policy for dealing with particular programs. It also requires the Department to provide technical assistance to such groups. The bill requires that, if the loan servicer changes, the old and new servicers inform of the borrower and allow the borrower a 60-day grace period during which payments mistakenly sent to the old servicer are not counted as late.
3.. A Right To Make Affordable Loan Payments For borrowers in the Income Contingent Repayment system, the bill exempts for the purposes of income tax the amount forgiven at the end of the repayment period. The bill allows borrowers with severe need to discharge student loans with appropriate safe-guards, in cases of serious disability and in certain cases of bankruptcy.
4.. A Right For Interest Rates and Fees To Be Reasonable The bill limits collection fees and makes them dependent on the expenses incurred in collecting on a loan. The bill requires the Secretary to cap the total amount that can be charged of a borrower for a given loan over various periods of time, including all interest and fees, beyond which additional payment would be exploitative.
5.. A Right To Not Be Exploited The bill urges the Department to enforce borrowers' rights to raise claims related to the actions of for-profit schools against the lenders from which they borrowed money to attend such schools (including the Federal Trade Commission Rule). The bill provides borrowers recourse if they suffer an economic loss as a result of a violation of the Higher Education Act. The bill makes schools liable for a borrower's loan if the school violates the Higher Education Act by paying admissions officers as salespersons - i.e., on the basis of how many students they admit. The bill requires lenders to give borrowers who pay more than is required in a given payment period the option of applying that payment against the principle owed on the loan. ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Just wanted to touch base. We have rougly 1000 people among the fifty states now. We will be rolling out the states again to account for the new members. Also, One of our own, John Pinion, was featured in last weeks "Geraldo at Large". You can see the clip Here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5723049845277943308 Also, Lynnae Brown is still seeking people to submit their own video submissions for here documentary. That link is Here:
More Soon, Alan SLJ
Hey Everyone. Hope all are having a great weekend. We were featured 3 times this week in the media. First: Two of our own, Ethan Winsby, and the Small Family (Beccie and Andrew) were featured in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle October 25th ("Private loans prove costly for college students"). KUDOS to you both for standing up like that. Second, we were quoted in a piece by Annys Shin in the Washington Post ("Getting Schooled on Student Loans-"). Third, I published an OPED in the Fredericksburg Free lance Star, responding to what some idiot lobbyist said in an earlier piece ("Student Will be Hurt by Loan Rates"). There are a couple of other pieces I am aware of in the offing, but it will take awhile for them to come out. Also, There was a disturbing report issued by the Office of Inspector General Last Month: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/a04e0009.pdf In this report, Theresa Shaw, Head of Federal Student Aid, is warned by the Inspector General that her oversight of Federal student loan problems is weak, and open to conflicts of interest. Her office disputed most of the findings. This is no surprise, especially since Ms. Shaw is a former vice president for Sallie Mae. Read it for yourself, and let me know what you think. That's
it for now. I hope everyone will see what they can do to get their
stories published in local media.
Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone. Tomorrow is officially our first stop on the "Bus Tour" . I will be meeting with Rep. David Wu's (D-OR) staff at 2pm in downtown Portland. I will be giving him all of our Oregon Stories, and reiterating the urgent need to get a fair shake for the borrowers through passage our PAC's agenda. Other than that, we have been doing alot of press stuff lately. Today we did the Armstrong William Show in New York. Tomorrow we are doing a radio show in Baltimore. A TV station in Wisconsin is doing an investigative piece on student loans, featuring our members, and we have also been approached by CSPAN, and a whole cadre of radio stations. Oh. We also published an OPED in Denver, and were written up in a fairly controversial piece in Inside Higher Ed. Read it for yourself to see what the Industry thinks of us. I do feel somewhat compelled to say, here, that we no longer use profanity in emails to student loan executives. The email mentioned in this piece was sent almost two years ago, before this movement took off. The sentiment, of course, remains... Anyhow, I couldn't be more excited to be hitting the road finally. As always: PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD about this! There is true strength in numbers. High Regards,
*************************************************
The bus tour is in Santa Rosa presently, with meetings planned for tomorrow with Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey. We will be meeting with George Miller (chairman), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House), Buck McKeon (ranking minority member), and Linda Sanchez (Los Angeles) this week, before heading to Arizona next week. The "bus" is performing admirably, with only minor mechanical glitches so far! I will get some photos up on a daily blog in the coming week. It is really critical that we get the word out. That is why there is a brochure posted at www.studentloanjustice.org/brochure.pub You can easily download this file, get brochures printed, and distribute as you see fit to. I recommend libraries, coffee shops, or other public places with a high throughput of people. I know this is a slight bit of effort on your part, but I hope you all will see that the effort will be worth the hassle. It is definitely a wiser use of your time than trying to deal with collection companies to no avail!! Other than that, we have been doing a ton of radio shows recently, and are getting OPEDs published in various small papers across the country. The folks in Wisconsin have recently completed taping for an investigative news piece to be aired in March. The next few months will be critical, and so I hope you each will give that fact serious consideration. Obviously, keep us posted as to developments in your local areas, so that we can update the country as to your progress! More soon, Alan StudentLoanJustice.Org ************************************************* Hey Everyone, We are currently leaving Santa Monica enroute to Tucson by way of Phoenix. We have met with the staff of 5 members of the education committees thus far: Wu, Woolsey, Miller, McKeon, and Sanchez. Also, we have been greeted at our stops by various members...this is important...helps keep the morale up! The "bus" continues to function well, except for a slight mishap (flat tire) in Cherry Valley. The meetings have gone well. Some staff have suggested measures even more beneficial than what we are currently proposing, although we did meet some skepticism from Miller's staff with regards to the payoff plan for defaulters (agenda item #1 for the PAC). This is of particular concern, since Miller is Chairman of the house education Subcommittee. It would behoove you all to contact the House Committee, and let them feel your pain!! Their phone number in Washington D.C. is: 202-225-3725 We will be giving a talk in Tucson to the Democratic Party (Northern Tucson chapter) on Monday at noon. I will be sending out a note specifically to Arizona folks to give the location. All in all, I'd say it's shaping up pretty well, but REMEMBER THIS ENDEAVOR WILL ONLY WORK IF YOU ALL, INDIVIDUALLY, PITCH IN FOR THE CAUSE. The brochures are a great start, maintaining a high amount of pressure on your congressmen is critical, and getting media attention is also of utmost importance. Oh...I almost forgot. WE HAVE T-SHIRTS NOW!! This is a fundraising effort to support the PAC. We are selling them for $20 delivered, or $15 in person. You can pay via the PAC donation link on the webpage. Strength in Numbers, Alan
************************************************* Hey Everyone, We have now made it through Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and are in Edinburg, Texas, to meet with Ruben Hinjosa tomorrow. He is probably the most important member of the House committee, since he chairs the higher education subcommittee. Arizona was very successful. Gave a talk to the Greater Tucson Democrats, which was only supposed to go 15 minutes, but stretched out to over an hour. There were about 40 people there, and led to a number of follow up meetings with members of the state legislature. We also did a "drive by" at Senator McCains office. Also, we were invited to do an OPED for the Arizona Republic, and are now connected to the University of Arizona Young Democrats. I have met with a bunch of the members along the way, and appreciate all the energy out there! Would be great to speak with more republican groups, however. This issue really does cut both ways... We also met with Senator Bingaman's staff in New Mexico. We've gotten OPEDs published in a couple of local papers in Oregon, and Colorado, and did an hour radio show on WDIG (Ohio). Also, we've been inundated with requests from all over the country to do interviews with various editorial boards, which I will accomodate as best as possible. At the urging of many of our members, we have procured a video camera to document peoples stories along the way. Hopefully we can deliver a good video to Congress when I get to D.C. If you want to do an interview, let me know, and we'll try to make that happen. Regarding the PAC: We have received a total of $3,757 in donations to date. I have not done the calculations yet, but I estimate that we have spent approximately $2,000 in fuel, some food, and some administrative costs (paper, bumper stickers, office supplies). We have a payment of $1200 coming due imminently to cover the costs of 200 T-shirts, and 100 hats. Since we are selling these items ($20 each) these should way more than pay for themselves over the course of the trip. So...we're staying above water, but your support continues to be critical on this. Beyond that, I have posted the brochures in two different formats: Word and Publisher. Please, Please, Please print 20 or so out, and place at strategic locations. Public bulletin boards, coffee shops, libraries, etc seem to work pretty well. Beyond that, I hope everyone will think positive thoughts for the "Bus", and its mechanical health!!!! That's it for now! Have a great week, everyone, and remember, this is a grassroots movement which means that each of us have a responsibility to make something happen...however seemingly insignificant! Strength in Numbers! Alan
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Two of our members, Cheryl Rohloff and Lynne Ostergen, are being featured today in an investigative TV news program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is a hard hitting piece that cuts right to the heart of this issue. The link is: http://www.todaystmj4.com/features/iteam/5688091.html It takes courage to get up and tell your story in a public fashion like this, but it is SO important and helpful to the cause. So thanks to Cheryl and Lynne from all of us. I truly believe that we could do this in every state of the Union. There is no shortage of compelling stories out there, and the folks in the media are more than willing to do stories on it. I hope all of you will consider making an effort to contact your local media, or get me their contact info. I'm more than happy to get the ball rolling, if you are willing to get up and tell your story. And for what it's worth: at the end of the day, it feels good to get it off your chest! Also, we are doing a nationally syndicated radio show tonight at 11 pm eastern time. Its called the Jim Bohanon Show. It would be great if some of you want to call in. You can find the show in your local area at: http://www.jimbotalk.net/
1. This will entail living with an ever increasing balance over the 15 year term in most cases, (hindering borrowers credit), and ensures a MASSIVE tax penalty at the end of the term-particularly for those of us who's loans have already "gone nuclear" in the first place! 2. This plan ensures that if we should experience financial fortune, it will be sucked into the interest on this debt. 3. 15 years is a long time, and who knows how it will change over time depending on the whims of Congress? Anyhow, let me know your thoughts. A good analysis of both bills is at: Analysis of H.R. 5, the College Student Relief Act of 2007 Analysis of S. 359, the Student Debt Relief Act of 2007 The Bus tour is in Ft. Worth, Texas. This is a BIG state! We have shot 3 videos in the past 4 days, and have two more scheduled before we leave the state for Louisiana tomorrow to meet with Charles Boustany (or his staff) on Monday. We did an interview with the New York Times yesterday regarding private loans and culinary school. (If this is you, you may be getting called by them soon). That's it for now. As always, please help spread the word about this in whatever way you see fit, and remember that this is a grassroots deal, and we are the roots.
************************************************* Hey Y'all! The Bus Tour is currently in Tifton, Georgia enroute to Atlanta. Since I last wrote, we've been to Amarillo, TX, Lafayette, LA, New Orleans, and Orlando. I was awaken by a violent shaking and an indescribable torrent of rain that disappeared as quickly as it came early tuesday morning in New Orleans. Turns out that a tornado wiped out 4 houses two blocks from us. So that was interesting, and probably a bit lucky.
Anyhow...Progress: 1. The Jim Bohannon show went well. Jim started as a skeptical host, asking all the tough questions, but was making our arguments for us by the end. In particular, he couldn't believe that it is illegal to refinance consolidated student loans. The calls (which included Holli and Warren, SLJ members) seemed to really drive the points home. So that was good. We also did interviews with the NY Times and the Arizona Republic recently and were contacted yesterday by Time Magazine, and a couple of other papers that escape me at the moment.. Hopefully something will get published soon. Please keep calling the press, and getting them to do stories. that really is where the rubber meets the road. 2. We continue to take video submissions from members. We have 7 at this point, but can certainly use more. Here is the itinerary for the next two weeks. If there's any way you could meet the bus at these locations for a few minutes to have your say, let me know: February 19th: Atlanta, GA (Sen. Isakson) ALSO: IF YOU HAVE YOUR OWN VIDEO EQUIPMENT, MAKE YOUR OWN SUBMISSION POST IT ON UTUBE (OR SIMILAR), AND EMAIL ME THE LINK. PRIVATE LOAN STORIES ARE MOST NEEDED PRESENTLY, BECAUSE I AM SITTING ON AN EDUCATION WRITERS PANEL IN CHAPEL HILL MARCH 3rd, AND WOULD LOVE TO HAVE SOME TO SHOW. 3. We have T-shirts and Hats available now. Here is a photo of the T-shirts: To order, just donate $20 to the PAC for each item, and send me an email letting me know what you want, and where to send it. Please be patient. I will be amassing orders and sending in bulk once per week. 4. Here is the list of legislators we have visited so far with contact info. Now is the time to nail them with calls if you are in their state
5. Financially, we are doing OK. We're a bit in the red, on account of 2000 more miles logged than predicted at this point (Texas is BIG), currently, but I have faith that all will work out. I'll be crunching the numbers between now and next report. 6. Don't forget about the brochure . We are about to roll a new version, but the current one is fine for now. ************************************************* Hi Everyone, Greetings from Knoxville, Tennessee! We went through Georgia, meeting with staff for Senator Isakson, and Rep. Price the last couple of days. Today we hit both representatives (Wilson, Inglis) from South Carolina, and made it into Tennessee. We're getting into the "whilrwind" part of the tour. Three things: 1. I was contacted yesterday by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. They are looking for borrowers who have had hard times with collection companies for federal loans. If you are willing to testify, let me know. There are a few that stick out to me that would make excellent testimony, but we literally have thousands of submissions, and I don't want to overlook any good ones that would really help to further the cause. If this is you, let me know ASAP. 2. Keep spreading the word, and doing what you can-individually-to make this right! The flyers are working- Alberto handed out 100 in Florida, and we received a couple of submissions from that already. Also, remember to keep bugging the House and Senate Committee members. Do not be put off by the junior staffers. Do whatever it takes to make them feel your pain! 3. A StudentLoanJustice Supporter has issued a "fundraising challenge"! For the next 7 days, all donations between 10-$100 to the PAC will be matched...up to a maximum of $1000. As always, your support is greatly appreciated, and will be used wisely. To date, we have received $4,457, and are nearly breaking even. I will have an expense report at the end of the week. Keep Fighting, Alan StudentLoanJustice.Org
Hey Everyone, The Tour is now in Oxford, North Carolina. We hit Senator Burr, and Rep. Foxx in Winston Salem, NC today, and are off to Newport News tomorrow. We will be back in Chapel Hill on March 3rd for a conference, and will hopefully be meeting with staff for John Edward's campaign at that time. This is important, and I forgot to mention in the last update: The
Student Borrower Bill of Rights has been reintroduced into the Senate.
It is now S.511, and can been seen here An income contingent repayment plan without the tax penalty One thing it doesn't have is a viable "make good" option for defaulted borrowers who want to repay a reasonable amount in the short term (i.e. the amount that the government paid for the default claim), and move on with their lives, which is our #1 PAC agenda item. Anyhow, give it a look, and let me know what you think. I am very encouraged that it was reintroduced, since it was our efforts that led their office to do the original act in the first place, so we should all be slightly proud about that. More soon, Alan ps. 5 days left in the "fundraising challenge"! StudentLoanJustice.Org ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Since I last wrote, we have visited Virginia, and high tailed it up to UMASS Boston. UMASS, at the last minute, informed me that we could not set up a table on their campus, despite detailed planning 2 1/2 weeks ahead of time. I wasn't too impressed with this response. Judging from the brand new buildings, and facilities on campus, it would seem that they are protecting their investment. Not to worry, we will be posting and handing out as many flyers on campus regardless. Anyhow, Virginia went well, and we are off to Chapel Hill for the Educational writer's conference on Saturday.
I'll have more to say soon. KEEP FIGHTING!!!!
************************************************* Hey Everyone, The Tour is now in Chapel Hill, NC. We presented on a panel of the These are heavy hitters, and so I considered it a good sign that we were While the topic was private loans, I did a long seguet that covered federal Also...we ended up with $670 on the $1000 goal for the matching fundraiser. So now it's back up the coast. We are speaking at Cornell University on
Alan
************************************************* Hey Everyone, The Tour is currently in Bingampton, NY. We gave two talks at Cornell University on Wednesday to a total of 27 people. Thanks again to Heather Dunbar for her efforts to make it happen. It was quite well received, and I was truly shocked at how little the students know about their loans. For example, I asked three students at UNC Chapel Hill about their loans: - The first student thought her loans were from FAFSA, and knew nothing beyond this. This is beyond appalling. If the students don't know even this most fundamental type of infomation abot their loans, we can bet that they know even less about the terms of their loans. Anyhow, we're off to Boston again, and will be coming back through NY, and then off to the midwest. Pray for the Bus. We had our second flat tire yesterday, and various other mechanical difficulties are beginning to appear!!!. Oh...four quick things: 1. Great article yesterday in the Port Folio Weekly (Virginia). It can be found here: http://www.portfolioweekly.com/Pages/InfoPage.php/iID/2580 2. Has anyone ever been threatened with having their degree taken away? A reporter wants to talk with you if so. 3. As of March 4th, PAC expenditures were at $3,717.00, and donations are at $5,797. Expenses are a bit less than I had thought, which is good, but we still have yet to cut the check for the T-shirts and Hats, however, which will be roughly $1000. The expense report can be viewed here. 4. T-shirts are being mailed out This Monday. Thanks for your patience!! More soon, Alan StudentLoanJustice.Org
Hey Everyone, The tour is in Concord, New Hampshire. We met with Kennedy's staff on Monday, and Sen. Sanders (VT) Tuesday. It's back to Boston tomorrow, and then back to New York. So the East Coast is almost finished, then its off to the North and Midwest before we finally get to DC. Susan in California had an emotional face to face with Rep. Woolsey on Saturday. I can't tell you all how important this is...Elected officials get inundated by lobbyists all the time who are trying to sell solutions for nonexistent problems. If we are to be successful, we have to make sure they know there is a problem, and put a face to it. There are a couple of interesting things perking along on the media side of things, but nothing firm to announce quite yet. We did appear on Coast to Coast AM over the weekend, but it was pretty short. Don't forget to convince a reporter in your local area to do a story on this problem. At the minimum, get me a name and contact info, but I would prefer if you could do some of the legwork- it's really not hard, just takes a small amount of perserverance. Also, we'll be sending "open emails" to everyone on a state by state basis in the next couple of weeks. If you DON'T want your email address to be visible to others in your state, please reply to this email, give your state and email address, and we will take you off the list. That's it for now...KEEP FIGHTING!!! StudentLoanJustice.Org ************************************************* Hey Everyone, So the bus tour is now in Providence Rhode Island. We have now logged about 14000 miles on the SLJ Bus, and have connected with about two-thirds of the Denate and House Education Committees. We're going to SenatorJack Reed's office tomorrow, then it's on to the North, and Midwest, before we end up in Washington D.C. I want to say thanks to all the folks who have stepped up and supported the tour along the way. Meeting you all, and hearing your stories makes us all the more dedicated to bringing justice to student loans. Membership has picked up appreciably. We are getting like 5-10 submissions per day now, and are getting calls out of the blue from media people throughout the country. What we need right now is press. Despite previous publications and newscasts, we need to get our story out there. Unfortunately, this seems to be what the Congress responds to. The Student Loan Loan PR machine is extremely strong, and their PR stooges are very good at casting doubt in the national and local media. Think about local reporters in your area who need to be writing about this issue. Pick up the phone. Call them. Send me their contact info. We are batting nearly 1000 in stories as compared with suggested press contacts. We have a compelling story to tell, but it takes everyone to give a damn, and do some legwork on this. Are you feeling me?
Committee on Education and Labor Call them as well. Make them FEEL YOUR PAIN!!! So that's it for now- I will have alot more for you all soon.
Alan
Hey Everyone,
We have, to date, logged almost 14,000 miles on the tour, and have visited with staff of about two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate Education committees. Quick facts: 1. NY Attorney general Andrew Cuomo recently revealed findings about an investigation of student loan companies in NY. He found that they were giving kickbacks to Universities in return for business. This is only the tip of the iceberg of bad practices on the part of the student loan industry. We were interviewed by Newsday about the matter, and also gave two talks about this in Chapel Hill and Cornell University. Tip of the Iceberg, folks. What I would really like to find are provable examples of illegal collection tactics. We've uncovered a couple, but there are many, many more out there. If you are currently dealing with collection companies threatening you or your employers with jailtime, additional fines, or are presenting themselves as government employees, then get a tape recorder, and get proof. Radio Shack sells decent recorders fairly inexpensively. If they announce that the "call may be monitored", then we're covered. If not, then work into the conversation an announcement to the affect that the call may be monitored. 2. There is a class action lawsuit brewing for people in the direct program. If this is you, you may want to check it out. 3. We have 4 hard media pieces working currently (that I know of). 3 in Major media outlets, and 1 in...well, you'll see soon! Please identify the right reporter in your area to cover this topic. Use your powers of persuasion to get them to do a piece. I can send them any number of local "victims" with extremely compelling stories to back up what we are saying. This is not hard, folks... 4. Don't forget: The House Education Committee needs to hear your input. I gave their email a couple of updates ago, but "snail mail" may be the best way to go. the address to send letters to is: Committee on Education and Labor Call them as well. Make them FEEL YOUR PAIN!!! 5. The "bus" is hanging in there. We had a battery breakdown, and also a gas tank leak become problems in the past week, but are dealing with them. The generator is almost not usable at this point, due to exhaust issues which will require a welding machine to fix. The engine and transmission remain strong, however. This is all that really matters (knock on wood). 6. Keep sending donations as you can afford to. We're slipping a bit back into the red. Also, I would like to have a small reserve built up for when we get to Washington D.C. Thanks. 7. Special thanks to Anthony in Providence for the great hospitality. He originally borrowed $3,000 and is being pursued for $52,000. Absolutely insane.
