Social Security Docked For Student Loans

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2012/08/social-security-docked-for-student-loans

SmartMoney has an article on how the government is docking Social Security checks to recover unpaid student loan debt:

From January through August 6, the government reduced the size of roughly 115,000 retirees' Social Security checks on those grounds. That's nearly double the pace of the department's enforcement in 2011; it's up from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000....

Many of these retirees aren't even in hock for their own educations. Consumer advocates say that in the majority of the cases they've seen, the borrowers went into debt later in life to help defray education costs for their children or other dependents.

Where does most of this money go? To pay salaries of professors and of other college and university support staff, like Elizabeth Warren and her spouse Bruce Mann, both Harvard Law professors, who reported wage, salary and tip income totaling $688,974 in 2008.

If it were a bank or credit card company docking retirees' Social Security checks to recover on loans for relatives of the retirees, Professor Warren would probably be calling on the consumer financial protection bureau to stop it while complaining about the highly compensated bank executives.

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator N. for sending the tip.

by Editor  |  Aug 8, 2012 at 12:33 pm Related Topics:  Compensation, Education receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list