Many young people have excessive student loans but it probably takes quite a while to pay them off waiting tables.

The San Jose Mercury News reports.

How Santa Cruz waitress, 22, got in hock $30,000 to Corinthian College

SANTA CRUZ — Makenzie Vasquez, 22, a server at Kianti’s Pizza and Pasta, owes $30,000 in student loans at an eight-month medical assisting program at Everest College in San Jose that she says locked her out before she could finish.

She’s one of “the Corinthian 100,” former and current students of Corinthian Colleges Inc., which was one of the largest for-profit colleges in the U.S., operating Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech.

They are refusing to pay their student loans, taking advantage of a little-used provision in the Higher Education Act that says borrowers can fight federal student loan collection if their school violated state law.

“They sold me a dream for a nightmare,” said Vasquez. “I shouldn’t be 22 and be in this much debt and have nothing to show for it.”

Vasquez signed up for her student loan two years ago.

She said her debt includes $6,500 in a federal government student loan and $23,500 in a private Genesis student loan. Her payment is $126 a month.

She said she hasn’t heard from Genesis since she changed her phone number and nothing from the federal government since November.