Make It Make Sense: College Predators on Loans

In this unapologetically honest episode of the Let’s Get Naked Podcast, Anne Karber and Cameron take aim at one of America’s most sacred cows: higher education.

What was once marketed as the golden ticket to success has become, for millions, a lifelong financial trap. With passion and precision, Anne and Cameron break down how universities turned education into a billion-dollar business—selling teenagers an illusion of stability, prosperity, and prestige, only to deliver a mountain of debt and a degree that too often leads nowhere.

This isn’t an anti-education rant. It’s a wake-up call to a system that has stopped serving the people it claims to uplift.

The Dream That Became a Debt Trap

For decades, students were told that college was the only path to success. Guidance counselors, parents, and politicians all preached the same mantra: Go to school. Get good grades. Take the loans. It’ll pay off.

But as Anne and Cameron point out, the math stopped adding up years ago.

“Imagine,” Anne says, “being 18—barely old enough to vote, not old enough to rent a car—and signing your name to a six-figure loan that follows you for life. That’s not opportunity. That’s entrapment.”

They expose how universities inflated tuition costs while lowering educational ROI, creating a generation that is both overeducated and underprepared—armed with degrees, but lacking real-world skills, financial literacy, and job readiness.

The Business of Higher Education

Behind the glossy brochures and inspirational slogans lies a harsh truth: college is a business first, and an educational institution second.

Anne and Cameron peel back the curtain on how federal loan programs, endowments, and administrative bloat created a perfect storm of profit and dependency.

Billion-dollar institutions rake in tuition money, expand their campuses, and hand out degrees that don’t translate to jobs—then walk away untouched while students spend decades paying for their “dream.”

Meanwhile, taxpayers subsidize a system that rewards inefficiency and punishes the very people it was designed to help.

“The universities got paid,” Cameron notes. “The government got paid. The banks got paid. The only people who didn’t are the ones who actually believed in the promise.”

When Degrees Don’t Deliver

The conversation dives deep into the emotional fallout of a system built on overpromising and underdelivering. Graduates enter the workforce saddled with debt, often working jobs unrelated to their major—or worse, jobs that don’t require a degree at all.

Anne and Cameron call out the disconnect between academia and reality: outdated curriculums, useless majors, and institutions more focused on marketing than mentorship.

“We taught kids how to write essays,” Anne says, “but not how to negotiate salaries, manage money, or build careers. And then we wonder why they’re drowning.”

Political Blame, Economic Fallout, and the Human Cost

This isn’t just an educational issue—it’s a political and moral one. Anne and Cameron unpack how both sides of the political aisle have weaponized the student loan crisis for talking points while doing little to create real reform.

They explore how debt impacts every area of life—from homeownership to mental health to generational wealth—and how the ripple effect is reshaping the American Dream itself.

The result? A generation that did everything “right” and still feels left behind.

A Call for Accountability—and a New Way Forward

Anne and Cameron don’t just critique—they challenge listeners to think differently about what education could be. They call for transparency, reform, and a redefinition of success that values skills, creativity, and adaptability over credentials and conformity.

Maybe the solution isn’t abolishing college—it’s reimagining it.

What if mentorship, apprenticeships, and self-led learning carried the same respect as traditional degrees? What if financial education was mandatory before signing a student loan? What if we stopped measuring worth by a piece of paper and started measuring it by contribution, purpose, and impact?

As Anne puts it, “We can’t keep pretending the system’s broken. It’s not broken—it’s working exactly as designed. And it’s time to redesign it.”