Student Debt Threatens the Safety Net for Elderly Americans
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-12/more-elderly-americans-are-struggling-with-student-loan-debt#r=hp-ls
Until his Social Security check arrived almost $300 lighter last June, Eric Merklein, 67, didn’t know he had outstanding student debt. He’d taken out a loan about 40 years ago to attend Southern Illinois University and believed it had been repaid by his grandmother after he graduated in the early 1970s. When he contacted the Department of Education to ask why he was getting less in his check, Merklein says he was surprised to learn the government was withholding a portion of his benefit to cover the debt.
Merklein is among the more than 2 million Americans age 60 and older carrying student debt, up from about 700,000 in 2005, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The debts are from old loans like Merklein’s and more recent ones that older Americans take to go back to school or pay for college for their kids. In total, this group has $43 billion in unpaid loans, five times what they owed in 2005. The average debt also has risen by more than 60 percent since 2005, to around $20,000 per borrower older than 60.
The government has the power to seize portions of the pay or Social Security checks of those who’ve stopped paying their federal student loans. It can also confiscate tax rebates. Borrowers can negotiate a repayment plan with the government to get out of default.
= new reply since forum marked as read
profits before people.
at least the debt dies with the debtor... 
and yet they were able to find him to seize his SS. 
I'm in the income based repayment program right now. My current hope is that next year, I'll be able to live on 1 p/t job and start collecting SS, which I will use to pay off the student loans in 3 years or so, plus continue to do work (more insulation, change heating systems, etc) on the house to slash my utilities costs plus expand my gardening so that over the long haul I'll be able to live on the smaller SS. Then at 65, if HP doesn't steal it, I'll get a couple thousand extra/year in my tiny pension. Plus if I'm able to sell my home I can downsize the house and location to have a little extra cash rolling around and even lower cost of living. That's a big if, though, in this economy.
What a punitive, mean society has evolved with the compounding of interest rates like what are cited upthread. This is what you get, however, when the bankers run the government.
I recently heard a program on their infiltration and control of the government (practically from its inception). It was shocking, even to me, and I have read quite a bit about it.
Cher
They aren't really interested in collecting the debt. Only in making students into lifelong debt-slaves. 
While I was in graduate school, my undergraduate loans were resold a number of times. I kept trying to get them consolidated, but getting them rolled back to the place where they had the zero interest they should have had was impossible. As a student I would often take rooms in other people's houses, and they would receive the calls from debt collectors who had inappropriately received the resold debt. I tried to be proactive about informing banks that I was still in school while never giving anyone my phone number, but they could automatically record wherever I called from.
Anyway, I finally managed to get the loans consolidated, but I had to accept almost $2000 in tacked-on interest that didn't belong there. And once the consolidation was completed there was nothing I could do about it.
So this was basically robbery via secret loan reselling behind my back while I was in school the whole time!!! And this interest itself accrues interest because it has been years since I've been in a position to start paying off these student loans. Right now they are being deferred since I'm in the welfare system, but when I was merely low-income and unemployed they were gathering interest the whole time.
