Student Debt
News media sometimes run stories about students who graduated with six-figure student loan debt. Such articles have appeared in Businessweek, the Chronicle of Higher Education, CNN, the Huffington Post, the Miami New Times, Money Magazine, the New York Times, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal. These stories have shock value and sensationalize the student debt problem, but the borrowers depicted in these stories are not representative of typical college graduates. Most undergraduate students graduate with an affordable amount of debt, with less that 10% of college graduates having total student loan debt exceeding their annual income. The average debt at graduation for Bachelor's degree recipients in 2011 was about $27,000, about the cost of a new car. Nevertheless, much can be learned by examining extreme examples. Extrema can help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the student loan system. I have written a student aid policy analysis paper that analyzes the characteristics of students who graduate with an extreme amount of debt, in excess of $100,000.
The full paper can be found at www.finaid.org/educators/20120801sixfiguredebt.pdf
