Meet Brian Galloway, a 46-year-old indentured servant. He lives a Spartan existence in a one-bedroom University Place apartment.

What’s that? You thought indentured servants – laborers who work off debts to employers – disappeared with Colonial America?

Not when it comes to student loans.

Galloway expects to work the rest of his life in service to Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest provider of student loans.

He took nearly $65,000 in student loans from Sallie Mae. The loans helped him earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Puget Sound and the master’s degree in urban planning from Eastern Washington University and get two-thirds of the way through Seattle University School of Law.

He always figured each succeeding educational achievement would lead to a better-paying job so he could pay off the debt. But he defaulted during a period of unemployment.

Still, Galloway has paid back $106,000 on the $65,000 he borrowed. Sallie Mae says he still owes $98,000 – an amount that keeps growing faster than he can pay it off.

You can’t believe it?

“I can’t believe it either,” said Galloway, a transportation planner for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.

Sallie Mae advertises itself as “helping millions of Americans achieve their dream of a higher education.” True. But the dream has become a nightmare for Galloway and a growing number of Americans caught in “The Student Loan Scam.”

That’s the title of a new book by Alan Michael Collinge, a University Place author who has appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” ABC’s “20/20” and National Public Radio to blast the $85 billion student loan industry.

Collinge’s obsession – driven by his personal student loan payback problems with Sallie Mae – has made him the equivalent of an Old Testament prophet warning the powerful to change their ways.

The problem, Collinge said, started in 1997 when Congress, after intense lobbying from student loan companies, concluded a series of law changes to the payback rules. Congress allowed higher, compounding penalties should a borrower default, eliminated the option of refinancing the debt and made student loans the only debt in America that you can never escape – even with bankruptcy.

How big will this problem get?

Collinge quotes a U.S. inspector general’s 2003 broad estimate that between 19 percent to 31 percent of student loan borrowers will default at some point over the life of the loan.

And Collinge predicts the defaults will skyrocket. Why? Three reasons. As the nation’s economy has hemorrhaged jobs, many more student borrowers won’t find jobs to pay down their debt. Those who have lost jobs no longer can keep up with their debt payments. And many more in the unemployment lines have flooded back into higher education, paid for by loans, to better themselves.

Collinge’s No. 1 warning? Do everything you possibly can to avoid borrowing money for college.

He knows, however, that college for many isn’t possible these days without borrowing. So if you do borrow, do everything you can to stay current on your loan payments.

“A defaulted loan will ruin one’s life,” Collinge said. “Because the penalties and the fees, and because, unlike any other type of loan in our nation’s history, there’s no bankruptcy protection, no truth-in-lending requirements, no fair debt collection practices coverage. … These student loan companies have debt collection power that would make a mobster envious. They can garnish a borrower’s wages, Social Security payments, disability income and your income tax return all without court order. And there’s no recourse for you.”

Collinge’s Web site – studentloanjustice.org – has become a haven of sorts for a growing social network of folks across the country unable to shake their student loan debts. They tell their stories, join the lobbying effort and find comfort in shared misery.

Galloway has found it so.

The debt load he carries “has badly affected my life,” he said. “It’s a pretty Spartan existence. I can’t afford to have a family. I date, but I don’t want to get too serious, because I’ll just get disappointed.

“The older I get the more disappointing it becomes. It is a mental burden that I think about every day. … I had no hope before I ran across Alan’s Web site,” Galloway said. “It turned me around from being depressed about the whole thing and helped me realize there might be an answer.”

For his part, Collinge the Prophet tells anyone who listens that borrowers should pay back the money they borrow. But Congress must reinstitute the same protections for student debt as other debt.

“Congress needs to address this issue quickly,” Collinge said, “before things get too badly out of hand.”

Dan Voelpel: 23-597-8785

dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com