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Bankers in the Ivory Tower
Nine public service employees are suing Navient, the student debt service provider, for providing misleading and inaccurate information. They allege that Navient engaged in predatory lending, more interested in turning a profit than finding them the best repayment plan.
My guest today is Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. ATF has been helping their members navigate the student loan industry. What they found is shocking.
For Randi, there is a legal and electoral path to find justice for student loan borrowers.
Citation: Weingarten, Randi, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 133, podcast audio, November 5, 2018. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/weingarten/
Transcript, translation, and resources: Read more
Hyland et al v. Navient: The fight over student debt
For over two years, this podcast has aimed to disseminate academic ideas through the medium of audio. This year FreshEd will continue to air interviews with scholars from around the world, but we are also going to experiment. Over the holidays, I got to thinking about new ways I could use audio.
Listeners are now familiar with me in the role of interviewer where the focus is on other people’s ideas. I thought maybe you would also interested in hearing about some of my ideas and how they have been influenced by some of the interviews I’ve conducted.
But it’s not as if I’m going to interview myself.
Instead, today’s show captures what it sounds like inside my head as I piece together different ideas and attempt to form a coherent academic argument. It’s like an academic article for your ears.
But not exactly.
Through the soundscape, I’ve tried to convey how seemingly random ideas come together, the moments of synchronicity, and the thesis that comes out of the mix.
This episode is the first installment of The Idea, and is about the indebted student in American higher education.