About $60,000 in mostly private student-loan debt later, Rademacher said he is “numb” to how much his college education has already cost him.

“It’s just kind of daunting knowing that you owe a lot of money,” he said. “I have an on-campus job, and I just feel like I have a lot of work because I owe so much each month. Having that over my head is more overwhelming.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, released a report today detailing complaints from private student-loan borrowers, opening the student-loan discussion to students such as Rademacher who could not fund their entire education with scholarships or federal loans. The report will be provided to Congress, U.S. Department of Education officials and CFPB Director Richard Cordray, an MSU alumnus who was appointed by President Barack Obama in January.

In a conference call to press Monday, CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Rohit Chopra, who authored the report, said his office has handled almost 3,000 complaints about private student loans since March — the majority of which were related to loan fees or terms of conditions students were unaware of when applying.

“Borrowers told us about feeling stuck in a dead end with no way to get back on their feet,” Chopra said. “They described no options to refinance or pay back their loans, (and) told us they still ended up in default.”

Sallie Mae — the nation’s largest loan firm, where Rademacher borrowed from — had 46 percent of all complaints, the highest of any company. American Education Services followed with 12 percent, and Citibank, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase followed with less than 10 percent each.

Total student loan debt surpassed credit card debt for the first time in 2010. Of all student-loan debt, private student loans account for more than $150 billion, according to the CFPB report.

Although information on private student loans is not collected at MSU, the average student who borrows money through federal loans graduates from college with about $23,000 in student loan debt, according to the Office of Financial Aid.

The CFPB was created in 2011 under the Dodd-Frank Act, an effort by Congress to further regulate the financial firms in the wake of the 2008 collapse.

For Rademacher, informing students about student-loan options early is a better way to keep track of paying for college.

Rademacher said. “Maybe rather than hitting the problem once you are already in the problem, once you need loans, maybe (they can) educate people about how not to get into the loan situation in the first place.”