Have you received e-mails or telemarketing calls that offer a one time chance to avail great student loans which you can never find elsewhere? The offer may be tempting but beware because the student loan industry has become a predatory one. Students who take loans find themselves burdened with debts amounting to thousands of dollars by the time they graduate. Not only this, if you default on loans, be ready to sacrifice the life and career you have managed to build up since college. Many people have their professional licenses revoked on account of defaulted loans.

Government sponsored federal loans have a fixed interest rate of about 6% to 6.8%. Private loans on the other hand work more like credit card debt. They have interest rates of 15% or more.  The problem here is that much of the federal loans are provided by profit oriented private lenders. So, students take loans from lenders like Sallie Mae thinking that it is government funded only to find out later that they actually hold a private loan. The difference is enormous and upsets whatever plans they may have had to repay the loan. Those students who have fallen into the trap of high cost private loans find themselves using more than 40% of their income to pay off these loans.

Unfortunately, with interest adding up by the minute, most people find repayment difficult. As a matter of fact, there are about five million federal student loans currently in default, amounting to over $38 billion in bad debt. The sad part is that students who have defaulted on loans find themselves at the mercy of lenders. This scenario prompted Alan Collinge to set up a grass roots organization called StudentLoanJustice.org.

StudentLoanJustice.org has a political action committee that aims to campaign for legislations which provide consumer protections, including full bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and refinancing rights to all student loans. It also aims for legislations that will permit defaulters 5 years or more to repay the principal amount along with a reasonable amount of interest. Another goal of this organization is to provide long term repayment caps that will limit the amount that can be collected from borrowers over a period of 10, 15, 20 or 25 years. In this way, borrowers would be allowed some relief from the burden of debt. As mentioned earlier, defaulting on loans can result in cancellation of professional licenses. StudentLoanJustice.org aims to end this practice altogether.

StudentLoanJustice.org now has around 4000 members and still counting. This organization and the cause it supports have been credited as the inspiration for Hillary Clintons Student Borrower Bill of Rights. You can visit the StudentLoanJustice website to get an idea of how you can help in furthering this cause. For instance, you can learn more about the finer details of student loans or talk to reporters you know who would be willing to take up the issue or simply talk to others who are in the same situation as you are.