For that matter it has been my experience as a person who became blind
as an adult that sighted people don't quite accept me as a social equal.
But then, I can't say that I was well accepted as a social equal before
I became blind. I did not detect that my standing decreased among the
people I already knew when I became blind, but time passes and people
drift away. At the same time, there is at least one sighted person who I
met after becoming blind who seems to hold me in a lot higher esteem
than I think I deserve. That is a woman who seems to think that I am the
smartest man in the world and who keeps coming to me for advice with her
problems. I have to keep disappointing her by telling her that I can't
answer her legal questions and that I know nothing about auto mechanics.
But whether you are ostracized or not and whether you are not
considered a social equal or not I have a hard time understanding why
people would self segregate themselves on email lists that have nothing
to do with blindness. Like I said, the other participants don't even
have to know that you are blind unless you tell them.
On 11/5/2017 4:49 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
It has been my experience as someone who was visually impaired since birth, that the majority of fully sighted people have never fully accepted me as a social equal. That isn’t to say that no one has. But the majority of people tend to be uncomfortable with someone who is different. My eyes don’t look normal. But I have not been able to disguise this with dark lenses because that would cut the small bit of vision I have. Then my left eye ruptured when I was 31 years of age. After it was surgically repaired, it had a white film over it. My doctor wanted to fit me with a cosmetic lens. But the surface of my eye is too sensitive and it was too painful to wear the lens. Sighted people respond to visual cues and they are uncomfortable withany kind of physical disfigurement. But aside from that, even if my eyes looked OK, I couldn’t make eye contact with people. As I lost more vision, I couldn’t see if they were talking to me or someone else if they greeted me on the street or in a crowded room, unless they used my name. These are the simple superficial things that facilitate social interaction. But even when I was known, when I was actdive in my community and had positive relationships with people, I wasn’t treated the same as everyone else. At one point, I was on a school/community committee that was meeting bi-weekly at the high school in the evening. I had a guide dog at the time and I would walk to the school and back home after the meetings. I accidentally discovered that everyone else on that committee went out for coffee together after each meeting. One of the other members was a neighbor who lived very close to me. But all of them were uncomfortable, apparently, about inviting me to join them. I can give you other examples of experiences that I’ve had, over and over again, which illustrate the reluctdance of sighted people to reach out to me and to other blind people. I did overcome this tendency when we joined the Ethical Humanist Society, but it took tremendous effort on my part. All of the blind people whom I’ve known, have talked about experiences similar to the one I described. Some folks are more outgoing and keep trying to bridge the gap, over and over again. By the time I was in my sixties, I was just tired of the whole thing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to put forth effort every time I’m forced out into the world and into a situation where I am relating to new sighted people. And now that I’m 80, blinder than I was before, hardly able to walk, even with a walker, and not hearing too well, the ways in which people perceive me and relate to me are much more negative.
Most of the blind people whom you are encountering on all these lists, have lived, knowingly or unknowingly, in a world where people see them as different and as outsiders. This may or may not be true of their sighted family members, not only strangers. Many of them attended residential schools for the blind. Many worked for agencies for the blind and have always been surrounded by other blind people or by sighted people who are comfortable with blind people. Some work in a sighted environment and need the relief from the stresses of dealing with the attitudes of sighted people, so they turn to blindness lists. The other thing that no one wants to talk about is that blind people relate to the world differently than sighted people do. All the emphasis on technology, aside from making people employable, is to help them approach the level of capability of sighted people. This means that interests, recreation, use of leisure time, conversation, all of it is affected by how one relates to the world, what one does and with how much effort. And that affects social intercourse between sighted and blind people.