StudentLoanJustice.Org
Hey Everyone, The Bus Tour is in Nyack, NY after hitting Connecticut last week. Good meetings, quite a bit of progress. I will talk about that later. Actually, there is quite a bit going on right now, but there is someting much more pressing to announce: So we were snubbed out of the Department of Education's "Commission on Higher Education Policy" summit this Thursday, along with almost every other student group (with one notable exception). Cool. Fine. Whatever. To be expected. Below is the list of people who were invited by the Secretary to attend. Each of you: PLEASE browse this list, and find one or more who is in your local area. Call them a million times, if that's what it takes to get ahold of them, and MAKE THEM FEEL YOUR PAIN. Stick to our agenda if it makes you feel better, but at all costs, talk to at least one of them. And DO NOT GIVE UP until you are convinced that they feel you. Don't be intimidated by their title. It does not matter. Don't be shy. Life is too short to be the victim of politeness and social constructs. I'm picking the Gates foundation person, because that is where I'm from. If there's on one on the list in your local area, then pick one without an address at random!
Alan Who's Who at the Spellings Summit The various conspiracy theories were fed in part by the fact that requests to see the list, from participants and interested reporters alike, were turned away in recent weeks. But department officials insisted that the delays had occurred because they were striving to balance and satisfy the hundreds of nominations and suggestions that college groups and others had submitted for the maximum 300 slots, and to make the final group representative not only of higher education itself but of the many other constituents with an interest and stake in it. The full list of those planning to attend Thursday's meeting follows: Lois Adams-Rodgers
************************************************* Hey All! The StudentLoanJustice.Org bus tour is currently in Youngstown, Ohio.. We haver logged approximately 15,000 miles since the tour began, have visited 39 members of both House and Senate educatiom committees, have given 3 public speeches, 4 radio shows, and have been featured in 7 newspaper pieces. Not too bad. I'm looking very much forward to getting to Washington, D.C. to make a whole slew of career lobbyists who work for Sallie mae, and other student loan companies look extremely foolish in public, by doing nothing more than stating the facts about student loans. A pretty good piece on CNN today on the Paula Zahn show regarding preferred lender arrangements, and the NY Attorney General Investigation. Her producers talked with us before the story, and hopefully will be focusing on the bigger picture soon. It is so funny how all the press regarding this almost trivial issue has come about, and yet most of the national media is oblivious to the bigger, REAL story about student loans. Oh well. Any press is good press, I guess. Keep fighting to get THE REAL story out there. It will all come out sooner or later. One quick thought: We are all but invisible on the internet, still. Most of our new members come from Findlaw, and the big lenders have purchased most of the webspace for this issue. This is why it is SO IMPORTANT to spread the word by mouth. Seek out others in your life who are dealing with this crap. Tell them to come to StudentLoanJustice.Org, and tell their story for the record. There are tons of things perking, but I don't have anything to brag about at this moment. Some extremely intelligent, and influential peope in this debate have contacted us recently, and we are working with them. All I can say is...KEEP FIGHTING. The press is our friend, and anything we as individuals in our local areas can do to get media to cover this issue is key. Anthony in Boston has gotten the attention of the Globe. Victoria in San Diego has gotten the attention of People Magazine. There should be other pieces in about 3 BIG papers coming out in the next month or so. Come on, guys. I'm out here humping it for zero pay, and am (in all likelihood) killing my own personal hopes of pursuing the goals that I went to college for in the first place. That's fine. I'm ok with all that. However: The LEAST you all can do is get a media story going in your local areas. It's not hard. Just think about things, pick up the phone, dial the right number, and talk to the right person, and make them FEELYOUR PAIN!!!!!! Keep us posted. StudentLoanJustice.Org
Hey Everyone,
1. It was discovered recently that not only have a gaggle of financial Aid Administrators been found to have taken stock, and other incentives from Student lenders: A high ranking official from the Department of Education has also been implicated in a private lender stock scandal that is only now starting to come out. This is the tip of the iceberg with regards to corrupt activities folks. I guarantee it. 2. I am getting calls from 4-5 national and regional media outlets. I am on auto pilot, and am simply forwarding them emails I have received from all of you. Be redy. Be ready to tell your story, and fight for yourself. This is why I started this whole deal in the first place. 3. Remember that despite the current "heat and light" regarding the university-lender relationships, it does nothing to shine light on the inexcusable predatory situations that are currently plaguing most of us. The curent maelstrom will blow over and be forgotten in a few months time if we do not each, individually, fight to make ourselves heard. To our politicians. To the media. To ANYONE who will listen. 4. Remember guys...This is not a "watch it happen " type of deal. I can guarantee you that if you all do nothing, nothing will happen. We each need to make something happen. Maybe it is convincing a reporter in your local area to do a story. Maybe it is meeting with your representative personally to make him/her feel you pain. Maybe it is showing up at your guarantors board meetings and making public comments. Maybe it is something altogether different. I don't know. What I DO know is that if you sit back waiting for good fortune to come your way, it won't. Guaranteed. The "system" is counting on you standing down when it is most important. That time is here, and you have to ask yourself if you want to be relegated to a lifetime of ridiculous debt or if you want to something about it. 5. There are more items working in the press right now that I can really talk about. I have forwarded over 100 stories to various reporters throughout the nation recently. Hopefully more than a few of you will be called. Be ready. Be ready to tell your story. Don't be intimidated. Don't be ashamed. Tell your story for the record. It needs to be told. Hold nothing back. Here is a represenative piece published recently by Anya Kamanetz in the Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/arts/0715,kamenetz,76309,12.html 6. Find 3 people who are having similar experiences. Tell them to come here. Our numbers are growing, but we are still nearly invisible on the net, and have to rely on word of mouth to grow. 7. James Kvaal, policy advisor for John Edward told me recently to stay tuned, that the Edwards camp wil have much more to say on this subject on the near future. Apparently the email I sent him, and the messages that other SLJ members sent him, are having some positive effects. 8. If you can afford to donate to the PAC, do it. We have incurred some costs recently, such as a tow truck in Pennsylvania, and motel stay in Youngstown, OH, that were unforeseen. Also, we will be arriving in D.C. shortly, and would like to have a modest "war chest" built up to write strategic checks to key legislators. Thanks. KEEP FIGHTING!!!
Hey Everyone- Sallie Mae is being acquired by B of A, and JP Morgan Chase, among others. Pretty slick move. No doubt many of the senior executives will be cashing out bigtime. Story: http://charlotte.com/295/story/87530.html This does not change our mission of bringing standard consumer protections to student loans. It will be harder to obtain financial information about the new private company, however.
Alan
Hey Everyone, The Tour is now in Iowa, after hitting 4 states in the last 6 days! Since the last update, our members have been featured in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times, NJ Star Ledger, and others. There are a couple of big, national pieces in the hopper that I will announce when they air/go to press. While the recent media attention has focused on improper relationships between lender/guarantors and universities, that is beginning to change and the real story- the astonishing lack of consumer protections for student loans and the effect this is having on decent people for the sake of corporate profits- is beginning to come out. Three quick points: 1. One of our members has started a yahoo group for studentloanjustice. It seems to be really taking off. the link is; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentLoanJustice/ 3. Keep the donations coming! We are operating pretty significantly in the red at this point (by about $1500), and could use a shot in the arm prior to our arrival in D.C. next week! That's it for now. Alan
Hey Everyone- The bus tour is now within the beltway. We hit the Senate offices tomorrow and Thursday, and will be turning our attention to the House through next Tuesday. Heather from New York has joined us, and others will be converging upon D.C. in the coming week. I must say: It has been an extraordinarily good month, in terms of press coverage. Either we or our members have been written about in top stories for a number of reputable news publications in the past month, including (In no particular order): 1. Probe Launched on Sallie Mae Collection Tactics, Amit Paley, The Washington Post, April 27th, 2007 (Front Page, Business Section) This detailed collection abuses that the Senate has found from borrowers, and asked Sallie Mae about. If the abuses look famiiar, they should. They largely came from SLJ members. A couple of our members were featured in this piece, and for good reason.
This piece was a long time in the making, and featured two of our members. This piece really begins to address the question of the predatory activities of the guarantors, which many of us have had first hand experiences with. 3. 'Top Chef' Dreams Crushed by Student Loan Debt , Kim Severson, New York Times, May 8th, 2007 (Front Page) This piece details some of the extraordinary high interest loans that are being doled out by culinary schools across the country. Great piece. Our members are featured, and we are quoted. 4. Sallie Mae Reaps Benefits From Ties to Key Agency, Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7th, 2007 We are quoted in this piece. Paul Basken is proving to be an extremely talented reporter. He later uncovered some very helpful activities that ED employees performed on behalf of student loan companies. I don't think this is that last we will hear from Mr. Basken. 5. Law favors gambler Over Grad, Dave Newbart, Chicago Sun Times, May 6th, 2007 There are actually 3 pieces by Mr. Newbart that address this problem. One of our members, Richard, is profiled in one of these pieces. Please google newbart, and student loans to see the collection. Very hard hitting pieces. Richard: You now have the clout to go banging on Barack's door. Please do it...I can confirm that their offices are wheelchair accessible! 6. Lending to Students a Gold Mine for Creditors, David Washburn, San Diego Times Union, April 24th, 2007
Our member are featured here. Very good piece that gets at the more important issues.
SLJ Member Alyscia was featured in this piece. Again, this piece really begins to ask the tough questions. Stephen Koff has broken some extremely compelling stories in this area in the past few years, and his tenacity is highly, highly ijmpressive. This may be the most important piece of the lot, because it looks at the guarantors, not just the lenders.
This is what we're up against. If I had to predict, I would say that this next week will be filled with low level meetings with junior staffers who don't want to address the REAL problems within the student loan industry: The plight of those of us whose lives have been wrecked by their student loans will remain the Great Unaddressed Problem unless we act, and act forcefully. This means that we have to push our electeds far beyond what we have yet endeavored to do. We have built up a bit of political capital, and this should provide us with at least an entree to make our pain felt. All of you must do it., and do it now. We have nothing to lose. Remember that. Beyond that, we need to get state reps for this cause. We already have leaders for the states of California (Southern), New York, Iowa, and Maryland staked out. The rest are open. The job descriptions for these volunteer positions are very loose: In other words, as state leader, you can do as much or as little as you deem appropriate. All that is required is your passion to get something done. Let me know if this is you. I will get you an email address, and a mailing list, and you will have complete control beyond that. There is no pay, if you have to ask ( No one gets paid in this, by the way...). One last point: Here is the list of our enemies. These are the people who make their fortunes by ensuring that decent people like you and I are stripped of their wealth for the sake of unearned fortunes of those in control of the student loan industry. Thanks to Anya Kamanetz for this nugget: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anya-kamenetz/secret-email-whos-who-i_b_48684.html GET UP, GET OUT, and MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN!!!!! ************************************************* Hey Everyone,
Our message- whether meeting with D or R offices-has been the same: current proposed legislation does almost nothing for borrowers who have seen their loan balances explode to ridiculous proportions. Our agenda remains the same, and we must all, individually, endeavor to convince our lawmakers to right what that which has so sorely wronged us over the last decade or more. 1. Speaking of individual efforts: Huge credit is in order for Denise of Maryland. Denise wrote a very concise, and otherwise well written response to an editorial by the executive Director of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC). After a couple of interchanges with Mr. Davis, StudentLoanjustice received the following email: This is a very large movement here, folks. The fact that Mr. Davis is interested in granting this kind of common sense fairness to borrowers is potentially a massive step forward for this movement. It is our hope that ISAC will indeed be able to get this done. This will be groundbreaking, and other guarantors throughout the nation will be compelled to follow his lead. So huge thanks to Denise for this effort, and please use this as inspiration for your own efforts. 2. State leaders. We now have volunteer state leaders for the states of California (Northern and Southern), New York, Iowa, and Maryland, and Arizona. All other states are open. If you have the passion to lead your state in this, let me know. This doesnt require a huge amount of work, but does require a strong desire to get things done with your legislators, and fellow borrowers in your state. 3. Keep the donations coming. We are significantly in the red at this point (By about $2000). This is a bit worse than I was expecting at this point, and so every contribution counts. I am confident that all wil pencil out in the end, but your support really matters. 4. Again, there are a gaggle of media efforts underway. I will announce these as they come to press, or go on air. More soon. KEEP FIGHTING.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, The tour is now in Elkhart, Indiana. We finished up our 8 days in Washington, and spent the day on Wednesday with the CEO and staff of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. The Washington visits were... just ok. I frankly was less than impressed with most of the education staffers on the hill, but I think we made a few impressions in the right places. My general impression was that they were quite happy to remain interested in the issues that the media has driven- namely, the preferred lender arrangements that have been exposed recently, and had little interest on addressing the millions of people who have already been through the system, and are having their lives ruined by exploded debt. Hopefully I am wrong. This is where your contacting these people really becomes important. I was pretty impressed that the Pennsylvania Student Loan Agency was interested in meeting with me. We had almost 5 hours straight of frank an honest dialogue, and they were clearly concerned with what I told them. Hopefully this will come to something tangible in the future for us (like what is happening in Illinois), but only time will tell. In any event, Below are all the email addresses for relevant education staffers that I could find. If you have some that are not on the list, please forward to me: Barack Obama 230 South Dearborn St. Chicago IL 60604 (312) 886-3506 steven_robinson@obama.senate.gov
KEEP FIGHTING!!!
Hey Everyone, The tour is now in Elkhart, Indiana. We finished up our 8 days in Washington, and spent the day on Wednesday with the CEO and staff of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. The Washington visits were... just ok. I frankly was less than impressed with most of the education staffers on the hill, but I think we made a few impressions in the right places. My general impression was that they were quite happy to remain interested in the issues that the media has driven- namely, the preferred lender arrangements that have been exposed recently, and had little interest on addressing the millions of people who have already been through the system, and are having their lives ruined by exploded debt. Hopefully I am wrong. This is where your contacting these people really becomes important. I was pretty impressed that the Pennsylvania Student Loan Agency was interested in meeting with me. We had almost 5 hours straight of frank an honest dialogue, and they were clearly concerned with what I told them. Hopefully this will come to something tangible in the future for us (like what is happening in Illinois), but only time will tell. In any event, Below are all the email addresses for relevant education staffers that I could find. If you have some that are not on the list, please forward to me: Barack Obama 230 South Dearborn St. Chicago IL 60604 (312) 886-3506 steven_robinson@obama.senate.gov
KEEP FIGHTING!!!
Hey Everyone, We've been a fairly since I last wrote. We are featured in this month's issue of Penthouse Magazine in a piece by Anya Kamanetz. I know, I know...but any press is good press, and the article is very, very good. I salute the magazine for tackling these issues. This is stuff that Rolling Stone should be covering, except that it is no longer relevant! There are ALOT of other press pieces working in some very notable publications. As always, I will announce them when they publish. Also, I have forwarded stories from our members whose loans are guaranteed through The Illinois Guarantor (ISAC) to the Executive Director, and his assistant is personally attending to them. Keep me posted if this is you. I can't tell you how important this development is for us, potentially. I am going to be asking many of you to pitch in for a nationwide push against the various student loan guarantee agencies to do the same. In the absence of meaningful legislation at the national level, this could be the path of least resistance to get what we need. Pamela Chambliss will be the point person on this, since she made the ISAC thing happen. We now have state leaders for the following states: Arizona This is good enough to get started. We will roll these state chapters out at the end of the week.
Dick Durbin recently introduced legislation that would reinstate bankruptcy protections for private student loans. This will be retroactive to the best of my knowledge, so that is important for those of us with private loans. Except for this, and refinancing rights mentioned in Clinton's bill, I don't really see anything in current legislation thats particularly useful for us. The Sallie Mae/CBA lobbying team is strong, and they have every advantage. It is pretty much up to us to counter what they are doing back in D.C. Use the list of contact people for House and Senate Education Committees. Contact them, and make them feel your pain! Name Address City State Zip Phone
Many have asked for a mailing address to send checks to. It is: 2123 Mt. View
************************************************* Hey Everyone, We now have reps for roughly half the states. We still need leaders for Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, and a couple of other big states. The responsibilities are not huge. In fact, as State rep, you can do as much or as little as you deem appropriate! The main point is that we are able to talk to others in our local areas, and do something locally. There is strength in numbers. Below is the list of State Rep Emails. If you want to throw your hat in for your state if it isn't taken, let me know.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Pastor Dan Lozer of Iowa is being featured on NPR today in a piece by Libby Lewis. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11837081
Anyhow, I am thankful for Dan's courage to stand up!
Hey Everyone, I've been locked into CSPAN all day, watching the education bill being debated on the Senate floor. There isn't much in this bill to provide fairness for people whose lives have been hurt by their student loans, but even still, it is being blocked. It is certainly "silly time" in the Senate, with amendments being offered pertaining to Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby, Clinton's pardon of terrorists, etc. I'm not impressed. Anyhow, we need more media coverage, guys. Its not hard. You just have to pick up the phone, and call a reporter in your local area. I've said this many times in the past, and a few of you have guided stories all the way to press, with great effect. You need to do this. It's not rocket science. Point them to this site if they ask questions you can't answer, but make a story happen. The press has been pretty good for us to date, and we have an extremely strong argument. Keep us posted. Alan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ************************************************* Hey Everyone, I had a couple of facts slightly wrong about the bill (2669) that passed the Senate the other day. Fore instance, Repayment for the income contingent repayment (the one with the massive tax penalty at the end of the term) is actually 25 years, not twenty (assuming no public service). A good synopsis of the bill can be found at: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/07/20/budget
I have noticed alot of you showing up on blogs, and article comments. This is great. It really does help. What REALLY helps are media pieces that show how predatory the industry has become...particularly on the guarantor/collection side. People don't believe me when I talk about student loan debt doubling, tripling, or worse. They also don't realize the astonishing lack of onsumer protections for student loans, even compared to IRS, credit card, or payday loan debt! It is up to us to make sure they realize the extent to which we are being hit. If you don't tell the story, no one will! Given what I'ce seen from Congress, it will take quite sometime to get anything close to fairness for those of us who have already had our lives trashed by student loans...certainly through the next election cycle unless somethinjg dramatic happens (which I'm not counting out). So there is time, but we have to keep working the problem in our own ways.
Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Sorry if I've been less than responsive lately. It has been very busy on this end, and alot is happening. As you know, HR 2669 was passed by both House and Senate last week, and is currently in the reconciliation process. I have said, and continue to say that we are extremely disappointed- the bill does some good things for future students, but nothing for those of us who have gone through the system, and are now stuck in unreasonable debt situations. 1. MEDIA Some good stories have come out recently. We were featured in the Port Folio Weekly in Virginia this week: http://www.portfolioweekly.com/Pages/InfoPage.php/iID/3152 Also, Jesse Jackson wrote one of the first good OPEDs I have seen on this issue in the Chicago Sun Times this week (you'll have to google it), and a good opinion piece also came out in the NY Times in a piece by David Nocera: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/education/edlife/nocera.html?_r=1&oref=slogin There are 3 or 4 other pieces in the hopper. One of them promises to be quite groundbreaking. I will announce them when they come out. In the meantime, NPR is looking for younger people (i.e. 30 or younger) whose life decisions have been altered by their student loan debt. If this is you, let me know and I will forward to the appropriate people. ***Also, Joe Galata of Nevada is planning on doing a doumentary/book on this subject*** PLEASE SEE SUBMISSION AT THE END OF THIS MESSAGE.
I finished the expense report for the PAC/Bus tour. For the Bus Tour, we spent $13,402.92. Nearly half of this went for fuel ($5200), while the rest was roughly equal amounts for food ($1300), lodging ($1500), T-shirts and hats ($1200), Internet/Cellphone ($1000), and repair ($1300). This is pretty good considering the tour covered nearly 6 months, covered 22,000 miles,and accomplished what we did. I hope you will agree. You can see the expense report at: http://www./expense report.htm Donations, however, currently stand at $8967.00. I hope that you all will consider what we accomplished on this shoestring budget, and consider it a worthwhile investment to support the PAC further. Monetary gain is clearly not my intention here, but neither do I want this to cost me personally an arm and a leg. Every bit helps, and your support is appreciated!
Fight On!
I am now going to design and produce a book, teleplay, and theatrical presentation featuring TRUE STORIES about students, graduates, and parents who are borrowers of SALLIE MAE STUDENT LOANS. The web site is now being designed, the research is being done, and I'm starting to request TRUE STORIES from those who have are borrowers of Sallie Mae student loans. My work has always focused on telling stories in the different formats and genres mentioned above. I have focused my telling of stories on the tragedis and triumphs juvenile justice, hospice, education, cultural, heaiing from grief and mourning, subtance and sexual abuse, etc. Now.. because I am learning first hand from being a parent who is a co-signer on my daughter's student loans with Sallie Mae and I have no other relationshp with a student loan lender, and our relationship with Sallie Mae is what makes great entertaining and educational drama...and all good stories have plot after plot of conflict, I can only focus on true Sallie Mae stories. Hope you'll share your true story with me... I'll keep it nameless or will acknowledge you.... just email me at JGalata@aol.com. Joseph ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Hope all is well. Congress is out on recess for the rest of the month, so I hope you all will see if there is an opportunity to meet with your Congressman or Senator during the break while they are local- particularly those who sit on the House or Senate education committees. They will picking up the College Access Bill upon their return, so now is the right time do to this.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec07/loan_8-15.html
Also, Mark Kantrowitz, of FinAid.org, released an interesting report regarding private student loans and bankruptcy yesterday. It can be found at: http://www.finaid.org/educators/20070814pslFICOdistribution.pdf
And as always, please support the PAC if you can. We still need to make up about $3000 to break even on the Bus Tour! If you prefer not to use paypal, you can mail donations to: 2123 Mountain View
-Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone, I hope all is well. This week, I have some bad, some good, and some research news.
