[shermantanktop]

We don't have the option to "refuse participation," so that's not really the point. We can feel better or worse about it, and you feel good about it, and that's great. I feel good for the individual students who benefit but do not feel good about the institutional corruption that this system represents.

If we were to finally reform the student loan process without any protections for the students themselves, it'd be a painful correction for everyone. But the current system has massive pain in the form of students taking on massive debt to go to places like the University of Phoenix, and they often don't even end up with a degree. Some of them do, of course, so maybe under the current system we end up better off as a whole. It's hard for me to know one way or the other.

But it is painfully obvious who the winners and losers are. The winners are the universities, debt collectors and loan servicing companies. The losers are some percentage of low-income students who get screwed and saddled with debt, the well-meaning taxpayers who fund the loan scheme, and the middle-class parents who pay ever-rising tuition that is fueled by loan money that they don't even qualify for.