Miriam
*From:*Roger Loran Bailey [mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx]
*Sent:* Sunday, November 05, 2017 3:34 PM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; M Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Great College Loan Swindle
I have noticed myself that blind people seem to self segregate. This very list is an example. When it started out it had to do with some faction fight in the ACB and so was of special interest to blind people, but that has not been the focus for a very long time and I assure you that there are other lists out there that discuss the same political issues that are discussed here and from a similar frame of reference. So why does there have to be a political discussion list for blind people? Then there are various literary discussion groups for blind people. Some of them make sense to be of special interest to blind people. There is the DB-Review list, for example. The reason it is of special interest to blind people is that it involves discussing books obtained from a source that sighted nondisabled people are not allowed to obtain books. But then you have Pages Plus. I have never figured out why the topics discussed there are of special interest to blind people. I myself have just subscribed to a science fiction literary discussion list. I don't think a single subscriber is not blind. Blindness is completely irrelevant to being a science fiction fan though. Someone tried to found a literary discussion group on Goodreads for blind people. I went ahead and subscribed to that one, but it fizzeled and never got off the ground. But what did it have to do with being blind? Aside from those there are also just general chit chat lists for blind people too. Don't they realize that there are lists on the web that they could chit chat in just fine without anyone even knowing that they are blind if they didn't happen to mention it. And if they did happen to mention it I am sure that they would not be ostracized. As for off line self segregation, I will say that as a formerly sighted person I had very little interaction with blind people before I became blind myself. Once I did become blind, though, because of entering rehabilitation and because of taking advantage of other services for blind people I did start interacting with blind people and I can see that some amount of segreation occurs circumstantially. That is, if you go to a school for the blind you will grow up with other blind people and a bblind culture will start to form. Personally, except for interacting in those services and organizations for the blind I have not sought out the company of blind people. I do get the impression, though, that congenitally blind people do. And it is self segregation too. Most every blind person came from a sighted family and have had much opportunity to interact with sighted people because sighted people make up the most of the world, but they seem to prefer blind company. It is somewhat understandable if they might choose blind company in the physical world because fellow blind people are more likely to understand one's limitations and capabilites, but why self segregate on the Internet where no one even knows that you are blind?
On 11/5/2017 9:42 AM, M Vieni wrote:
Mary,
I think that there are very understandable reasons for black
people remaining together in self segregated supportive groups and
these reasons have to do with the necessity of defending
themselves from the day to day slights, insults, and assaults on
personal identity that every black person receives in our society.
I have a Black-Vietnamese daughter whom we adopted in 1974 and I
have lived in a racially integrated suburban community since 1976.
I’ve observed, first hand, the kinds of unforgiveable things that
even well-meaning white people say to, and about, black people.
And then, there is the normal self segregation among all cultural
groups that takes place in America which is much less of a melting
pot than our national myths would like us to believe. There was a
time, after all, when there was much disapproval if an Irish
Catholic American married and Italian Catholic American. My
cousin, Jewish and six years younger than I, fell in love with a
beautiful Catholic girl, but they never married. They split up
because of parental disapproval. I recently told a story on this
list about how upset the parents were when a group of ninth
graders, my daughter among them, had a racially integrated party
one Friday night. These were good students, well behaved kids. My
daughter told me that at the party, all of the kids talked about
how their parents had pressured them not to attend the party. It
was the only party of its kind, that happened that I was aware of,
no repetitions. I’ve known a lot of blind people in my life and I
think our social experience with sighted people is probably
analogous in several ways, to that of black people in relation to
white people, except that sighted people don’t actively hate us.
Most of them, aside from some close family and friends, would just
prefer not to have social interactions with us. And lastly, things
were superficially very different in terms of racial integration
in the 70’s than they were in the 50’s. In the 50’s, there was not
even any pretense of including black people in anything. At the
New York Lighthouse for the Blind, the women’s recreation was
segregated; white women on Tuesdays, black women on Thursdays. The
Lighthouse provided transportation for these elderly clients and
it was just so convenient to send all of the cars to Harlem on one
night.
Miriam
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *MARY
CONVY
*Sent:* Sunday, November 05, 2017 7:57 AM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: The Great College Loan Swindle
Miriam, First, for other list member, NYC has had a very unique
college system to provide very, very low cost education. When I
was a kid we called it 'free', though there were fees. I just
checked on line and the average city college undergraduate tuition
is under $3400. The ten lowest in state colleges have tuition
under $5300. Not everyone needs to go to a $30,000 school.
I do believe the banks are taking great advantage of the student
loan programs and when I was young the loans gave a good break to
the student.