It was reported yesterday that a former student at Illinois State University, despondent over student loans, committed suicide on campus yesterday. SLJ leader Denise (Maryland) has reported that Andy Davis of the Illinois Student Aid Commission (ISAC) is very concerned about this, and has asked Denise to keep him apprised. I can only say that our prayers go out to the family, and I hope that all of us, if faced with similar emotions, will think about positive steps to be taken to solve this problem rather than taking actions like this. We're definitely not alone- not by a long shot, and if you need to talk about it, go to one of our chatrooms, such as the StudentLoanJustice group on Yahoo.com The Good News: Time Magazine did a fairly good piece on the issue yesterday. While the piece focused on private loans, and they failed to mention a whole host of consumer protections that are absent for all student loans, they did mention the lack of standard bankruptcy protections. Importantly, the piece quoted Sallie Mae employees: "...Conwey Casillas, Sallie Mae's director of public affairs, acknowledges that the previous bankruptcy law, which allowed students to discharge their loans after seven years of active re-payment, might be more appropriate, adding that the company would support revisiting bankruptcy laws for students who act in good faith but still struggle to pay off their debt. Martha Holler, a company spokesperson, defended Sallie Mae, saying: "We don't make the rules, but we do have to follow them."" This last line is a complete and utter lie, given that Sallie Mae (along with the Consumer Banker's Association and others) has championed all manner of legislation that curtailed, or ended, bankruptcy protections for student loans, but the quote is an important one nonetheless.
There are a couple of other things going on in this area, and I will announce them soon. Research: So last week, Eastern Michigan U returned over $100,000 to a foundation that Sallie Mae uses to donate to non-profits, in order to "avoid the appearance of conflict of interest". Well, I looked into the tax filings of this foundation, called "The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region". Check this out: The Foundation has a mission of donating to worthwhile causes in the greater Washington D.C. area. However, there are a bunch of non-profits OUTSIDE Washington D.C. that received millions of dollars in donations from this foundation--Mostly universities, and university foundations, as well as alumni associations, financial aid groups, and the like. I found this interesting enough to compile some of these gifts from the foundation over the past three years. Below is what I found (This is a long list, so please excuse any typos!). I hope that some of you out there will see this as interesting. Please note that the gifts to universities in or near the beltway probably aren't from Sallie Mae entirely, but it's a good bet that many- if not most- of the others are. I would go further in saying that these universities, or the universities that these nonprofits are connected to, are more than likely preferred lender schools for Sallie Mae. Name of School/Nonprofit 2006 2005 2004 TOTAL Adams State Coll $500 $500 Hopefully others will pick up on this, and do some more thorough research to determine whether or not there are quid-pro-quo arrangements here.
Hey Everyone,
"...If we succeed in renewing the spirit of the American Constitution after the confusions of our day, it will be in considerable measure to the credit of the courageous efforts of the Unitarians and their Beacon Press"
This will be a yearlong effort, and if yoiu're wondering, I'm not forseeing getting rich from it--If the sales are 20,000 hardback copies, I will be thrilled. 10-15,000 is probably more like it, although I give it a chance to break through to a much larger audience, potentially. Anyhow, the true strengh of this book will be stories from you all, so don't be surprised if I ask you to allow your story to be used.
http://www.lawcash.com/attorney/3348/general-revenue-lawsuit.asp 3. There is another suit brewing against the California Culinary Academy. They are the worst school that I am aware of in terms of submissions to the SLJ website. Take a look at the email at the end of this email. 4. Inga Skipping of the SEIU Union would like to hook up with SLJ members in the DC area who are interested in representing us. If this is you, let me know and I will forward your contact info to Inga.
I
Hope you're all doing well. Daniel and I are getting settled in So Cal right now. I just wanted to get in touch with all of you and pass along what i think is pretty exciting information. I'm not sure if you're aware of the publicity CCA has recently recieved in the media. Just in case you haven't, here's a link to an article (if you want more, just let me know, because there are many others!). http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-06-06/news/burnt-chefs/ Anyways, to make a long story short, there is a lawyer that is filing a class action lawsuit against CCA. If you feel that you were misled in any way during the "admissions" process (particularly about the student loans or the career options when you graduated), then you might be interested in getting some of your money back. I'm going to attach all the info for the lawyers. Please feel free to contact them. Their office is in LA, and Daniel and I went to meet them in person and I was very impressed with them. They're very smart, very nice and helpful, very willing to answer questions or concerns, and above all else- they genuinely believe that CCA students were wronged and they're willing to fight for us. They only get paid if we win the case, so Daniel and I feel that at this point we have nothing to lose. Since this is a class action lawsuit, obviously the more people we have, the better. I believe that currently there are about 50 students or so. The lawsuit will be filed this month in September, so if you are interested DON"T PROCRATINATE! Also, please pass this along to anyone you know from CCA. Even if you choose not to take part in the lawsuit, I think it's only fair that we pass the info to as many people as possible. I would love to catch up with you all one on one! I definitely miss cooking and eating with you guys every night. By the way, my new phone numbers are (650)515-0791c and (949)209-8856. Please feel free to call me anytime!
P.S. If you can just send me a response to this e-mail so I know you got it, I'd really appreciate it. I just want to make sure I get this info to everyone. P.P.S Daniel's class--- Can one of you guys forward this to Christle, Brandon, Dave, Bill, and Adrian? I don't have their e-mails. Thanks!
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to all the new members. We seem to be picking up steam in terms of submissions to the site, so keep sreading the word- Couple of things:
2. As most of you know, I've agreed to write a book on this subject (to be published next year), and my intention is to feature as many of us as I can. If you DON'T want your story used in the book, then please let me know. 3. Don't forget to join the SLJ "chatroom" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentLoanJustice/ 4. We've picked up a couple of additional state leaders since last week. Hopefully we can get up to 40 in the next week or so. Here is the current list (see below). If your state is taken, drop an email to the lead, and say hello! 5. We are still a few thousand dollars short of covering expenses for the bus tour. Your support is appreciated That's it for now...Keep Fighting!!
Hey Everyone, Four quick items: 1. A respected media organization is looking for people who filed for bankrupty for whatever reason, and weren't able to get their PRIVATE loans discharged in the process (regardless of whether they went in to it thinking that their private loans would be dischargeable like most other debt). This is for PRIVATE loans, not federally guaranteed ones. If you're not sure whether your loans are public or private, private loans usually carry high interest rates, above 10%. Public loans (those guaranteed by the federal government) do not. If this is you, particularly if you filed after October, 2005, let me know ASAP, and provide yor contact info as well. 2. One of our members, Jason, is being featured on "The Story" on NPR tonight at 8pm. You can go to the WUNC website (NPR affiliate), and go to the "The Story" tab to find it. 3. Please support the PAC (we are getting fairly close to paying off expenses for the bustour, so I will be nagging for a bit longer on this.) If you don't like paying on the web, our mailing address is: 2123 Mountain View Dr. W.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Hope all is well. Couple of things- 1. We are quoted today in the Port Folio Weekly (VA) in another good piece by Jenny O'Donnell. The link is: http://www.portfolioweekly.com/Pages/InfoPage.php/iID/3315
They are Here, and Here .
6. Please contribute to the PAC. We still need to cover expenses for the Bus Tour, and have a couple of thousand of dollars to go. I don't foresee any large expenses beyond this, so I can quit harping about it when we meet this important goal! That's it for now. As always, KEEP FIGHTING!!! ************************************************* Hey Everyone, I hope all is well. Things are perking along on this end.
2. One of our members, Fred, is featured, and we are quoted this week in the Chronicle of Education in a piece by Kelly Field, regarding bankruptcy protections for private loans. It can be found at: http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/daily/2007/09/2007092001n.htm This is a subscription, unfortunately, but the savvy can find it posted elsewhere on the net... 3. Sallie Mae said recently that they would support bankruptcy for student loans publicly. Twice now. The first quote pertains only to private loans. The second quote, however, is applicable to federal student loans, I believe.
"...Conwey Casillas, Sallie Mae's director of public affairs, acknowledges that the previous bankruptcy law, which allowed students to discharge their loans after seven years of active re-payment, might be more appropriate, adding that the company would support revisiting bankruptcy laws for students who act in good faith but still struggle to pay off their debt. Martha Holler, a company spokesperson, defended Sallie Mae, saying: "We don't make the rules, but we do have to follow them." "
4. I know alot of you are bumming out about your loans, as I am about mine. I also know that a slight majority of our members are female, who reportedly "turn inward" when faced with external pressures. I can't pretend to understand this. I know the individuals responsible for the student loan scam, and I am taking the fight directly to them. Anyhow, if you are finding yourself unable to cope, don't do anything stupid that doesn't solve the problem. If you need to talk about it, go to our newsgroup at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/studentloanjustice/ to talk with others going through the same thing. Also, go to the whatwecando page on the SLJ website. These are concrete, easy steps that can be taken, and help the cause bigtime. 5. Our numbers are still, really low. We have roughly 3000 members, but this is a tiny, tiny fraction of our true numbers, which run as high as 10 million. Please find a couple of others in the same boat as you over the next week, and tell them to come here. I am frankly stunned at the progress we have made thus far with nearly zero funding, and a relatie handful of members. When we reach 20,000 members, we will really be able swing a big stick. 6. (Speaking of funding)...we are still trying to make up for the expenses of the Bus Tour that finished in June. If you are able to donate to the PAC, that would be helpful. Our needs are very small compared to the Million Dollar PACs operating on the other side (Sallie Mae spends over $1 million on their bus tour compared to our $15,000 excursion), but needed nonetheless. Your help here is appreciated. I hope to shut up about this soon. 7. As always, KEEP FIGHTING. Call a reporter in your area and get them to do a story. Post some brochures in your neighborhoods. Do whatever you can to make a difference. It helps us all. And keep us posted on your activities so we can brag about them.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, I hope all is well out there. Couple of things:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/571489,CST-NWS-SUICIDE24.article http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/581019,CST-NWS-college30.article
We are on the winning side of this argument, folks. The lenders have ducked nearly every swing we have taken at them. Sallie Mae executives declined to be interviewed for the 60 Minutes piece last year. When I gave a talk at the Education Writers Association this Spring, Sallie Mae declined to present. I could give a thousand examples on this here, but suffice it to say that in the two and a half years since this website has been up, the national attitude about student borrowers has changed dramatically. Respected individuals and organizations from all ends of the spectrum- from Ralph Nader to the Adam Smith Society- have spoken out against the student loan system. We were also the reason that Senator Clinton introduced the Student borrower Bill of Rights, and our borrowers are the basis for an ongoing Senate investigation of collection abuses by the biggest lenders. And I daresay that national attitudes regarding student borrowers have changed quite a lot during this time. The big lenders are finding it harder and harder to push the outdated stereotype of the lazy, irresponsible, or scheming student borrowing their way through college without the intention of paying the money back on the American People. This cheapshot myth is reduced in value by the facts on the ground--facts that only we can stand up and point out. So if you're feeling low, don't roll over. Fight back. Educate yourself, and tell anyone who will listen about the real story with student loans. In particular, the free press, and Congress are the people we should be talking to. I've said this a thousand times, and will probably say it a thousand more. This is what works. And if the pressure seems overwhelming, then know that there are millions of citizens like us going through the same thing. Go to the SLJ group to see what other's are doing if you need inspiration ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentLoanJustice/ ). Also, we will have state chapters for all 50 States in the coming months. I think that these state groups will prove to be key in this fight down the road. 2. Speaking of State Chapters, we are up to 37 state chapters now. The contact info for these is below. If your state isn't covered, then think about stepping up. There are no formal "job descriptions" for heading these groups--this is a grassroots deal, which means that you all are in charge. Make your own decisions, do whatever is appropriate for your state. 3. Pamela in Maryland met with staff for Senator Cardin this week, and they were impressed with her presentation. Also, Joe in Nevada single-handedly got a TV piece done on the Reno Area last week. Also, Thanks to Fred in Massachusetts for stepping up to be interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education in a piece about Durbin's bankruptcy bill. 4. Our membership seems to be picking up, but we're still only slightly north of 3000 members. I hope that everyone can find one or two friends that are going through the same thing, and tell them to come here. There are millions of us out here, and I see no reason why we shouldn't have at least 20 thousand members. I know a lot of people are ashamed intimidated, and otherwise unwilling to step up and speak out, but they need to get over it. By suffering in silence, they are actually hurting the cause rather than helping. 5. Keep the donations coming! We are starting to get pretty close to paying off the bus tour, and every little bit helps. Paying off this expense, and having a bit left over to cover nominal admin expenses (i.e. internet and cell phone), and perhaps a few small, strategic checks to candidates is all I really see the need for at this point. When tax time comes around next year, and the presidential races heat up, we will probably try for another drive of $5,000 or so, but that is a way's off.
Hey Everyone,
Couple of things. 1. Late last month, The President signed the College Cost Reduction Act, touted as the most significant higher education legslation since the G.I. Bill. Don't be fooled. While the bill is pretty good for future students, it does very little- or nothing- for those of us who have already been slammed. There is a loan forgiveness provision in it that was fought for by good people, but this program has major flaws. To be quite candid, I can only think of one phrase to describe this program...Lipstick on a Pig. At the end of the day, student loans remain as astonishingly absent of the basic, standard consumer protections as before. So the fight continues. 2. One of our members, Rod in Florida, got his OPED published in the Daytona Beach News Journal today. Way to go, Rod! Last month was pretty good for us in the media, with our OPED being published in the LA Times (and throughout the country), and a feature story in the Port Folio Weekly, as well as quotes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Chicago Sun Times. I am guessing that national media will be dying down on this now that the bill mentioned above has been signed, so it is our job at this point to keep the issue alive in our local media. Are you up to it? 3. If you want to do something useful for the cause besides contacting reporters and Congress, post to your local craigslist (www.craigslist.org). This has been done successfully in a number of states. its free, quick, and easy. Tell them to come to the SLJ website and tell their story. 4. Again, I am posting the revised list of state leaders. Contact them and let them know you're out there, and if your state is open, then consider stepping up and leading your state.
Regards, Alan Why 2669 Doesn't Work for Defaulted Borrowers. In recent legislation signed by the president, the "fix" for defaulted borrowers comes in the form of loan forgiveness for public service, and income based repayment plans. Both plans would require a defaulted borrower to consolidate his or her defaulted loans into the Direct Program, and a percentage of their income would be taken for extended periods of time (1-2 decades). At the end of the term, the unpaid balance of the loan would be forgiven. For those who have seen their loan balances triple, quadruple, or worse, this program is entirely unacceptable for the following reasons. 1. This program requires the borrower to sign a new promisorry note to the federal government for the massively increased loan amount- thus legitimizing the escalated amount- and this amount will likely increase through the life of the repayment term. 2. At the end of the term, there is likely to be a massive amount still owing on the debt, and this is TAXABLE INCOME. 3. If the borrower should experience financial fortune, it will be taken away by this debt. 4. If the borrower should default on this second, inflated loan, the default process begins again, and what was an astronomical amount owing becomes far, far larger. 5. Who can say that future Congresses won't change the terms of this plan, much like bankruptcy protections were taken away retroactively for student borrowers? For defaulted borrowers who have already had their lives trashed by the unfair, predatory laws governing student loans, this program reeks of yet another complicated government program that promotes even greater governmental control over the borrower's lives for decades. The solution is simple and obvious: RESTORE STANDARD CONSUMER PROTECTIONS TO STUDENT LOANS. Standard Bankruptcy protections would solve this entire problem without creating a new government program. Bankruptcy is no longer a "walk away" situation for the vast majority of debtors. Typically, bankruptcy courts will require payment of principle, and perhaps some interest for filers since 2005. While no one wishes to file for this protection, it is a hugely important right that all borrowers should have. The right to file bankruptcy is essential for negotiating fair and reasonable settlements of debt. Not having this most needed protection causes both lenders, and the federal government to abuse the borrowers. This has been proven time and time again in the case of student loans.
Hey Everyone, I hope all is well. Welcome to all the new members! It's been a relatively quiet week or so since my last update, but there are a few items to share: 1. Couple of articles last week in that we were featured or quoted in. The first was a piece by Helen Huntley in the St. Petersburg Times: http://www.sptimes.com:80/2007/10/07/Business/New_law_gives_some_st.shtml I was mischaracterized in this piece a bit, being ascribed the position that student should be able to "wipe out their loans" with bankruptcy. This is not the point of our fight to restore standard bankruptcy protections for student loans, and I made this clear in the interview, but this is the way it came out. Also, we were feature in a piece by Marketwatch: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07287/825027-68.stm
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-09-30-studentloans_N.htm
3. We now have 38 state leads signed on. The list is posted below. Please drop your state contact an email to let them know you are out there. If your state is unclaimed, please think about stepping up. The positions, obviously, are volunteer, and the duties include whatever you think is appropriate in your local area. I hope you will consider it.
5. As always, KEEP FIGHTING! This is a grassroots effort, which means that everyone has to step up. Don't be intimidated or ashamed to stick up for yourself, and this cause. This is not a "watch it happen" deal. You can be doing any number of activities, at little or no cost, to help. Plus, it feels good to do! Have fun, and keep us posted! [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ************************************************* Hey Everyone! Welcome to all the new members. We have a 4-month backloog of stories to update the website with at this point, so I ask for your patience in getting them up! I am reading them carefully, and a few of our new members have been featured in reports, so even though they aren't posted yet, they are doing good! A really good piece came out last weekend in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Dan Hirschorn was the reporter). Thanks to The Wallaces, and Richard Frea for stepping up on this one. The link is: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18936241&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623495&rfi=6
On the lighter side: I learned recently that anyone seeking to find the website corresponding to the name of Albert Lord's new golf course (Anne Arundel Manor) will be redirected to . Also, one of our members in Florida, Joe, has started his own website. I think you will find it inspiring! www.joesdebt.com
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members- I hope all is well out there. I have some important info that I hope all of you will take to heart as you go forward. This is information that to date has not recieved widespread press attention: The student loan industry and even the Department of Education frequently brag that defaults of student loans are at an all time low- proof that the system does work. Those "few" that do default on their loans are then painted as deadbeats, lazy, irresponsible, etc--this is used as a justification by those same entities to slam these borrowers with fees, penalties, and capitalized interest. Not only are defaulted loans huge moneymakers for loan guarantors and collection companies; even the Department of Education makes a huge return (about 20%) on every dollar it pays out to lenders in default claims. When people like us speak out about this, the lenders/Department of Education respond that the the system works, since defaults have come down so much--to between 4-5%. Well, a study recently completed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that the 10 year default rate for students borrowing more than $15,000 for college is actually about 20%. This is not the lifetime rate, which probably approaches 23-24%. This is one in five, perhaps closer to one in four. This is an ABSOLUTELY HUGE number. Moreover, about 10% of all borrowers default on their student loans within 4 years after graduation. This study looked at students graduating in 1993, and tracked them through 2003. College has become much more expensive- even after accounting for inflation- since that time, so we can expect that these rates are increasing as we speak, despite the ridiculous "cohort default rate" that the lenders/guarantors/Department of Education point to- a metric that is easily manipulated by those same entities.
http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=559757
I ASSUME EVERYONE IS OUT THERE TALKING TO REPORTERS, RIGHT??!!!
That's it for now. There's a bunch more going on right now, but I will save it for the next check in. Regards, Alan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hey Everyone, Hope all is well. Welcome to the new members. 1. Senator Dodd announced legislation to restore bankruptcy protections for private student loans. This is good for some of us, but not most, who have federally guaranteed (not private) loans. Remember, bankruptcy is no longer a "walk away" solution for the vast majority of borrowers- most will be required to repay what they borrowed, and some interest. Still and all, it is an extremely important protection to have in order to negotiate fair and reasonable settlements, particularly for defaulted debt that has spiraled beyond comprehension. We need to push for the reinstatement of bankruptcy rights for ALL student loans, not just private loans. 2. One of our own, borrower Joe Perez, made the front page of the Providence Journal this week. I applaud him for standing up- something that we all should be doing. It takes some guts to do this, but I think you will all find that it pays dividends. At the least, this kind of exposure will cause your loan holders to give you some additional consideration, I have found. The link to the story is: http://www.projo.com/ri/cranston/content/joes_debt_11-27-07_307SPRK_v21.2c27e53.html 2. NPR is accepting questions for their democratic debate. Please go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2007/11/ask_the_candidates_other_topic.html#commentform and submit your question. If 100 of us do this, I should think they will seriously consider giving us a question. 3. A noted reporter is looking for older borrowers who are either having their social security garnished, or are perilously close to this happening. If this is you, please let me know so I can forward you to her. 4. Please donate to the PAC. Your support is appreciated, and needed. We are still a bit in the red from the Bus Tour, and also need to start building a small warchest for the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. I don't expect to be able to match what the lenders are pushing into Congress, but a $100 check from us is as significant as a $5,000 check from Sallie Mae, in my view. Also, the more donors we have, the more respected we will be regardless of the dollar amounts. 5. Please keep fighting, and do whatever you can to keep this issue in the spotlight. Convincing reporters to do stories is best, but posting brochures also seems to work pretty well, and its fun to do! Regards, Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone- Hope all is well. Welcome to the new members. Lots of news. A month or so ago, I said that things would be dying down on this issue with the passage of the college cost reduction act. Well, I was wrong. AG Cuomo continues to make pretty big news--primarily with regards to private (not federally guaranteed) loans. This is kind of good --particularly for those of us with private loans- but doesn't have much of an effect on those of us with federally guaranteed loans. Also, Sen. Dodd (D-CT) announced legislation to restore bankruptcy protections for private(not federally guaranteed) loans. This is similar to what Durbin proposed a few months ago. Time will tell if he is serious about pushing this through, or if he will drop it, like what has happened to every other piece of bankruptcy legislation for student loans up to this point. New information is coming out that is potentially huge: An NCES Study that tracked about 10,000 student loan borrowers (who graduated in 1993) found that after 10 years, 9.6% had defaulted on their loans. For those borrowing over $15,000 this number was doubled, to about 20%. For African Americans, this number doubled again, to about 40% (for all black borrowers). These number are big, far larger than the "cohort" default rate that the Department of Education, lenders, guarantors, and universities frequently point to as evidence of the success of the federal student loan program. This study didn't even count those who never graduated, by the way.
