Student Debt Series from Reveal and Consumer Reports Highlights Disastrous System of Compound Interest

Reveal – from The Center for Investigative Reporting, has produced a series of articles related to student debt.

Who got rich off the student debt crisis – A story about how, by privatizing the student loan program, Congress created a profit center for Wall Street and a system of college finance that created a kind of debt that can never be erased, “which is bad for Americans and good for banks and debt collectors.” It’s an unflattering report about those who profited from the student loan system. Of note is that an insideARM post from 2011, written by a guest author, is quoted. Ironically, the quote – unflattering to the industry – was the opposite of the point of the blog post, as the author is actually on the side of those who would forgive student debt.

In debt and out of hope: Faces of the student loan mess – A series of case studies about individuals who have – for one reason or another – accrued an insurmountable amount of student loan debt, largely due to compounding interest and fees.

Share your student debt story using the hashtag #MyDebtCouldBuy – An effort to build a conversation about student debt through social media.

So far, I see 12 entries (there are others, but those are just re-shares of the blog post encouraging people to tweet about what they could buy). Mostly people mention buying a house, or putting a down payment on a house, others mention: a 21-day Europe tour for 3, a Tesla P85D, a master bedroom addition, a used Mazda RX7, roundtrip flights to every continent, and 2,400 cups of specialty coffee.

How a small-time company became the ‘Wal-Mart’ of debt collection – A very streamlined (i.e. limited context) story of how NCO grew to be involved with student loans, fined by regulators, and sold to investors.

In conjunction with the Reveal series, Consumer Reports conducted a survey about student debt, and published the results earlier this week in a story titled, Degrees of Debt and Regret.

The data included responses from 1,500 Americans with student debt who responded to a March 2016 survey from Consumer Reports National Research Center. Among other findings, 44% of respondents said they would want to know how much student debt a person has before starting a serious relationship.

They also published their own series of articles, including:

insideARM Perspective

The Student Loan Bubble is, in fact, a HUGE problem that none of the politicians want to deal with. As with all things related to debt collection, the facts are way more boring and complicated than what is/can be presented in stories like these. Just to name one… the “Americans” referred to in the top story above are also the Americans who pay taxes and have to foot the bill for those who don’t/can’t pay back their loans. I suppose you could use this as a counter argument, or you could use it as yet another supporting argument for how disastrous the system is, because it hurts BOTH the people who don’t pay and the people who do pay.

Cooincidentally, the CFPB’s monthly complaint snapshot for June highlights the fact that student loans tops the list for biggest growth in complaint volume (61%, compared with a 0% increase for debt collection complaints). Although the total number is still relatively small compared with other complaint categories, this is likely because the CFPB only reports complaints about private student loans. They pass complaints about federal student loans to the Department of Education.