Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Hall of Shame: Student Loan Lenders and Profiteering Colleges

Here's a great BusinessWeek expose from Jessica Silver-Greenberg about college students racking up credit card debt and the credit companies whose predatory on campus recruiting tactics seem to stimulate the youth debt phenomenon.

This mirrored and investigative clip I saw last night on CurrenTV (it originally aired in June and was produced by MossMedia), in which the reporter's polling of NYU students on their astronomical debt burden is interspersed with clips of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo talking about his state's bust-down on credit card companies, colleges, and their less-then-ethical collaborations- which included KICKBACKS to the schools from private student loans!

All of which is a way of saying that companies and colleges are working together not to ensure that young spenders understand debt- which is perfectly clearly NOT the case- but instead to make sure that they BOTH profit from the rising costs of college in the US.

Let's make this general indictment of the student lending industry our inaugural entry in The Optimist Company's Hall of Shame

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