Sunday, April 29, 2012 CBS Morning featured our March of the Student Debt Slaves action in DC as part of their report on the student debt crisis:

We are excited to share with you this podcast and resource page built from the information gained and resources assembled for our recent interview:

Student Debt Jubilee & Why Higher Education Ought to be Free.

On this, the 84th podcast in our Conversations with the Cabinet series, we learned from expert organizers about effectively challenging the unjust phenomenon of student loan debt, as well as why free higher education for all at our two- and four-year public universities is a common-sense, fair and affordable alternative.

Quality public higher education is a right and yet this basic right has been violated for 36 million Americans who have student loan debt. In 2010, average student debt upon college graduation was $24,000 (see Huffington Post article). This year, unpaid college student loans exceeded $1 trillion for the first time, and student loan debt is now higher than credit card debt. (see USA Today article). Thus, our country is creating an entire generation of indentured servants, while offering unprecedented wealth to predatory and unregulated private lenders such as Sallie Mae (related Mother Jones and Counterpunch articles).

We were joined by Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice StudentLoanJustice.org and author of book Student Loan Scam. We also heard from Serge Bakalian, ofDefault, the Student Loan Documentary, as well as Kyle McCarthy, Default distributor and co founder of Occupy Student Debt and Studentdebt.me.

The second half of our Conversation featured Bob Samuels, President of the University Council, AFT in California, author of Why All Higher Public Education Should Be Free and blogger at Changing Universities , as well as Samir Sonti, graduate student in government, free higher education expert.

Listen to the podcast, then check out our resource list to see how you can help end student debt and bring about free higher education for all in 2012!

Diane Wittner
Co-Producer and Host
Conversations with the Cabinet
Backbone Campaign

Listen to the Podcast:
Student Debt Jubilee & Why All Higher Education Ought to be Free

Recent Doo-Occupy Actions in DC:

Articles:
Free Higher Ed! by Adolph Reed Jr.
Here's A Demand: Forgive Student Loan Debt, by Robert Applebaum
Majoring in Debt by Adolph Reed Jr.
Why All Higher Public Education Should Be Free by Bob Samuels
Book: Student Loan Scam, by Alan Collinge

Movie:
Default: The Student Loan Documentary (Serge Bakalian and Kyle McCarthy)

Websites and Blogs:
Occupy Student Debt (Kyle McCarthy)
http://studentdebt.me/ (Kyle McCarthy)
StudentLoanJustice.org (Alan Collinge)
Forgivestudentloandebt.com (Robert Applebaum)
Changing Universities Blog (Bob Samuels)
Campaign for the Future of Higher Education (Adolph Reed Jr. and Samir Sonti)

Quotes from our Guests:

Alan Collinge:
"The cost of tuition has risen at double or triple the rate of inflation. At the same time, a very dirty and predatory lending instrument has been thrust upon students."

"The Department of Education needs to return money back to students in some way, shape or form."

"We must take steps now. There is a very active collection industry poised to do even more terrible things to students."

"Amendments to the Higher Education Act removed basic consumer protections. Defaulted loans are more lucrative than non-defaulted loans. Congress turned its back on the citizens on this issue."

"The Department of Education is a revolving door. The Office of Federal Student Aid is run by such executives as former Sallie Mae employees. This is a captured agency."

"Some predatory lenders also own collections agencies: "

Sallie Mae salliemae.com
NelNet nelnet.com National Education Loan Network
ACS acs-education.com
ECMC ecmc.org

Kyle McCarthy:
"By turning education into a commodity, we have shifted the growing burdens of higher education onto the backs of those who can least afford them. The underlying reasons for the Occupy Wall Street protests start to come into focus."

"It's a shift of wealth to the top."

Robert Applebaum: (paraphrase)

"A bailout for students would rejuvenate the economy."

Bob Samuels:
"There is no longer a sense that universities are citizen-based, public institutions that we should all support."

"Higher education has been privatized and corporatized."

"In most developed countries, higher education is free. Public universities in the US were free until recently, or fees to attend were very low. The system is now broken. America spends more money than any other country on higher education, but only 30% who start out are able to get degrees."

Samir Sonti:
"It's striking how cheap and how straightforward it would be to make two and four year public universities free for all enrolled students. It would cost about 75 billion dollars. This is two 2 percent of the federal budget, or 7 percent of what the government spends on the military now."

"This isn't big government. It's a question of political will, something we once had. We got CUNY, we got the University of California system, we got the GI bill."

"A study was done on the economic benefits to our country from the GI Bill. For every dollar that was spent on sending veterans to school, the federal government reaped about seven dollars. It's clearly a sound investment."