While comparing this data is tough to do, since the 1993 study only looked at graduates, and was a relatively small sample, the numbers indicate, potentially, an INCREASE in the default rate from 1993...not a decrease as the Department, lenders, guarantors, and universities would have us believe. If this is indeed the case, this is huge news--particularly given the obscene amount of money that these guarantors, collection companies, and yes...even the DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION are raking in on the backs of defaulted borrowers. Given this, this has all the earmarks of a predatory lending system. The fact that the Department of Education recently decided to kill a default aversion program further strengthens this argument. The fact that Sallie Mae's "fee income" increased by a whopping 160% between 2000-2004 further supports this claim. When I was interviewed for a 60 Minutes piece last year, the toughest question I was asked was why people should really care about this, given that defaults are at record lows. I didn't have a good answer for it then, but I do now. I've also been hearing from people (on the down low) who work for guarantors confirming my sentiments that they love defaulted loans. ALSOThe private loan market is in a free fall. Stock prices of student lenders are plunging---and plunging big-time. The fall in Sallie Mae's stock price, for example has decreased by about 50% since mid-April. While some may be inclined to take some pleasure in this fact, I do not. This has the very real possibility of garnering sympathy for the plight of the loan industry on the Hill, and could very well be used to take away attention from the critical need to restore standard consumer protections to student loans. This
is why it behooves each and every one of us to take it upon ourselves
to make the public aware of the predatory nature of student loans, and
the effect that this has had on our lives. Now, more than ever, it is
important that the public not lose sight of the real victims in all of
this. 1. Joe Galata in Nevada has finished a trailer for a documentary on student loans. You can see it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtSdd1-VjQY When this piece is complete, we will all owe Joe a huge debt of gratitude! 2. Chris Zeman has updated his website, http://www.Salliemaebeef.com . As the name indicates, the site is focused specifically on Sallie Mae. Check it out! 3. There appears to be yet another lawfirm looking at a potential class action. This one deals primarily with minorities borrowers of private loans. The link to it is: http://www.jameshoyer.com/problem_Sallie_Mae.html I haven't talked to these guys yet. If you do, let me know what you think. 4. I'm getting pretty close to finishing the book. 5 of 7 chapters are now complete in draft form,and we have pushed up the deadline by a month. If there are attorneys out there who might be willing and able to look it over prior to publication, and check it for potential liabilities, that would be extremely helpful. 5. Please keep the donations coming! Even small amounts really add up, and we are still a bit shy of covering costs for the bus tour-
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Happy Holidays to everyone! Couple of items this week.
-Ashley Flanagan, reporter for The Times of Acadiana, Louisiana published an uncommonly good piece today. The link is below. Thanks to SLJ member Karen Latioloais for stepping up on this one. I will paste the story below as well.: http://timesofacadiana.com:80/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071212/NEWS01/712120310/1002/NEWS01
2. Please consider a donation to the StudentLoanJustice Political Action Committee this holiday season. Yor financial supprt is obviously important, but more than that, the more donors we have, the more formidable of a political force we become on Capitol Hill. While we can't match the dollars that the student loan companies throw at Congress every year, we should be able to far surpass them in number of donors. I hope you will consider it. The link to the donation page is: http://www./pac.htm To send checks, the mailing address is: 2123 Mountain View Again, Happy Holidays!
*************************************************
Dan Rosenfield, UL dean of Enrollment Management, at his office Dec. 8.
When students stay in school an extra year to work part-time and avoid
taking out loans, Rosenfield points out, that means they've kept
themselves out of the full-time workforce for an extra year, and lost a
year's salary in the long run. Photo by P.C. Piazza But once she graduated from UL and put that education degree to work, she learned a schoolteacher's salary was barely enough to cover the $700 per month loan repayments, let alone rent and groceries, as well. Unable to afford payments, she had to start requesting deferments and forbearances. But the forbearance agreement allowed the loan company to capitalize interest -- that is, they added the interest to the principal balance, so that Latiolais now has to pay interest on the interest. Today, she owes nearly $28,000 in capitalized interest alone. Her total debt comes to $78,000. "I'll never pay on the loan, my entire life. I will always pay on the interest," she explains. "My forbearance runs out on November 21, so I'll have to get another one and then that will allow me to make a payment I can afford, but it'll also give them the opportunity to tack on a lot more interest to the loan." If payments were affordable, Latiolais says, she'd be happy to pay them. But as things stand, she has no hope of even paying off the interest in her lifetime -- never mind touching the original debt. "I figure I will have this student loan on my back until the day I die, and hopefully, it won't affect my children down the road, but there's really nothing I can do," she says. "I've told my family, don't leave me anything, because I'm afraid that they'll come and take it." Stories like this are nothing new to . He's the founder of Student Loan Justice, a political action committee dedicated to reforming U.S. student loan laws. The current situation "has literally destroyed people's lives," says Collinge, who collects student loan horror stories. "These are people whose aspiration to pursue the American dream has become an absolute nightmare." They've had reports, he says, of people who've been driven to leave the country or even commit suicide because of unmanageable debt. And since Hurricane Katrina, there's been a massive upswing in stories of student loan woes from Louisiana. Cindy Perez, UL's director of financial aid, agrees. After Katrina, "everybody kind of went to a deferment," she says. Why are loans such a problem today? In the last three decades, college tuition has increased at nearly double the rate of inflation, says Collinge. But that's not the only factor. "Congress -- since the 1970s, but really in the mid-90s -- has removed all standard consumer protections from student loans," he says. Today, it's nearly impossible to discharge student loans by declaring bankruptcy. Once borrowers consolidate their loans, they can never refinance again, no matter how interest rates fluctuate. Student loans are exempt from the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, statutes of limitations and federal truth in lending regulations. Lenders can levy massive penalty fees on borrowers who don't make payments. Collectors can garnish not just wages, but even tax refunds, Social Security and disability payments. Other lenders, such as credit card companies, don't have such extensive powers. That means that for many young adults, the very first major economic decision they make is also one of the riskiest. And, Collinge adds, the high penalty fees mean "it's far more profitable for these guys when students default on their loans." Loan companies, of course, argue this isn't true. But it does seem clear that they're making a tidy profit from penalties: in Sallie Mae's 2003 corporate report, then-CEO Albert Lord attributed that year's record profits largely to fees and collections on defaulted loans. And when graduates do manage to avoid defaulting, there can still be a cost for the public. Everyone benefits when a society has plenty of good teachers -- but teachers need college degrees, and as Karen Latiolais found, it can be nearly impossible to pay off student loans on a teacher's salary. The same goes for many other important, but low-paying, jobs. Arizona lawyer Kelly Carmody helps state governments develop loan forgiveness programs for public service attorneys. It's necessary, she says, because currently there aren't enough civil legal aid attorneys to cover even 20 percent of the need. "Certain people can't afford to do it because of their debt, so it limits the pool," she says. "A lot of people who would like to do it just can't." But not everyone agrees that the laws are the problem. "If students were allowed to default on student loans, the program would become so expensive that it would be more difficult for the government to set up loans so that students who needed the money were allowed to borrow the money," says Dan Rosenfield, UL's dean of enrollment management. And, he insists, students who are too afraid to take out loans at all end up hurting themselves. When students stay in school an extra year to work part-time and avoid taking out loans, Rosenfield points out, that means they've kept themselves out of the full-time workforce for an extra year, and lost a year's salary in the long run. "Loans are an excellent way for students to finance their education, if they are cautious, and if they are good consumers," he says. "Everybody talks about loans as though they're horrible things and they're to be avoided, but they're actually very useful." And, he says, in his experience, borrowers who run into problems rarely have trouble working out an acceptable payment plan, as long as they contact their lender promptly. "My experience has been that people making a good faith effort generally do not encounter those kinds of problems," he says -- though Collinge and Latiolais would disagree. To Rosenfield, a more common source of trouble is student borrowers who don't realize that they need to be careful with loans. "They're not for luxury items," he cautions. Today's college students, who may have had their own credit cards since high school, don't always take debt as seriously as they should. And it's a rare 18-year-old who can truly grasp what numbers like "$700 a month" mean before they've ever had to pay for living expenses. Alternative loan companies that advertise on television are another problem, adds Perez. "We do find students trying to bypass the Stafford loan process to go to the alternative loan process because they think it's a quicker process, but they're hurting themselves when they do that," she says. "There are some very reputable companies that do alternative loans, but then there are also some that are just out there to make money," she explains. "And the alternative loan industry is really not regulated by the federal government at all, so there's some free rein in there that's a little scary." Whether you blame Congress, Sallie Mae, alternative loan companies, rising tuition costs, or naïve student borrowers, one thing is clear: Student loans are something to handle carefully. "A lot of people say, 'I don't want to borrow money; I would like grants. I would like scholarships. I don't want loans.' And I think that's wonderful; if you can finance an education without loans," says Rosenfield. But that's just not possible for everyone. When it comes to law school, "I don't think there's any way to avoid it anymore, unless you come from a wealthy family," says Carmody. It is possible to minimize costs, though, by shopping around for a school that offers relatively low tuition, and by making sure not to borrow more than necessary. For choosing the loan itself, both Perez and Carmody recommend that students look to federal loans first. Federal loans offer much better rates, they say. Thorough research is key. Carmody recommends talking to recent graduates, as well as your school's financial aid office. If private loans are necessary, Perez suggests, look for a company that offers federal loans as well, and be sure you can find reputable information on them. Look into possible loan forgiveness programs before you take out a loan. Latiolais says she found out too late that her loan could have been partially forgiven in exchange for working at a high-risk school -- but only if she'd agreed to it when she first took out the loan. "I wasn't given that information at all," she reports. And if you do encounter trouble making payments, contact your lender immediately. When someone who's having trouble avoids their loan company, companies tend to take "kind of a hard tack," says Rosenfield. Perez agrees. "Especially when times are tough, that's when you need to call that lender or servicer to see what you need to do to stay out of default," she says. For those already in default, the first step is talking to both your lender and the financial aid office at the school you graduated from. Both may be able to offer options. For others, Carmody suggests that it may not be too late to look into programs that offer forgiveness in exchange for public service work. Programs can apply to almost any government job and many non-profits. Lawyers can find loan repayment assistance programs, or LRAPs, at ABAnet.org. For others, Carmody recommends searching at finaid.org. Another option is checking with individual employers. Many public interest attorneys now administer LRAPs directly for attorneys working under them.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members, and Happy New Year! Couple of items: 1. David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the NY Times, has just published a book: "Free Lunch: How the wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)". This book is currently #3 on the Amazon list, and marks the second time we have been written up by PP winning journalists. This book has a chapter devoted entirely to Student Loans, in which two of our members are featured. So thanks go out to Jason in Pennsylvania, and Jason in New Jersey for stepping up on this. 2. Sallie Mae's stock price has fallen massively in the wake of the botched sellout deal to J.C. Flowers, rising defaults on private loans, and the tightening in the private credit market. This has similarly affected other lenders. This is not a good thing for us, I fear. My guess is that borrowers can look forward to even harsher collection tactics, starting immediately. I advise those of you being harassed to record collection calls. 3. We still need state leads for about 10 states. I will paste what we do have below. If your state isn't listed, think about stepping up and volunteering. We have to collectively get through to the presidential candidates, and by banding together at the state level, we can get it done. This doesn't necessarily require a lot of work per se, but will require some organizational skills, and a drive to get this problem licked. We can do it, but only with your help. Our first effort will be a nationwide "flyer day" at the end of the month, and I will have more about that later. 4. Please consider a donation to the PAC. This will help us immensely down the road to compete with the lenders on the Hill, and we have big enough numbers now to start making a serious impact. 5. Matt Kresling has written and produced a song on student loan debt. I was impressed: http://www.mattkresling.com/Beast.html That's it for now. Keep us updated about what you are doing out there to solve this problem. We need more success stories from individuals steping up, and taking some leadership on this. Nothing happens unless you make it happen. -Alan
Everyone: I am pleased to announce our very FIRST national action...NATIONAL FLYER WEEK. THAT'S RIGHT!! January 24th (TOMORROW) through January 31st is national Flyer week. We are asking everyone recieving this email to dowload the flyer, print 10-20 copies, and post in as many public places as possible. Colleges, coffee shops, and libraries are good places, but don't be limited to just them. Be creative and put them everywhere that you feel they will have the biggest impact in your local area!!! Also, please check back with your state chapters to let them know where you posted. The flyer can be found at: http://www./january_flyer.doc
Hey Everyone, Welcome to all the new members. I want to thank everyone who pitched in to make our first national action, National Flyer Week, a success. Traffic to the website is up, and I only ask that if you didn't post flyers in your local area, please do. The flyer is downloadable at the main page of our website www. . As far as I'm concerned, every week should be National Flyer Week! a.. I need to take a moment to ask everyone to make a donation to the Political Action Committee (PAC). It is only with your support that we can continue this effort, and so please give this some immediate consideration. I am asking that everyone make a donation of $50, so that we can finally recoup our costs for the Bus Tour, and also establish a "warchest" for the upcoming presidential (and congressional) elections. Your support is very much needed, and greatly appreciated! As an added incentive: For donations of $100 or more, we are sending out high quality T-shirts! After making your donation, please email us to let us know your size, and shipping address. There is more to report, but I will save those items for the next update. In the meantime: If you ever doubt why this is a fight worth fighting, I want to bring this to your attention:
"...I am disgusted at what I see. The 'Sallie Mae' model has taken over our management and now every huckster from around the world wants to be a Sallie Mae CEO. No one stops these people and they stop at nothing to extort millions from the public. In eight years we have gone from a wholesome public venture to a loan shark operation, preying on students who do not belong in college in the first place. [one of our VP's] has single handedly turned our agency into a big payday advance type operation, preying on the old, minorities, anyone who is unable to stand up for themselves. Greed is good? I've seen it destroy American Higher Education firsthand. The mafia would blush if they saw how our operation was run from the inside out." This employee continues in subsequent emails: ".Envy/greed run hand in hand. People I work with see what the CEO of Sallie Mae 'earned' and now they are all greedy. They have forgotten the schools, students, lenders, employees. We have a rash of private people wanting entrance to this industry purely for a profit motive. It's a mess. Not sure what else I can say-"A significant percentage of our portfolio is what I refer to as 'subprime'. NINJA loans if you will. Our previous CEO targeted the poorest areas of [two states], knowing that many if not all of these students would end up paying us large default collection fees over the long haul. According to this employee, the company also engaged in egregious collection practices, and gave an example: When I worked default collections I refused to garnish a little old lady's disability check. Sweetest little old black lady you ever want to meet. She came with her son from Chicago so her son could play ball at [a university in the area]- she signed a bunch of PLUS loans. She was eating a mac and cheese diet on her disability check and I received an order to garnish her, rather than set up on low payment based on income. That's when I snapped and realized no one is protecting the public anymore..." I hope this encourages you all to get more active to convince Congress to solve this problem, support the movement, and ultimately, help the country going forward.
Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welome to the new members. Traffic to the site has picked up since Flyer Week, and so that is a good thing. Couple of items: 1. Congressman Danny Davis(D-IL) is considering offering an amendment to the Higher Education Act Reauthorization that will restore bankruptcy protections for private student loans. It would behoove all of you with private loans to contact him and let him know that you're out there, and need this protection. I know alot of you have been saddled with extremely high interest private loans, and can't get anywhere wih your lenders. Bankruptcy protections will help your negotiating position immensely, and allow for a fair and reasonable way for you to settle your debt. In classic grassroots style, I am asking you all, particularly Illinois rsidents to send his education staffer, Brian Montgomery, an email: b.montgomery@mail.house.gov . Please keep it concise, and to the point.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7704336701 3. We were quoted last month in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This is a paid subscription, btw: http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle.com%2Fdaily%2F2008%2F01%2F1277n.htm 4. There are curently 3 separate documentary film makers working on student loan documentaries. They are looking for stories. If you have a compelling story you are willing to have told, please shoot them an email: Jgalat@aol.com aurora.sf@gmail.com joshjgoldman@aol.com
Student Loan Justice PAC Also, Thanks to Tom Cimochowski of New Jersey for stepping up to be interviewed for the Star Ledger in New Jersey a while back. This article escaped my attention!
Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. This will be a brief update. 1. We are quoted this week in a series of pieces by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Debt can saddle students for many years 2. I've identified the "Blue Dog Democrats" who voted against the amendment from Rep. Davis (IL) that would have reinstated some of the bankruptcy protections that were taken away for private loans. If any of these names look familiar to you, then please give their offices a call. If not for the blue dogs, this long overdue amendment would have gotten through. Chairman Miller, and most democratic members of the House education committee voted for it, knowing that these protections should have never been taken away in the first place. Here is the list of Blue Dogs that voted against the amendment: Baca, Bean, Berry, Bishop, Boren, Cardoza, Carney, Chandler, Costa, Davis, Donnely, Ellsworth, Giffords, Hill, Holden, ampson, Mahoney, Marshall, Matheson, Melanon, Moore, Murphy, Peterson, Ross, Herseth Sandlin, Schuler, Space, Taylor, Wilson You can find their contact info at: www.bluedogdems.com
Thanks, Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. I hope everyone is doing well, and taking actions to bring attention to the astonishing lack of consumer protections for student loans. I have seen an increase in blog entries regarding student loans, and so that is a good thing. Also, our facebook group is now up to 170 members. My hope is that we can get it up to 25,000 or so in the next 6 months, so please check it out, and help spread the word about it. I am still very concerned at what the Blue Dog Democrats did to Danny Davis's amendment to return bankruptcy protections to private student loans. I hope that you all will check the list of BDD's who voted to kill this amendment, and if one is in your state, call them, and let them know your feelings. Her is the list of BDD's who voted to kill the amendment: Baca, Bean, Berry, Bishop, Boren, Cardoza, Carney, Chandler, Costa, Davis, Donnely, Ellsworth, Giffords, Hill, Holden, ampson, Mahoney, Marshall, Matheson, Melanon, Moore, Murphy, Peterson, Ross, Herseth Sandlin, Schuler, Space, Taylor, Wilson You can find their contact info at: www.bluedogdems.com Also, the private loan industry has asked the Feds to consider a bailout for their private loans (these are the high interest, non federally loans that have become hard to resell in the currrent credit crunch). I find it irksome that Congress is willing to consider this, and at the same time is unwilling to consider returning standard consumer protections to student loans. At every opportunity on Capitol Hill, the borrowers are relegated to second position behind the banks. This is what we need to change, folks. Now more than ever, your activism is needed. Also, I've been asked alot recently to give an endorsement for the democratic presidential race. From my perspective, this is very easy to do. Hillary Clinton did more to restore standard consumer protections to student loans than any other member of Congress in the last Congress with her Student Borrower Bill of Rights (S.511), and so of course my endorsement goes to Senator Clinton. Ralph Nader, who recently entered the race, has written excellent pieces on this issue also, I should add, but has not specifically advocated for the return of consumer protections for student loans to date. Senator Obama has not done or said anything to my knowledge on this issue, nor has Senator McCain. Having said that, it is incumbent upon us to make this a presidential campaign issue, regardless of who the candidates are. It appears to me that thus far, no candidate has been eager to discuss the astonishing lack of consumer protections for student loans. We can change this. I encourage you all to get with your state chapters, and see what you can do together as the campaigns come through your state. I think we've demonstrated pretty strongly that affecting media stories about the problem is the most efficient way to go about this, but please don't be limited to just this. I know you all are struggling, and appreciate that. However, we have to devote our efforts to this issue. So please, don't get discouraged, and keep fighting! Regards, Alan
Hey Everyone, This will be a brief update. 1. We are quoted this week in a piece by Jennifer Haley of CNN. It was the top emailed story of the day, and we are in the first paragraph. The link is: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/03/05/student.loans/ 2. This week, we submit our year end report to the Federal Elections Commission for the Student Loan Justice PAC. The report will show receipts of $9,842, and expenditures of $13,403. This leaves us in the hole by about $4,000. The balance has been paid by me personally, a circumstance I had not hoped for. I hope that you will consider making a donation to the PAC in view of this. 3. We need to make this a presidential campaign issue. Hillary Clinton is the best candidate with regards to restoring standard cnsmer protections for student loans, but neither candidate has talked about returning standard consumer protections to student loans on the campaign trail. So get out there, hit the blogs, make phone calls, use every tool at your disposal to make this an issue. It really is up to you. Alan Collinge, Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Alot of you have been asking about the Yahoo group. Unfortunately, It has been taken down. We hav too many people from the student loan industry sitting in on it, and it was beginning to make some people uncomfortable. Anyhow, The Facebook page is up and running, with over 200 members at this point. I hope you will all check that out. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7704336701 Also, because we have so many members, the StudentLoanJustice ISP is no longer capable of handling all the emails going out from the check-ins, and so I will be posting these on the Facebook until we can increase our mail capabilities. You will have to check out "The Wall" on the link above to get this. I will also post the updates on the website. I am quite busy with my normal life for the next few months- I know you all can understand that. That said, it is all the more important that others pick up the ball and run with it. I urge you all to get with your state leads to get stuff going locally. It really is the local grassroots work that is going to make the difference for us. California is doing well in this regard, and a couple of the other states are beginning to come together, and this has to continue and expand. Hopefully you are aware that the banks are seeking, and getting alot of sympathy on the Hill currently because of the credit crisis, so that we borrowers, once again, find ourselves relegated to the outside looking in. Since the Piece on CNN eariler this month, we haven't had much exposure in the press, but there are a couple of items I know that are in the works. However, I hope that some of you will take it upon yourselves to pick up the phone, call a reporter or a news company, and let them know what's going on. Keep us posted, donate to the PAC, and of course, keep fighting.
