We recently highlighted a piece suggesting that personal finance should be a core requirement. A new report from Eric Owens of The Daily Caller seems to reinforce that idea.

Claim: 40 percent of student loan debtors have no clue if they received mandatory loan counseling

America’s collective student loan debt exceeded $1 trillion awhile ago and newly-minted graduates leave their alma maters with a typical debt of almost $27,000 these days.

Here’s the hilarious part, though: 40 percent of all federal loan borrowers either don’t receive any kind of financial exit counseling — which is required by law — or have no earthly idea if they received such counseling.

The extraordinary claim is highlighted in a new book by Carol Jensen entitled College Financial Aid: Highlighting the Small Print of Student Loans.

Jensen traces the claim to Healey C. Whitsett of National Economic Research Associates and Rory O’Sullivan of Young Invincibles.

“Their discovery questions a universal understanding that college students with federal loans are mandated by law to receive counseling,” Jensen told The Daily Caller.

The counseling mandate is minimal. The U.S. Department of Education merely requires all students to undergo a cursory, 30-minute exit counseling process each time they “withdraw, graduate or drop below half-time attendance (even if you plan to transfer to another school”).”

In her book, Jensen argues that the federal exit loan counseling process is fantastically ineffective. Borrowers of vast sums of money — money they are supposed to pay back, with interest — just brazenly skip it altogether or don’t remember attending because it’s so awful and unmemorable.

She also claims that the requirement is utterly toothless because it only requires schools to notify students. No one is penalized when students don’t actually receive important information about loan repayment and default.