Aram Zucker-Scharff

Student Loans Entice Borrowers More for Cash Than a Degree:

Some Americans caught in the weak job market are lining up for federal student aid, not for education that boosts their employment prospects but for the chance to take out low-cost loans, sometimes with little intention of getting a degree. Ray Selent of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who is taking courses for a degree in theater, says student loans allow him to cover any needs that arise.

Taking out more student loans to cover expenses and keep back the collectors on other student loans is pretty foolish. The fact that people are doing so because they’re too much of a credit risk to get a normal loan is both familiar and terrifying. 

Discover Faces Investigation Into Student Loan Debt Collection Practices Amid Rising Deliquencies:

The bank’s student loan business has almost doubled in two years and is facing heat from regulators.

“Graduate students seem determined to willingly delude themselves about the neoliberal financial foundation of graduate education; I’ve found that they are the most deeply invested in the myths of the academic cult. Then they finish their programs and hit the job market. The job market reveals the total insupportability of the entire system.”

– From: “Understanding the risks and resisting the Kool-Aid: An interview with Karen Kelsky about student debt”

In which some idiot claims that Student Loans are too big to fail.:

Thanks for explaining that the student loan system is Too Big To Fail. That argument has never failed, right? Also, can’t let the *enormous* assumption here pass that bankruptcy is the only way out of loans, because no one has ever run out on a loan before.

Just because it is harder to run out on a student loan than a house loan doesn’t make it impossible. This is the same type of BS that was said about the housing market: ‘oh well, no one will run out on their housing loans because people don’t do that, it would be irresponsible.’