The 21st Century American Employee needs a college education to obtain any white collar job and have a basic life. Even if studying high income fields, except a small few, most require post graduate schooling. No matter what route you take, most people, especially minorities do not have the money to seek a higher education and must take out loans if they want to educate themselves.

In the case of NJCLASS these loans are predatory. For those that don't know. The state has combined a private entity with a public service and is beholden to wall street investors. In a conflict of interest the state takes the personal information of students as young as 17 to determine eligibility of grants. Most of the time these grants are nowhere close to paying for the cost of higher education in New Jersey. This information provided to HESAA gets passed off to NJ CLASS. It's not stressed enough by school counselors or NJCLASS that this is not a federal like loan with the goal of educating students, it is a for profit private loan that has the recovery mechanisms of a federal loan because it is backed by the NJ government. In other words they put the grants under the same roof of a predatory lending scheme.

If anyone sees this take it as a warning. The federal student loan forgiveness rate is about 5-10% of all loans dispersed, and there are talks about full or partial forgiveness. In addition there are several forms of payment plans to avoid default. For actual private loans from banks presumably the forgiveness/settlement rate is significantly higher (hence the higher rates you get charged). For NJCLASS not only do you they get the higher rates but they have a forgiveness rate of 1% of all debt and that's after allowing discharge when you die. It is a business such to the point they resorted to gaming online reviews through bribery. When you take a loan through them it actually gets packaged with other loans and sold as a private bond investment to private investors. Returns are marketed as guaranteed to these private investors. On their behalf the state will, if needed, garnish, seize assets, and revoke licenses. The student receivedms the WORST of both worlds. Do not take that loan!

The state should not be profiting from those trying to better themselves and do better in informing and the entire system needs to be changed. Rant over