The student loan trap

Jessie Suren grew up hearing the same advice over and over: College would be her ticket to the middle class, even if it meant taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. But when the job she applied for after graduation fell through, she ended up working at a call center to hound people who had fallen behind on their loan payments. She feared she was staring at a window into her future, and she would spend the rest of her twenties doing whatever it took to get her balance to zero.