Seven U.S. marshals armed with automatic weapons turned up at Paul Aker’s home in Houston, Texas, last week to arrest him over a $1,500 student loan debt dating back to 1987.
“It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker said. “I was wondering, why are you here? I am home, I haven’t done anything ... Why are the marshals knocking on my door? It’s amazing.”
Aker said he was arrested, shackled and taken to federal court. “I was told: ‘You owe $1,500.’ I just couldn’t believe it,” he told Fox 26. “I was taken before a judge surrounded by seven marshals.”
Texas representative Gene Green, a Democrat, said it was unacceptable that U.S. marshals are being used to collect decades old student loans. “There’s bound to be a better way to collect on a student loan debt that is so old,” he told the station.
Aker is unlikely to be the only person to be surprised by marshals collecting on student loans. A source at the marshal’s office told Fox 26 that it is planning to serve warrants on 1,200 to 1,500 people over student loan debts.
Student debts are at a record high, with 2015 graduates saddled with an average debt of $35,000, according to analysis of government data by Edvisors, a student finance advice site. That level of debt is more than twice the amount U.S. graduates had just two decades earlier, even adjusted for inflation. About 40 million Americans have outstanding student loans.
The reports come as students and graduates were preparing to march on the Capitol demanding action over escalating student debt. Students from Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that went bankrupt last year, was joined on Wednesday by students from other for-profit colleges including the Art Institutes, ITT Tech, and the University of Phoenix in a “fight back against educational debt” protest.
Last year, 15 former Corinthian students launched the nation’s first student debt strike, refusing to pay back loans incurred to attend for-profit Corinthian Colleges.
Arne Duncan, the former secretary of education, had said he would work to write off the students’ Corinthian loans and vowed to fight back against unethical businesses moving in higher education.
“You’d have to be made of stone not to feel for these students,” Duncan said last summer. “Some of these schools have brought the ethics of payday lending into higher education. This is our first major action on this but obviously it won’t be the last.”
The Corinthian students have accused the Department of Education of not working fast enough to fulfill Duncan’s pledge. “Eight months later, that promise remains unfulfilled,” the students said. “Instead of doing what is legally and morally right the Department of Education has engaged in bureaucratic delaying tactics to deny former students justice.”
Federal student loans often make up the vast majority of for-profit colleges’ revenue. They have been criticized for spending more of that money on marketing and recruitment than they do on education.
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MEANWHILE, Keith Reid-Cleveland reports for Black Youth Project that student loan debt is becoming a life sentence in the U.S.:
With college graduates coming out of school with large amounts of student debt looming over them, many have elected to go with an income-based repayment plan to avoid default. Some will find that, even after their loans are potentially forgiven after a couple decades they may still owe a large sum due to a tax bill.
Upon graduation, many students can’t afford their recommended monthly loan payments. So, to avoid default, they elect to participate in a program that only charges them a certain percentage of their annual income. But for those with higher debt and even higher interest rates, their overall debt could more than double over time.
Some may think that all is forgiven once their debt is forgiven, but NBC News reports that may not be the case while speaking to Michael Hulshof.
Hulshof is now an attorney that left the University of La Verne in 2012 with a law degree and $145,000 in student loan debt. That figure has already grown to $220,000 due to interest rates and could get as high at $400,000 by the time he’s 55 years old.
Fortunately, Hulshof is in a repayment plan that will forgive his debt after 25 years. Unfortunately, that total debt that is forgiven is currently set up to be considered income and can be taxed by the government, meaning Hulshof will have to potentially pay $175,000 in taxes when that day comes.
“Me and my wife talk about it all the time, how we’ll deal with it at that point,” Hulshof said. “It’s incredibly depressing to think about, that bankruptcy may be your only option … to start over at 55 when you worked so hard to get an education to better yourself and society.”
NBC News reports that, as of Sept. 30, more than 4.2 million federal direct student loan borrowers were enrolled in one of the five available income-based payment plans. This is a 50 percent increase from 2014 and a 160 percent jump from 2013.
Politicians, borrowers and more are campaigning to lower interest rates or striking the loans from federal taxes so that borrowers won’t have to pay a massive bill in the distant future that may even be more than their initial loan’s total.
“Programs such as the income-based repayment program have helped in a small way to ensuring that students can continue to pursue their dreams and get on with their lives while they responsibly pay off their student debt,” Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said in a statement to NBC News. “However, slamming students and families with a massive tax bill after they have played by the rules is just wrong.”
While many people are coming together to work on a situation that appears to be painting borrowers into a corner, a slim silver lining can be found in the fact that the amount someone could pay in taxes will likely still be smaller than the total amount their loan accumulated due to interest rates.
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