Student Loan Debt Exceeds Credit Card Debt for the First Time Ever

[Emmortal]

http://articles.courant.com/2010-09-23/news/hc-ed-student-loan-debt-20100923_1_freeze-tuition-tuition-and-fees-state-tuition

Buried By Debt
Student Loans Amount Owed Now Exceeds Credit Card Debt
September 23, 2010

When Connecticut State University System trustees get together today to consider freezing tuition and fees for the first time in more than a decade, they should also consider this:

The U.S. reached a very disturbing threshold this year when the amount of money owed for student loans exceeded the money piled up in credit card debt for the first time ever.

In June, the amount that Americans owed in revolving credit — most of which is credit card debt — was $826.5 billion. Student loans outstanding just edged out that figure, adding up to $829.7 billion. About $300 billion of that was added in the last four years.

CSU trustees have long argued that its state universities are a bargain. But state tuition has jumped faster than inflation in the past decade. The average yearly cost of a state university is now $17,997 in tuition and fees for students living on campus and $8,043 for commuting students.

CSU hasn't promised to freeze tuition. That will depend, it says, on how much state aid it gets. It has asked for 11 percent more.That's an absurd request to make of a state facing a $3.4 billion deficit next year.

And it's a brazen request coming from a system that gave top administrators raises of 10 percent until public outcry this summer prompted trustees to adjust the raises to 5 percent.

The amount of money people are forced to pay to obtain a college education, public and private, is getting frightening. It will shackle individuals and our nation for years to come.

There's plenty to be outraged about.

What rational justification could there be for the extraordinary rise in college tuitions nationwide over the last 30 years? The rate at which college tuitions have gone up has exceeded not only the rise in home prices, but the annual rise in the cost of medical care. Homes, at their peak, had risen by about 400 percent since 1978. Medical costs went up by 600 percent. College tuitions, in contrast, have risen by more than 1,000 percent in 32 years.

This is absurd, unconscionable and unsustainable.

Parents have to teach their children to be smart shoppers when it comes to a college education. Too often, students rack up mountains of debt in the course of obtaining degrees that provide them with limited ability to help them pay back their loans. And during this recession, few jobs await any college graduates.

Even when more jobs become available, large student loan payments will mean less money for students to pay for other items that fuel the economy, such as homes or cars. That doesn't just hurt students. It hurts everybody.

[Soul Crusher]

Another federal govt inspired ponzi scheme.   

[BayGBM]

Yikes!

How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship
By RON LIEBER

Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman’s fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days.

Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But, she said, even she didn’t know what the true balance was; like a car buyer who focuses on only the monthly payment, she wrote 12 checks a year for about $1,100 each, the minimum possible. She didn’t focus on the bottom line, she said, because it was so profoundly depressing.

But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. “He accused me of lying,” said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor’s degree in photography. “But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn’t really want to know the full amount...


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/your-money/04money.html?scp=1&sq=Allison%20Brooke%20Eastman&st=cse

[Soul Crusher]

This is solely the fault of the federal govt. by making ridiculous levels of credit available to these kids.