Thom talks to Kyle Olson, Founder and CEO of Education Action Group Foundation, (educationactiongroup.org/) on Student loans & for profit colleges are creating a new generation of indentured servants.

~~~ Read MOAR ~~~ This is a follow up to the Dual Com with TheAv8tqr where I discuss some more aspects of “the college plan” and share some cautionary advice regarding student loans. I will get back to a normal game play video next time. I have some cool stories coming up too… mostly about Chickens. Check out www.youtube.com www.youtube.com Follow me on Twitter twitter.com/DarvinTV or @DarvinTV

Current, former, and soon-to-be students discuss how student loans have affected their lives.

www.facebook.com www.coasttocoastam.com In the first hour, Ian Punnett welcomed the founder of StudentLoanJustice.org, Alan Collinge, who discussed how federal student loans have become predatory, turning a generation into debtor slaves. “It’s a socially horrible epidemic,” he declared, noting that America’s total student loan debt now surpasses the nation’s credit card debt. He explained that student loans are particularly pernicious because they contain no consumer safeguards such as bankruptcy protection, statute of limitations, or the ability to re-finance the debt in an open market. As a result of these factors, Collinge said, when a loan is defaulted, it can double or even triple due to penalties and fees. In looking at the source of the problem, Collinge pointed to student loan advocates and the Department of Education as the key entities that “failed to play their part” in overseeing lending practices. According to him, the DOE has been using a faulty metric to determine the default rate on student loans, thus misleading Congress into increasing the allowable limits on colleges for lending. Additionally, Collinge said, the DOE actually makes “about 22% versus what they pay out” for defaulted student loans. In order to fix the student loan epidemic, Collinge endorsed restoring bankruptcy protections for these loans. Should that happen, he said, “a multitude of problems” will resolve themselves, including an “almost overnight” drop in college tuitions.

For the first time last year, student loan debt outpaced credit card debt, and according to the New York Times, is likely to top a trillion dollars this year! This comes at a time when state budgets are being slashed, tuition is going up, and Pell Grants are in the middle of a budget debate on Capitol Hill. Ana Kasparian, host of The Young Turks, TYT University discusses what students are saying about this.