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Eye on the News – The End of America: The Student Loan Scam and the Return of Debtor’s Prison

Witness the lives shattered as collateral damage of today’s Jewish economy.

A college grad flees U.S. to avoid student loan debt: ‘I had to escape this prison’

by Sam Rulan

Eventually, Chad Albright just couldn’t take it anymore. The rejection, the depression, the mounting bills, it became too much to deal with all on his own.

“I had to escape this debtors’ prison,” he said. It felt like there was no other choice. “That’s what America became to me, a prison. So I left.”

Albright bought a one-way ticket to China and boarded an airplane, uncertain if he would ever return to the country he once considered home.

It was 2011, and Albright was 30 years old, starting over in a country more than 7,000 miles away from his life in Pennsylvania — away from his family, his friends, and far away from the $30,000 he owed in student loans.

Borrowing money for college seemed like a sound financial decision at the time. Albright thought his degree would reliably lead the way to a well-paying career.

With tuition comes high debt. And when delivering pizzas was the only job he could find two years post-graduation — with the country’s outstanding student debt rising above $1 trillion, and one million people defaulting on student loans every year — it didn’t seem like it was worth it after all.

“I was expected to make a $400 loan payment every month, but I had no money, no sustainable income,” Albright said during a Skype interview. “College ruined my life.”

Chad Albright graduated Millersville University in December 2007.

In high school, he read books about the American dream, classics like “The Great Gatsby” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” If he worked hard, it would pay off — that’s what he was always told.

But, Albright said, he now knows those were just stories.

“There was no future for me in the United States,” Albright said. “And the American dream? Yeah, it doesn’t exist.” …

How did he get here?

Growing up, it was drilled into Albright’s head that college would lead to success.

His father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a beautician. They never attended college but believed if their son went he would have ample opportunities at his fingertips.

Albright started delivering pizzas right after high school to save money for his college tuition and continued to work full time even after starting classes. He was 25 years old when he finally thought he earned enough money to enroll at Millersville University. …

Albright graduated in December 2007 — right at the start of the economic crisis that would later become known as the Great Recession, the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Millions of people lost their life savings, their jobs and their homes. Not exactly an ideal time to be entering the job market, Albright said.

Interview after interview, Albright heard the same thing: “Sorry, there’s someone who’s been doing this for 10 years and just lost their job. I have to go with someone who has 10 years’ experience.”

“But the last thing they would say to me,” Albright recalls, “‘Don’t worry, your day will come.’”

Back to the pizza shop and back to living with his parents in Lancaster, Albright fell into a deep depression. He was behind on his student loans and still couldn’t find a job. Plus, he was worried that once he did find a job, the government would garnish his wages.

“Two years of nonstop interviews and nothing,” Albright said. “I was so done.”

* * *

Source: USA Today / York Daily Record

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missy
missy
13 June, 2019 1:44 pm

We now have income contingent repayment for student loans. All he has to do is go online to the federal student loan web site and enter his income amount each year. He will owe no monthly payments if his income is poverty level and after 20 years the entire loan is forgiven. If his income ever improves, he would then be required to make a sliding scale payment.

Geli
Geli
Reply to  missy
17 June, 2019 12:31 am

Agreed, Albright is an idiot along with the other idiots who don’t investigate the type of education they will be getting. He could have applied for income driven repayment or deferred his loans. Unless, he didn’t go through a federal loan, many are refused and have to get a loan directly through a private organization, either way, he had options.

Guest
Guest
16 June, 2019 4:22 am

What did Obama do during those years?

Edmond Dantez
Edmond Dantez
16 June, 2019 7:51 am

No mention of what degree earned?
Turns out “interpretive dance” wasn’t a great choice, huh? lol
Also, college is now a total scam of indoctrination and propaganda. Don’t come back to the taxpayers crying about how you got scammed and demanding us to pay for it. Only through negative experience will people ever learn.
We’ve already got a huge problem with entitled parasites demanding fixes to problems of their own making. Suck it up and deal…..or don’t. Stoicism, losers. Get some.

Eric
Eric
Reply to  Edmond Dantez
17 June, 2019 4:45 pm

I read he got a degree in Public Relations. Now, that can be a viable degree (I know people who are doing quite well having gotten degrees in marketing and whatnot), but I think this guy may be a bit of a loser to begin with. So when things didn’t work out and he had debt he couldn’t repay, he ran like a little girl.