ABSTRACT
Student Loan Debt (SLD) affects lives, families, wellbeing, and futures in vastly different ways. The intersection of students' unique characteristics complicates the impact of SLD profoundly. In the author's position as a 66-year-old Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, there are unspoken assumptions regarding his background, status, and experiences. The federal government of the United States of America has been and continues to be complicit in the author's economic slavery, as was my state government. Collegians are being taken advantage of and misled when it is in the interest of the loan servicers to prolong payments so they make more money while providing minimal service. The author's Golden Years are nonexistent as an economic slave with SLD, and his reward after working most of his life is the reality that he will never be able to stop working. At the time the author's loans were consolidated, he had four payment plan options: standard, extended, graduated, or Income contingent.
