In four weeks, Congress will decide whether to double the interest rate on subsidized federal student loans to 6.8% or give millions of students a break for yet another year.
President Obama took the mic today in front of dozens of college graduates at the White House to implore lawmakers to cut borrowers some slack.
But for millions of student borrowers, help can't come soon enough.
Last Fall, Robert Applebaum, co-founder of studentdebtcrisis.org, invited students to share their student debt stories in candid Youtube videos submitted online. We thought now was as good a time as any to shed some light on the roughest of the bunch.
"We want the world and our leaders in Washington to see these are not just numbers on a piece of paper," Applebaum told us. "These are real people struggling day to day with student debt."
Charice is only a year out of college but she's $30,000 in debt and has no job prospects. "I'm sitting here living with my boyfriend and his family," she says. "It's pathetic. It really is."
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"I wish I hadn't gone to school," says Mark, who graduated in 2005 with degrees in psychology and music and $875 monthly payments on $80,000 worth of student loans. "I had to claim bankruptcy ... which of course did nothing to the student loans." (Student loan debt is nearly impossible to discharge through bankruptcy.)
Sue has spent 20 years trying to pay back $29,000 in student loans that have more than doubled to $70,000. "It just started jumping in $5,000 increments every year or two," she says. "I put myself in this coffin, or straight jacket, of a situation unknowingly."
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