Student Debt on the Rise

Congratulations recent graduate!  Your prize for four years of hard work is on average $23,200 in student loan debt (not including the debt that your parents are assuming) and a very difficult time to find a job!  Woohoo – time to celebrate!

In all seriousness, student loan debt is on the rise and there is not much we can do about it.  History shows (and economic forecasts confirm) that this phenomenon will only intensify.  According to projectstudentdebt.org, “Nationwide, average debt for graduating seniors with loans rose from $18,650 in 2004 to $23,200 in 2008, or about six percent per year. State averages for debt at graduation in 2008 ranged from highs near $30,000 to a low of $13,000. High-debt states are concentrated in the Northeast, while low-debt states are mostly in the West. At the college level, average debt varied even more, from $5,000 to $106,000. Colleges with higher tuition tend to have higher average debt, but there are many examples of high tuition and low average debt, and vice versa.”

The entire “Student Debt and the Class of 2008″ report which was released in December 2009 can be read here. 

More interesting articles on this topic:

“Students Borrow More Than Ever For College”

“Student Debt and Unemployment on the Rise”

“Student Debt”

“Student Loans and Delinquencies on the Rise:  Can Consolidating Student Loans Help?”

I attended and graduated from two very inexpensive state universities, but still came out with a decent amount of student loan debt due to the lack of current funds available to finance my education by myself or my family.  The point of this article is not to say that student loans are bad – because in most instances they are a means to an education that will help obtain future employment.  There is a pretty basic ROI calculation that each individual and family could do before sending the student off the college, that I would say less than 5% of parents do.  Every college degree is not necessarily created equal.  Additionally, if your goal is to obtain a career that you know you will never get rich off of (I’m not going to name specific careers here, but you know who you are) – do you really need that $200,000 education for a job that is going to pay you $30,000 per year for the next 30 years?  Think hard about this before you attend university – undergraduate or graduate.