Portland Trib’s take on student loan mess
Monday, September 8th, 2008Not sure what to make of this write-up in the Portland Tribune on the student loan problems. The story oversimplifies, in that it talks about how the mortgage crisis has “infected” the student loan sector. Strictly speaking, I don’t think that’s true.
The student loan industry and some parts of the private education for profit industry created there own problems. It doesn’t take much digging to find a series of nested problems, including outrageous tuition Example: As the article points out, tuition of $45,000 at Western Culinary Institute. As comments following the article note, this qualifies you for a job paying $10-$12 per hour. It doesn’t take much math skill to see that that’s a real problem. Underneath are a number of questionable transactions. For example, how is it that a private lender would ever loan a student $45,000, when the student has no collateral and will graduate and qualify for the low paying jobs? Doesn’t make sense, does it?
David Sugerman