Navient accused of predatory lending

[hightower]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/business/dealbook/states-say-navient-preyed-on-students.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clic kSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I didn't read the whole article because I couldn't get past the terrible example they used in the first couple of paragraphs.  This girl took out $150k in student loans to go to photography school.  Now they are saying that Navient is to blame for letting her borrow that much for a low paying career?

I'm sorry, but did this girl not look up the occupational outlook profile for professional photographers before signing up for this school?  $150k schooling for a median salary of $31k??  And a slower than average job outlook (3%), meaning there's a strong possibility you won't even find work.

I'm not saying that the whole student loan system doesn't need to change, but at some point its clearly not the job of a lender to do the homework that the individual should have done on their own.  If anything, someone should blame the school that charges that kind of tuition for a photography degree.

I don't know, I guess if Sallie Mae/Navient actually was aware of what a bad deal these loans were for the students and lended anyway, there should be some sort of protection there to prevent such ridiculous loans from being given in the first place.  But, this girl was clearly very ignorant to borrow this much.

[hightower]

I went ahead and read through the whole article.  Each case they site there's a clear problem with BOTH the lender and the borrower.  The borrowers are being irresponsible fools and the lenders are being typical greedy capitalists.  I guess this is the American way.

[Zaphod]

hightower wrote:

I went ahead and read through the whole article.  Each case they site there’s a clear problem with BOTH the lender and the borrower.  The borrowers are being irresponsible fools and the lenders are being typical greedy capitalists.  I guess this is the American way.

Click to expand...

It really was quite predatory if you 100, okay, 92% expect to get defaulted on, aka, you would normally never make such a loan, however, you do it to get your foot into the government rent seeking money. That is criminal.