Alan Michael Collinge’s first job as an aerospace engineer did not pay him quite enough to keep up with the payments on the $38,000 of student loans that he’d accumulated earning his degrees. Before he knew it, he was pulled into a vortex of debt, default and collection, and within seven years of graduation, his loans had ballooned to over $100,000 due to penalties, fees, collection charges and compounded interest.
Collinge faced three choices: accept his fate and spend the rest of his life in poverty, leave the country or stay and fight. Numerous others in his shoes have been so desperate that they have made a tragic fourth choice — suicide. Collinge chose to go public and fight, and so was born one of the nation’s foremost whistleblowers on the student loan industry. His book, “The Student Loan Scam,” has become a primer for the uninformed and unaware.
Before reading Collinge’s book, I was among the naive. My privileged upbringing provided me a debt-free college education, and I never questioned the standard narrative about student loans: That they were for the benefit of the student and the ticket to fulfilling one’s promise in life. “Scam” not only dispelled me of
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