And mentioning the no black students. I was in college in the
70's and there was a black minority of students who kept to
themselves, ate in their own section of the cafeteria, etc. I
had a boyfriend but in my last class there was a black guy and we
had great discussions in that class and enjoyed each other's
views. It was last class and all the wealthier kids drove home
but he and I would walk to the bus stop off campus and talk while
we waited for our bus. One day he told me his 'friends' thought
it looked bad that he was walking with a white girl and he had to
stop. And he did. I was so sad because I thought we were the
enlightened generation and would change things. This was MY
generation acting like this. I had a black girlfriend in HS and
she wasn't allowed to bring me home. But that was the 'old
people'. MY generation would be different. But we weren't.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> on behalf of Miriam
Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 4, 2017 9:54 PM
*To:* blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: The Great College Loan Swindle
This whole college loan thing is just unbelievable to me. It's one
of these
incredible changes that I can't get my head around. I attended Queens
College, which was a top New York City college from 1955 to 1959
and paid
$10 a semester registration fee. Suddenly, in the 1970's, people
were paying
several hundred dollars tuition each semester. When I went to
college, I
don't remember seeing one black student in any of my classes. I
had one
black professor, a sociology professor. In the 70's when the cost
went up,
theoretically, they started something called "open enrollment" in
the city
colleges, which meant that students didn't have to take an
entrance exam or
have a certain grade point average to get in like they did in the
1950's.
They also began opening community colleges. But they were charging
fees
which eliminated certain kinds of students.
Miriam.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Abby
Vincent
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2017 8:06 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Great College Loan Swindle
When my son was in college, he borrowed part of his Colorado U.
tuition from
a government sponsored revolving loan program. It wasn't long
before the
banksters took over these loans, making it harder to make payments
when
times are hard and increasing the cost dramatically. Think of how
robust
our economy would be if unemployment were low and the loan
payments could
go toward buying a home and starting a family.
Abby
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam
Vieni
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2017 1:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Great College Loan Swindle
Students on a college campus. (photo: Calvin College)
The Great College Loan Swindle
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
04 November 17
How universities, banks and the government turned student debt into
America's next financial black hole
On a wind-swept, frigid night in February 2009, a 37-year-old
schoolteacher
named Scott Nailor parked his rusted '92 Toyota Tercel in the
parking lot of
a Fireside Inn in Auburn, Maine. He picked this spot to have a final
reckoning with himself. He was going to end his life.
Beaten down after more than a decade of struggle with student
debt, after
years of taking false doors and slipping into various puddles of
bureaucratic quicksand, he was giving up the fight. "This is it,
I'm done,"
he remembers thinking. "I sat there and just sort of felt like I'm
going to
take my life. I'm going to find a way to park this car in the
garage, with
it running or whatever."
Nailor's problems began at 19 years old, when he borrowed for
tuition so
that he could pursue a bachelor's degree at the University of Southern
Maine. He graduated summa cum laude four years later and
immediately got a
job in his field, as an English teacher.
But he graduated with $35,000 in debt, a big hill to climb on a
part-time
teacher's $18,000 salary. He struggled with payments, and he and
his wife
then consolidated their student debt, which soon totaled more than
$50,000.
They declared bankruptcy and defaulted on the loans. From there he
found
himself in a loan "rehabilitation" program that added to his overall
balance. "That's when the noose began to tighten," he says.
The collectors called day and night, at work and at home. "In the
middle of
class too, while I was teaching," he says. He ended up in another
rehabilitation program that put him on a road toward an
essentially endless
cycle of rising payments. Today, he pays $471 a month toward
"rehabilitation," and, like countless other borrowers, he pays
nothing at
all toward his real debt, which he now calculates would cost more than
$100,000 to extinguish. "Not one dollar of it goes to principal," says
Nailor. "I will never be able to pay it off. My only hope to
escape from
this crushing debt is to die."
After repeated phone calls with lending agencies about his ever-rising
interest payments, Nailor now believes things will only get worse
with time.
"At this rate, I may easily break $1 million in debt before I
retire from
teaching," he says.
Nailor had more than once reached the stage in his thoughts where
he was
thinking about how to physically pull off his suicide. "I'd been there
before, that just was the worst of it," he says. "It scared me, bad."
