News
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From Bloomberg News
By John Hechinger
The debt collector on the other end of the phone gave Oswaldo Campos an ultimatum:
Pay $219 a month toward his more than $20,000 in defaulted student loans, or Pioneer Credit Recovery, a contractor with the U.S. Education Department, would confiscate his pay. Campos, disabled from liver disease, makes about $20,000 a year.
A debt collector for the U.S. Education Department insisted that Oswaldo Campos pay $219 a month on his more than $20,000 in student loans -- even though he was entitled to pay less under federal student-loan rules.
Campos holds a letter from the U.S. Department of Education confirming that he is considered disabled. He contracted liver disease from a blood transfusion.
“We’re not playing here,” Campos recalled the collector telling him in December. “You’re dealing with the federal government. You have no other options.”
Campos agreed to have the money deducted each month from his bank account, even though federal student-loan rules would let him pay less and become eligible for a plan -- approved by Congress and touted by President Barack Obama -- requiring him to lay out about $50 a month. To satisfy Pioneer, Campos borrowed from friends, cut meat from his diet and stopped buying gas to drive his 82-year-old mother to doctor’s visits for her Parkinson’s Disease.
With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on...
Friday, December 30, 2011
Detroit News
BY Mike Wilkinson
Declining state aid and rising costs have made getting a top-notch education in Michigan among the most expensive in the country, gobbling up parents' savings and saddling graduates with tuition bills that typically are far higher than their peers across the country, according to a Detroit News analysis of national education statistics.
At the University of Michigan, one year's tuition is now equal to more than 26 percent of the state's median household income — more than double what it is in Florida. In 2010-11, U-M's in-state tuition and fees hit nearly $11,837, according to the National Center for Education Statistics; the University of Florida charged state residents $5,044, or just 11 percent of median household income.
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