Student Debt: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

this week hundreds of thousands of students started classes at colleges and universities and one thing is increasingly clear by the time they graduate most students are going to be leaving with a lot more than just a tacky polyester robe and a copy of other places you'll go that their teeth tearful aren't got them they'll be leaving with this seven of ten graduating students left college last year in debt the total bill due for students in America tops one trillion dollars that's right student debt in the u.s. is now bigger than debt from credit cards and auto loans and is second only to mortgages essentially student debt is like HPV if you go to college you're almost certainly going to get it and if you do it will follow you for the rest of your life because legally student debt is a special kind of debt it is the most collectible kind of debt there is it is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy they will garnish your wages they will intercept your your tax refunds they will sue you in court they won't stop there they'll steal your wallets they'll pawn your baby shoes they will shrink themselves down to two inches high hide in your pocket and take that money back one dime at a time student debt has tripled in the past decade it has surpassed Bob Marley's greatest hits album as the thing seemingly every college students has how did this happen well more than 90 percent of student debt is subsidized by the federal government and it all started with such good intentions here is one of the federal student loan programs early champions poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer and escape from poverty ah escape from poverty by the way the single worst Kurt Russell movie ever made but a higher education system open to all was one of LBJ's top priorities along with creating of course a Libyan pool party in Vietnam and and finding a pair of pants that could contain his gigantic testicles now that last one might sound like a joke but listen to this actual phone conversation that he had in the Oval Office with a representative from the Haggar clothing company the Crites down were you nuts Hank is always a little too tight so when you make them up give me a eat that I can read out there because they cut me this is like right now why offense good cgk believe me about the needs from the for the zipper ends round under my back my bunghole look we all thought they'd be in LBJ stood for Bates but it actually stands for balls balls my big bulbous balls are too close to my bunghole isn't history fun but like LBJ's testicles the federal student loan program has now swollen too uncomfortable proportions one reason for this might be that in recent years states have slashed funding for higher education by 23% public institutions have responded by raising tuition rates forcing students to take out ever larger loans why else do you think the colleges have so many a cappella groups they know they sound stupid they just can't afford instruments anymore another consequence of these cuts has been that some community colleges have been forced to reduce capacity leading to things like a nursing program in North Carolina with a waiting list just to get on the waiting list because that is what you need in the land of tobacco and barbecue a shortage of nurses but all this shows that people in this country that they want to go to school to better their lives and it is good that they have broad access to federal funds to help them do that the problem is this is where we meet one of the biggest drivers of student debt for-profit schools like University of Phoenix and ITT Tech most of them are publicly traded on Wall Street and they run commercials like this one evening I was watching TV and then the night ET Tech commercial came on and I decided to give them a call I think my education is paid off tremendously I got into the field of aerospace it's been over 12 years now there's nothing I would change about my life we've been married almost 10 years now we have two beautiful boys everything is perfect that's nice although I will say there's something about the phrase everything is perfect that I find inherently suspicious because the only other person who says that is Janice in accounting and she secretly puts Jim Beam in her coffee cup and repeats keep you together you can do this Janis into the bathroom mirror five times a day for-profit schools account for nearly 1/3 of all student loans despite having just 13% of our country students that is way out of proportion and part of why for-profit schools account for so much student debt is that they are not cheap I was surprised to learn how expensive tuition at the for-profits is five to six times the cost of a community college and as much as twice a four-year state university Wow five to six times the cost of a community college plus you don't even get to hang out with a study group full of lovable scamp's for let's say for let's say six seasons in a movie but if you are wondering why they charge so much it is nothing to do with the quality of education if you take a look at for-profit colleges the analysts will tell you that anywhere between twenty and twenty-five percent of the total revenue of the company is in sales and marketing about a quarter in most cases the faculty are in the 10 to 20 percent range they spend half the amount on teachers that they do on marketing think about that is amazing you say hey teachers we're not saying you don't matter we just say ads about you matter twice as much well one for you two for a spot during Wayne Brady that's about fair the thing is from a purely business perspective that disparity makes some kind of sense when I go and buy perfume for my mom the chemicals in the bottle and the bottle itself amount to about 50 Cent's the advertising amounts to five or six bucks okay for start stop buying perfume for your mom you creep I like the way you smell mum you smell good and secondly perfume is not educational although I will say both do market themselves aggressively with perfume its spraying it into people's eyes when they walk into a department store and for for-profit schools it's actually even worse Zahra Crowley was a recruiter at the for-profit Westwood College in 2007 Crowley says she quit because she couldn't continue preying on low-income youth and using something called pain points pain point would be something they work at McDonald's they don't want to be like their parents we'd turn it on him and say I thought you wanted to do something with your life do you want to work at McDonald's for the rest of your life yeah they are told to hit people's pain points the only professionals who should be doing that are dominatrixes or emo bands that's it and this pain point approach seems to be an industry-wide technique this is an actual slide some ITT Tech recruiters were shown during training that