I can just tell you a little background. But what excited me is the Department of Education came out with what hopefully will be some relief. This just hit the news. It’s been coming. We’re going to talk about what I think kind of created the student loan bubble. If you’re a student and you need to get loan approval fast, you could get out one of the main stream providers King Of Cash as an example.
Because the way I look at it, it’s an almost exact replica of the mortgage bubble. And it looks like some of the same defenses that people were able to use who had problems with their mortgages may come into line with student loans.
So before we get into this possible relief– which could mean some people’s student loans actually being wiped away, which would be pretty awesome.
Again, depending on the circumstances. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. So first, let me kind of run through the parallels of student loans and subprime mortgages. So everybody’s aware of the disaster created by subprime mortgages, and the housing crisis, and everything else.
Relationship Between Sub-Prime Mortgages and Student Loans
And what I will tell you is, I know from experience from people I personally knew who were in the mortgage business, a lot of folks who used to sell subprime mortgages made the transition to for-profit colleges selling people student loans after the financial meltdown happened, and they couldn’t make the fast money in the mortgage business anymore.
And so you had a lot of these same despicable tactics that were being used in the mortgage industry back in the heyday, in the subprime days, that were trapping borrowers in toxic mortgages. All those folks took those honed skills of deception and went over to work for-profit colleges.
And then one of these big for profit colleges, Corinthian, blew up earlier this year.
I can remember, we did an entire hour program on the fact that a lot of these so-called colleges would bait and switch you by saying, we’re going to give you a brand new computer, we’re going to get you a laptop that’s unbelievable, and all you have to do is sign up for this college. But the college wasn’t much.
Absolutely, it was crazy. And I talked about this and apparently no one listened. No one at the Department of Education listened to me six years ago when I was ranting and raving on the radio about how this was going to be the next bubble. And I could see that the same practices that had been used in mortgages were now being used in student loans. And the writing was on the wall.
And so Corinthian, which owned Everest and a bunch of other colleges, they got popped because they were falsifying their placement numbers, what percentage of people were landing jobs. In one particular example, there was a graduate who went to work at Taco Bell, and they counted that as a successfully placed job tied to the student’s training. I mean, this is the type of stuff that was discovered.
Creation of the Student Loan Bubble
What happened is because the Department of Education did not listen to me six years ago, Corinthian gave out $3.5 billion worth of student loans over the last five years.
Billion! $3.5 billion. So you have a for-profit college who was lying about placement rates and lying about the benefits of going to their school, using all of these old subprime mortgage techniques. All these guys who honed their skills taking advantage of people with toxic mortgages all went to work selling now student loans at for-profit colleges. And they racked up $3.5 billion.
Now, let me tell you, there is no house to foreclose on. And most of these people ended up with not much of an education according to reports now coming out. So that $3.5 billion bucks is pretty much wasted. And it all went into Corinthian’s pocket so they could get rich.
One of the things I pointed out when I talked about this years ago, is that the president of a for-profit college was making like 10 times the salary of the president of Harvard. Because just they were making that much money. They were taking such advantage of students.
Could You Have Your Student Loan Discharged?
Here’s what’s going on now. And I think this is intriguing, and so I’m actually going to assemble all of my attorneys later today, and we’re going to have a conversation about this.
So apparently there is a phrase, there is a clause in the promissory note of a student loan– and I don’t have one of these. I would like to get my hands on one. But what I’m looking for is, according to some research I did, there is a phrase that says, in some cases you may assert as a defense against collection of your loan that the school did something wrong.
Now, that doesn’t seem like– it’s in quotes where I found it in the article. But that doesn’t sound like normal legalese to me. I’m guessing that’s not exactly what it says on the promissory note. But the idea here is that if your school broke the law, if your school committed fraud, if your school deceived you, you may be able to sue and have your student loan discharged.
What brought this to light is that the Department of Education has come out and they’ve identified around, 40,000 people who they feel fit this criteria, who were Corinthian students. And they’re going to get $544 million worth of student loans forgiven to this group.