He had a young son and a younger daughter, but Nailor had been so
broken by
the experience of financial failure that he managed to convince
himself they
would be better off without him. What saved him is that he called
his wife
to say goodbye. "I don't know why I called my wife. I'm glad I
did," he
says. "I just wanted her or someone to tell me to pick it up, keep
fighting,
it's going to be all right. And she did."
From that moment, Nailor managed to focus on his family. Still,
the core
problem - the spiraling debt that has taken over his life, as it
has for
millions of other Americans - remains.
Horror stories about student debt are nothing new. But this school
year
marks a considerable worsening of a tale that ought to have been a
national
emergency years ago. The government in charge of regulating this
mess is now
filled with predatory monsters who have extensive ties to the
exploitative
for-profit education industry - from Donald Trump himself to Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos, who sets much of the federal loan policy,
to Julian
Schmoke, onetime dean of the infamous DeVry University, whom Trump
appointed
to police fraud in education.
Americans don't understand the student-loan crisis because they've
been
trained to view the issue in terms of a series of separate, unrelated
problems. They will read in one place that as of the summer of 2017, a
record 8.5 million Americans are in default on their student debt,
with
about $1.3 trillion in loans still outstanding.
In another place, voters will read that the cost of higher
education is
skyrocketing, soaring in a seemingly market-defying arc that for
nearly a
decade now has run almost double the rate of inflation. Tuition for a
halfway decent school now frequently surpasses $50,000 a year.
How, the
average newsreader wonders, can any child not born in a yacht
afford to go
to school these days?
In a third place, that same reader will see some heartless
monster, usually
a Republican, threatening to cut federal student lending. The current
bogeyman is Trump, who is threatening to slash the Pell Grant
program by
$3.9 billion, which would seem to put higher education even
further out of
reach for poor and middle-income families. This too seems
appalling, and
triggers a different kind of response, encouraging progressive
voters to
lobby for increased availability for educational lending.
But the separateness of these stories clouds the unifying issue
underneath:
The education industry as a whole is a con. In fact, since the
mortgage
business blew up in 2008, education and student debt is probably our
reigning unexposed nation-wide scam.
It's a multiparty affair, what shakedown artists call a "big store
scheme,"
like in the movie The Sting: a complex deception requiring a big
cast to
string the mark along every step of the way. In higher education,
every
party you meet, from the moment you first set foot on campus, is
in on the
game.
America as a country has evolved in recent decades into a
confederacy of
widescale industrial scams. The biggest slices of our economic pie
- sectors
like health care, military production, banking, even commercial and
residential real estate - have become crude income-redistribution
schemes,
often untethered from the market by subsidies or bailouts, with
the richest
companies benefiting from gamed or denuded regulatory systems that
make
profits almost as assured as taxes. Guaranteed-profit scams -
that's the
last thing America makes with any level of consistent competence.
In that
light, Trump, among other things, the former head of a schlock
diploma mill
called Trump University, is a perfect president for these times.
He's the
scammer-in-chief in the Great American Ripoff Age, a time in which
fleecing
students is one of our signature achievements.
It starts with the sales pitch colleges make to kids. The thrust
of it is
usually that people who go to college make lots more money than the
unfortunate dunces who don't. "A bachelor's degree is worth $2.8
million on
average over a lifetime" is how Georgetown University put it. The
Census
Bureau tells us similarly that a master's degree is worth on
average about
$1.3 million more than a high school diploma.
But these stats say more about the increasing uselessness of a
high school
degree than they do about the value of a college diploma.
Moreover, since
virtually everyone at the very highest strata of society has a college
degree, the stats are skewed by a handful of financial titans. A
college
degree has become a minimal status marker as much as anything
else. "I'm
sure people who take polo lessons or sailing lessons earn a lot
more on
average too," says Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice, which
advocates
for debt forgiveness and other reforms. "Does that mean you should
send your
kids to sailing school?"
But the pitch works on everyone these days, especially since good
jobs for
Trump's beloved "poorly educated" are scarce to nonexistent. Going to
college doesn't guarantee a good job, far from it, but the data
show that
not going dooms most young people to an increasingly shallow pool
of the
very crappiest, lowest-paying jobs. There's a lot of stick, but
not much
carrot, in the education game.
