Via Professor Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit, who follows the Higher Education Bubble closely, comes a collection agency insider’s view of student debt.

Jerry Ashton, former CEO and now a consultant on credit matters, offers this eye-popping perspective on a New York University event:

As I wandered around the crowd of NYU students at their rally protesting student debt at the end of February, I couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represented – for our industry.

It was lip-smacking.

At my right, to graphically display how she was debt-burdened, was a girl wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the fine sum of $90,000, another with $65,000, a third with $20,000 and over there a really attractive $120,000 was printed on another shirt. Guys were shouldering their share, with t-shirts of $20,000, $15,000, $27,000, $33,000 and $75,000.

Although not every NYU student debtor was there – past or current – to participate, it’s been projected that some $659,000,000 in NYU Student Debt is hanging out there. Yes, $659 MILLION! This is the largest student debt of any non-profit university in the country. If non-profits can rack up these numbers, you can imagine the dollars owed, collectively, by for-profit schools.

Actually, we don’t have to guess about a thing. Last summer, it was announced that student debt achieved the distinction of being greater than that of credit card holders and even the victims of subprime mortgages.

In today’s job market, in which older workers are staying on longer and employment opportunities have been stifled by an extremely weak economy, many graduates are struggling with student loan payments. The New York Times reports on some of their experiences with agencies collecting on government loans, using options that are not available to private loan firms.

“I keep changing my phone number,” said Amanda Cordeiro, 29, from Clermont, Fla., who dropped out of college in 2010 and has fielded as many as seven calls a day from debt collectors trying to recover her $55,000 in overdue loans. “In a year, this is probably my fourth phone number.”

Unlike private lenders, the federal government has extraordinary tools for collection that it has extended to the collection firms. Ms. Cordeiro has already had two tax refunds seized, and other debtors have had their paychecks or Social Security payments garnisheed. Over all, the government recoups about 80 cents for every dollar that goes into default — an astounding rate, considering most lenders are lucky to recover 20 cents on the dollar on defaulted credit cards.