Now, remember Corinthian had total of $3.5 billion. So the initial 40,000, I think, is the kind of final round of students, the most recent round of students. But there’s a lot of pressure right now on Department of Education to do something for everyone.
How Student Loans Impacts the Taxpayer
Now, the downside to this is, where’s that $3.5 billion gonna come from? It’s gonna come from the taxpayer.
So because the Department of Education screwed up and didn’t monitor these guys, and let them rack up $3.5 billion worth of federally insured student loans, they, one, are now defaulting like crazy, and two, now have this potential clause that the students can fight back and possibly have the student loans discharged. That’s a three a $3.5 billion problem for the taxpayers.
But, I think better on the taxpayers then on these individual students.
I mean, we spread it across the entire country. We all take a little pain because our government screwed up on this one. It’s better than the students right now whose lives are potentially in shambles because of these toxic student loans they received from these toxic for-profit colleges without getting a good education.
Now, I’m sure there may be some good for-profit colleges out there. I’m not talking about the whole group. But I’m talking about the players like this particular one who were lying about placement rates and lying about job success rates. We can figure this out.
But this is a new mission for me. This is– a lot of people were negatively affected by this. I talked about this on my TV show years ago. I talked about this on the radio show years ago. It fell on deaf ears. $3.5 billion in loans with a college who was has been closed down for fraud and deceptive practices.
I would think all of those people should be able to get their loans discharged. And what about the people who made the payments? I mean, they’re not entitled to any relief, I don’t think. Just because you discharged the debt doesn’t mean you can get your money back.
Bottom line, this is a huge problem. When you look at economic graphs that show the increase in student loan debt, the spike that came in student loan debt, it almost perfectly mirrors the type of percentage increases we saw in mortgage leading up to the crash, leading up to the bubble.
The Pain Cycle
And again, the same deceptive practices being used. The same types of sales techniques. One of the studies they did on a for-profit college quoted that they were using a sales technique called the pain cycle. Just all of these different things they built to basically scare people or fear people into signing up for the student loans and getting these for-profit educations.
Which they didn’t really care if you graduated or not. They were going to falsify the placement and success rate records, and go on with life and keep milking this federal student loan. Because the crazy thing is, even if someone dropped out after– there’s a time limit. It’s not very long, something like 10 weeks or 12 weeks. As long as you attend a certain amount of time, they get all the money whether you continue the degree program or not.
The other interesting thing, is there’s some other language in here which very much reminds me of mortgage. And that is, there’s questions about whether or not your signature may have been forged on a promissory note. You know that’s one of the big foreclosure defense techniques that lawyers use when it comes to mortgages.
It is going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out, and how this happens. But we’re going to be at the front lines of this. We’re going to make sure our listeners are aware of this, because I’m sure a lot of them are affected.
And right here– I pulled this off of the student aid, or one of the federal government websites for student loans– and it says that you may be eligible for a discharge of your Direct Loan or FFEL Program, FFEL Program Loan, in these circumstances– your school falsely certified your eligibility to receive the loan based on your ability to benefit from it training.
Caught In a Lie
The idea here is that if they lied about placement rates, and if they lied about the earnings potential you would have after receiving the degree, because these are required for calculating eligibility for these loans, if they falsely certified your eligibility, because they falsified those placement rates and those job rates and those potential incomes, then you may be able to– and because of that you would not have been able to get the student loan.
If at the end of the day they told the truth and said, well nobody actually graduates and nobody gets a better job, you would have been ineligible for the student loan. And so that’s a one clause you can use in order to possibly get your loan discharged.
Another is that the school signed your name on the application or promissory note without your authorization, or the school endorsed your loan check or signed your authorization for electronic funds transfer without your knowledge. Unless the proceeds of the loan were delivered to you or applied to charges owed by you to the school.
So the big one here is if they forged your signature on the application or the promissory note. I will almost guarantee you there’s some of that going on because forging signatures on applications was rampant in the mortgage business. And a lot of these same players went over to student loan. So that’s definitely something, when I talk to the attorneys, we’re going to take a look at and see.
