Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice on CAP’s Current Efforts to Revamp Student Loans

It has been a while since I had last talked to Alan. I knew at the time he was at issue with a stance the Center for American Progress was taking on Student Loans which surprising are supported by some of our more popular consumer advocates. Kind of makes sense as we now see the Center for American Progress cuddling up with the Koch Brothers? Not what I would call a marriage made in heaven benefiting us and I wonder who will own whom in the end. Law and Order Koch Brothers suddenly concerned about the incarceration rate in the US? Yeah, right! Save that one for another post. Anyhow, Alan moved from Tacoma, Washington to Washington, D.C. to confront CAP on their stance.

Amongst loans, it is no secret student loans make money and make even more money in default from the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) student loan which comprises a majority of all outstanding student loans; the Department of Education can recover $1.22 (before collection costs, and the government’s “cost of money”) on every dollar loaned. Student loans are not a zero sum game as some critics might have you believe.

recovery-rate-graph

On refinancing student loans, one venture capitalist pointed out: It’s a trillion-dollar opportunity. You don’t get a lot of those,” gushes Brian Hirsch, cofounder of Tribeca Venture Partners, an early investor in CommonBond. (He sits on its board.)

Well, maybe not a trillion, but hundreds of billions. About 75% of the $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt is eligible to be refinanced, and the creditworthy tranche of this debt–the part private investors are eyeing–totals at least $200 billion. So far Common Bond has made some $100 million in loans to current students and graduates of 109 M.B.A., J.D., M.D. and engineering programs at 50 brand-name schools. Another VC-backed company, three-year-old SoFi (for Social Finance), has refinanced more than $1 billion in student debt held by 13,500 graduates of 2,200 schools, making it the largest refinancer in the market. This leaves no doubt where some of the emphasis on refinancing student loans my be coming from today. I wonder if Moodys will rate it AAA as they did with tranched CDO/MBS and not care about the securty of the loan(s) in each tranche?

In particular the former statistic of payback after default refutes the arguments of student loan critics the likes of Jason Delisle (New America) and Brookings Beth Akers and Matt Chingos who advocate Fair Market Valuation of Student Loans to assess risk. It might make sense to do so, if a student loan was the same as a home mortgage or a piece of machinery in a factory; but, student loans are not the same. By a student’s signature, a student loan becomes a roach motel as there is no way out through bankruptcy. You can wait 20-25 years and get out of it on an IBP plan, die, become disabled, or do public service to get out of potions of it. If you default, the Government will garnish your wages, SS, Disability to collect their money besides disqualify you from any federal programs.

CAP’s How Qualified Student Loans Could Protect Borrowers and Taxpayers proposes returning bankruptcy protections to student loans. A closer examination of the plan reveals this program would disqualify many federal and private loans from having access to bankruptcy. Instead what is seen are alternatives to bankruptcy such as gainful employment, income based payment, service loan forgiveness, payment on tim interest reductions, etc. most plans of which are teasers with only a low percentage of applicants being accepted and successful. CAP and other liberal advocates push for these repayment programs which in the end result in the majority of people who try for the benefit being kicked out before anything is forgiven. CAP has recruited a former director of the Department of Education lending program David Bergeron who does not appear to have brought anything new to the discussion other than repayment programs which may cause more damage in the end. The issue still remains of bankruptcy protection in the form of what was given to big business and TBTF by Congress and in the end walked away from $billions in responsibility over the decades. Guess students do not get a benefit of the doubt.

Another proposal by David Bergeron and CAP is a federal refinancing plan for private loans. The plan would refinance private loans at lower interest rates, taking them over from private banks at book value and offering a better deal than what was offered to investment firms (made into banks by Geithner and given access to Fed money). Nonperforming loans would be included in this plan also as a bailout and makes the government a private industry bill collector for loans which more than likely should not have been made. The impact of this plan would help a few borrowers and in the end may hurt them as they lose protection under the statutes of limitations.

While Democrats favor the two aforementioned plans, Republicans are still stuck in the past of no bankruptcy protection for student loan holders, complaining of the high cost of repayment programs and the lending system, and suggesting private banks for student loans as subsidized by the Feds can do a better job. Students and parents would be at the mercy of the banks. Republicans would resurrect a taxpayer subsidized banking system such as what our venture capitalist would love and was put to its grave by Obama who stopped short of revamping the entire student loan system. There is no serious accommodation for middle and low income students coming from Republicans. Republicans have abandoned their free-market attitude by not affording students the same protection afforded TBTF and big business under bankruptcy and Democrats have embraced the past with people such as Bergeron from the Department of Education who help create today’s student loan and repayment environment.

What mostly brought the nation to today’s bad student loan environment is a Congress dead set against “supposed” lazy students escaping any responsibility for something they signed up for as 18 year-olds, a student loan system fraught with a profit motive forcing young people and their parents into an indentured servitude to banks with the Gov as the bill collector, nonprofit and for-profit colleges not having any responsibility for the loans offered to their students, uncontrolled college employee expenses due to the addition of staff beyond teaching staff, decreased state funding for colleges, federal grants and scholarships which have not kept up with inflation, etc. The only cost to have exceeded healthcare cost increases is that of the higher cost of education.

In the end, what many young college graduates earned in a living well beyond what could be made with just a high school education is far less when compared to decreased high school income and years previous. While the percentage difference may be the same, the actual income for college grads has decreased. Young couples with little or no student loan debt have accumulated higher levels of assets in comparison.