When I was 16, my mom told me that she and my dad wouldn't be able to help me go to college. I knew very well there was no money to spare in our home, in the economically depressed rural South in the 1980s. I had a younger brother just getting to high school and two sisters still in elementary school. Both my parents worked, but in today's politically-correct language, we would be considered "working poor." Despite their long hours at a job that was decidedly low-skill, we got public assistance. And college was out of our league anyway; no one on either side of my family held a college degree. But from my earliest memories, my grandmother pushed me to do well in school, study hard, "get my lessons," and go to college. I did everything she told me to do, up to that conversation at the kitchen table with my mom when I was 16.


My parents' solution was that I join the Army because the "new" military promised a college education alongside "seeing the world." My dad made that call. Recruiter came to that same kitchen table, made his pitch with slick brochures. And while my parents watched, I signed the contract to enlist in the Army with a handwritten caveat -- and I remember these words -- "contingent upon" graduation from high school and a successful military health screening. I, who had no interest in military service, spent my 17th birthday at the military processing center in my state capital, being screened from head to toe for fitness to serve. It was one of the longest days of my young life.

If the screeners had started at my toes and worked their way upward, that day would have been much, much shorter and I might have left for home by mid-morning. But they didn't, and at about 5 p.m. the health specialists discovered a condition I suffer whose Latin name I'd never heard: "severe per planus." So, thanks to a terrific case of flat feet, I never served in the Army.

On one hand, the four-hour ride home in the recruiter's van was a relief to me; I never aspired to go to Grenada or Lebanon. On the other hand, it was torture. Without financial aid from my parents, I'd equated access to college with enlistment in the military, and both doors appeared to close at the same time. My parents reiterated that. If I wanted to go to college, I'd have to figure out how to get there myself, and how to pay for it myself.

Back at school, I stopped for a long visit with my guidance counselor, which led to a FAFSA, and to college applications to nearby schools. I chose carefully and didn't submit them all because even a $35 application fee was a challenge for our budget. But I made those choices. Fast-forward five years: With a series of part-time jobs on- and off-campus, a series of college loans and a lifestyle much more conservative than my peers', I'd graduated with a bachelor's degree and several thousand dollars of loan debt. After nine more years, I finished paying off that debt.

Today, I don't think I could have done that, thanks to the reduced investment in federal student aid, the rising costs of tuition and other student expenses, and the control that banks and private lenders exercise over students' and their families' lives.

A little over a year ago, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo testified to Congress about his investigation into that control, and he made a series of recommendations that Newsday magazine said weren't likely to be adopted.

First, the federal budget has consistently slashed education funding. In his last budget, President George W. Bush even called for cuts in subsidies to companies participating in federally guaranteed student loan programs to force diversion of loan business to private programs.

Second, there wasn't a word of caution uttered on Capitol Hill when the nation's largest education lending institution -- Sallie Mae, which manages $150 billion in student loans -- decided to sell itself to Wall Street: to Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and two private equity companies, to be exact.

Not that education lending privatization is something new. Sallie Mae was created in 1972 as a government-sponsored agency. During the Clinton administration in 1997, it began turning private, completing the task under the Bush administration in 2004. It was no coincidence that between 1997 and 2004 the amount of total college funding received from private institutions quadrupled.

On April 11, Sallie Mae came to an agreement with Cuomo: It would limit conflicting relationships (limit, not cease) and pay a $2-million fine. Five days later, the company announced its $25-billion sale, not a bad price for that payoff. Its stock has leaped 30 percent since, and not because it will make loans more affordable to more students.

The deal is the largest indication of how commercial banks and private equity firms will be able to dictate who goes to college.

Read that last line again: "commercial banks and private equity firms will be able to dictate who goes to college." If commercial banks and private equity firms had been given that authority in the mid-1980s, I'd be working in a phosphate mine today. Literally.

Why have they been given this control today? That's easy. Because they have tremendous political power, undergirded by immeasurable financial power.

What's in it for them? Profit.

Banks advertise the advantages of consolidating existing student loans, much as they do for home loans and credit cards. But this line is merely attractive bait used to capture market share now, in return for higher fees and interest rates later.

Similarly, private equity firms won't have affordable education as their top priority. It's just not profitable. Instead, they will determine how to squeeze the most out of students and parents, which is far more lucrative.

And solutions? Newsday's report quotes Alabama Senator Richard Shelby saying "we should encourage the growth of private lending."

In essence, this theory of "college aid" finds a man neck deep in a hole and tosses him a shovel.

Who gets hurt most by this backward thinking? The "working poor," obviously, but Newsday focuses on the impacts to the minority community specifically.

Minorities get hurt. Just 38 percent of black high school graduates and 28 percent of Hispanics enroll in college. One of five students enrolling in college are in the bottom 25 percent in family income, while 7 of 10 are from the top 25 percent. Talk about educational class segregation. A year of private college costs half the average American family's income per child.

Meanwhile, interest rates have been rising. This means student loans, in the noose of private lenders, will find their unregulated, uncapped rates rising, too. This pain would be alleviated if more lending returned to the federal government's hands.

This article was published in mid-2007, when the crowded field of primary candidates had given birth to a few early notions about making college more affordable was still a topic of discussion. Newsday's editor offered this summary:

The solution, beyond establishing a code of conduct between lenders and universities, is to increase federal funding for college and graduate school education, establish national federal guidelines a la Edwards' work-for-tuition programs, regulate existing privatization, cap interest rates and establish debt cancellation programs for important professions in which salaries hamper one's ability to repay loans.

While our presidential candidates are spinning such topics as Iraq and religious faith, they should think about whether they'd be where they are if they weren't able to finance their college educations -- and they should consider making this issue an important election topic.

It's important to me, and I've wondered through my series of the past few weeks if it's important to others, too. It certainly is important to several bloggers whose work I've highlighted in my notes.

Like the writer Grizzle1, who says,

I'm scared. And I know that I'm not the only one who is scared about their current and potential debt. But somehow that really doesn't help. I've been pretty lucky so far, but I'm looking at my $40,000 master's degree with some serious trepidation.

But every time I get started on it, or even think about getting started, it all starts looking so huge and unmanageable. If I don't do something though, I'm going to be dealing with an even more impossible situation of trying to pay it all off with my $28,000 starting teacher's salary.

And "Journey" from Tempe, Arizona, who can't find work and can't afford to go to college, even with his computer skills.

I've been looking for a job for 2 years now and I have a lot of self-taught skills in the computer area but no employer will even look at me.  I've applied everywhere I can think of, followed up and still get nothing.  I would like to go back to college, but I can't afford it because I got no job.  Is there a better way of finding a job with someone in Raleigh, NC?  I'm real desperate for income here.

And the writer at Occult Corpus, who says he's looking for something to "dull the pain" of his debt.

First off, let me simply say that I'm not looking for favors, I'm looking for advice. Life is kinda pitiful for me at the moment. I've done something stupid that I told myself not to and I fear I've dug myself into a hole I'm not sure I can get out of...

My contract with work is gonna be up soon. They don't look like they're gonna rehire me and keep me full time.. Which means I can't afford college (at the moment). Fate just seems to despise me at the moment, and I see no way out.

This isn't the American dream, is it?

Here's a question: Who made the decisions when you chose to go to college? Did banks or private lenders make those choices for you?