And then the other is that your loan was falsely certified because you were a victim of identity theft. That’s probably not going to apply to a lot of people. And then the school certified your eligibility, but because of physical or mental condition, age, criminal record, or other reason, you were disqualified for employment in the occupation in which you were being trained.
So this probably applies to some people. These for-profit colleges were using no discretion. And if the particular field that you were being trained in has a requirement regarding criminal record, requiring physical or mental condition, requiring age, and you didn’t meet that, then again this may be a way for you to challenge that student loan and get it discharged.
From Bad to Worse
Right now, the only way to do this is to get an attorney actually sue. But the Department of Education is trying to change that. They’re trying to put together streamlined program because so many people have been affected. They recognize that they dropped the ball on this. They recognize that a lot of people have been taken advantage of, and have been harmed by certain for-profit colleges.
And now it’s time to clean up the mess. And as always, the big mess is going to cause taxpayers a lot of money. Do you know, Rob, one of the big techniques they used to find people to try to sign up for the colleges is they would set up sites for fake jobs. This actually happened.
So they would run an ad on Monster or CareerBuilder for a fake job in a particular industry. And then they would get all these resumes from people who were trying to apply for a job because they were unemployed.
And then if your resume showed you were unemployed, and if the resume showed that you were probably in a desperate state, they would now reach out to you. And that was a lead. That was a lead for them for a potential student.
And when you’ve got educational institutions operating in these manners, tricking people into sending their contact information in under the guise of employment in order to then be called by a slick salesman who was selling subprime mortgages six weeks before, and is now selling you on the idea of signing up for college, and is going to prey on the fact that you’re unemployed, that you’re looking for work.
You got to remember, when this trend started, the economy was in a bad place.
Remember that? There were so many jobless kids. They had gotten out of high school. They couldn’t afford to the big schools.
And as explained six years ago, I remember it so clearly now that I’m thinking back, and during your dissertation I’ve been thinking about there were a whole bunch of kids that couldn’t get jobs–
Not just kids, they targeted adults as well. Anybody who was out of work.
It was a bad economy. Nobody could get a job. And all of a sudden you get something that says, hey, you can have a little pocket cash, you can get a brand new computer, and we’re going to throw in some kind of education, and we’re going to accept everybody. That pretty much it?
That’s it. And then we’re going to saddle you with these loans. And now we’re looking at the next big credit crisis in this country. And just as we’re starting to see a housing recovery, all the articles now are talking about how foreclosure rates are hitting lows, delinquency on mortgages is at lows.
Everything– we have finally come out of the mortgage meltdown and the mortgage crisis. Most people have to have either regained equity because home values have increased substantially. Most people either regained equity over the last two, three years. Or worked through their issues and then got back on their feet.
And are now– we’re getting back into a normal housing market from a delinquency standpoint. There’s not as many people in foreclosure. There’s not as much pain and destruction being caused in people’s financial lives by the mortgage industry.
And now we have this next ugly beast rearing its head. And it’s going to be student loans. It’s going to be federally– again, just like mortgages. You know, mortgages were federally guaranteed because of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. And now we have a problem with federally guaranteed student loans going down the exact same path.
And then I think this bail out will be much, much larger. I think the loss to taxpayers is going to be much, much larger when the dust settles on this. Because again, with housing, there was a tangible item there. There was a house. There was something to live in.
And so when they came out with HARP, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, and they were able to lower people’s payments considerably, it then became more affordable to stay in the home with the new lower payment than to walk away from the home.
There’s nothing like that that can be done with student loans. If someone went to a college that was committing fraud, and that was falsifying documents, and that was lying about potential job placements and everything else we see going on here, there’s nothing like that they can do. There’s nothing they can do.
It’s just funny. I just got a text. 941 area code. They said, “I worked for Corinthian, and everything you’re saying is spot on. The school was full of lies, deceit, greed, large egos. I was a recruiter for one of them. “
“Management purposely lied to us and kept us in the dark on many issues, especially financial aid. I thought I was doing the right thing and helping people, but in the end of the day it was all wrong.”
