It's Not a Student Loan!

As then-law professor Elizabeth Warren said in 2007, “Why should students who are trying to finance an education be treated more harshly than someone … who racked up tens of thousands of dollars gambling?”

In addition to having no escape from their loans, students must deal with aggressive creditors that can get to virtually any income source to secure payment – paychecks and tax refunds included. The Department of Education uses an “army of private debt collectors,” some of the most notorious financial operators out there, to intimidate and harass student borrowers. These collectors earned $1 billion in commissions from taxpayers in 2011. They get paid bonuses for extracting higher payments, and they can also rack up additional fees virtually endlessly. That’s because student debt has no statute of limitations on collectors, unlike most other forms of debt. The government can even collect student loan payments from Social Security checks, thanks to a 1996 law (this is not theoretical, as growing numbers of seniors are entering retirement with student debt).

Read more.. from Salon