It's a vicious cycle. Since everyone feels obligated to go to
college, most
everyone who can go, does, creating a glut of graduates. And as
that glut of
degree recipients grows, the squeeze on the un-degreed grows tighter,
increasing further that original negative incentive: Don't go to
college,
and you'll be standing on soup lines by age 25.
With that inducement in place, colleges can charge almost any
amount, and
kids will pay - so long as they can get the money. And here we run
into
problem number two: It's too easy to find that money.
Parents, not wanting their kids to fall behind, will pay every
dollar they
have. But if they don't have the cash, there is a virtually
unlimited amount
of credit available to young people. Proposed cuts to Pell Grants
aside, the
landscape is filled with public and private lending, and students
gobble it
up. Kids who walk into financial-aid offices are often not told
what signing
their names on the various aid forms will mean down the line. A
lot of kids
don't even understand the concept of interest or amortization
tables - they
think if they're borrowing $8,000, they're paying back $8,000.
Nailor certainly was unaware of what he was getting into when he
was 19. "I
had no idea [about interest]," he says. "I just remember thinking,
'I don't
have to worry about it right now. I want to go to school.' " He
pauses in
disgust. "It's unsettling to remember how it was like, 'Here, just
sign this
and you're all set.' I wish I could take the time machine back and
slap
myself in the face."
The average amount of debt for a student leaving school is
skyrocketing even
faster than the rate of tuition increase. In 2016, for instance,
the average
amount of debt for an exiting college graduate was a staggering
$37,172.
That's a rise of six percent over just the previous year. With the
average
undergraduate interest rate at about 3.7 percent, the interest
alone costs
around $115 per month, meaning anyone who can't afford to pay into the
principal faces the prospect of $69,000 in payments over 50 years.
So here's the con so far. You must go to college because you're
screwed if
you don't. Costs are outrageously high, but you pay them because
you have
to, and because the system makes it easy to borrow massive amounts
of money.
The third part of the con is the worst: You can't get out of the
debt. Since
government lenders in particular have virtually unlimited power to
collect
on student debt - preying on everything from salary to income-tax
returns -
even running is not an option. And since most young people find
themselves
unable to make their full payments early on, they often find
themselves
perpetually paying down interest only, never touching the
principal. Our
billionaire president can declare bankruptcy four times, but
students are
the one class of citizen that may not do it even once.
October 2017 was supposed to represent the first glimmer of light
at the end
of this tunnel. This month marks the 10th anniversary of the
Public Service
Loan Forgiveness program, one of the few avenues for wiping out
student
debt. The idea, launched by George W. Bush, was pretty simple:
Students
could pledge to work 10 years for the government or a nonprofit
and have
their debt forgiven. In order to qualify, borrowers had to make
payments for
10 years using a complex formula. This month, then, was to start
the first
mass wipeouts of debt in the history of American student lending.
But more
than half of the 700,000 enrollees have already been expunged from the
program for, among other things, failing to certify their incomes
on time,
one of many bureaucratic tricks employed to limit forgiveness
eligibility.
To date, fewer than 500 participants are scheduled to receive loan
forgiveness in this first round.
Moreover, Trump has called for the program's elimination by 2018,
meaning
that any relief that begins this month is likely only temporary.
The only
thing that is guaranteed to remain real for the immediate future
are the
massive profits being generated on the backs of young people, who
before
long become old people who, all too often, remain ensnared until
their last
days in one of the country's most brilliant and devious
moneymaking schemes.
Everybody wins in this madness, except students. Even though many
of the
loans are originated by the state, most of them are serviced by
private or
quasi-private companies like Navient - which until 2014 was the
student-loan
arm of Sallie Mae - or Nelnet, companies that reported a combined
profit of
around $1 billion last year (the U.S. government made a profit of $1.6
billion in 2016!). Debt-collector companies like Performant (which
generated
$141.4 million in revenues; the family of Betsy DeVos is a major
investor),
and most particularly the colleges and universities, get to prey
on the
desperation and terror of parents and young people, and in the
process rake
in vast sums virtually without fear of market consequence.