Please support the PAC
Hey Everyone, Apparently our new ISP is allowing bulk emails, so I will continue sending updates until they catch on! It has been three (long) years now since was started. However, I have to say that i am proud with what has been accomplished to date. With almost no funding, and a heavily beleagured membership, we have been written about in nearly every major newspaper in the U.S., been featured on 4 television programs including top story on 60 Minutes, been featured in 4 books, and written one of our own, and also been aired on dozens of radio shows across the country. We've also been featured in 3 magazines, and have grown to comprise roughly 3000 members. We also formed a political action committee, toured the country, and have formed state chapters for 40 states. We also served as a basis for an ongoing Senate investigation, and are credited as being the reason that the Student Borrower Bill of Rights was created in 2006. Still
and all, there has been little progress on the legislative front, and
this is really what matters. I hope you will be encouraged by this to
get out and do your part to make sure that Congress realizes what an
absolute scam the student loan industry has become. If you don't stand
up, no one will stand up for you. 1. Lynn O'Shaugnessy thanks us in her new book: College Solution. 2. I was a guest last Monday on the Armstrong Williams show: Take Back America 3. Congress is again bending over backwards for the banks. In my view, this is a travesty. These are the same banks that lobbied for, and got the removal bankruptcy protections for private loans, and then proceeded to wrecklessly lend as much as possible- and at as high of an interest rate as possible- to students. Now, with the economy turning, and these students defaulting on these predatory loans (predictably), they are crying for help. Again, the citizens are taking a back seat to the banks. This will continue, particularly in light of TERI, the nations largest guarantor of private loans, filing for bankruptcy. Ironic that they can file for bankruptcy protection, but not the students who are now saddled with these usurious loans. That's it for now. Keep us updated on your progress. We need something to brag about for the next update! Alan ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Hope all is well out there. Welcome to the new members. We have noticed an uptick in submissions over the past several weeks(particularly from people planing on leaving the country for some reason), and I expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future. The downturn in the economy guarantees that student loan defaults will be increasing...possibly at an alarming rate depending on how bad it gets. Those of you who follow these updates will know that despite the rhetoric from the student loan industry that default rates for student loans are at historic ows, the opposite is true. Recent data suggests that about 20% of all student loans will end up in default, and this is probably closer to 25%. Moreover, the amount of student loan debt out there is massive...about $500 billion. Compare this with the total amount of credit card debt ($900 billion), and you should agree that this problem is very large. Now is the time for you all to take personal leadeship for getting the word out about the uniquely predatory nature of student loan debt. The pressure that the industry is under due to recent legislation and the credit crunch have all but swept this under the rug, and Congress is cowtowing to the banks, predictably. The suffering that the astonishing absence of consumer protections for student loans is causing has been drown out by the cries (and lobbying) by the banks. This should concern you, and concern you greatly. I do know of a few media pieces in the works that address this issue, but I have to say that with the exception of a few folks in California, I am not seeing much tangible evidence of action out there in the country to bring attention to this issue. Its not hard to pick up the phone and call a reporter. It's not hard print up some flyers and post them around the colleges. There are a million things that you could do. Just pick one. Also, I want to make it clear that this site is not for the purpose of giving out personal advice to borrowers. This site is for galvanizing grassroots action to convince Congress to return the standard consumer protections to student loans. I would like, at some point, to be able to offer counseling services to individual borrowers, but we are not there yet. Thanks, and please take some action. Alan Keep us posted- Alan Collinge,
Hey Everyone, I estimate that about 200 of us have sent our student loan stories in to Lou Dobbs at this point. If you haven't yet sent in your story, please do so...and save it for later use. If there's no bite with Dobbs, then we will move on to the next possibility. Be sure to mention the unique lack of bankruptcy and other standard consumer protections that are causing predatory behavior. His email is loudobbs@cnn.com
Recent data suggests that approximately 1 in 4 student loan borrowers will end up in default. This is a huge number. While we represent approximately $200 million in loans, the total value of defaulted loans across the country approaches $40 billion (higher if you include private loans). We clearly have a long way to go to connect with the millions of citizens out there who are going through what we are facing. Please get with your state chapters contacts, and let them know you're out there. Spread the word about this site to everyone you can in your daily life. Think about actions that you can take as an individual, or in groups, to bring this issue to the forefront. The presidential campaigns have paid little attention to the astonishing lack of consumer protections for student loans, and if we don't make them aware of it, then we will be drown out by the student loan industry. There are a couple of important media pieces in the works, but this is nothing compared to what could be happening if we all dedicated ourselves to this effort. Also, don't forget to make a small donation to the PAC if you can. It really helps. You're not alone. Keep Fighting! Alan Alan Collinge, Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hello Everyone, Pretty busy week. Welcome to the new members. In no particular order:
2. A couple of weeks asgo we were quoted in a piece in the Chicago Sun Times http://www.suntimes.com/news/931855,CST-NWS-college05.article
I would love to see all fifty states with websites such as these. It would really help.
http://consumerwarningnetwork.com/
http://consumerist.com/5009106/round-39-sallie-mae-vs-ebaypaypal 6. Please donate to the PAC as you are able to!!!!!
Alan Alan Collinge, Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. This will be a brief check in.
http://www.amazon.com/Student-Loan-Scam-Oppressive-History/dp/0807042293/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211865769&sr=8-1
http://www.politickerwa.com/bryanbissell/1127/bart-proposes-student-loan-amnesty
Keep fighting. Alan Collinge, Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. It has been an interesting week. 1. Steven Greenhouse, a writer at the NY Times, has published an excellent book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker in which one of our members, Michelle Young, is featured (Thanks to Michelle for stepping up). This book has won really compelling critical acclaim, and will certainly have a large impact on the public discourse. I encourage you all to give it a read. 2. There is a writer at a well known national magazine seeking people who, despite being highly capable students, dropped out of college. She is particularly interested in people from lower-middle class backgrounds. If this is you, let me know and I will forward it along. 3. As I mentioned previously, a respected, REPUBLICAN, congressional candidate in Washington State has proposed a student loan amnesty, where long time defaulted borrowers would be allowed to repay what they originally borrowed, and move on with their lives. The Democrat that he is running against actually voted with the banks recently to kill an amendment offered by Danny Davis of Illinois that would have restored bankruptcy protections for private student loans. I hope the irony of this is not lost on you all. There may be some hope for the republican party, given this. As treasurer of the StudentLoanJustice PAC, I intend to support this candidate. Please donate to the PAC if you agree. 4. What we have accomplished to date: Since we started over three years ago, I am extremely pleased with what we have accomplished given the hurdles that we faced. We have been featured in nearly every major newpaper in the U.S., including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun times, San Francisco Chronicle, L.A. Times, and many others. We have also been featured on numerous local and national television programs including 60 Minutes (top story), Geraldo, and others. Further, we have been featured in magazines including Fortune, Businessweek, Penthouse, and others. We have also written OPEDs in the LA Times, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and many, many others. We have done about a dozen radio shows, and been featured in 5 books including our own book to be published early next year, The Student Loan Scam. We also are the reason that Hillary Clinton introduced the Student Borrower Bill of Rights, and were intrumental in convincing the Illinois Student Assistance Commission to agree to forgive interest and penalties for bankrupt borrowers, and explore this possibility for federal loans. We also were the basis for an ongoing investigation by the Senate HELP committee into student loan abuses. We also traveled the country for 6 months last year, visiting 50 members of both House and Senate education committees in 42 states. 5. Fundraising: As our numbers grow it is really important that we get serious about contributing to our Political Action Committee. I think that you all will agree that we have are getting a huge return for our investment in the PAC, given our miniscule funding to date compared to what we have accomplished. It is time to step it up on this front. If everyone were to give $30 to the PAC, this would allow us to launch a real nationwide campaign. We'd be able to contribute significant amounts to the "good guys" on the Hill, expand our numbers to more accurately reflect the true size of this problem (there are 5-10 million defaulted borrowers in this country), and this would certainly build on itself. I hope that you will give this serious consideration. As encouragement I am proposing the following: A small delegation of SLJ members will be visiting the University of Washington at the end of the month. For every $30 received in donations to the PAC for the next two weeks, a t-shirt will be given to a student. Also, if you have an interest in doing the same thing in your local community, then please contact me. 6. As I mentioned previously, the book is now available for pre-order. There are some great stories in there, and I hope that you will consider ordering it. The cost is approximately $15 on Amazon. 7. Inspirational Closing: I just wanted to share part of one of the many emails that we get on this end by way of encouragement. This is from Jen in Colorado: "...I have to admit I've been doing nothing - I was paralyzed and didn't want to call and shame myself to a reporter. But something just happened and I hope you can tap into this. I followed the link in this email and read about Bart and the comments readers posted. The desperation and devastation of good Americans lives has me enraged and ready to act! Not because of the wretched, hopeless, agonizing situation I am in with my loans but because of reading other peoples horror stories. About retirees getting their SSI garnished!!! If you could share stories of ours in your email blast I think we would be getting off our asses for each other. Keep up the amazing, courageous and necessary work you are persisting at. I will print brochures to distribute around Longmont, CO and the surrounding area and I will call and email reporters and politicians. I will let you know what I do as I do it. We are a damaged group of ! decent people getting pushed around, driven underground and ruined - our American dream has been stolen and crushed. I don't have anything left to lose so, I'm ready to rise up."
************************************************* Hey Guys, This email goes out to borrowers only. It is certain that Sen. Obama is going to be the democratic nominee. Now is the time to hit him, his staff, his campaign, and anyone else associated with him to make our point. Please send an email to steven_robinson@obama.senate.gov
2. People are literally being forced off the grid, are fleeing the country, 3. Sallie Mae's "Fee income", for instance increased by 228% between 4. Sallie Mae and others have been found, repeatedly, to have been putting 5. Despite frequent claims that student loan defaults are at historic lows, 6. There is $550 billion in outstanding student loans nationally. Compare 7. Check out www.premierecredit.com This is a student loan collection Chapter Eight: Solutions Citizens, student advocacy groups, and state Attorney's General have begun to make it clear that monumental changes are critically needed for student loans, and Congress is beginning to respond. Widespread publicity showing how standard consumer protections were removed from student loans, how banks and universities actively engaged in improper and exploitive relationships with lenders and students for the sake of monetary gain, and evidence showing the effects that student loan debt is having on the U.S. population has begun to change the national discourse on the subject. The rhetoric on Capitol Hill has finally begun to change in favor of the consumers, not the banks, and the average citizen is now aware that this type of debt has serious, grave implications. There has been significant student loan legislation introduced since 2006, and some notable improvements have even been signed into law by President Bush. This is an encouraging first step in the right direction. Make no mistake, however: thus far, legislation proposed for the reinstatement of standard consumer protections for student loans has not progressed anywhere close the point of being signed into law, and indeed much of it has stalled, or been abandoned. Student loans still remain as absent of standard consumer protections as before, but the ground has been laid, at least, for A return of standard consumer protections to student loans. Even Sallie Mae representatives have stated publicly (in a Congressional hearing) that it may be time to re-examine bankruptcy laws for student loans. This chapter discusses recent legislation, proposes additional legislation that should be considered, and also briefly touches on potential solutions for what truly is the overwhelming problem with higher education: the astonishing rise in price.
The College Cost Reduction Act of 2007
On September 27, 2007, President Bush signed into law the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-84). Touted as the most significant higher education legislation since the GI Bill, this law mandates significant improvements for students. The new law provides for a halving of interest rates for future undergraduate students on the subsidized portion of their federally guaranteed loans. Also, the bill increased the maximum Pell grant amount slightly, and cuts lender subsidies significantly and guarantor collection fees somewhat. While this legislation provides tangible benefits for current and future students, it does very little for those who are already buried under unmanageable student loan debt, especially defaulted borrowers whose loan balances have doubled, tripled or even grown by an entire order of magnitude as a result of unreasonable collection charges and other fees. In fact, it could be argued that the cuts in lender subsidies, while they certainly benefit the federal government, will actually have an adverse effect on people who have already seen their loan balances escalate through the default process, since the lenders will more aggressively work to make profits in other areas to make up for the shortfall caused by the subsidy cuts. The most important aspect of the bill from the perspective of defaulted borrowers was a provision for loan forgiveness given after 10 years of public service. This was touted by some public policy advocates as a potential solution for defaulted borrowers whose loan balances have spiraled out of control due to penalties and fees. However, the public service plan is largely unacceptable for the purpose of clearing defaulted student loan debt for a number of reasons. First, assuming the borrower successfully finds and maintains public service employment for 10 years, the amount that would be forgiven would be treated as taxable income under current law. Given that most defaulted borrowers have loan balances that far exceed the amount they originally borrowed and that their loan balance is likely to increase significantly during the remaining term of the loan, the amount of tax they would have to pay immediately after the end of the term would likely be astronomical, often more than the original loan balance. Second, the borrowers would be forced to "rehabilitate their loans" in order to qualify for the program. This would entail signing a new promissory note, thus legitimizing all the penalties, fees and that caused their loan balances to drastically increase. Moreover, throughout the term of the repayment, the loan balance is likely to increase, such that if the borrower should happen to experience a financial windfall, it would likely be consumed by this onerous debt. Moreover, there is a larger issue to consider here: this program smacks of indentured servitude. Being relegated to working in a specific field for the sole purpose of retiring one's unreasonably large student loan debt is a severe restriction on the freedom of citizens. This sentiment is felt most strongly by those borrowers in their 40's, 50's, and beyond who have no wish to quit their current jobs and find a new one in the public sector for the sole purpose of retiring their exploded student loan debt. David Aigaki, the chiropractor in Texas who has been relegated to driving trucks because the State of Texas revoked his license to practice medicine due to his defaulted loans, raises some critical questions regarding the new legislation. "I originally borrowed $75,000. They are now demanding about $400,000 in payment. I suppose that I could quit my job, take a cut in pay, learn a new field, and take a job at a non-profit somewhere for 10 years, and give up 15% of my income along the way, but at the end of the day, I'll probably owe a half a million. What is the tax on that? I'm 50 years old now, where am I going to find a hundred-plus thousands dollars- on top of what I will have already paid- to pay these people off after all is said and done? I don't want to die in debt, but at this point, it's looking like either that, or the tax hit at the end will put me into an early grave anyways, so I can't win- the U.S. Government has seen to that". There is another issue for borrowers who have seen their loan balances explode, and it is one of trust. Many borrowers who were defaulted on their loans feel they were defaulted improperly in the first place, others accept that they bare responsibility for the default, but see clearly that the system as designed was so heavily tilted in favor of the lenders in the first place, and feel so abused by years of ruthless collection tactics and a lack of recourse under the law, that they no longer have any faith in government on this issue. These borrowers have been bullied for so many years by the system, that they have no desire to enter into a long term contract on the debt with a party that they do not trust. After all, Congress retroactively removed bankruptcy protections from student loan debt, for example, so what assurances are there that the rules will not change in the middle of the game, yet again, during a 10-25 year period, depending on the whims of Congress? To be sure, this program may be attractive for recent graduates whose loans have not ballooned due to default. In the view of nearly all defaulted borrowers who have studied this program, however, the plan is completely unacceptable, and is seen as a cheap attempt by Congress to forego the reinstatement of the standard consumer protections that have been taken away from student loans.
The Student Loan Sunshine Act of 2007
In May 2007, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (414-3) to approve the Student Loan Sunshine Act. This act was in response to the investigation of the New York Attorney General that found widespread corruption within the industry. The act called for sweeping reforms of the relationships between the lenders and the universities. Under this act, colleges would be required to make full disclosure of any special arrangements between lenders and institutions of higher education. The legislation also bans lenders from offering gifts worth more than $10 to college employees, including travel, lodging and entertainment, and bans lenders from providing in-kind services to college financial aid offices. The legislation further requires full disclosure of the reasons why an institution of higher education has selected a lender for its preferred lender list, including any special arrangements the lender has with the school. Again, this legislation was welcomed, and will certainly provide for more education for the borrowers prior to taking out student loans. It does not offer, however, any benefit for those citizens who have already taken out loans.
Bankruptcy Protections
While no one ever wants to file for bankruptcy, the reasons for bankruptcy protections are well founded. Bankruptcy protection affords citizens with insurmountable debt a legal mechanism for resolving their debts, and continuing on to be productive citizens. Most consumers who file for bankruptcy do so for reasons beyond their control. This is seen by most as a critically important freedom to have, and serves as a protection against human rights abuses that frequently occurred for debtors in centuries past, including slavery, involuntary servitude, and debtor's prison. Bankruptcy protections are also seen as a critical freedom for a nation to provide its citizens in order to encourage and foster entrepreneurship, risk taking, and creativity. For example, notable Americans including Thomas Jefferson and Henry Ford went bankrupt multiple times during their lives, yet contributed greatly to society through their creative and societal endeavors.. The rationale for the restriction, and ultimately, the removal of bankruptcy protections for federally guaranteed student loans was predicated largely on undocumented anecdotal examples promulgated by the lending industry of students who filed for bankruptcy upon graduation. In fact, most of the examples involved credit card debt, not student loan debt. Instances of this type of activity were reported widely in the media, and in 1978, Congress added a 7-year repayment requisite before student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy. The amendments to the Higher Education Act in 1998 went much further, and removed bankruptcy protections completely for the majority of borrowers. Interestingly, the language that exempted student loans from bankruptcy discharge in the 1978 overhaul of bankruptcy laws- which reportedly came up "at the last minute" [i] was opposed by both the primary co-sponsor of the bill, Rep. Don Edwards, and the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Rep. James O'Hara. Edwards' opposition was strong. He said that Congress was "Fighting a 'scandal' which exists primarily in the imagination." [ii] The statistics on bankruptcy filings, moreover, painted a far different picture from the one used as a premise for removing bankruptcy protections from student loans. People graduating from college, and then promptly filing for bankruptcy protections for the sole purpose of erasing student loan debt simply did not occur in numbers large enough to warrant such draconian legislation. In fact, it was shown by the Government Accountability Office that prior to the 1978 legislation fewer than 1% of federally guaranteed student loans were discharged in bankruptcy proceedings.[iii] Thus, the initial basis for the removal of bankruptcy protections is highly suspect and evidently without firm grounding in fact. Another rationale given for the removal of bankruptcy protections for student loans is the fact that the federal government guarantees these loans. However, there is no precedent for this. There are no other federal loan guarantees in existence in the United States- secured or unsecured- that enjoy bankruptcy exemptions. From Farm Loans, to FEMA Loans, to SBA Loans, and all other government loans, and government loan guarantees, not a single one- with the exception of student loans- enjoy exemptions from bankruptcy discharge. In general, higher education provides the nation with a public benefit. As such, student loans should, at least conceptually, be more agreeable to the borrower in terms of consumer protections than loans that do not contribute to the public good, such as credit cards gambling, or other debts. Yet, with student loans, we find that exactly the opposite is true. For the purposes of bankruptcy, student loans are in a class with criminal debt, unpaid child support, taxes, and alimony. It should be obvious to any logical thinker that this is wrong. For private student loans, the lending industry argued that removal of bankruptcy protections would allow for greater accessibility of student loans to individuals with lower credit scores by allowing the lenders to relax the underwriting criteria. Two years after the removal by Congress of bankruptcy protections for private loans, however, no evidence could be found to show that the lenders followed through with their promise, based on disclosures by the largest private lenders in the prospectuses for private student loan securitizations. A study conducted by Mark Kantrowitz, Publisher of FinAid.org, found that since the removal of bankruptcy protections for private loans in 2005, the percentage of borrowers with low credit scores receiving private loans from Sallie Mae, for instance, increased by a mere 0.2%[iv].
