Albany filmmaker takes on student loan debt crisis
First chapter of 6-part series debuts virtually on Monday at festival
Is the nation’s student debt crisis the result of a bad borrower problem or a bad lending system?
That was the question driving the latest project of Albany filmmaker Mike Camoin.
“Sallie Mae Not,” premieres virtually at 1 p.m. Monday at the Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival. It is the first chapter in Camoin’s six-part “Scared to Debt” series, which explores how the U.S. student loan debt ballooned from $10 billion in 1986 to $1.6 trillion.
The film festival, which this year is a “Salute to the 50th Anniversary of the Pentagon Papers and Rise of Investigative Journalism,” is being hosted by ACORN 8 and the Society of Professional Journalists, Washington D.C. chapter. ACORN 8 is a watchdog organization of former Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now insiders and national board members who attempted to reform ACORN following the discovery of a multimilliondollar embezzlement.
The film festival is runs through Aug. 1.
For Camoin, his documentary is personal. Next year, his 17-year-old daughter will be a senior in high school and start applying to colleges. He also has a 15-year-old son entering 11th grade.
“I started to talk to some friends of mine about student loans and realized this is really impacting so many people that I know. As a parent, I would soon be facing this very bad choice for funding college, he said. “I don’t want to sign on these loans. I know too much.”
A graduate of St. Bonaventure University and University at Albany, the former social worker from Slingerlands launched his company Videos For Change Productions 25 years ago and has turned docu
mentary filmmaking into a full-time career. His 1998 production “Inside The Blue Line: Leadley’s Legacy,” a series focusing on an Adirondacks woodsman’s quest to save the wilderness, aired on PBS and Canadian television.
Camoin’s latest film pulls in the voices of student borrowers, financial experts and early whistleblowers who say they weren’t taken seriously when they warned of a systematic dismantling of basic consumer protections for student loan borrowers, which began in 1998. The result is a predatory lending system that is exploiting millions of young people and their families.
It features Rolling Stone columnist Matt Taibbi, who sounded the alarm on the student loan industry in 2013, when Sallie Mae Bank, a once federal governmentbacked lender, went fully private.
“Everyone in the education business is making out on the misery of young people who are entering into catastrophic
financial decisions when they are just teenagers,” Taibbi says in the trailer.
The series takes aim at banks, government and college leaders. It links the under-regulated student loan system to skyrocketing tuition costs at institutions across the United States. The average cost of tuition and fees for the 2020-21 school year was $41,411 at private colleges, $11,171 for state residents at public colleges and $26,809 for out-of-state students at state schools, according to data from U.S. News & World Report.
Camoin also speaks to Catherine Fitts, a former housing official for President George H.W. Bush, who has spent years working in finance. She was on the board of Sallie Mae from 1991-93, before it was privatized.
Fitts describes a concerted effort by banks to remove basic protections for student borrowers,
which has effectively created a lending bubble.
“From an ethical standpoint and a societal standpoint, you are taking it from a legitimate operation or business to a scam,” Fitts said.
Tying the piece together is the voice of Alan Collinge, founder of Studentloanjustice.org and author of “The Student Loan Scam.” Collinge is a scientist-turned-activist who said he was wrongfully thrown into default by Sallie Mae. Collinge warned of the lending “scheme” in 2006 on “60 Minutes,” which he argued has led college students and their families to a financial cliff.
Camoin interviews borrowers who have been making regular payments for decades, but due to interest rates and fees — which start accumulating the day they sign the papers — have hardly chipped away at the principal. Many people in
their 30s figure out that they will not reach the loan principal in their lifetime, Camoin said.
“Who warned them what they were getting into? Time after time, they receive very little to zero financial advisement,” he said. “This is the most expensive decision of their life.”
Through an online fundraiser, Camoin has already raised about half of his $350,000 goal, funds that will help him complete the series.
The film stops short of advocating any one solution. Progressive advocates like Collinge are calling on the federal government to cancel all federal student loans and restore bankruptcy protections to student borrowers.
Camoin said his approach is to “give voice to those without a voice” and encourage nonpartisan solutions to be discovered. He warns that as students realize that they have been “scammed” by private lenders, it will prompt a “debt revolt.”
“Once they find out they bought a car with no brakes on it, they are not going to want to pay these loans back,” Camoin said.
“Once they find out they bought a car with no brakes on it, they are not going to want to pay these loans back.” — Albany filmmaker Mike Camoin