stef gray took on student lender sallie mae. >> my issue is that sallie mae. if you are unemployed or underemployed and can't make your student loan payments, they charge a fee to prove you can't pay. they want me to pay $150 every three months to put my loans in forbearance. >> reporter: the petition went up in january and already it has 164,000 supporters. >> so far we've had a partial victory. before my campaign, the fee that they were charging was just an arbitrary fee-- it didn't go towards the student's debt whatsoever. now, they will apply the fee to your debt, but after they hold money in limbo, and require you to jump through a number of hoops. >> reporter: more than 15- thousand new campaigns are started on change.org every month. there are more than ten million active members. the organization has a staff of one hundred, which brings up the business model. >> you don't have to pay to sign a petition, so how does your site make money? we enable non profits to pay for sponsor petitions on the site. and then when people come on to the site to take acti

of employers that check credit when hiring but what it comes down to what i want to know is that sallie mae it all comes back to selling me america's largest student lender think of them as how bank of america was for the for closure crisis now it's house speaker john boehner his daughter works for sallie mae and he's very close friends with their c.e.o. albert lord so really it's about nepotism as well john boehner is just helping out his friends and his child he's not thinking about america's youth we certainly see a lot of that here in washington the revolving door between lobbyists and politics and a lot of them are friends and relatives. we put some of the numbers up before but if you look at this timeline of what's going on here it's not just about this threat of the interest rate doubling we've got about a quarter of you know we've got about twenty five years of state funding decreasing that means of course that we've seen over the last few decades and schools raise or to wish and and then in many cases the federal government steps in to fill those holes with more loan money and as y

. >> reporter: the nation's top private lender, sallie mae, openly supports reform that would help borrowers dissolve their student loan debt, but only after they've tried to repay the loans for five to seven years. that caveat would keep grads from filing for bankruptcy right after college. something advocates like robert applebaum say is unlikely anyway. >> you can't just declare bankruptcy. and suddenly your debts are erased, you have to prove insolvency. you have to prove an inability to pay. >> reporter: applebaum doesn't think the bankruptcy change will make it into law this year. but, as student debt plows past $1 trillion. he hopes lawmakers will consider this and other reforms. sylvia hall, "nightly business report," washington. >> tom: next week on n.b.r., we mark the two year anniversary of b.p.'s gulf oil spill. we'll see how the region's comeback is progressing. and we look at who fared better during the recession, women or men, when it comes to jobs and hiring. and monday, mattel, the maker of barbie dolls and matchbox cars reports earnings. we'll see how the results play with

one of the biggest problems is the exploitation of the predator student loan industry sallie mae america's largest private investor assigns low income student interest rates of up to twenty five percent let's take a look at just some of the stats. tuitions costs have risen six hundred percent over the last thirty years average in-state tuition has risen by eight percent just last year and in two thousand and ten graduates have an average of twenty five thousand two hundred fifty dollars in student debt it's a hot topic on the campaign trail with obama and romney a green that the student loan interest rates congress and stated to freeze in the two thousand and seven college cost reduction access act should stay at three point four percent without intervention this year they will jump to six point eight percent when the act expires which was another thousand dollars burden of debt per student loan with this mounting debt on the shoulders of those entering the workplace it's almost impossible to get a job or actually own a home and respond to this crisis today the occupy the student debt camp

pennsylvania avenue while marching from the department of education to the offices of loan provider sally maet they're leaving college with prevents them from getting ahead once they leave school. the average student loan debt is about $25,000 per person. nationally, student loans make up more than $1 trillion in debt. that's more than credit card and auto loans. >>> three major roadways in virginia are getting a name change. it might be an inconvenience for some drivers, but the department of transportation tells us it's a good thing. julie carey has details. >> reporter: most drivers don't have to think twice when you ask them to name this busy road that cuts all the way across fairfax county. running a paving business, pat gorman has come to know it well. >> the parkway, yeah. >> reporter: gorman, other drivers and their gps systems will soon need reprogrammed. three major northern virginia roads, the parkway, fran cone yeah parkway and prince william parkway have been renumbered. it's because all three were just reclassified for secondary to primary roads. under federal rules, the numbers

