The country’s student loan system is convoluted, confusing and sometimes criminal. We meet desperate debtors who face a daily struggle and investigate who is responsible for the mess.
As a nation, we now have 44 million people shouldering a total of $1.4 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, a figure that’s growing by more than $100 billion a year. What’s more, the impact of this staggering amount is not distributed evenly. It falls disproportionately on those most vulnerable in our country, cutting into decades of advancement for first-generation college-bound students and low income Americans limiting their ability to buy homes, get married, have kids and contribute to the national economy.
Those without a college degree are increasingly falling out of the middle class and being left behind. But students attempting to prepare for these economic realities are finding themselves taking on a greater burden of covering the cost of higher education and assuming enormous financial risks compared to previous generations. And what’s more, now the government is poised to radically reduce oversight of the companies running an industry that controls not only how student loans are handled, but essentially access to the American Dream.In this Naked Truth hour-long investigation, Fusion examines student debt through the lives of several borrowers struggling to make their payments.
We look at who benefits from the rise in student debt and examine improvements that government officials and the private sector can and should make to a system in desperate need of reform a labyrinth of federal agencies, college financial aid offices and debt servicers operating in a climate rife with confusion, missteps and abuse. On the heels of the mortgage crisis, regulators and other experts are beginning to ask what is really at stake for a country that increasingly finances its higher education system through personal debt. Fusion’s The Naked Truth reveals what can be done to ensure that education remains a way up the ladder for Americans, not just another mechanism to cement people in place.
– Source: IMDB