I’m telling you, this is a mirror image of the mortgage industry. And it’s happening over there. And Corinthian is just the first to fall. I mean, don’t think they were the only institution doing this. I think they’re the first of many to fall.
I think the Department of Education, who never really in the past, Rob, has had to worry about enforcement– they probably don’t even really have an enforcement division. I doubt they do.
Because if you look back when you had these institutions that had been around– nonprofit colleges that were institutions, and had been around for hundreds of years, and were ingrained in the communities where they were.
And again, there was only so many people that could attend on the campus, so there were some constraints to growth. And if you think about it, not everybody gets in because they only have so much classroom space and everything else. The industry kind of policed itself.
And then because of the rise of the internet and online education, which I think can be a great thing. I think people being able learn online can be a great thing. I think bringing the possibility for college education to people who otherwise would not have been able to take advantage of that is a great thing.
But as with any industry, when you have something new pop up like this, and the internet is boundless, and there’s no constraints to growth, and there’s no quality control in check, there’s no regulation, there’s no enforcement division over at the Department of Education to make sure these colleges are telling the truth.
And all a sudden you’ve got a for-profit companies realizing they can make billions of dollars. Remember, $3.5 billion in five years in student loans. That means they received $3.5 billion in revenue. So this for-profit college had– what was that– $700 million a year in income over the last five years for $3.5 billion.
When a company realizes that they can make $700 million a year by falsifying a couple documents, well there’s apparently people out there that will take advantage of that. There are bad actors all over the place. The internet seems to boost some of this. And the internet seems to facilitate a lot of this.
And then it became this nameless, faceless beast sucking money out of the student loan system, saddling up and coming people, saddling people who are just trying to get back on their feet, saddling people who just want a better life with the debt and giving them almost nothing in return. And now it’s time to pay the piper. And it’s time to pay the piper as a society, as a country, as a government who let this happen.
If we’re going to guarantee student loans, if our federal government– which I think is a good thing. I think it’s a good thing that we want to make education available. But just like with every other government program, there’s always going to be fraud. There’s always going to be bad actors. There’s always going to be people trying to take advantage of this system.
And if you do not police it, if you do not enforce it– imagine if the IRS didn’t have auditors. Imagine if the IRS did not have any type of enforcement. Imagine if the IRS just trusted everyone to fill out their tax returns correctly and file them. It probably would not happen. A lot of people file correctly out of fear of audit, fear of repercussions.
Well, because the Department of Education had no enforcement division to speak of, no one to go out and regulate these, no one to go out and watch these colleges like Corinthian, who’ve now been shut down after saddling people with $3.5 billion worth of debt, we find ourselves in this situation we are in today as a society.
And again, it is now our responsibility because we as the taxpayers, we as the voters, allowed the people that we put in power to let the Department of Education not have any enforcement. And we’re going to end up eating a who-knows-how-many billion dollar bill.
I mean, if just one single company, if just Corinthian had $3.5 billion– I’m going to try to find out before the end of the show what the total outstanding volume of student loans is. And again, not all of them are going to be bad actors. Not all of them are going to fit the criteria and will have taken advantage of students. But there’s a bunch of them out there that I guarantee you have.
It is so amazing that this is hitting the fan again. And just like six years ago, I think we’re the only people talking about it except for a couple of obscure articles out there in the marketplace. Because that is what this show does for people. Saving Thousands on the Saving Thousands Network, you’re always exposing stuff like this, and people need to be looking into it.
Is Consumer Financial Protection Bureau going to be the best stop for people? We’ve got to figure it out. And because the problem here is, with the mortgage crisis, the lender was to blame. The person who actually loaned the money was to blame.
Where in this situation, the lender is the federal government under most of these programs. So how are they going to punish themselves? This is a little different because this is the recipient of the funds, which in the mortgage it would’ve been the home seller. That’s basically who perpetrated most of this. And then the student loan is just kind of a byproduct of it.