Sallie Mae Acknowledges Need for Bankruptcy Protections
In 2007 there was public and congressional outcry over the removal of bankruptcy protections for private loans, and even Sallie Mae executives conceded publicly that perhaps bankruptcy protections need to be revisited. In June of that year, Sallie Mae spokesperson Martha Holler told Paul Basken of the Chronicle of Higher Education that ".We agree that it may be appropriate to revisit how to handle private student loans in bankruptcy".[v] Similarly, Conway Casillas, Sallie Mae public affairs director, told Time Magazine in September 2007 that it might be appropriate to revert to the previous laws regarding bankruptcy of student loans, where discharge was possible, given a 7 year repayment history by the borrower[vi]. These acknowledgements from Sallie Mae are hugely important. After all, the Sallie Mae lobbying machine went to great lengths to support legislation that took these rights away in the first place. Indeed, a December 2006 internal strategy memo regarding federal government relations from Sallie Mae made public in 2007 showed that of the 7 objectives for the company on this front, the second was to "protect private credit economics (including bankruptcy)".[vii]
Canada Relaxes Bankruptcy Restrictions
The Canadian government also changed bankruptcy protections for student loans at approximately the same time as the United States Congress. In 1997 a two year window was placed on the debt after the student graduated, during which time the loans were not dischargeable. In 1998 this window was extended to 10 years. In 2007, however, legislation was approved and is currently pending passage that would reduce the 10 year window to 7 years for all borrowers, and 5 years for those facing hardships.[viii]
Bankruptcy Legislation for Federal-Guaranteed Student Loans
In May 2006, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced the Student Borrower Bill of Rights Act of 2007 (S.511). This legislation had a plethora of important modifications to the Higher Education Act, not the least of which was the reinstatement of bankruptcy protections for student loans. The act provided for the return of bankruptcy protections for federally guaranteed loans, with the restriction that borrowers be in repayment status for 7 years- effectively rolling back the law to pre-1998 conditions. The legislation was reintroduced in March 2007. The Student Borrower Bill of Rights prefaced its language regarding bankruptcy by stating that the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) affords sufficient protections to prevent fraud and abuse in the carefully regulated discharge of student loans in bankruptcy. There are two problems with this legislation. First, it only applies to loans made on or after the enactment of the legislation. Second, if a borrower is in such desperate financial condition to warrant a bankruptcy filing, having to wait as long as 7 years to file, does nothing for their immediate financial distress. In other words, this legislation provides no relief for borrowers who have already seen their student loan debt explode. Congress needs to enact legislation that restores full bankruptcy protections for all student loans and all borrowers, regardless of when the loans were made, and puts them on an equal basis with all other types of consumer credit. It is hoped that there will be significant attention paid to arguments made by such experts as Elizabeth Warren, John Pottow, Deanne Loonin and others on this issue.
Bankruptcy Legislation for Private Student Loans
In June 2007, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Il) introduced legislation that would restore bankruptcy protections for private student loans. Senator Chris Dodd announced a plan in November 2007 that would similarly reinstate bankruptcy protections for private loans. The fact that these loans were exempted from bankruptcy discharge in the first place was a testament to the lobbying prowess of the student loan industry with the Congress of 2005, and had little rational basis, except the false promise (in hindsight) by the lending industry that the bankruptcy exemption would allow for greater access to higher education for individuals with low or no credit scores. Moreover, given that lenders are adopting more stringent credit underwriting criteria in response to the subprime mortgage credit crisis, there is no longer any need for a bankruptcy exception. The Durbin legislation, unfortunately, has not progressed far, and there are indications that the bill may be quietly abandoned[ix]. Senator Dodd ended his presidential campaign in January 2008. It is not known if his plan will move forward in light of his withdrawal. In February 2008, Rep Danny Davis (IL) introduced an amendment to the Higher Education Act Reauthorization that would have restored limited bankruptcy protections for private student loans. This amendment, like the Durbin legislation, was seen by student advocates as a long overdue correction to language that the republican Congress had slipped into the 2005 Bankruptcy bill that made private student loans (loans not guaranteed by the federal government) non dischargeable in bankruptcy.
The amendment apparently passed by a voice vote, but Buck McKeon (R-CA) called for a recorded vote and there was a delay. During this time, the Banks and their lobbying machines went to work. By the time the vote was cast, the amendment no longer had the necessary support, and it failed. It turned out that many "Blue Dog Democrats" had voted against the amendment after being lobbied heavily by the Consumer Banker's Association, and other student loan interests on the Hill. Fully 29 of the 37 Blue Dog members voted to kill this amendment. Easily enough to make the difference between success and failure for this initiative.[x]
Refinancing Rights It is a basic free market principle in finance that if there is a lender who is willing to charge less interest, or otherwise give a better deal to a borrower, that borrower should be able to refinance the debt with the new lender. As per federal law, however, students who have consolidated their federally guaranteed loans can never leave that lender for a more competitive bank. This captivity is a major source of distress for borrowers, many of whom were locked into extremely high interest rates with inferior customer service. For a brief period, there was a convoluted mechanism by which this could occur, where a borrower could transfer his loans into the Direct Program, and then back out with a private lender under more favorable terms, and millions of borrowers took advantage of it while it was available. However, this loophole was closed by Congress in 2006 under intense lobbying by Sallie Mae and others. Tom Joyce, Sallie Mae spokesman, commented that this anti-competitive move would make smaller lenders think twice about getting into the student loan business. Senator Clinton's Student Borrower Bill of Rights also called for the right for students to refinance (or "reconsolidate") their federally guaranteed student loans. Surprisingly, no Republican members of Congress have stepped forward to similarly call for refinancing rights for federally-guaranteed student loans. This lack of commitment for free market enterprise among some members of Congress may suggest a conflict of interest for those whose campaign coffers are filled by individuals who would not benefit from such a free market.
Future Legislation
The current legislative efforts regarding student loans are significant, but there are still key areas for improvement. First, a borrower's ability to practice in his or her chosen field should not be encumbered by student loan debt. Currently many states regularly suspend professional licenses as a result of defaulted student loan debt. In the current environment, this only serves to further compound the financial difficulties being faced by the borrowers, and does nothing to benefit the public. How does Congress expect a doctor to repay medical school debt if he or she is unable to practice medicine, or a lawyer who is unable to practice law? Suspending their licenses is counterproductive. Legislation should be introduced which does away with this practice entirely. George, a registered nurse in Texas, can't understand the current law. He wants to repay a fair amount for his defaulted loans, but his nursing license was suspended, and so his hands are effectively tied. "This is completely upside down: They demand that we pay an outrageous amount on these loans, and then they turn around and force us to work at McDonalds to do it. It seems like some kind of trick to keep us paying their penalties and fees for the rest of our lives. There has to be a fair way to do this, but this isn't it. I've never been so hamstrung by my own government, who I served faithfully during years of military service". Also, legislation needs to be introduced that prevents lenders from "double tapping" defaulted borrowers. This occurs when the original lender owns the collection company used to collect the increased amount of the defaulted loans, under contract with either the state guarantor of the loan, or the federal government. In effect, this gives the lending company a perverse incentive to default the borrower, since the lender gets paid nearly the full balance of the defaulted loan, but also stands to make significant extra income from the collection of the default loan that has been escalated dramatically with penalties and fees. If the lender was unable to collect the loan when they held title to the loan, how does the guarantee agency expect them to be able to collect the loan on its behalf? This provides the lender with a clear conflict of interest and encourages them to fall short in their initial collection efforts. Congress should pass legislation that bans guarantee agencies from retaining lenders (and their subsidiaries) for the collection of loans to which the lender previously held title. Further it is abhorrent that many of our elderly and disabled citizens are having their social security and disability income garnished by the federal government. Marilynn Piszczek, of Riverside, CA attended the International Flight Academy in Ontario, California in the 80's. At the time, she believed that the loan documents she was signing were for a grant. She was shocked when she began receiving notices of default, and to make matters worse, she had been terminated from her job due to a pulmonary medical condition. Marilynn is now 66 years old and derives the majority of her income from Social Security. According to Marilynn, "Since the social security cost of living increase, the student loan people have taken more of my monthly check and I am still stuck for all of my rent or trying to figure out where it is to come from. I cannot walk anymore and cannot get in and out of my house that way and cannot get a ramp built for my power chair- and they are taking a bigger lump of my monthly income and do not try to answer any questions from me or anyone else. Sometimes I hope that maybe one day they or someone in their family will get this treatment and then they won't get out of it either."
Repayment Limits for Federally Guaranteed Student Loans
While restoring bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, refinancing rights, and perhaps other standard consumer protections for student loans is of critical importance, it is also highly desirable that Congress implement upper limits for repayment of federally-guaranteed loans, regardless of the past repayment history of the borrower. The astonishing level of debt increase that typically befalls student borrowers with no recourse can be crippling for citizens for whom bankruptcy is not an option due to personal considerations. There needs to be an upper limit on how much these people should be forced to pay on their loans, particularly if they faced default, or egregious fees and penalties during repayment. In other words, regardless of what happens during repayment of a loan, the borrower should never be forced to pay more than a certain amount over certain time periods on the loans, including fees, penalties and the like. This type of repayment cap would go a long way to ensure that citizens who weren't necessarily in a position to file for bankruptcy would at least have some protections from exploitation by the industry. Again, Sen. Clinton's Student Borrower Bill of Rights addresses this issue, and calls upon the Senate to study what reasonable repayment caps might look like over 10 and 25 year periods.
Interest rate caps for private student loans would also be very useful. Given the usurious interest rates that are currently being charged to students for their private loans, approaching 30% interest in some cases, one would hope that federal regulations could be established to prevent usury by setting maximum interest rates for these loans.
Reducing the Price of College
While there is a critical and immediate need to restore standard consumer protections and curb collection powers for student loans, there is an underlying problem that has not been addressed: the costs, and ultimately, the price that is demanded of students, whether in the form of loans, or direct payments by the students or their families. We should reconsider, as a society, our decision to place so much of the financial burden of higher education on our citizens in the first place. The current higher education funding framework has proven, without a doubt, to be obscenely inflationary by its very nature, and is fed largely by the naiveté, vulnerability, and optimism of the nation's students. As a result, we must now brace ourselves for the impact this will inevitably have on the well being of these citizens and their families for years to come. Dr.
Larry Leslie, a Penn State professor in the 1970's, noticed this
disturbing trend, and wrote about it at the time[xi]. Today, with the
benefit of hindsight, Dr. Leslie is certain that his concern was well
founded. Now at the University of Georgia, he comments, "My current
views regarding college costs center around the failure of state
governments to adequately fund their colleges and universities and the
Federal government's policy of promoting student aid at the expense of
institutional aid. It is these factors, in my view, that largely have
moved us in the direction of higher tuitions and related costs. The
discussion of the past two decades or so regarding grants v. loans
would largely be moot if governments had continued to fund
institutions". It is time to seriously consider a return to the days of low tuition, government-funded colleges and universities. This would obviously make higher education much more accessible to the general public, and would also circumvent and obviate the need for the overwhelming, complex, and expensive layers of bureaucracy that accompany the entire student aid system. Of course, the taxpayer should not have to pay for the excesses that have crept into our nation's higher education institutions. One does not have to look far within today's schools, however, to see areas where most institutions of higher learning could cut costs considerably. Fancy gyms, student unions, expensive non-academic programs, administrative salaries, exorbitant salaries and bonuses for athletic coaches and other capital projects that go well beyond the classic paradigm of teaching and learning are obvious areas, to name only a few. It is beyond the scope of this book to delve more deeply into the proposition of returning to institutional aid over student aid, but it is hoped that this recommendation is given serious consideration by the public stakeholders in our higher education system going forward.
Reducing Degree Requirements
One interesting idea for reducing the cost of college that has been proposed is the concept of reducing course requirements for degrees, thereby reducing the cost of those degrees. Notably, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago proposed in September 2007 that universities should consider cutting courseloads in half. He commented, ""They should cut half the courses. It would cut the cost down tremendously. What are the basic courses that you need in college? Cut some of the unnecessary courses out" to reduce administrative overhead and let students graduate sooner.[xii] Indeed, it is taking longer for students to graduate. The Education Trust found in 2003 that only 37% of undergraduate students completed their degrees within 4 years.[xiii] While cutting courseloads by half is likely an extreme measure that would shortchange students' educations, the sentiment could be worth further discussion, particularly in today's ultra high cost environment. It took over a decade for the standard consumer protections that we take for granted with every other type of loan to be taken away by Congress. One can't expect them to be returned overnight. However, the groundwork has been laid for significant change, and legislators can non longer overlook the astonishing rise in price of a college education, and cannot ignore the real human suffering that is taking place as a result. One can only hope that Congress and the executive branch act not only to improve the system looking forward, but also act quickly to address the more immediate problems that the student loan system has caused for people who have already had their lives drastical
[i] The Nondischargeability of Student Loans in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search for a Theory, John A. E. Pottow (University of Michigan), Canadian Business Law Journal, March 2007 [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid. [iv] Impact of the Bankruptcy Exception for Private Student Loans on Private Student Loan Availability , Mark Kantrowitz, FinAid.org, August 14, 2007. http://www.finaid.org/educators/20070814pslFICOdistribution.pdf
[v] Congress May Revisit Bankruptcy Protection for Student Borrowers, Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2007 [vi] Government Student Loans, Government Debts and Bankruptcy: A Comparative Study, Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, CA, February 27, 2007 [vii] Federal Government Relations Strategy Discussion, obtained from the New America Foundation,: http://www.newamerica.net/blogs/education_policy/2007/05/questionable_arrangement, May 31, 2007 [viii] RRSPs to get protection under new bankruptcy law, James Daw, TheStar.Com, December 22, 2007 [ix] Senate Bill Would Allow Borrowers to Discharge Private Student Loans through Bankruptcy, Kelly Field, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2007 [x] Blue Dog Democrats voting Nay on the amendments were Representatives Baca, Bean, Berry, Bishop, Boren, Cardoza, Carney, Chandler, Costa, Davis, Donnely, Ellsworth, Giffords, Hill, Holden, Ampson, Mahoney, Marshall, Matheson, Melanon, Moore, Murphy, Peterson, Ross, Herseth Sandlin, Schuler, Space, Taylor, and Wilson [xi] The Market Model and Higher Education , Larry L. Leslie, Gary P. Johnson, The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1974), pp. 1-20 [xii] Cut half of College Courses: Daley; Says 2-year degree far more, Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun Times, September 20, 2007 [xiii] The Education Trust, Telling the Whole Truth (or Not) About High School Graduation (Washington, DC: The Education Trust, December 2003), p. 1. Alan Collinge, Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey All, Now, the Wall Street Journal is looking for people who RECENTLY defaulted on their loans. This can be either public or private loans. Please write me back ASAP if this is you, and include phone and other contact info. Also, I hope you all will consider donating something to the PAC. I haven't said so publicly, but our PAC funds are really hurting, and could use a serious shot in the arm. In fact, we still are not paid up for the bus tour we did last year, so if you can help, please do! Thanks, Alan Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey All, Now, the Wall Street Journal is looking for people who RECENTLY defaulted on their loans. This can be either public or private loans. Please write me back ASAP if this is you, and include phone and other contact info. Also, I hope you all will consider donating something to the PAC. I haven't said so publicly, but our PAC funds are really hurting, and could use a serious shot in the arm. In fact, we still are not paid up for the bus tour we did last year, so if you can help, please do! Thanks, Alan Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey All, Welcome to the new members. This will be a brief update.
2. The New America Foundation has done an excellent, comprehensive study of the influence that the student loan industry has on financial aid administrators from a lobbying and control standpoints. I touch on this in the book, but the NAF really took it to a new level. 3. That's it for now. There are a number of things developing, but haven't clicked just yet. As Always, keep fighting. Do whatever you can think of to bring attention to this problem...and keep us posted when you have accomplishments so that we can build off of our success! Regards, Alan
************************************************* Hey guys, This is a slightly removed from our focus, but one of the best known newspapers is looking for people who recenty found that their credit card limits had been slashed. If this is you, and you are willing to be interviewed, write me back with contact info. Thanks, Alan Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey Y'all, Thanks to all of you who stepped up to be interviewed. It looks like we are being featured in pieces in both the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times over the coming month or so. That's pretty much a "two-fer". Hopefully it will help get our numbers up, and get the ridiculous politicians (who don't seem to listen to the borrowers unless its through the media, or there's a picket line outside their office) off their collective a**ses. Also, I bit the bullet this week, and shelled out $600 of my own money to pay for a mass emailing. Over the next week, two million people will be getting emails telling them to come to SLJ and tell their story. I have mixed emotions about spamming the internet looking for members, but I thought long and hard and decided that it's the right thing to at least try once. We are basically invisible on the internet thanks to the student loan industry and their big dollar marketing campaigns that overwhelm every search you can think of regarding student loans.So hopefully this will serve as an equalizer. Also, I'm a little distressed about our PAC funding at this point. If you all knew how many thousands of dollars (tens of thousands actually) I have thrown into this personally you would understand why I am always schlepping for donations. Anyhow, if you can help out. Please do. The donation link is www./pac.htm Alan Please support the PAC
Hey Everyone! Welcome to the new members. It has been a busy week.
2. We've revised the website somewhat. Please take a look, and let us know what you think. We added real quotes from our members. These were selected in a nearly random way. If there is a quote that you are burning to use , please send it to me, and i will see what I can do to get it up there on the homepage. 3. The T-shirt fundraiser secured donations sufficient for 10 T-shirts to be given away at the University of Washington later this month. 4. Matt Kresling has produced a truly haunting song and video about the student loan problem. Powerful stuff: http://www.vimeo.com/1208357 5. Please consider a donation to the PAC . Your support is appreciated.
Alan Alan Collinge,
Hey All, If you are good at research, and have a couple of hours to spend, here is an extremely valuable challenge for you: Take a HARD LOOK at your guarantor. This is the entity (usually state sponsored) that supervises the default collection process for your loan. These agencies are the worst actors in the entire student loan system. They derive 60% of their revenue (at least) from the collection of defaulted loans, and are the biggest reason that defaulted loans explode with penalties and collection fees. They love defaulted loans, and actually wouldn't exist were it not for defaults. For instance, I looked up the executive salaries of my guarantor, Edfund, in 2005. What I found was amazing. These people were making astonishing amounts of money, giving themselves obscene raises, and spending ridiculous amounts on lavish headquarters, travel, etc. The research I did led to a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle. There are roughly 30 Guarantors out there, and I have only loooked at a handful of them. If you take a fine toothed comb to your guarantor, you will probably see similar patterns. It may be interesting for you to see where all of your money was going while you were working two jobs, and eating top ramen to pay their massive fees and penalties. To find out about your guarantor, simply go to guidestar.org and do the free registration. This allows you to look up the recent 990 tax filings of all non profits. Find your guarantor, and get their 990s. From there, you can get the executive salaries going 3+ years back. You can also find all manner of other interesting avenues of inquiry. Its really a gold mine of information, but its more research than any one person can do in a reasonable amount of time. Those of you who decide to dig in, let me know, and please send me an analysis of your results. ALSO...The Lou Dobbs thing apparently hasn't worked. So what about Jack Cafferty? His email is: JackBrokenGovernment@cnn.com Let try this guy for the next couple of weeks...see what happens.
Alan Please support the PAC ************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. Hope everyone's summer is going well. We continue to pick up members at a steady pace. Stuff that has happened since the last update: 1. We passed out donated T-shirts at the University of Washington over the weekend. This is an excellent way to spread the word. As you may know, there are roughly 5-10 million defaulted student loans out there (about 1 in five people end up defaulting on their loans), and at least that many that are perilously close to the edge. Also, the total student loan market in this country is catching up to the credit card industry, at $550 billion (total outstanding credit card debt is at $850 billion). So there are people out there everywhere who care--or should care about this issue. If you would like to pass out T-shirts in your own area, please contact me, and we can arrange. Your effort is greatly appreciated and needed. 2. As hoped, the state chapters are starting to take off. Two of the state chapters have created their own chatrooms or websites. California has their own website up, and Maine has started a Google group. If you would like to create a similar group in your area, then please let me know- These groups are really good for planning local activities. The California group may have some major news in the forseeable future, for instance...
http://www.vimeo.com/1208357
5. That's it for now. Keep fighting, and keep us posted about your progress!!!
************************************************* I am looking for people whose student loans were put into forebearance without their knowledge or approval. You may have applied for a deferment, but were granted a forebearance. You may have been less than 1 year ot of school, and they just did it to you.
Thanks, Alan
Please contact me, and let me know your contact info ASAP!! Thanks, Alan Please support the PAC
Hey Y'all, Its been rough for us lately in the media. The big issue that everyone is writing/talking about its the student loan credit crisis. Congress is bending over backwards for the banks to make sure that students are able to get student loans. That is the story. The fact that student loans are astonishingly absent of the most basic, standard consumer protections is completely left out of almost every story to come out in the past 4-5 months. This is seriously, seriously bad for us. Not only that; Obama, while discussing his agenda for overhauling the bankruptcy code, did not mention student loans. Its pretty much up to us to get the real issue about student loans out front again. Sink or swim. Yesterday, I wrote to some of our members asking for email addresses for local reporters who might want to do a story on our side. I also quit my job to devote myself full time to this issue for the foreseeable future. The amount of work required to get these stories cooking is monumental- particularly when you're dealing with 50 states. So
I'm asking you to do one thing for me: Look over the email addresses
below. If you recognize any of them as being for publications in your
area, then write to these folks, and put what I said to them (pasted
below that) in your own words. Say whatever you can to get them to do a
story.
Hi. My name is Alan Collinge. I run a grassroots website called . We started in 2005, and have grown to comprise thousands of people across the country. I recently asked my members to recommend reporters who might be interested in doing a story for us, and your name came up. The story: Student loans stand alone among all other types of loans in our nations history to have the most basics, standard consumer protections taken away. This happened since the mid-90's due to a heavily lobbied Congress and sympathetic executive branch. Today, Student loans are the only loans in existence to be exempt from standard bankruptcy protections, Statutes of limitations, truth in lending requirements, refinancing rights, and even Fair Debt Collection Practices. At the same time, the student loan industry convinced Congress to give them mafia-like collection powers including wage garnishments Tax return garnishment, and even social security and disability garnishment---all without requiring a court order! In addition borrowers can be terminated from public employment, and can have their professional licenses suspended as a result of their student loans. This system actually makes it very lucrative for the lending industry when the borrowers fall behind, and actually makes it far more profitable when borrowers default on their loans! They are, in effect, rewarded for confusing the borrower, and their profits become inversely proportional to the quality of their customer service! The end result is that decent citizens who fall behind on their payments (for whatever reason) are strong-armed into repaying far, far, far more than the amount they originally borrowed. This often doubles and triples the debt (or far worse in some instances), and there is absolutely no recourse. We have documented thousands of stories from across the country that include people being forced off the grid, fleeing the country, and even committing suicide as a result of this predatory activity.
