The always hilarious Hasan Minhaj is making young audiences laugh, cry (from laughing so hard), and become more informed once again in this week’s episode of Patriot Act. This week, he breaks down the complicated world of student loans in the United States. Most students in the U.S. have to take out loans to afford college. “Congratulations on being a Kennedy,” Minhaj directs towards the small percent of people who aren’t in thousands of dollars of debt. Understanding the way that student loans works are really vital for anybody who plans on going to college in America, and maybe even for furthering their education beyond that.
Image Credits: Youtube
That’s part of why this show is so enjoyable for teens — not only is Minhaj laughable, but he’s also really talented at breaking down the somewhat convoluted topics that teenagers can find harder to relate to. As his first way of explaining what taking out and paying back student loans can be like, Minhaj states, “Imagine starting a race, and then the guy with the starter pistol uses the gun to shoot you in the leg.” If that doesn’t paint a clear enough picture of this crisis, I don’t know what will. 44 million people in the U.S. have student loan debt. It is outrageous that in order to be educated in America, you either have to be unbelievably wealthy or willing to deal with a lot of debt for a long time.
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I think the most informative part of the episode is when he talks to Seth Frotman, Ryan Belz, and several other people who have experienced trouble with loans, in addition to including a clip of an interview with former Navient employee Lynn Sabulski. Sabulski revealed important information about Navient, such as how employees are only allotted seven minutes per customer service call. This is problematic for consumers because it means that they aren’t even being given enough time to have their queries fully resolved during their call. Sabulski even stated that, sometimes, having such a short amount of time meant having to give poor advice. Having experts and common people with experience on discussed topics gives the series a lot more meat and assures viewers that it’s credible without allowing them to get boring. Patriot Act is amazing because the host is willing to divulge the information and explain every part of the information that regular newscasters sometimes don’t say. For example, almost 30,000 people applied to have their loans forgiven in 2017 and only 96 were accepted due to sheer amateurish mistakes made by the Department of Education. By exposing this information, Hasan Minhaj proves he is fearless when it comes to using his voice.
Moral of the story — when you’re going into your freshman year of college, make sure you’re not making any mistakes that could put you in hot water later on, just in case this problem hasn’t been settled by the time you would be able to pay them all off (there’s $1.5 trillion worth of debt in the U.S. This problem probably won’t be solved by the time Generation X is out of college). Know the facts about borrowing and paying loans, make yourself aware of the fallacies behind the system, and don’t let yourself get screwed. Teenagers are not too young to educate themselves on the problems in society.
This week’s episode, just like all the other episodes, did not disappoint and I would recommend watching here:
Patriot Act episodes are uploaded to Youtube and Netflix every Sunday.
Featured Image Via Youtube