But there’s apparently over $1.2 trillion dollars in student loans outstanding. And then this– $1.2 trillion. All right, so again, this is a potential disaster waiting to happen. Years and years ago, it was only in the couple hundred million range, and now we’re up to over $1.2 trillion.
And so what I look at is, whenever something grows that quickly, you’ve got to take a look at it. I mean, whenever there’s such a strong growth– we saw it with mortgages. Outstanding mortgage balances swelled at an alarming rate and then it led to the bubble.
Student loan outstanding balances swelled an alarming rate, which is leading to this next bubble. This one hasn’t really caught on yet, Rob. And it’s coming. I mean, I think it’s coming. I think enough people are affected. I’m surprised it’s taken this long. But I think we’re going to hear more about this and see more about this.
I’m disappointed that the mainstream media is not out there beating this drum. Particularly, if you think about it, there’s now 40,000 people out there who should be able to get their loan forgiven if they were at one of the Corinthian schools that meets this certain set of criteria just released by the Department of Education.
But who’s spreading that word? Who’s letting these people know? Why aren’t we out there beating the drum? Why aren’t we out there letting everyone know? I’m going to do my part. I’m letting the couple thousand listeners I have here on the Saving Thousands Radio Network know what’s going on.
But we need more than that. We need more people getting involved. I think get at the end of the day, a lot of our rules can protect– could have protected people from falling victim to these, right.
If we look at rule number one, shopping around, when you look at a for-profit college and costs 10 times as much as your local community college, that’s probably not a very good deal. You probably should shop around and rethink that, and not sign up for the online college that costs 10 times more than community college. That’s not a good deal.
The three-day waiting– rule number three– waiting three days to think about this. A lot of people were sold into the for-profit colleges using high-pressure sales techniques trying to close them immediately on the phone. If you take your three days to think about it, if you follow rule number three, that can be a big benefit.
Checking out, googling scam, googling reviews– I’m sure there’s a lot of people sharing their negative experiences with these colleges online. And we’ve got to be more empowered consumers.
I mean, these colleges were preying on Financial Zombies. They were preying on people’s desperation. They were forcing people to make quick decisions without weighing their options. They were definitely trying to keep you from shopping around. They didn’t want you to do your research. They didn’t want to do your homework.
They wanted you to sign on the bottom line, strap yourself with debt, and then they were laughing all the way to the bank $3.5 billion dollars later. Again, at just one for-profit organization. And I’m not even sure if they’re the largest, Rob. I mean, there’s lots of other big ones out there.
And like I said, I’m sure there are some people out there doing a fine job just like in any industry. When you look at the mortgage industry, there were people doing a good job all through the crisis that didn’t get involved in the subprime and the toxic mortgages.
But it’s the bad actors who are going to– the problem is the bad actors seem to have the meteoric rise to success because when you have $3.5 billion to play with, you can do a lot to grow, and set up more fake sites to get resumes, and run more radio, TV, and internet ads and everything else. A lot internet advertising was dumped into this.
And so the guys who are playing by the rules and doing it right don’t have near the budget, so they don’t grow as fast, and they don’t blow up as fast. And what you see is some of the bad actors become some of the largest companies in an industry. And it’s frustrating.
And I think this all comes down to enforcement. If the government is going to back something like student loans, or back something like mortgages, they’ve got to enforce it. If they just want to let the private sector do their thing, if the government wasn’t backing student loans and it was all private money, then who cares?
But let me tell you, private money is smart. And private money would not have allowed– I mean, could you imagine a company, a privately owned corporation dumping $3.5 billion of their capital into this scheme with Corinthian before they figured it? I don’t think so.
I don’t think it would have taken a private company five years to figure this out. And so this, again, is if our government’s gonna play in these financial industries, which I think there are some benefits to– I think there are some times when it’s necessary– they’ve got to be willing to enforce it. And they’ve got to be able to enforce it, and smart enough to enforce it, and have the right rules in place. And again, we did not have that when it came to for-profit colleges.
Something else that is a whole different show, but you went over it a minute ago– and we did about two or three shows, and this again, was five to six years ago– you said, there’s going to come a time when we’ve got to pay the piper, and we’ve got a lot of people out there that owe $1.2 trillion on student loans.
