The financialization of education: the next economic crisis
by Danny Weil
Sometimes one cannot believe the news, not for fear of it being misinformation or disinformation, but for the startling and unsettling horror stories that appear more than occasionally these days. This one is especially morbid.
Marian Wang, a reporter for Nation for Change, wrote an excellent article about a grieving father and his struggles to pay his dead son’s student loans (http://www.nationofchange.org/grieving-father-struggles-pay-dead-son-s-student-loans-1339769156). Wang reported that a few months after he buried his son, ‘Freddy’ (who was tragically killed in an auto accident), Francisco Reynoso began receiving notices in the mail from creditors eager to get their hands on a commission for collecting defaulted student loans. Letters were not enough so then the debt collectors became more ruthless, calling Mr. Reynoso on the phone in his time of grief with clockwork regularity. These merciless debt collectors are reminiscent of the for-profit college recruiters who sit in boiler rooms, lying and prevaricating to gather money for their paymasters. They are part of the
