The Occupier Effect

A faction of the “Occupy Wall Street” campaign has set its sights on the education finance sector. Its strategy: urging people to default on their student loans.

The Occupy Student Debt Campaign, as the initiative is called, was formed as “a response to the student debt crisis and the dependency of U.S. higher education on debt-financing from the people it is supposed to serve,” according to its web site.

Participants ― which include students, alumni, and teachers ― contend that “there is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders,” according to the site. “Education is a right and a public good, and it should be properly funded as such.”

From the group’s principles:

“Student loans are not consumer loans, and they should not be packaged as if they were consumer credit debt. At a time when a university degree is considered to be a prerequisite for employment in the knowledge economy, debt, for most students, is a precondition for entry into the workforce. They cannot work unless they have gone into debt–a condition akin to indenture. This arrangement does not correspond in any meaningful way to a consumer choice. Zero-interest student loans are the only justifiable kind of lending under these circumstances. The current scenario, in which government agencies, banks, and other private lenders set extortionate rates and extract lavish profits is corrupt and abhorrent.”

Just wondering how long before auto loans become the next “Occupy” target…