Now, that’s a little bit different than this problem we’re having out there right now. But these are people who are going to be owing $1.2 trillion. How’s that going to affect their ability to buy a home? How’s that going to affect their credit scores? I mean, this is serious when you’re looking at that kind of money that’s just standing out there. And you already pointed that out years ago.
Yeah, and we’re seeing the effects, Rob. I was at a conference in Denver recently and we had an economist come in and talk about housing. And one of the big reasons that housing is not recovering at the rate it should– I mean, we’re doing well. Things are good. But millennials and the younger generation are just not buying. People are buying homes later in life. There’s a lot of these things happening.
And a lot of folks want to blame the mortgage industry, that the rules are too tight, that the guidelines are too tight. And that’s just not the case. I mean, it’s actually pretty easy to get a mortgage right now. We talked about this on yesterday’s show.
What’s keeping a lot of people out of the game is the student loan debt. When you look at the average amount of payments for student loan debt that people now have– and up until recently, if your student loan debt was deferred, we were able to not count against you in your qualifying ratios for a mortgage.
That has now been changed. Student loan debt has become such a problem that we now have to count an estimated payment against you even if your loans are not yet begin to require payments, which is a new guideline. So that is going to hurt some people.
But this student loan thing is definitely weighing on people’s ability to purchase homes. When the amount of student loan debt has gone up so significantly, and those– I mean, people are making house payments on their student loans.
I mean, there are people out there paying $1,000, $1,200 a month for student loans. And they went to a college that possibly falsified information and had no intention of helping them succeed. And that is now replacing their ability to buy a home.
For some people it’s replacing their ability to live on their own. They’re having to live with roommates. They’re having to rent an apartment and split it three ways because they’re strapped with these student loans.
And it’s just an unfortunate situation. It’s one we let get completely out of control. If I saw this coming six years ago, others should have seen it coming as well. And just another example of us dropping the ball. As a society, we dropped the ball on this.
And then the guys who owned these big for-profit colleges made a lot of money because of it just like a lot of bad players in the mortgage industry made a lot of money. And now the burden is going to fall on the American taxpayer once again, unfortunately, to clean up that mess, and to undo and to pay back all of that money that was put into these people’s pockets under these false means.
And it’s frustrating. It frustrates me to no end. And I still don’t think we are truly– as we sit here today, I think Corinthian was just the tip of the iceberg.
I think that enough is not being done. I think in another year or two, we’re going to read about another one of these, and another one of these. And we’re going to wake up 2 trillion. And we’re going to have an even bigger problem when we could’ve stopped it right here today at $1.2 trillion.
Corinthian should have been the wake up call, but apparently it wasn’t. Because I don’t see any type of widespread enforcement happening. We’re now trying to reactively deal with Corinthian and figure out what we’re going to do with all the students who are strapped with this $3.5 billion in debt from a college who was shut down for fraud.
I mean, just think about how crazy that sounds. I mean, 10 years ago would you ever imagine a college being shut down for fraud? Because you picture University of Florida or Florida State– I mean, these are institutions in our lives. We look at colleges as something of credibility and trust and honesty. And that’s not what these new for-profits are doing in a lot of cases, at least not the bad actors.
So this is something that’s got to be addressed. Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to be addressed soon enough. Again, I think if financial literacy– it all goes back to my goal, Rob– if financial literacy was being taught in schools, if we were teaching our young people, our kids, our future generation, to be more conscious about signing a note to borrow money, understanding the payments, understanding the interest, understanding the long-term obligation, understanding how student loans work, how credit cards work, how credit scores work.
The lasting impact– if you think about, Rob, you’re on the phone with someone– again, I’m going to put myself in the shoes of one of these folks. I just graduate from high school. I can’t get a good job. I apply for a job. I send in my resume.
And all of a sudden I get called by this shark of a recruiter for a for-profit college who is promising me the world, who is promising me a laptop, who is getting all hyped up, who is telling me he is the answer to all of my problems. All I have to do is e-sign some paperwork.
