THE STUDENT LOAN SYSTEM

The student loan crisis didn't happen by accident. It was engineered-piece by piece-through federal incentives, institutional expansion, financial markets, and a regulatory system that protected everyone except the borrower.
The Student Loan System: How Federal Policy Created a Trillion-Dollar Burden and Empowered Predatory Institutions is a groundbreaking exposé that reveals how America built the largest consumer debt program in its history-and why it still can't escape it.
Drawing on federal law, congressional history, GAO audits, OIG investigations, and decades of financial and regulatory decisions, this book uncovers the machinery behind the crisis:
how colleges raised tuition knowing federal loans would cover it;
how servicers profited from complexity and errors;
how Wall Street securitized student futures;
how accreditation became a gatekeeper cartel;
and how the Department of Education found itself managing a system too large to regulate and too fragile to reform.
You'll discover the incentives that made debt the lifeblood of modern higher education, the revolving-door networks that shaped the rules, and the quiet partnerships that turned students into long-term revenue streams. Each chapter reveals another layer of a system that grew not through conspiracy-but through incentives so powerful that no actor could afford to challenge them.
Clear, investigative, and uncompromising, this book shows why tuition soared, why repayment became a decades-long struggle, and why the system resists change even as it harms millions. It is the definitive guide for readers who suspect the crisis is deeper than high prices and bureaucratic mistakes-and want to understand the structure that created it.
If you've ever wondered how student loans became a trillion-dollar market, or why the crisis keeps growing despite reforms, this book delivers the full story with clarity and force.