The federal student loan system has become systemically predatory due to the deliberate removal of critically important consumer protections including Bankruptcy, statutes of limitations, Truth in Lending Laws, Fair Debt Collection Practices, State usury laws, and others.  

These protections were created for sound reason, and their absence from student loans has led to unchecked inflation, intolerably poor oversight, decreasing academic quality, a litany of corrupt practices, and an extremely high default rate. Astonishingly, the large loan companies, the guarantors, and even the federal government have been realizing more income (often far more) from defaulted loans than from loans that remain in good stead. Millions of citizens and their families have come under serious threat from this lending system. Many have been badly harmed both financially and in other ways.  Some have been destroyed financially, and others have suffered profoundly in other ways.

Certainly, President Johnson and his congressional colleagues on both sides of the aisle would wince were they to see what has become of the well intentioned, carefully designed lending system they created in 1965.  The lending and collection system we see today is intolerable in the U.S., or any country for that matter.

At a minimum, standard bankruptcy protections must be returned to all student loans, and the interests of all lending elements must be realigned to be with the borrowers, instead of against them. With no exemptions, and no qualifications.