That paperwork appears in my email probably while he keeps me the phone. Because again, they want to close the sale on the first call. This is old school subprime mortgage tactics. They don’t want you to wait the three days. They don’t want you to shop around. They want to get you right now.
And all of a sudden, this person types of their name into a box on their computer screen, and it changes the course of their life financially for the next 10, 15, or 20 years. Rob, we’re talking about a 10 or 15 minute phone call, and typing your name onto a screen.
And now your ability to buy a home is affected. Your ability to have a good credit score is affected. Your life is completely changed in moments because of the tactics used by these for-profit colleges.
I mean, just imagine that. Just think about that one little tiny mistake like that, because you got caught up in the hype, because you weren’t educated, because you didn’t understand the long-term risks and the long-term downsides. And you’d understand how debt works, and how loans work, and how interest works.
You didn’t shop around. You didn’t wait your three days. You didn’t follow the financial ninja rules. And now you find your life changed, when your mind you were doing something great. You were going to go to college. That’s all they were trying to do. They were trying to go to college, something is ingrained in us from a young age.
So we ingrain our children that they need to go to college, but then we don’t arm them with the tools to make good financial decisions about choosing a college and going to that collage. And that’s my big frustration. And that’s where, I believe, if we can have financial literacy taught in schools, then we can see things start to change.
Well, I’m thinking now, when you brought up all these different specialty colleges, I started thinking, have you been home in the midday– I know you’re so busy you probably haven’t– but you walk by a television between like 9:00 in the morning about, oh, 3:00 in the afternoon when the majority of people are working.
And all of a sudden you get the commercials, and there’s a specialty school that’s going to teach you how to drive a truck, or go into IT, or be a beauty specialist, or any of these type of very special schools. I wonder how many of them were bad players as well. Because they’re talking to the vulnerable people that are sitting at home unemployed.
Yeah, there used to be one of these. It was, like, a girl in pajamas.
I actually did some research on that company. And they weren’t even a for-profit college. They were a lead generation company. Again, the parallels between this and mortgage are just so similar.
Just like during the boom, you had companies like Lower My Bills and Lending Tree and these lead aggregators who would advertise. And they would sell your name to four mortgage companies.
That’s what these companies do. They run TV commercials promising you a better future through education. And then they sell your name to four of these for-profit colleges, of which at least one is probably crooked. I mean, just statistically with the size of Corinthian, one of the four if not all four are out to get you.
And now you’ve got four competing colleges all calling you nonstop relentlessly. I mean, I’ve heard stories, Rob, of people getting literally hundreds of phone calls after calling one of those ads.
And just one person after another trying to push them, sell them, talk them into attending the for-profit college. And again, it’s so frustrating. It’s something we’ve got to stop, we’ve got to regulate. And I think we’re gonna get it worked out.
But I think it’s going to take time. And it should happen right now, but it’s not. And that’s what’s frustrating.
But it goes back– like you said, it goes back to if people had been educated as early as grade school, middle school, high school, they could have seen some of this stuff happening. If it looks too good to be true, if you know the smoke and mirrors– rule number five, if you know how the magic happens, it doesn’t happen.
It’s amazing, if people would just follow these rules, we wouldn’t be stumbling. And maybe the government needs to have a class too.
This is going right up there with my financial literacy campaign in schools, giving the resources and putting together some help knowledge-wise for people who may find themselves in these situations.
I mean, if you were given a student loan under fraudulent terms, if you were deceived– see, the government requires all this disclosure to be given to try to help protect. But if that disclosure is fraudulent, if that disclosure is faked, if those numbers are fabricated, then how can anybody make a good decision?
We’re going to try to put together roadmap. I’m going to talk to the attorneys. I’m going to rack up some billable hours, Rob, to figure out how we help people, how we help our listeners.
And then we’ll be putting together some kind of guide or document on savingthousands.com to help people navigate the waters if they find themselves in the situation, if they find themselves falling victim to one of the student loan traps.
