Indentured Students Rise as Loans Corrode College Ticket
Geraldine Damiani Brezler took out a $5,000 student loan in the late 1960s to study at the State University of New York. She became a nurse, got married, bought a house and repaid the debt in less than three years.
Today, her son, David, 38, owes about $85,000 in loans for a master’s degree in education at New York University. He can’t find full-time work, lives with his parents in White Plains, New York, and has deferred paying his debt for three years.
The financial-aid odyssey of two generations of Brezlers tracks the history of U.S. student loans, which, like the home mortgage, helped define the American dream. In the early years, the loan program let ambitious teens