Occupy Student Loans of $3.9M Purchased, Retired for $100K

Occupy Wall Street's effort to reduce student loan burdens saw a tiny measure of success when it paid about $100,000 to purchase and retire $3.9 million in student debt from a for-profit college.

The Rolling Jubilee Fund was created from donations from the Occupy Wall Street movement to purchase student loan debt from debt collectors, according to Time magazine. Organizers told the magazine the announcement was made in recognition of the movement's third anniversary.

The fund recently spent $107,000 to settle $3.9 million of debt owed by students who attended the for-profit Everett College, part of the Corinthian Colleges network. The group told Time the debt was owed by 2,761 students.

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"We chose Everest because it is the most blatant con job on the higher ed landscape," the Occupy Wall Street organizers told Time. "It's time for all student debtors to get relief from their crushing burden."

Rolling Jubilee members told NBC News, though, the effort to retire debt is meant to bring attention to the problem, which now saddles students with $1.2 trillion in unpaid loans.

"This isn't just a stunt or a spectacle," Astra Taylor, 34, a Rolling Jubilee who has $45,000 in student loans told NBC News. "This isn't a long-term plan, either. The point is to touch people where they are, and try to create a political awareness out of that."

USA Today reported this week that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a federal lawsuit against Corinthian Colleges, accusing it of cheating students with predatory loan and debt-collection practices.

The lawsuit, the newspaper said, was the newest action against the nation's largest for-profit education company.

The lawsuit alleged that the college urged students to take out expensive federal and private loans by giving them false and misleading representations about career opportunities and job placement assistance.

Corinthian runs schools around the country under the names Heald, Everest, and WyoTech, according to USA Today, enrolling about 74,000 students as of last March.

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