The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put out a call for consumers to share their student loan stories on its message board  to try and established sensible new rules for student loans.

Among the comments were these horror stories, complied by Mandi Woodruff in The Business Insider:

Steve Macintyre: $100,000 in debt and out of a job: “I used to work in the entertainment industry but have been unemployed for a few years and I needed to desperately update my skillset if I could hope to find a job in the highly competitive field of games and animation.

Socialworkmary: Paid $350+ per month on her loans for 14 years to no avail: “I admit I did not understand capitalized interest until recently. I consolidated my loans in 1997 when the interest rate was 8 percent. My student loan office at Tulane University led me to believe that I ‘had’ to consolidate and Sallie Mae was the only option offered to me.

Dgoeck: Stuck with a clunker – indefinitely: “I’m not really sure what to do at this point. I am a victim of a for-profit school that definitely seemed in cohorts with Sallie Mae. My original loan was $80,000 but has grown to $135,000 and all I can pay is interest only, which is already $700 a month.

KDF11: Dogged by debt collectors: “I am a graduate (doctoral) student with a 2005 loan from Bank of America which was passed to American Education Services. AES passed my loan to their subsidiary National Collegiate Trust…They cited that my (notice to them) was over 60 days late and the loan was in repayment and refused to negotiate. Then, when I called/wrote/emailed NCT to negotiate, they sent my loan to another subsidiary— their collection agency MRS.

Debttired: Needs to hit the lotto to pay off loan debt: “I am the first in my family to go to college. Without family support, I self-financed three college degrees (BA, MA and PhD) at state colleges between 1988 and 2005 using Pell Grants, multiple jobs, scholarships and $90,000 in subsidized and unsubsidized student loans.

Jnsmith553: Drowning in daughter’s debt: “My daughter will graduate in 2015 with about $80,000 in debt.  Worse case scenario for me (is) two years of payments. (The loan payments are) going to be more than my mortgage.”

Nick Keith: Collects cans and squeaks by on disability benefits: “I am a victim of a for-profit school that sold me a private student loan that I cannot afford to repay. I borrowed $60,000 to attend a culinary school–a school that has settled a class action lawsuit admitting that it lied to students about the value of the program and the statistics of the number of graduates getting employment in the culinary field….I was lied to about the terms of the private student loan.