Letter to the editor: Student loans are the most predatory lending of all

Commission-based Mortgage Loan originators have been castigated as villains for recommending inappropriate loans to unsuspecting borrowers who were sold mortgages they couldn’t afford. It has even been tied to the downfall of our economy in 2009-10.

At the same time, universities take advantage of the idealistic students, who take on tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, by telling them the marketplace seeks after students who major in liberal arts. While not commissioned, the careers of the advisers and professors are solidified and perpetuated.

The university and community at large benefit from the debt of the young, idealist students who look up to their academic heroes. Sallie Mae won’t reduce the rate to make it competitive to current rates. It isn’t forgivable and can’t be dismissed in bankruptcy.

The average state college graduate in 2012 ended up with $29,400 in student debt, up from $18,750 less than a decade before in 2004.

My husband graduated in 1992 at a time when 8 percent was the lowest student interest rate. He was a 19-year-old college student that had an entire floor of student aid workers filling out the paperwork and telling him how much he would have in his own pocket after the school was paid.

Today, his liberal arts degree has led him to 20 years of ground maintenance work at WSU that pays $13 an hour. His inability to pay his monthly Sallie Mae has landed him $113,000 in student loans that will never be repaid.

Today, he is picking up trash at the university that talked him into taking on this debt. His is but one story amongst tens of thousands of disillusioned students who drown in debt as soon as they leave college.

The predatory sales and lending practices of our colleges are a shame. Our young people deserve more sound career advising before they saddle themselves with debt they’ll never be able to repay before they even get out of school. At least with a mortgage, a person has a hard asset and a place to sleep at night.

—Submitted by Christie Summervill, WSU Class of 2000 graduate