—A suspenseful recounting of how the federal government created the student loan system, and how banks, Sallie Mae, and universities transformed it into the monster it is today—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe
Author: Josh Mitchell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 272 | 2022
The [student loan] program became a profit center for schools and the student loan industry, which put none of their own money at risk as they encouraged students to sign up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt…
The actors who have benefited the most–banks, Sallie Mae, and universities–shaped that system, hiring armies of lobbyists to push for laws that improved their bottom lines while often leaving borrowers in the lurch…
They have fended off attempts at federal regulation that would have prevented many borrowers from getting into financial trouble.
The Fiction Spot
The Rock Eaters
Brenda Peynado
“I thought about how they had spent not just their lives, but our lives, too, gobbled up or snorted up or injected into their faces all that good fortune of the eighties and the dot-com boom, them laying their heads back into the shampoo bowl and me wasting all my understanding about the world–fluid dynamics, the great monologues of literature, the construction of engines, the physics of flight–on rubbing their skin over their bones.
The Product Spot
NAACP student debt stories
The NAACP–a legendary civil rights organization that advocates for black Americans–has compiled stories from students from around the country, focused on the incredible burden of the student debt system and its impact on their lives.