There's a link to this pdf in the above entry, but I can't resist reproducing this look through the looking glass at Sallie Mae's concerns as revealed in an internal strategy document:
WHERE WE ARE
Challenges
*Democratic control of Congress
*Political momentum on college affordability (the horrors!)
*Harshest critics of private sector lenders in key leadership positions
*Continued budget pressures
*String of anti-FFELP media (yeah, baby!)
Strengths
*Vast school customer base
*Substantial employee base
*FFELP market momentum
*Some industry allies that can help
*Strong Republican base and growing Democratic base for FFELP
*Republican White House (at least until January 20, 2009)
There you have it folks: marching orders. Educate Republican and Democratic lawmakers that FFELP is not the free market and it is not our friend.
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This "FFELP is not a free market" argument is a straw man supreme.
No one has ever seriously contended that the federal guaranteed student loan program is the free market.
Moreover, no one can honestly argue that it does not have elements of the free market. Maybe not as much as you like, perhaps.
But is that really what you want?
Do you want a pure free market in student loans? Well, you have one close to it in the private school loan market, the one you complain about bitterly, where loan underwriting is done, cosigners are required, interest rates are higher and fees charged.
Which gets me to my point: what does Anya Kamenetz want?
One loan program for every student in the United States, run by the federal government, whose level of service and terms would be ENTIRELY at the mercy of many of the politicians in Congress you despise?
Is that what you want?
A program whose only constituents in future budget wars would be low-income and middle-income families and colleges, making it vulnerable to the kinds of budget cuts and underfunding that the Pell Grant program has experienced [Clinton cut Pell Grants once, remember.]
A program that, according to the budget rules you defend, generates significant profits for the government, profits many Democrats and Republicans will be eager to tap to pay for this program or that.
Tell us what you want.
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