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The Secret Weapon in the Fight Against Bad Student Debt? It's Our Professors - Laura McKenna. It might sound crazy to say that instructors could help solve our college loan crisis. But by focusing students on a cost-effective course of study and on-time graduation, they could make a big difference. Wikimedia Commons Every Saturday morning at 9:00, Lisa tutors my 10-year old son. With her round smiling face, Lisa draws him into his books and holds a bookmark under the words to keep his eyes from jumping ahead in the text. Lisa still has another three years of college, despite the fact that she's been in school full time for five years. Lisa is not alone. Are colleges - and faculty in particular -- doing enough to help students earn their BA's with a limited amount of debt? At most schools, students are required to meet with an assigned faculty member every year.

Faculty said they could do little to help students manage their finances. Faculty did not encourage a discussion of loans, because they did not feel qualified to talk about financial decisions. Project on Student Debt: Home. Student Debt and the Class of 2014 Seven in 10 seniors (69%) who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,950 per borrower. Over the last decade—from 2004 to 2014—the share of graduates with debt rose modestly (from 65% to 69%) while average debt at graduation rose at more than twice the rate of inflation. Debt at graduation varies greatly by state and by college, and this report includes average debt levels for each state, lists of notably high- and low-debt colleges, and links to data for more than 1,000 colleges nationwide.

It also includes policy recommendations for reducing the burden of student debt. View the interactive map Read the report Read the press release Take Action to Help Defrauded Students Get Debt Relief Your comments must be submitted by August 1 - TAKE ACTION NOW! The Top 10 Student Loan Tips for Recent Graduates provides useful information new graduates should know about repaying student loans. more... Grading Student Loans. Meta Brown, Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Maricar Mabutas,* and Wilbert van der Klaauw Student loans support the education of millions of students nationwide, yet much is unknown about the student loan market. Relevant data are limited and, for the most part, anecdotal. Also, sources tend to focus on recent college graduates and do not reveal much information about the indebtedness of parents, graduate students, and those who drop out of school. To inform the public and policymakers, we devote this post to some new findings obtained from the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel, a unique and nationally representative data set sourced from Equifax credit reports.

The outstanding student loan balance now stands at about $870 billion,1 surpassing the total credit card balance ($693 billion) and the total auto loan balance ($730 billion). From the second to the third quarter of 2011, the total outstanding student loan balance grew 2.1 percent, from $852 billion to $870 billion. Student Loans Weighing Down a Generation With Heavy Debt. Goldman Explains Why The Amount Of Total Student Loan Debt Has Quadrupled Since The Year 2000. Goldman's Alec Phillips and Hui Shan are out with a very good note about the size and implications of student loan debt in the American economy. Student loan debt has gotten a ton of interest over the past year since A) it's growing B) there's a heightened interest in all things credit-boomy C) the bad job market has made the existing burden even more onerous. Good clean student loan stats aren't that easy to come by, but as of Q4 2011 there was at least $870 billion in student loan debt outstanding, says Goldman, and that number has quadrupled since the year 2000!

So why the big surge? Alex Phillips and Hui Shan give four reasons: The cost of attending college has risen. Meanwhile, here's a pretty interesting chart on the correlation between unemployment and college attendance. Goldman Sachs. Student loans seen as potential ‘next debt bomb’ for U.S. economy. William Brewer, head of NACBA, has said, “This could very well be the next debt bomb for the U.S. economy” — something akin to the housing mortgage loan crisis that triggered the U.S. financial crisis. “Obviously, in the short term, student loan defaults are not going to have the same ripple effect through the economy that mortgage defaults did,” Brewer said. “My concern is that the long-term effect may be even graver, because people who need student loans to try to get a higher education or retraining” will be unwilling to run the risk of taking out a student loan.

Moody’s Analytics has evaluated the chances of a student loan crisis. “Despite its rapid growth even as credit quality weakened during and after the recession, student lending is not likely to turn into the next subprime crisis,” it said in a January report. The student loan market is one-tenth the size of the residential mortgage market. And more than 90 percent of student loans are federally guaranteed. Sex Work to Pay Off College Loans? How the College Debt Racket Has Left Young People Desperate -- And Led Many to Occupy Wall St. | Sex & Relationships. October 7, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.

The young man standing next to the “Jail Sallie Mae, Cancel All Student Loan Debt” sign in Liberty Plaza last night could very well end up in jail himself – not for protesting economic injustice and marching on Wall Street, but for doing sex work to pay off his student loans. Though he works a day job in the tech sector, it’s not enough to get by. With the Department of Education estimating that outstanding US student loan debt will soon exceed $1 trillion and job growth stalled, students face the very real prospect that there’s no way to ever pay back their debts.

Wednesday also saw solidarity walk-outs to Occupy Wall Street from hundreds of students from the New School, New York University, Columbia University, and several CUNY campuses.