One last point: In the first year of doing this, we ended up being featured in fortune Magazine, and also were featured in the top story on 60 Minutes in May, 2006. Hillary Clinton introduced a Bill on our behalf in 2006, as did Dick Durbin, and Danny Davis. All have been quietly killed due to massive lobbying by the student loan industry. Also, Since then. Also, our plight has been largely drown out by the credit crisis in the student loan industry. This is why I am writing to you to urgently request your consideration. I will paste a couple of facts below for your further consideration. Also, check out our website to see more. One last request: go to www.premierecredit.com for 10 seconds if you have any doubts about how ruthless this industry has become. You will see what I am talking about if you just go there. Please write me back if you are interested. I can also put you in touch with our local "state chapter leader" in your area. Thank you very much. Alan Collinge ************************************************* Student Loan Industry FACTS.
2. "Fee income" for Sallie Mae, the nations largest lender, grew by 228% between 200-2005 (Their loan portfolio grew by only 87% during the same time period) 3. Despite false advertisements by the industry that defaults are dropping, defaults are actually rising- in fact, about 1 in 5 borrowers will default on their student loans. 4. The average undergraduate borrower now leaves school with $33,000 in student loan debt, $42,000 for graduate students 5. The cost of college has risen at double the consumer price index for the past 30 years 6. Student Loans are the ONLY loans in our nation's history to be specifically exempted from bankruptcy protections, truth in lending requirements, statutes of limitations, state usury laws, and even fair debt collection practices. 7. Between 1995-2005, Sallie Mae set aside $3.6 Billion in stock for its employees. This amounts to about $640,000 per employee. 8. The Sallie Mae CEO bragged to shareholders in the 2003 annual report that their record profits that year were attributable to collections on defaulted loans, and other student loan companies report similar trends.
Hey Guys, Thanks for all the email addresses and names of reporters that everyone is providing. The weekend isn't over, and already we have pieces working in three additional outlets: The Hartford Courant, the New York Daily News, and Minnesota Public Radio. One note: Please don't send me links to newspapers or TV stations. I need more than that. I need you to determine who the right reporter is in your local area who should do the story, and get me their name and email address. OK? Keep them coming, by the way. Thanks. This should be a strong week for us. About 30 reporters will be getting our emails tomorrow morning, and hopefully at least a dozen will bite. Alan ************************************************* Hey Guys, Wow. Things are picking up. Bigtime. Keep sending me names and email addresses (not links) of reporters in your areas who you think should do this story. This seems to be working. Even if your state is listed above, there are lots of papers in these states multiple stories are ok. Many of you may be contacted in the near future for interviews. Please step up, and hold nothing back. Great job. Keep it coming.
Hey Everyone, The list has grown. Today, I spoke with the LA Times, got heavy breathing from the Austin American Statesman (Thanks to Carol in Texas), sent stuff on request to the Boston Globe, WSJ, NY TImes, US New and World Report, and a few others I'm not even remembering at this moment. I'll paste the list of people I've contacted below. Keep the reporters names and emails coming, and don't hesitate to contact them yourself to get something going! Regards, Alan
************************************************* Hey All, We now have pieces working for 2 tv shows (Houston, St. Louis), 15-20 newspapers, and 2 magazines. If you are contacted by a reporter, please let me know. Keep sending me names and emails for reporters, btw. Below is a list of most of the reporters I have contacted... The guys on the left didn't respond. The guys on the right are working on stories
We have a TON of stories working. The first two to go live: A TV Piece featuring Lora in Oregon: As happens often, they left out the most important parts of the story (i.e. the predatory nature of the lenders), but with TV, you take what you can get...
http://www.insidenova.com/isn/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article/higher_education_loans_student_rights/18526/ Thanks to Lora and Katherine for stepping up and making things happen on this. Much more to come. We have three TV stations and 15-20 nespapers/magazines working on stories.
Hey All, This guy is arguing that we should further shift away from grants and towards loans to finance higher education. I hope that a few of you will read the article, and drop the author a note letting him know how student loans have affected your life. Its these inside the beltway "experts" that need a strong slap in the face from the real world. That is where we come in. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Education/bg2164.cfm Thanks, Alan
How do you spout this nonsense with a straight face? "Shifting the emphasis from grants to loans would be a much fairer and more fiscally responsible way to help Americans attend college."
Combine this with the fact that nearly every basic, standard consumer protection has been removed from student loans, and one can easily see why decent citizens are now being forced off the grid, are fleeing the country, and are even taking their own lives as a result of your friends in the student loan industry tacking every penalty and fee that they can think of in the absence of bankruptcy protections and other standard consumer protections. And you argue for a continuation and expansion of these principles? Are you truly that sadistic? Hey guys, We continue to field calls from reporters, and send out stories. By my last count, we have stories woring int he following: NY Times We also have "heavy breathing" from the following: Dallas Morning News There are a few that I am forgetting as well. I also am booked to to a radio thing next montha, and also talked with Libby Lewis of NPR yesterday, who said that she is going to do a story about people fleeing the country as a result of their student loans in the fall.
Alan
************************************************* If any of you have noticed that your loans because unsubsidized for any reason, whether it was due to consolidation or other reasons, please let me know. Subsidized means that the government pays the interest on the loan during times of deferment Check with your lender if you are not sure. Thanks, and let's hit it hard this week!
Hey guys, Sorry to be blowing you all up, but things are picking up. CNN is looking for people who have left the country, or are planning on leaving in the near future (for real) as a result of their student loan debt. I forwarded her a couple of people I know off the top of my head, but if this is you, then please contact me back ASAP. Thanks. Today's RECAP: ** Looking for people whose subsidized loans were somehow changed to unsubsidized throgh consolidation
Hey Guys, Pretty good week. Tavis Smiley is interviewing one or more of our members this week and next. CNN has interviewed two of our people, and I think they're going to do something. Also, the New York Times is flying someone out to Seattle Next week to interview me and some of our Washington State members (hopefully). I still haven't seen anything publish, though, in any of the local papers, but I may not be in a position to see them when they do come out (I only use google news search, usually). So if something does get out there, be sure and let me know in case I miss it.
We now have a website specifically meant for mobile users, Thanks to Brian McLane of New York. Brian is the founder of iProgram, a small text marketing company in New York City specializing in Mobile Video. He is trying to keep the wolves at bay, and he has already rehabbed his loan once. To go there, just text "RJB SLJ " to: 83960 The site is supported by Paypal, so your donations to this platform are very helpful. Spreading the word to your friends is also really good.
This is really starting to happen...
Hey guys, So at least 2 dozen of our members have been interviewed over the past three weeks by a ton of papers, including the NY Times, Seattle Times, Wall Street Journal, Illinois Times, the Journal Sentinel, Chonicle of Higher Education, and a few others. Also, our members have been interviewed by Tavis Smiley, CNN, and a couple of local TV stations, one of which has aired. So far, however, nothing has made it into ink. We're also booked for some radio show in September in the Silicon Valley area. So these guys are basically sitting on the stories. My hope is that when the NY Times thing goes, the others will follow their lead, take their stories of the shelves, and publish. In the meantime, keep pressing the issue with local reporters. Also, there's been alot of people wanting to have a forum to meet and discuss with other borrowers. We tried this on Yahoo for a year or so, but the chatroom got inundated by lurkers working for the student loan industry. However, I have created another such room on Google. The link is: http://groups.google.com/group/studentloanjustice?hl=en There are currently no members in this group, so hop on in, and get a discussion going if you wish! This is a public forum, so we can expect it to get overun eventually, but for now it is completely safe. Regards,
Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. Busy week. Today, we are featured in two pieces in the Illinois Times: http://illinoistimes.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A8192 - Special Thanks to Shelley Pethy for stepping up to be interviewed on this one. http://www.illinoistimes.com:80/gyrobase/Content?oid=8202 Thanks to Wilma for stepping up on this one. (She ended up repaying $18,000 on a $2500 loan).
http://www.foxbusiness.com/video/index.html?referralObject=3043038 That's it for now. More to come. Donate to the PAC if you can. The link is below. Alan
Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. It has been a busy week.
That's it for now. Keep Fighting! ************************************************* thx ----- Original Message -----
Not to take much of your time, but I did want to get something off my chest. I am personally taking a beating from these articles. As you might expect, I am getting slammed personally by those who feel that I am a lazy, ne'er-do-well, etc. While the emails Im getting are about 20 to 1 on our side, those that are not are painful to read. Frankly, Jonathan Glater really didn't represent my own personal story in a way that would garner much sympathy. It also failed to point out the uniquely predatory nature of the federally guaranteed student loan system (and also the private student loan system inasmuch as recent bankruptcy changes are concerned). I am posting my own personal story (this is actually the preface from the book I just finished) below for your consideration. This is the honest, unadulterated account of my loan history as accurately as I can tell it. I'm sure not many of you care about this, but I feel it's important for those of you who do to have this account for your own consideration. I do agree that I am not the most effective "poster child" for this issue. After having read over 3000 stories from you all, I can pick out at least 2500 that make my own situation pale in comparison. Unfortunately, I seem to be one of the few who has the time, ambition, drive, motivation, and perhaps stupidity to take a stand publicly and repeatedly on this issue. One last point: As a result of getting all this publicity for this issue (I believe), the Department of Education did, in fact, offer to settle my student loan debt for $60,000. This includes what I originally borrowed ($38,000), plus interest up until the time my loan defaulted. This is a FAR better deal than most other people get, I am sure. Although they are demanding payment in full, which is not possible for me, I still have to say that all in all, I consider this to be a reasonable deal (although the energy I have expended on this issue and the cost associated with that is probably in the hundreds of thousands after 3.5 long years). I hope this will encourage you all to take the bull by the horns, and speak out publicly and often about this issue. It really doesn't take that much effort to educate yourself about the issues, and be able to speak intelligently about the subject with reporters. ----------------------------------------------------------------Preface Below--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Being the poster child for defaulted student borrowers is a difficult badge to wear—and I never imagined I’d be known as the crusader for student loan justice. The truth is that I never considered student loans to be an especially interesting topic. College debt, I believed, was a necessary evil—to be repaid expeditiously, and then forgotten even more quickly. However, what I once thought of as an uninteresting issue has come to dominate my life. Through three degrees in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California, I managed to accumulate about $38,000 in student loans. Upon graduating in 1998, I consolidated these loans, which had grown to $50,000 while I was in school, with a friendly-sounding organization called Sallie Mae – an organization that I believed was a part of the federal government at the time. My plan was simple: graduate with a “bullet-proof” education, get a fine job in my field, repay my loans, and let life blossom beyond that. I yearned for a simple, middle class lifestyle—a wife, family and house—in short, the typical cultural aspirations that most people in the blue collar town in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up shared. In late 1998, I found a job at an exceptionally good college, Caltech, as an aeronautical research scientist. The salary wasn’t high but at $35,000, it did just cover my rent, food, basic necessities, like a car and utilities, and my monthly student loan payment, which amounted to about 20% of my take-home pay. In early 1999, I was slightly short on my student loan payment. I called the lender, and was assured that as long as I continued to make my regularly scheduled payments, all would be well, with the exception of a one-time late fee on the account. I continued to make regular payments thereafter; however, after around 6 months, I noticed that I had been charged a late fee every month since the initial underpayment. Assuming that this was a mistake, I called Sallie Mae, and requested that the late fees be removed. To my surprise, they refused. I spoke to multiple Sallie Mae staff to no avail. It was then that I realized that Sallie Mae was not a governmental entity, but, rather, a for-profit corporation. I searched for a different lender to take over my loans but found that these loans could not be refinanced- it was actually illegal to do so due to federal regulations that only permit consolidation of student loans one time, regardless of whether lenders exists willing to offer better terms on the loan. At the same time, it became harder to keep up with my loan payments. My rent had been increased, utility costs more than doubled, and a number of relatively small but significant unforeseen expenses cropped up that I hadn’t budgeted for. By the summer of 2001, my financial situation had reached a critical state, and I made the decision to take radical steps to solve this problem. I resigned my position at Caltech with the expectation of quickly finding a higher paying position, likely in the defense industry. Unfortunately, the events of September 11th put a chill on the economy, and instead of a 6 figure defense job, I found myself unemployed and surviving on a small retirement package. In retrospect, leaving Caltech without a job lined up was a big mistake, and one that I will live with for the rest of my life. I soon returned to my hometown of Tacoma, Washington nearly penniless, and sleeping on a friend’s couch. On December 1st, 2001, after realizing that my student loans were approaching default, I applied for an economic hardship forbearance. I was, after all, unemployed and should have qualified. Sallie Mae claimed they never received my application. I resubmitted the request on December 13th. Sallie Mae denied the request, and instead wrote off my loan on December 14th—the very next day. 9 days later, they made a payment claim for my loan for about $60,000. I never received any notice from Sallie Mae explaining this. Calls to them only garnered the response, “You’ll have to call your guarantor. We no longer hold this loan.” I didn’t realize then that it would be nearly 2 years before I found gainful employment. In the meantime, I took whatever kind of employment I could find. I worked in 5 restaurants, and even spent 4 months cooking on a remote island in Southeastern Alaska in 2002. I worked 92 hours per week, 7 days a week, with no days off. The income, less than minimum wage, was not even close to covering the growth of my now defaulted student loans. 16 months after being defaulted by Sallie Mae, a whopping $18,000 had been added to my debt, far more than I made during that time period. Upon my return from Alaska in the Fall of 2002, I was shocked to return to find a bill from a collection company, General Revenue Corporation, for nearly $80,000. The company, a subsidiary of Sallie Mae, was collecting on behalf of Edfund, the “guarantor.” I was baffled: who were these two new companies and what was a “guarantor”? I wasn’t in the position to ask a wealthy relative for assistance and the fact that they were demanding “immediate payment in full” greatly exacerbated my situation. This began two years of relentless collection activities. I was inundated by calls from various collection companies. At the same time, I was contacting my loan holders, and attempting to negotiate a reasonable settlement. I tried first with Sallie Mae, then with Edfund and also with the various collection companies they used, and finally with the U.S. Department of Education. I offered to repay principal and accrued interest, and even offered to pay at an increased interest rate of 10%, if only they would remove some of penalties. I believed that I was proposing a rather lucrative settlement—Sallie Mae had already profited well over $25,000 on my $38,000 loans- why should they need more? At every step along the way, however, I was refused. I found that I had no negotiation power whatsoever since bankruptcy was not allowed for this debt, nor were there any statutes of limitations, or other standard consumer protections that other types of debt have. Meanwhile, my loan balance was exploding. Most of these interactions, particularly with the collection companies, were unpleasant, to say the least. I was verbally assaulted, intimidated, and humiliated. I was called names that I have since suppressed. I was subjected to all manner of collection ploys to extract vast sums of money that I simply did not have. It became apparent to me that I had been snared in a web of debt so far above what I had initially borrowed that it was, in effect, a lifetime sentence of indentured servitude. Although I had a job at this point at a non-profit making about $3,000 per month, my debt had risen to nearly $95,000. One day I soberly realized that my hopes for a marriage, children, and home were much further away at age 33 than they had been at age 29, solely because of my mushrooming student loan debt. I continued working obsessively. I worked 7 days a week with no days off, including holidays, between 2003 and 2005. I earned a fixed salary, so this extra work was not for extra pay. In hindsight, I suspect I worked feverishly to somehow serve a penance for my horrible student loan mistake. While this may have had cathartic benefits, it did nothing to reduce my student loan debt: my original $38,000 debt had swollen to $103,000 by mid-2005. Those who have had a similar experience will understand what I mean when I say that the debt overwhelmed and paralyzed me. It was completely demoralizing. All the extreme effort, personal sacrifice, late nights studying, and poverty level subsistence I had chosen to endure for the sake of higher education ended up hurting me far more than it helped due to the loans. I felt like the butt of a very expensive, lifelong joke. In the Spring of 2004, something snapped. I became obsessive, literally unable to put my student loans out of mind for more than a couple of hours at a time. I was furious at myself, frustrated at the sheer stupidity of the situation—and just plain angry. Consumed, I began doing research. I found that Sallie Mae and other lenders actually made far more money from defaulted loans than from those that remained in good standing. Sallie Mae’s stock price had actually shot up significantly in the aftermath of the Dotcom recession, and overall, it had risen by 1700% between 1995-2005 truly a wall street darling. I found that executives at both Sallie Mae and Edfund had amassed personal fortunes in the time since I had graduated—enough to try to purchase a major league baseball team in one instance. I found a carefully-orchestrated lobbying campaign by well-connected student loan executives and shareholders that caused the most basic consumer protections to be stripped away from student loans. I found that even the federal government was making-not losing-massive amounts of money from the business of defaulted loans, and also that the Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid was being run by former student loan company executives. Finally- and perhaps most importantly- I realized that I wasn’t alone: there were millions of other citizens who were trapped like me. This is a crisis that our country has never before had to face. It threatens, in a very real sense, to subjugate large segments of our population to lifetimes of debt, at the cost of pursuits far more beneficial to the nation’s interests. I decided there were basically three options. The first was to accept my fate, and live at a poverty level while paying this exploded debt- perhaps well into my fifties or sixties. The second, I’m embarrassed to admit, was to flee the country, or assume a new identity and start a new life. The last was to try to force a political solution by connecting with the millions of people who shared my fate, exposing the individuals who had engineered this uniquely predatory debt system — and profited tremendously from it— and help spur Congress to fix the problem. Option #1 was probably the easiest option, and the one that the vast majority of student loan debtors choose, incidentally. However, I decided to embrace the last option, realizing it would require dedication and years of effort (and luck) to accomplish, and that it might very well compromise any career/reputation/earnings potential I might have in the field for which I had gone to school. In March, 2005 I started a web site called , where I posted my research, and invited others to share their stories. The purpose of SLJ was (and is) to convince Congress to restore the standard consumer protections that have been stripped from student loans. This would allow millions of borrowers to negotiate fair and reasonable settlements of their student loans, just like borrowers with credit cards, payday loans, and IRS debt. Being virtually invisible on the Internet, and with no budget, marketing or otherwise, I had humble expectations. However, I was amazed that by the end of the year, hundreds of people had posted their stories on the web site. I received submissions from people whose debt had exploded far more astoundingly than my own: one couple who had already paid more than double their original loan amounts still owed more than double of what they had borrowed, for instance.. There were people who left the country, even people whose family members had committed suicide as a result of overwhelming student loan debt. Despite the sometimes tragic circumstances that united us, it has been comforting for all of us to connect with others who had experienced a similar reality. I made many mistakes in the organization’s first year. Many were emotionally driven. Calling the Sallie Mae CEO at 3 am, for instance, was not a wise decision, nor was sending an email, containing expletives, to a lobbyist who I found particularly offensive. Despite these growing pains, my research was solid, and the facts that I compiled- combined with stories from real citizens- painted a compelling picture. I’m grateful that several useful accomplishments emerged that year. I implored Bethany McLean, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the Enron story, to examine the issue, and after over a year of communication, she wrote an exceptionally strong article which was published in Fortune Magazine in December 2005. was featured in the article, something which amazed me. Sallie Mae responded with a lengthy and scathing criticism of both the piece and of my repayment history. The Baltimore Sun published an OP-ED I wrote on the subject and shortly thereafter, in March 2006, I found myself in the New York City Women’s Republican Club, being interviewed by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, along with three other members. The 60 Minutes segment ended up being the top story, and ran on May 7th, 2006. This was progress almost beyond what I had hoped for. By the time both Ralph Nader and Michael Moore contacted the organization in the week following the show, it had become apparent that we had touched a nerve with the American Public. The avalanche of press coverage that we have been involved with on this issue includes coverage in dozens of publications including the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chronicle of Higher Education, among many others. We’ve been guests on numerous radio programs including NPR, featured in other television programs like Fox TV, as well as a couple of local investigative reports. The news media has proven to be absolutely critical for this movement. Indeed, around the time the 60 Minutes piece aired, Senator Hillary Clinton’s office worked with us to craft the “Student Borrower Bill of Rights.” This important legislation, had it been passed, would have done much to restore the basic consumer protections to student loans, and we were credited for being the reason they decided to pursue the issue. In December 2006, I was laid off from a low level defense job after failing to obtain a security clearance (student loans were the first, and nearly only topic during the interview). Given these circumstances, I formed a Political Action Committee and toured the country in a beat-up RV, meeting with staffers for both House and Senate Education committees, and also giving talks at local universities, and other gatherings. The past 3 years have been a whirlwind of activity, and some significant progress has been realized, but I occasionally wonder how my life would have unfolded without the specter of student loans. I never would have imagined putting forth so much effort for a calling where I receive no pay, yet have the conviction that I’m doing the right thing for the public good. At this point I think it’s important to write this book so that others facing similar situations can be informed, and also for the purpose of helping to move the public debate on this issue towards a workable solution. In this book, I will unearth both the history of the student loan industry, as well as analyze its current state. You will read of dizzying corporate profits it generated, the organizations and individuals that benefited, and most importantly, the many people whose lives have been destroyed as a result. It will be clearly demonstrated that student loans have become the most profitable, uncompetitive, and oppressive type of debt in our nation’s history, due to federal legislation since the mid 1990’s that removed standard consumer protections, and provided the lending industry with draconian collection tools to use against the borrowers. This book will not only shine a bright light on this problem but will suggest concrete and pragmatic solutions looking forward.
************************************************* Hey Everyone, Welcome to the new members. We are picking up members at an accelerated rate now, which is good. I can't stress how important it is that we seek out others in the same boat, and band together. 1. We were featured again on Fox Business News on Friday. The piece was highly antagonistic, and even slanderous at one point. Nonetheless, I feel that we held our own, and made at least some of the important points that needed to be made. The link there is: http://www.foxbusiness.com/search-results.html?searchString=student+loans&searchType=news
3. Now more than every, your financial contribution to the Student Loan Justice PAC is very important. If everyone receiving this donated a modest amount (say, $20-$40), we would be in great financial shape to begin to have a real influence on the Hill. I hope you will please consider it. That's it for now. Keep fighting, and keep us posted.
