OXFORD — Halloween is nearing. For-profit colleges are tricking people into signing papers that will treat them to a decade of debt. And Congress? Congress is like the dumb blonde oblivious to what’s going on. Climbing creaking steps, brushing aside cobwebs en route to an encounter with a chain saw-wielding madman. Everybody sees it coming. No one does anything about it.

Why? Too many people — including those who praise themselves as champions of the poor — are making too much money off the future misery of young people who are unwittingly locking themselves into poverty.

USA Today reported last week that student loan debt has now topped $1 trillion.

Worse, the pace of the debt is increasing.

Federal involvement in financing higher education is only about 45 years old. The initial programs were not authorized to correct the imbalance of wealthy families who could send young people to college while poor families could not. Student loans were, instead, justified as a national security measure to help assure America would have as many scientists and engineers as Russia, China and other potential enemies.

In the first 35 or so years, the total owed by borrowers built to $500 billion. It has doubled in less than a third the time.

Why should we care?

The cost of higher education is increasingly borne by taxpayers in two ways. One is the allocation of Pell Grants to lower-income students. That money, about $5,500 per student per year, is a gift of the people. It does not have to be repaid.

Loan programs are different. Previously, commercial lenders made money available to students, interest accrued and repayment (usually over a 10-year period) started when students graduated or stopped attending college. Banks were making this type of loan even before Congress got involved. And when Congress did get involved, it was only to create a public obligation to lenders that if students didn’t pay, taxpayers would.

It is very hard to avoid student loan repayment. For example, even filing bankruptcy doesn’t erase student loan debt. Ask young people who’ve been there. It’s easier to beat the IRS than to skip out on student loans.

Yet some people simply refuse or simply cannot make the payments — often several hundred dollars per month for young families. In turn — and this is important — their personal financial burdens become a drag on the national economy because they are trying to become financially established, buying homes, cars, life insurance, having babies, establishing savings plans and such. But first, they must pay student loans — often until they’re in their mid-30s.

According to the most recent federal data, the percentage of borrowers who are nine or more months behind on repayment rose from 6.7 in 2007 to 8.8 in 2009.

Under the Obama administration, commercial banks have been taken out of the loop. What that means — and no crystal ball is needed to see this coming — is that eventually Congress will entertain the notion of an amnesty. It will be easier to tack another trillion onto the nearly $15 trillion America is now in the hole because the borrowers owe taxpayers directly, not banks.

Now here’s the real deal. At the same time that Congress got into the student aid business, entrepreneurs suddenly discovered there was money to be made, greased the right people and had their businesses designated to receive loan money. It would be unfair to say that all for-profit colleges are bogus diploma mills. They do some people some good. But the statistics are striking: Eighty-eight percent of the money paid to the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest such enterprise, comes from student loans. And although for-profit schools account for only 10 percent of all college students in America, those students account for half the loans in default.

The very necessary disclaimer here is that I work for a state university, meaning that some would find criticism of commercial universities self-serving. But I’m not questioning their quality, just their tactics — as the Government Accountability Office has done.

If car dealers could do what for-profit colleges do, a young person could get a Porsche today and not make any payments for five or six years. And if the young person did not make payments, taxpayers would.

None of these facts is secret. Congress is fully aware of the victimization going on, yet continues to do nothing.

That’s what makes this a real horror story.

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Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at Box 1, University, MS 38677, or e-mail cmitchell43@yahoo.com.

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Correction: Last Sunday’s column erroneously reported abortions per 1,000 pregnancies in Mississippi. The abortion rate in the state, as calculated by the Kaiser Family Foundation, is five per year per 1,000 women 18-45.