"The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem"

Could America's current student loan debt --- which now exceeds $1 trillion and is predicted to reach $2 trillion by 2020 --- somehow become the sequel to the mortgage meltdown? Some economists think it's possible. Our guest on this edition of ST is Eric Best, an Assistant Professor of Emergency Management at Jacksonville State University. Along with his father, sociologist Joel Best of the University of Delaware, Eric is the co-author of "The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem" (University of California Press). As Eric asserts on our program, we as a nation are now facing a dire economic crisis when it comes to student loans --- a crisis that's been fueled over the past few generations by concerns about deadbeat students, crushing debt, exploitative for-profit colleges, and changing attitudes about the purpose and/or value of a college education.