About that: Universities, especially public institutions, have
successfully
defended rising tuition in recent years by blaming the hikes on
reduced
support from states. But this explanation was blown to bits in
large part
due to a bizarre slip-up in the middle of a controversy over state
support
of the University of Wisconsin system a few years ago.
In that incident, UW raised tuition by 5.5 percent six years in a
row after
2007. The school blamed stresses from the financial crisis and
decreased
state aid. But when pressed during a state committee hearing in
2013 about
the university's finances, UW system president Kevin Reilly
admitted they
held $648 million in reserve, including $414 million in tuition
payments.
This was excess hidey-hole cash the school was sitting on,
separate and
distinct from, say, an endowment fund.
After the university was showered with criticism for hoarding cash
at a time
when it was gouging students with huge price increases every year, the
school responded by saying, essentially, it only did what all the
other kids
were doing. UW released data showing that other major state-school
systems
across the country were similarly stashing huge amounts of cash. While
Wisconsin's surplus was only 25 percent of its operating budget, for
instance, Minnesota's was 29 percent, and Illinois maintained a
whopping 34
percent reserve.
When Collinge, of Student Loan Justice, looked into it, he found
that the
phenomenon wasn't confined to state schools. Private schools, too,
have been
hoarding cash even as they plead poverty and jack up tuition fees.
"They're
all doing it," he says.
While universities sit on their stockpiles of cash and the loan
industry
generates record profits, the pain of living in debilitating debt
for many
lasts into retirement. Take Veronica Martish. She's a 68-year-old
veteran,
having served in the armed forces in the Vietnam era. She's also a
grandmother who's never been in trouble and considers herself a
patriot.
"The thing is, I tried to do everything right in my life," she
says. "But
this ruined my life."
This is an $8,000 student loan she took out in 1989, through
Sallie Mae. She
borrowed the money so she could take courses at Quinebaug Valley
Community
College in Connecticut. Five years later, after deaths in her
family, she
fell behind on her payments and entered a loan-rehabilitation program.
"That's when my nightmare began," she says.
In rehabilitation, Martish's $8,000 loan, with fees and interest,
ballooned
into a $27,000 debt, which she has been carrying ever since. She
says she's
paid more than $63,000 to date and is nowhere near discharging the
principal. "By the time I die," she says, "I will probably pay
more than
$200,000 toward an $8,000 loan." She pauses. "It's a scam, you
see. Nothing
ever comes off the loan. It's all interest and fees. And they
chase you
until you're old, like me. They never stop. Ever."
And that's the other thing about lending to students: It's the
safest grift
around.
There's probably no better symbol of the bankruptcy of the education
industry than Trump University. The half-literate president's
effort at
higher learning drew in suckers with pathetic promises of great
real-estate
insights (for instance, that Trump "hand-picked" the instructors)
and then
charged them truckfuls of cash for get-rich-quick tutorials that
students
and faculty later described as "almost completely worthless" and a
"total
lie." That Trump got to settle a lawsuit on this matter for $25
million and
still managed to be elected president is, ironically, a remarkable
testament
to the failure of our education system. About the only example
that might be
worse is DeVry University, which told students that 90 percent of
graduates
seeking jobs found them in their fields within six months of
graduation. The
FTC found those claims "false and unsubstantiated," and ordered
$100 million
in refunds and debt relief, but that was in 2016 - before Trump
put DeVry
chief Schmoke, of all people, in charge of rooting out education
fraud. Like
a lot of things connected to politics lately, it would be funny if it
weren't somehow actually happening. "Yeah, it's the fox guarding the
henhouse," says Collinge. "You could probably find a worse analogy."
But the real problem with the student-loan story is that it's so
poorly
understood by people not living the nightmare. There's so much
propaganda
that blames the borrowers for taking on the debt in the first
place that
there's often little sympathy for people in hopeless situations.
To make
matters worse, band-aid programs that supposedly offer help
hypnotize the
public into thinking there are ways out, when the "help" is
usually just
another trick to add to the balance.
"That's part of the problem with the narrative," says Nailor, the
schoolteacher. "People think that there's help, so what are you
complaining
about? All you got to do is apply for help."
But the help, he says, coming from a for-profit predatory system,
often just
makes things worse. "It did for me," he says. "It does for a lot
of people."
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