. >> reporter: last year students showed at at sallie mae, protesting the higher and higher cost of aigher education. and last week, still more protests. >> i see this as a crisis. it seems that every state, every school that proposes 10% increases -- >> natalia is the organizer of group called occupy colleges. >> every week we have a protest against student debt. >> reporter: president obama worked the college circ itd during the week decrying the plan to sharply increase interest rates on student loan in july. president obama: now is not the time to double interest rates on >> reporter: republican rival, mitt romney was close behind. >> i total support extending the low interest rate on student loans. >> reporter: but how to pay for it. house republicans voted to use money set aside for the obama health program. that's a non-starteder for the president. >> and others proposed using money set aside for oil and gas companies. it's a problem. >> we can make it so the students who borrow next year will have loans with lower interest rates. but there's still lots of students out there wi

let's team up borrowing with lending and sallie mae, fannie mae, freddie mac.premes, many people think of "stop in the name of love" job justice scalia. maybe it's stop in the name of too long. we're going to talk about european rates. they've been moving up. all of that, top of the hour. great shot. how did the nba become the hottest league on the planet? by building on the cisco intelligent network they're able to serve up live video, and instant replays, creating fans from berlin to beijing. what can we help you build? nice shot kid. the nba around the world built by the only company that could. cisco. >>> three minutes into the trading day. jnc holdings, they cited valuation. the price target rate of $42. it has been a $35 price target where you see the stock is right now. u.s. bancorp is incorporated. it is now a hold, it had been a buy. pandora, jmt securities, the price target there is $14. pretty significant percentage move, if it were to hit that. >>> on to the feed frenzy in the skies. allegiance air announcing it will charge passengers $35. this make

the president of the university of iowa, sallie mae said. [cheers and applause] so, i've come to the university of iowa to talk a little bit about you. and some of the issues you guys have been dealing with every single day. now i believe that college isn't just the best of what you can make in your future. it is the best investment you can make in your country's future. i am proud of all of you for making investment because it's never been more important. [cheers and applause] in today's economy, there is no greater predictor of individual success than a good education. that's at the top. right now the unemployment rate for americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. their incomes are twice as high as those who don't have a high school diploma. a higher education is the single clearest path to net a class. i know those of you are about to graduate are wondering what's in store for your future because not even four years ago, just as the global economy was about to enter freefall you are still trying to find y

the private nongovernment-backed student loan market, s.l.m., let me translate, formerly known as sallie mae, discover financial services, wells for fargo and p.n.c. financial services. even with the defaults, if there are defaults, on these loans, these loans are protected because they continue forever. madam president, i don't know if my colleagues will join me in this, but all i ask them to do is go home and please talk to some of the families in your state, and you will find out that this student loan crisis is not just something manufactured by politicians. it is real. and we are complicit in it. when we allow low-performing and worthless schools to receive federal aid to education, students and their families are lured into believing these are real schools. go to the internet and put in the word college or university, click the mouse and watch what happens. you will be inundated with ads from for-profit schools. some of them will tell you you can go to school online. one of them ran a television ad here in washington. i think they have taken it off the air now that showed this lovely y

i think a lot of things our government is doing, sallie mae, are we just splitting hairs here?hey didn't like the way they're running the oil. i figure maybe the country can run the oil company better. congress passes a law and they seize 51% and they'll find out later how much that is worth. >> okay, now you enlighten me. 51% that's correct why in argentina. in this company kri the government only owns 27% of gm. a horse of a completely different color. >> seriously, if i was in spain and if i was repsol, i guess chavez did this and cuba, communist countries do this, right? argentina, it's nominally some type of western democracy, isn't it? >> i'll tell you, michelle caruso-cabrera, whenever she talks about argentina, she has her history down. at the turn of the century, they were pretty much equal in many ways to the u.s. in terms of horse power, the standard of living and things went amiss. we all know some of the issues in history. it's really a sad story in many ways. unless you like the sickle and the hammer, it's a sad story. >> i would fall back on to that could never h

going on with the student loan program and the government being in control of those programs via sallie mae you have to give something away because the tough love solutions don't give you necessarily a lot of electoral positives but they are solutions versus throwing money at a problem. >> yeah, i think without being specific on the student loan issue which we're delving into in detail right now, i would say that what we have right now is a vision of two americas. one is that you can have your cake and eat it, too. we can continue to go down this path of politicians giving citizens what they wish with other taxpayer money in order to make themselves popular or we can do those things that we all know have to be done for this nation to be made great. we're watching the movie play out right now in europe. when that was not adhered to, we know that that's not the path for our country. the treasury department, during this election year, has obviously forced money out, doing things that we know probably are not going to be in our country's best interests or i would say i know are not in our count

the private nongovernment-backed student loan market, s.l.m., let me translate, formerly known as sallie mae, discover financial services, wells for fargo and p.n.c. financial services. even with the defaults, if there are defaults, on these loans, these loans are protected because they continue forever. madam president, i don't know if my colleagues will join me in this, but all i ask them to do is go home and please talk to some of the families in your state, and you will find out that this student loan crisis is not just something manufactured by politicians. it is real. and we are complicit in it. when we allow low-performing and worthless schools to receive federal aid to education, students and their families are lured into believing these are real schools. go to the internet and put in the word college or university, click the mouse and watch what happens. you will be inundated with ads from for-profit schools. some of them will tell you you can go to school online. one of them ran a television ad here in washington. i think they have taken it off the air now that showed this lovely y