Sallie Mae's Success Too Costly?

Does The Lender's Success Come At Too Steep A Cost To Students And Taxpayers?

(CBS)  "Why wouldn't Sallie Mae say, 'Look, this is a law that worked?' " Stahl asks Alan Collinge.

"It has worked very well for Sallie Mae," he replies. "It's working very well for the federal government, but it hasn't worked well for the students."

It hasn't worked well for some students such as Lynnae Brown. She got loans from Sallie Mae starting in 1985 to go to college and then to film school.

"How much will you have paid them when you're finished?" Stahl asked.

"Over a quarter of a million dollars. $262,383 to be exact," Brown replied.

"For an original loan of what?" Stahl asked.

"$60,000," Brown said.

She started falling behind in her payments early on. "My sophomore year in undergraduate school, I was diagnosed with an illness. It does affect my daily existence, if you will, and it does affect the choices I make or can make," Brown says. "And, yet, there's no consideration for people's lives."

Lynnae Brown has never gone into default, but she may never catch up.

"I think the general idea of student loan program is excellent," she says. "I mean, I'm very fortunate that I was able to get an education. I think the problem with the system is it doesn't seem to keep in mind that people have human problems. Things happen."

It's a system that Congress created with good intentions, to help kids go to college, but it has ended up saddling hundreds of thousands with debt while guaranteeing that a lender like Sallie Mae can become what Fortune Magazine says is one of the most profitable companies in the world.

"How do you lose in a game like that? It's a great business model. I win from here; I win from there. It's the protected market," says Elizabeth Warren.

"It's not a free market?" Stahl asks.

"It's a market in which the protection goes to the lender," Warren replies. "And the students get served up like turkeys at the Thanksgiving dinner."