photo is from Marathon Man where Laurence Olivier famously played a Nazi torturer and it's maybe not saying much for your business model if your essential logic is hey guys this works really well for the Nazis let's at least give it a go but if you do sign up for one of these schools what kind of education are you going to get well remember the ITT Tech graduate from earlier and his absolutely perfect life well well actually says on the screen that he graduated with an associate's degree in engineering from itt's Sylmar campus and we checked their public filings and out of 115 students who enrolled in that program in the class of 2012 three-quarters didn't graduate and only 13 found work in that field meaning everyone else would have genuinely been better off studying engineering at Hogwarts and at least that way they'd have a owl to show for it and even for those who do graduate job hunting might be a little difficult as students from a Corinthian College Nursing program found I've been on countless interviews and they all asked if I've ever been in a hospital and I would have to tell them we never set foot in a hospital ever we went to a Museum of Scientology for our psychiatric rotation what Scientologists do not believe in psychiatry their museum is literally called psychiatry and Industry of death going to the Museum of Scientology for your psychiatric rotation is certifiably insane or evidence of a buildup of thetans in your system it's there's no that you teach the controversy now now full disclosure we asked Corinthian about this and they requested that we point out a few things such as the fact that those women later sued the school a financial settlement was reached and that those women later went on to become registered nurses and and also that us not mentioning of those facts to you would constitute reckless disregard for the truth I mean not the kind of reckless disregard for the truth that would lead you to send medical students to a scientology museum you know pretty reckless pretty reckless well also they also they also wanted us to take clear and extensive note of subsequent events and interest of doing that you should know that this summer after a government investigation of their job placement numbers Corinthian Colleges have agreed to sell or close every school they operate in the u.s. I presume that that's what they wanted us to tell you so job done now to be fair to be fair here we're good with it yeah now to be fair here the federal government does try to regulate these schools they are only allowed a me and ninety percent of their funding to come from federal loans however for-profit schools have found themselves a truly horrifying loophole the 90/10 rule says that the schools can only have 90 percent of their money coming from loans but the other 10 percent could come from veteran loans they exempted the veterans benefits so these schools have gone after the veterans benefits as a way to leverage their ability to sign up more students yeah they're going after veterans and the only time going after veterans is okay is when you let them walk through the door in front of you not when you try to take their money now for-profit schools took in 1.7 billion dollars in GI Bill money in the last reported school year alone and this is the length to which Ashford University was willing to go to get that sweet sweet budget assisting veteran dollar I went to a Marine base in North Carolina and I found that one of the for-profit colleges was sending a recruiter to the wounded warriors barracks where she was signing up brain injured Marines who even had difficulty remembering what courses they were taking holy I will say this for for-profit schools they've just given us all a first-class education in the depths of human depravity we all have a diploma in that now and here is where I actually have some good news and some bad news for you the good news is a few years back the Obama administration proposed tighter gainful employment standards the bad news is everything that happened after that the for-profit industry spent 10 million dollars in lobbying that year and also and this thankfully is a fun bit their trade group inundated the government with thousands of letters from ordinary students and educators asking them not to tighten the regulations and let me read one to you it reads I am a career college student at institution studying program institution is providing me with the education and training necessary to obtain the job I've always wanted as a career many many people didn't even bother filling in the blanks couldn't they at least have done it a bit like Mad Libs you could have gone to but cheese University seeking a degree in Wiener studies go the extra mile and the worst thing is the campaign worked the gainful employment rules were weakened and eventually struck down completely the latest version of the rules are expected by November and the for-profit school trade group app skew is still lobbying hard against them and if you'd like to let app skew know how you feel about their industry's behavior we've actually prepared a form letter for you which reads to whom it may concern I am named here a human being with described at least some level of sense then we sick of your synonym for well under the benefits whatever the benefits whatever the benefits are for-profit schools your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors and additional insults IDs for places to cram this letter once rattled up proposals for human waste products to be eaten thank you for your time name here again feel free feel free to go online copy this letter please do not bother to fill it in at all and send it to apps queue at this address and that might make you feel a little bit better but it will only be temporary because the student debt problem is far bigger than just for-profit schools if they all went away student debt problem would still be here because our leaders have decided that while education is incredibly important it is not important enough to actually pay for so with that in mind let me speak right now to all current freshmen in college who have student loans okay you need to stop watching this show right now you don't have time for this get out there and enjoy the out of your college experience because you may be paying for it for the rest of your life I am serious drink beer from a funnel at kidnapper mascot find out if you're gay or not and even if you are not have some gay experiences do it now it doesn't count I've become that weird guy on campus who rides a unicycle from class to class find out however the Winklevoss twins of your school are and steal their idea for a website and shoot fireworks out of every bodily orifice you can find do it now please make sure your college years are the best ones of your life because thanks to the debt that we are saddling you with they almost certainly will be get up there and do it Oh

