{"id":39500,"date":"2013-06-06T08:27:25","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T07:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/last-week-in-poverty-taking-on-sallie-mae-and-the-cost-of-education\/39500\/"},"modified":"2013-06-06T08:27:25","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T07:27:25","slug":"last-week-in-poverty-taking-on-sallie-mae-and-the-cost-of-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/last-week-in-poverty-taking-on-sallie-mae-and-the-cost-of-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Week in Poverty: Taking On Sallie Mae and the Cost of Education"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com\/zimmytws<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

June 3, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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The following article first appeared on the Nation.com<\/a>. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly 200 students, parents, community members and union leaders rallied at Sallie Mae\u2019s annual shareholder meeting in Newark, Delaware, yesterday. On the agenda: first, demand that the nation\u2019s largest private student loan lender meet directly with students to discuss their crushing debt burden; and second, introduce a shareholder resolution calling for disclosure of the corporation\u2019s lobbying practices and membership in groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council<\/a>\u00a0(ALEC).<\/p>\n

Outside of Sallie Mae\u2019s corporate headquarters, the activists were met by \u201cdozens of police, blockades and K-9 units,\u201d according to participants. Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice\u2014American Rights at Work, urged the crowd to confront Sallie Mae executives and board members \u201cabout their role in America\u2019s student debt crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n

More than 38 million<\/a>\u00a0people now owe over $1.1 trillion in student debt; Sallie Mae owns approximately 15 percent of that debt, or $162.5 billion. Students owe an average of $27,000 when they graduate from college and many have a debt load several times greater than that amount. Nearly one in ten will default on their loans within two years. <\/p>\n

Gupta noted that Sallie Mae \u201cspent $16 million on federal lobbying from 2008 to 2012 and has more than sixty state lobbyists.\u201d The corporation has lobbied at the federal level \u201cto block student loan reform,\u201d and at the state level \u201cfor reduced public investment in higher education, forcing more students to rely on private student loans.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in the business of condemning students to a lifetime of debt, not making education a reality,\u201d said Sara Fitouri, a law student at the University of Denver, who owes $145,000 in student debt. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey show that when we privatize something that used to be in the public realm it can lead to horrible results,\u201d said Sam Nelson, a junior at George Washington University who expects to graduate with approximately $50,000 in student loan debt. <\/p>\n

Sallie Mae was indeed created as a government-sponsored enterprise in 1972, and transitioned to a fully privatized bank lender between 1997 and 2004. Organizers say that as the largest lender it now sets the trends and standards for the industry. <\/p>\n

Gupta spoke out against profit margins that continue to increase for Sallie Mae as \u201cstudent debt and student loan defaults escalate at an unsustainable pace.\u201d She noted that the senior management team of five executives made more than $20 million combined in 2011; the former CEO\u2013who just announced his retirement\u2013was paid $35 million from 2007 to 2011. <\/p>\n

Twenty of the activists entered Sallie Mae headquarters as legal proxies for shareholders with a right to vote. The groups they represented included: the United States Student Association, the Student Labor Action Project, Common Cause, the Responsible Endowment Coalition, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Jobs with Justice\u2014American Rights at Work. Sallie Mae personnel attempted to restrict these individuals to a holding area but the activists successfully negotiated their way into the meeting. <\/p>\n

Prior to introducing the shareholders resolution<\/a>, Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, whose members\u2019 pension plans have more than $1 trillion in assets and are long-term shareholders of Sallie Mae, said, \u201cAs Sallie Mae profits from billions of dollars of student loans, it has an obligation to students, educators and shareholders to be transparent about its lobbying efforts, including on student loan reform.\u201d <\/p>\n

The resolution asked that the board disclose in an annual report the corporation\u2019s policies, procedures and payments for direct and indirect lobbying; as well as its membership and payments to any tax-exempt organization \u201cthat writes and endorses model legislation.\u201d (See: ALEC.) Although there has yet to be a tally of the vote, organizers hope that they received the support of approximately 30 percent of the shareholders. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com\/zimmytws June 3, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following article first appeared on the Nation.com. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their email newsletters here.\u00a0 Nearly 200 students, parents, community members and union leaders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}