Alan
Also, I was interviewed again today by the New York Times. Not sure what they're going to be writing about, but this was encouraging. That's it for now. Im busting my a** over here trying to get things done, and taking serious heat as a result. I hope that is not lost on you all!
*************************************************
Can we please all go to this page, and tell Oprah to do a piece on student loan predation?
The link is:
Good luck, and make them feel your pain! Also, please don't post this meesage publicly. That only gives the student loan industry an oppotunity to get to her before we do!
It's been a crazy week, as you all know. Interestingly, the US Government has chosen to bail out the banks involved in making bads home loans. The next loan bubble to burst will likely be the student loan bubble. It has been reported that defaults for student loans are spiking as we speak. Now more than ever, Congress needs to restore standard consumer protections for student loans. These are certainly tough times, but we have come a long way, and have got to stick together if we are going to get anywhere. Take heart in the fact that at least the public is now very wary of trusting the opinions of the banks, who have proven to be highly irresponsible. There is an opportunity here for us to get real justice, but we all have to pitch in. So please support the PAC, call reporters, and do whatever else you can think of that will make a positive difference. I am pasting a chapter from my book below to give you all some inspiration. I hope you enjoy it. Also, one of our members, JB, made a a student loan video that uses the songe done by Matt Kresling. The link is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9D-QxJNGnM Matt's song got like 200,000 hits, so I hope the same happens for this piece. So hang in there, ok? Lets make it a point to seek out 3-4 other people to come to the site. Regards, Alan
Grassroots activities by student loan borrowers have begun to emerge since the amendments to the Higher Education Act in 1998. In the context of this book, “grassroots” refers to organizations and collective activities executed by citizens affected by their student loans. These are not to be confused with initiatives that are created by existing, professional advocacy organizations, or even by organizations with ties to- and financial interests in- the student loan industry that call themselves “grassroots”. These are not true grassroots activities based on the original definition of the word, which pertains to the common people, as contrasted with or separable from an elite. Initially, these activities started largely with individual citizens desperate for relief. Over time, these individuals began to band together to share information, pursue joint research projects, and finally coalesced into loose organizations, formed for the purpose of exposing the problem to the public, gathering members, and ultimately, compelling Congress to restore standard consumer protections to student loans. Currently, the collective movement for student loan rights is at a very early stage of development, with fewer than 5,000 citizens actively engaged. This is an incredibly small fraction of the 10-15 million citizens who are overwhelmed by student loan debt. Clearly, significant grassroots growth is required so that citizens can convince Congress that they must address this issue meaningfully. This chapter describes the beginnings of these efforts, and also charts a path for its success. Weaknesses and Strengths
A coordinator from New York, Heather Dunbar, put it this way: “ People trapped under ridiculously large debt as a result of their student loans often have difficulties getting out of bed in the morning— convincing them to march in the streets, holding banners proclaiming their debt is about as easy as putting a cat in a bucket.” The inherent reluctance of borrowers to take grassroots action due to their weakened financial position, risk aversion, and shame is probably the most significant internal barrier to cohesive action. From an organizational standpoint, the challenge of internally raising financial resources sufficient to compete with the lobbying interests on Capitol Hill is equally daunting. Given the financial predicament of those overwhelmed by student loan debt, one should assume that this simply isn’t going to happen, and that other forces will have to be brought to bear on the problem.
Perhaps the biggest external hurdle to achieving anything at the grassroots level is longstanding national attitudes towards college students in general. To many, the mere mention of the term ” student” invokes a paternalistic response. Thus any term attached to it is disregarded. Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation’s conscience that connects irresponsibility with student loans. This is a result of well publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past that involved students taking out loans with no intention of ever paying them back, and simply filing for bankruptcy after graduation. This preconception was sufficiently strong to convince Congress to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans in the 70’s. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A.E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this preconception had a fatal flaw. “The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors”.[i] In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1% bankruptcy rate among student debtors.[ii] Nevertheless, this public misperception has been oft repeated, and now is indelibly etched in the public’s mind. Despite the various hurdles to organizing debtors, there are other factors that explain the emergence of the student loan grassroots activities thus far. These will be critical to sustaining the continued growth and ultimate success of these efforts. People who analyze this debt system carefully will arrive at the conclusion that if there is to be any reasonable and equitable solution to their student loan debt, it will take a political solution, where the standard consumer protections that Congress removed from student loans are restored. Those without the financial means to pay the drastically higher amounts being demanded of them have only one proactive option—namely, to stand up and speak out against the incomparable lack of consumer protections associated with student loans. Importantly, student loan debtors are typically intelligent and educated individuals. Meaningful research, articulate communication, and insightful interchange with lawmakers, reporters, and the general public are required to effect change, and so this is another strength within the grassroots that potentially could be brought to bear on the problem. Also, with the maturing of communications technology, it has become far easier to seek out, find, and organize people across the country who have been harmed by the student loan industry and wish to band together for the purpose of affecting political change. While the Internet is overwhelmed with advertisements, etc. promoted by student loan companies, and this deluge of marketing information makes it very difficult to find those engaged in the effort, those individuals who are sufficiently dedicated and persistent will eventually find sites where like minded individuals coalesce. Finally, the problem of student debt is increasing, and at a rate proportional to the rise in the price of college tuition- a price that has been increasing at double the rate of inflation for 3 decades. With the average undergraduate borrower leaving school with upwards of $20,000 in student loan debt, and the average graduate borrower accruing $42,000, there inevitably will be a tipping point beyond which the costs simply become too great to avoid broad public outcry. This fact alone virtually guarantees that there will be continued and increased grassroots activities on this issue for the foreseeable future.
Although initial submissions to the SLJ were few, the span of the stories was intriguing, and covered borrowers who had attended schools ranging from vocational institutes to Harvard University. There was Rick, a laborer from California who decided to go back to school to learn automotive repair. The Trade School he attended attempted to make him sign two separate promissory notes for what he was told would be one loan. Suspicious, Rick withdrew from classes, and arranged for the cancellation of the loans. Five years later, he realized due to an IRS tax refund offset that his loans had not been cancelled, and an original $1,500 note had grown to $3,500. Then, there was Petra, a Harvard graduate who left law school in 1986 with a little over $40,000 in loans. After a prolonged period of unemployment and a denied forbearance, she reluctantly filed for bankruptcy. Her guarantor, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, was paid 10% of the debt as a part of the bankruptcy settlement, and she was told that this was the end. Petra started over again, but the student loans were mysteriously revived. After the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act, student loan creditors began calling again, and payment for her loans were now being demanded in full, only this time for the staggering amount of $152,000. Petra notes, “At the start of this story I mentioned that I am a single mother. Part of the reason for my divorce is this issue. My ex-husband couldn't handle the pressure and the threats of the lawsuit. He became enraged whenever I received a harassing phone call or notice letter demanding $152,000 in payment. It was too much for him to take.” By the summer of 2005, word had begun to spread about the web site, and stories began to trickle in unsolicited. Again, the range of stories was compelling, but they all had in common an extraordinary increase in the amount being demanded from the loan holders compared to the amount of the original loans. The site was also used as a platform to post research regarding lobbying activities, executive salary trends, and other research germane to the problem. Also, a significant number of submissions were beginning to come from citizens who had borrowed private student loans. These loans typically carried far higher interest rates than federally guaranteed loans, and bankruptcy protections had been removed (retroactively) from them as of October 17, 2005 as a part of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.
In December 2005, McLean published a 5-page article on student loans that proved to be very important. In it, she described not only the massive profits being earned by lenders like Sallie Mae, but also covered a wide range of topics including the massive lobbying presence of Sallie Mae and the student loan industry on Capitol Hill, the massive growth of private loans, and also featured SLJ prominently in the piece. McLean and the staff at Fortune uncovered some astonishing information regarding these private loans. For instance, they found a private student loan whose APR was an astonishing 28%. [iii] While the article met with intense and vehement criticism from Sallie Mae, the facts reported in the story were accurate. SLJ membership grew by about 300 members shortly after this piece was published- still a tiny percentage of the number of borrowers caught in the student loan trap, but a significant step forward, nonetheless. Also, in March 2006, The Baltimore Sun agreed to publish a OPED that described clearly the lack of consumer protections for student loans, and the human suffering that had resulted as a result. While SLJ membership increased only slightly from the area following the piece, one submission from a man in Maryland introduced a new reality to the fight, when he described the tragic circumstances surrounding his sister’s self-inflicted death, as is described in detail in the previous chapter. When it comes to the point where citizens are fleeing the country and committing suicide as a result of student loans, all must agree that it is clearly time to reconsider, and reconsider drastically the whole notion of allowing our youth to assume more than token amounts of debt for their educations. To date, SLJ has received 3 stories of suicide from family members of student loan cborrowers, hundreds of submissions from people who claim to be suicidal, and dozens of submissions from people who have left the country (hundreds from people who indicate that they are seriously considering it). Not because they committed a crime. Not because they were being persecuted for their religious or other beliefs. Rather, this is solely because of the unendurable stress put upon them as a result of their student loans. In January 2006, Anya Kamenetz of the Village Voice published an important piece that clearly showed how Sallie Mae and the lending industry in general was making incredible profits from late fees charged to borrowers of both private and federally guaranteed student loans. The article also examined the obscenely large stock bonuses doled out to Sallie Mae executives, the potential for antitrust violations, and the huge amounts of money that Sallie Mae regularly poured into C ongressional coffers. SLJ members were interviewed and featured in the piece[iv], and membership grew significantly as a result. Then, in May 2006, a very significant story about Sallie Mae and the student loan industry ran on 60 Minutes that featured SLJ members including Brit Napoli, the counselor in California who owed nearly triple what he had borrowed, despite the fact that he had already repaid more than he had borrowed, Lynnae Brown, who was stuck repaying about a quarter of a million dollars on what began as a $60,000 loan, and Bill Mclaughlin, whose CPA could not understand the astonishing increase in his loans (Bill had originally borrowed $38,000, had repaid $48,000, yet still owed about $32,000). The 60 Minutes segment aired, top story, on May 7, 2006 , and shortly thereafter, the tudentLoanJustice.Org membership grew to well over 1 , 000 members nationwide. The story sent ripples throughout academia and the student loan industry. While Sallie Mae issued a scathing criticism of the borrowers portrayed in the story, and the quality of the reporting by CBS staff, the most significant fact of the matter is that Sallie Mae declined to be interviewed for the segment - stating that they didn’t think they would get a fair shake[v]. Importantly, the 60 Minutes piece gave the issue a prominence nationally that proved hugely beneficial to the grassroots. Within a week of the episode airing, SLJ had been contacted by both Ralph Nader and Michael Moore on this issue. Nader published a piece within 3 days of the piece airing in which he said that the corporate executives who designed the student loan scheme should be given the top award for “shameless perversity”. Moore asked to be connected to borrowers for potential use in his upcoming documentary film, although ultimately, the borrowers they were went were not used for the film, entitled “Sicko”, that concentrated on the U.S. healthcare system. While to date, neither has devoted significant resources to the student loan problem, it was highly encouraging to have been contacted by citizens of the caliber of Nader and the audacity of Moore .
The Fortune Magazine article had proven that respected reporters were keenly interested in the issue, or at least became very interested when informed of the facts about student loans. It was decided that if this grassroots movement were to succeed, the press would play a critical role. While considerable effort continued to be spent researching the problem, and attempting to convince Congress of the critical need to restore standard consumer protections to student loans, an equal, or perhaps greater amount of effort was spent promoting regional and national publications and other media outlets to investigate the issue. Importantly, Ken Moser, the president of the Adam Smith Society of California, published a scathing commentary on the lack of free market forces in the student loan industry in May 2006. The column specifically protested the fact that for federally - guaranteed loans, there is no ability for borrowers to refinance the debt after consolidation, regardless of whether there may be other lenders willing to accept less profit by charging the borrowers less to administer the loan. Given that the Adam Smith Society is one of the most conservative organizations in the world with regards to economics, this piece was highly noteworthy and significant.
The bill was introduced into the Senate on May 26, 2006 (S. 511). While it didn’t contain everything that SLJ members sought, it was certainly a step in the right direction, and served as encouragement for the group. One of the Clinton Staff members later sent an email stating that it was the efforts of SLJ that was the catalyst for the bill. [vi] This was highly encouraging to the membership. Senator Dick Durbin also contacted SLJ March 2006, and in June 2007 introduced S. 1561, a bill to restore full bankruptcy protections for private student loans- loans that are not backed by the federal government, and that often carry extraordinarily high interest rates.
In his speech on the Senate floor introducing the bill, Senator Durbin opened by describing the story of Connie Martin, an SLJ member since May 2006, and also had entered into the Senate record an important article published on the issue in the Chicago Sun Times—an article that also featured multiple SLJ members[vii]. Again, this was a sterling example of how the grassroots could contribute to legislative change effectively.
The SLJ community decided in December 2006 to form a Political Action Committee (PAC) as a way to serve as a counterweight to the well funded PACs controlled by the student loan industry, and in January 2007, the PAC was established. It was accepted going in that the amount of money that would be raised would be a pittance compared to the millions of dollars spent every election cycle, nevertheless it was an important and worthwhile step if only for reasons of principle. As a companion grassroots act, it was decided to travel the country on a bus tour, visiting as many members of both House and Senate education committees, both in their home districts, and in Washington D.C. While some in the media questioned the move as a ridiculous effort by a “rabble rouser”[viii], others felt positively about the PAC and the bus tour. In fact, the Boston Phoenix did a feature story on the effort[ix], and more than $5,000 in donations were received prior to embarking on the trip. The trip covered 42 States, over 23,000 miles, and of the 70 members of both House and Senate education committees, 60 were visited in their home districts. During the trip, the various scandals regarding the “unholy alliances” between the universities and student lenders broke in the mainstream media, and so during this time, SLJ members were featured in front page stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, among many others. Talks were given at Cornell University, UNC Chapel Hill, and other locations, and SLJ was invited to appear on both local and national radio shows. While the Bus tour cost about $15,000 to execute (far less than the $1 million or more that Sallie Mae spends on their tour every year), it was universally felt by all members that the money was well spent. By the end of the tour, SLJ had established state coordinators for 34 of the 50 states, and was well on its way to having state chapters for every state in the union. Today there are state chapters in every state, that vary in size from a few dozen, to a few hundred members. It is hoped and expected that these volunteer chapters will serve as focal points for the continued growth and expansion of the organization as time goes on, and the problem worsens.
While this change in national awareness about the issue is difficult to quantify, there are some indicators of change. Most notably, dozens of the nation’s elite schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Amherst, Caltech, Davidson College and the University of Pennsylvania, have committed to ending student loans for either all of their students, or those whose family incomes fall below certain thresholds.
Clearly, the ground has been laid for a significant surge in activism around this issue. Besides the organization, a number of additional groups have formed, and are growing. These include StudentLoanSlave.Com, SallieMaeBeef.Com, JoesDebt.Com, and a host of newsgroups on the Internet. In addition, there are dozens of blogs started by individual citizens that are similarly focused. While encouraging, from a grassroots perspective, much work needs to be done. The number of citizens overwhelmed by student loan debt is at least 10 million, yet currently, fewer than 5 , 000 citizens are actively engaged in bringing about a solution. One critically important- but currently absent- element of grassroots activity is at the university level. If ever there were a compelling issue for students to be interested in, absent a military draft, the overwhelming cost of college, and the predatory lending environment that supports it should be near or at the top of the list. Students need to realize how badly they are being exploited, and speak out loudly and forcefully against it. The colleges and universities have, in effect, enjoyed the “catbird’s seat” through the past 4 decades, raising their tuition, fees, and other costs almost at will, with the knowledge that students would gladly sign for increased loans to subsidize this. Until they hear from the students- strongly, loudly and consistently, the colleges will likely continue to operate as they have for years now—taking advantage of the very population they profess to be supporting. ************************************************* [i] The Nondischargeability of student loans in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search for a Theory, John A.E. Pottow, Canadian Business Law Journal, Vol. 44, pp 245-278, March 2007 [ii] Ibid. [iii] Sallie Mae: A Hot Stock, A Tough Lender, Bethany McLean, Fortune Magazine, December 26th, 2005 [iv] Your Late Fees, Their Millions [v] Sallie Mae’s Success Too Costly?, Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes, May 7th, 2007 [vi] Email from Dr. Gregory Walton, Office of Senator Hillary Clinton, May 26th, 2006 [vii] Law Favors Gambler over Grad, Dave Newbart, Chicago Sun Times, May 6th, 2007 [viii] More than a Rabble Rouser?, Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, January 12th, 2007 [ix] Manhandled No More, Catherine Tumber, the Boston Phoenix , December 14th, 2006 [x] Damning Data on Defaults, Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, December 4th, 2007 [xi] Hidden Details: A Closer Look at Student Loan Default Rates, Erin Dillon, Education sector.Org, October 23rd, 2007 [xii] Sallie Mae Lost $1.6 Billion in 4q, Marcy Gordon, The Associated Press, January 23rd, 2008
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 6:35 PM
The banks are now expanding the $700 billion bailout plan to include private student loans. This is on word I received today from from Paul Basken, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Sallie Mae has been added by the SEC to the list of companies that cannot be legally "shorted", and so we can expect that Sallie Mae, and other student loan companies will be holding their hands out to the federal government for high interest private loans they made since bankruptcy protections were removed from private student loans in 2005. People: Now more than ever, we need to ACT. I have given you the tools to do this. Please use the paste at the end of this email. Send it around to every reporter that you can think of. Also, make a donation to the PAC. Now more than ever, your support is critically important. Finally, please, please spread the word about this site. We will certainly be buried by the student loan lobbying industry if we do not act forcefully...RIGHT NOW. We do have a piece working with BusinessWeek, the WSJ, and a couple of other papers, but I hope for a flood of press inquiries to be forthcoming if you all do what is needed. This is so critical, guys. I can't tell you....please, please stand up for the common good. If you don't know who to send this to, just send it to the following:
************************************************* 2. "Fee income" for Sallie Mae, the nations largest lender, grew by 228% between 200-2005 (Their loan portfolio grew by only 87% during the same time period)
3. Despite false advertisements by the industry that defaults are
dropping, defaults are actually rising- in fact, about 1 in 5 borrowers
will default on their student loans. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Withheld (Maryland) I am writing to tell my sister's story. She is no longer with us...She took her life a year ago. My sister was the first in our family to attend college. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and did really well for awhile. In her early 30s, she became ill (breast cancer) and was unable to work. I am not sure how she was paying her loans, but I know the student loan representatives were hounding her. I spoke with several on her behalf and little if anything was ever accomplished. My sister was out of work for a very long time as "chemo" made her very ill. She was repeatedly called by student loan representatives even when told how ill she was. I do not want to go into a great deal of detail, but I will say that my sister took her life as she said she simply did not want to live anymore. What is interesting is that my sister was not terminally ill. Her cancer was in stage 2...and her prognosis were very good. What ultimately led to my sister's death is the way she was repeatedly hounded by collection agencies regarding her student loans. I wrote to a Maryland Senator myself and stated that something has to be done about this. People are being penalized for going after their dreams of becoming educated. Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? My sister's life has been an inspiration to me. I have decided to go back to school. I promised her that I would not obtain any student loans...I am doing it the old fashion way....I am working 3 jobs to finance my education. I will be somewhere in my early 40s when I finish, but at least I won't have to be concerned about being literally worried to death over student loans.... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gail (Oregon) This is my son's story so I don't have all the facts but I do know enough to know it was one of the factors that drove him to suicide. He was very depressed because he owed over $200,000 in student loans and saw no end to ever paying them off. He had consolidated before the interest went way down and when he looked into doing it when interest was good he was told he could only do it once in the life of the loans. He had gotten his masters degree and had almost completed his PHD. Because of this hard line rule it became overwhelming. He committed suicide 9/28/05 and the world lost a beautiful, brilliant person and I lost one of the loves of my life. I'm not just saying these things because I am his Mother and loved him. He was so smart he belonged to MENSA and I am attaching his local obituary. I keep receiving bills from the student loans even though I have repeatedly returned them to sender with the message that he was deceased. When they kept coming I added the fact that he was deceased in part because of these bills and when they still kept coming I added that they were rubbing salt in a wound and were breaking my heart and to please cease already. Michele was 39 and had so much to give. His Father is dying of liver cancer but Michele's death is the tragedy of his life, even more than his own death sentence. His wife, his parents and brothers are all victims. I would like to see legislation that protects these students and gives them alternatives if they have a hardship repaying these loans. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ David (Texas)
I don't have all the facts and figures about my situation but here's a
synopsis. I graduated from chiropractic school (1989) and defaulted on
my federal student loans (for the same reasons that others have had to
default) that totaled approximately $40,000 (in 1989) and now total
$320,000 (based on a collection agency's claim in 2005). I can't renew
my license to make a living (much less make payments (they wanted $800
per month in 1996) on the loans) and have experienced feelings of
hopelessness, despair, no self-esteem, depression, suicide, etc., etc. The Austins My husband took out a Heal loan for podiatry school in 1982, 1983, 1984 totaling $39,000. We have paid Sallie Mae over $88,000. In the last three years due to illness, bad luck and decisions, my husband's work has declined substantially. He has exhausted his deferments, and now his loan has accumulated a tremendous amount of interest. This was a $39,000 debt that now will have cost him well over $223,000 and more. All |