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 12,921,526

Rating: 4.9020867 out of 5

Keywords: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program), John Oliver (TV Writer), HBO (TV Network), last week tonight, john oliver, hbo, student debt, student loans, for profit colleges, itt tech

Id: P8pjd1QEA0c

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 07 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/drchexmix]

" We never set foot in a hospital. We went to a Scientology museum for our psychiatric rotation."

-Nursing Student at Corinthian Colleges Inc

holy shit.

[u/WizardPoop]

I feel like they focused way too much on for-profit schools and not nearly enough on the explosive increase in tuition over the past decade.

[u/edgarmcmunchkin]

UK Mirror - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x25g5h1_last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver-student-debt-hbo_fun

[u/klosec12]

The Community shoutout made me very excited. A fantastic piece as always and i really cannot wait to see what he goes after next.

[u/Link_GR]

That veteran, brain damaged crap is some next level, super villain type evil shit...

[u/kytosol]

As an Australian who's current education minister is attempting to model our education system on the US one, this was all rather depressing.

[u/imiweli]

Over 50k in debt and still no guarantee of employment :(

[u/ThePopeofHell]

I was hoping that he'd get into private student loans which are even more troubling that federal student loans

[u/theforman_]

I was one of those poor kids (still poor) who got preyed on 3 years ago by the Art Institute of Wisconsin, which is a complete farce and offered very little in the first semester of it's institution. They were attempting to make me take out a 100k loan each semester, i wouldn't pay 100k for the building the school was located in. Best decision of my life was going up to the councillor, when i dropped out, who recruited me and harassed me, (i still have the emails) and telling her to eat a fat dick and something to the degree of your life and job is a mockery to humanity. Btw just enrolled in a community college this fall where i pay 450$ a class for basically the same kind of education offered at the Art institute of Wisconsin.