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Student Loan Debt Crisis

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The student loan debt crisis is a major issue in the United States. Every day, students are dropping out of college because they cannot afford college. Ever since college tuition went up in the 1960s, the student loan debt has risen. Student loan debt takes a major effect of student’s lives after college is over and they must start paying their loans off. On average, students take out as much as $28,000 to $30,000 of student loans (Holland). Taking out these large amounts of loans cause students to dig a hole of financial debt for themselves. From the history of student loan debt to the current solutions that could solve the debt issue, student loan debt will always be a constant issue in students’ lives unless drastic measures are taken to …show more content…
Student, back then, could work all summer and pay their college tuition and other expenses that following school year. Before the G.I. Bill was passed, many Americans thought that college was only for the wealthy elite (Sanchez). “The law (The G.I. Bill) made college affordable for a group of veterans who never would have thought of going beyond high school,” says John Thelin, a professor at the University of Kentucky and author of A History of American Higher Education. The G.I. Bill changed America’s thought about college and soon not only veterans were pouring into colleges. Colleges embraced the new influx of students with open arms and like many would think, college prices did not go up. While state schools were handling expanding their college campuses, the federal government began making a program to help families pay for college: National Defense Student Loan program. This program was later called the Federal Perkins Loan program and it helped even more people go to college just like the G.I. Bill (Sanchez). Colleges and the federal government did everything they could from supporting financial aid to providing grants, so more students could go to college. The college business was booming and both sides, colleges and families, were content until 1975. In the year 1975, college costs began to rise much higher than inflation (Staff Writers). What caused the skyrocket in college prices was the …show more content…
Last year, the U.S. had a cumulative amount of $1.2 trillion dollars in student loan debt (Woolley). The amount of student loan is from both students and parents. The student loan debt has parents working longer and harder than they should be. Bloomberg.com says, “Parents saddled with huge debt burdens from helping to pay for their kids’ college expect to have less in savings, and more in debt, when they reach retirement age. And so, they work longer. Which is kind of a perverse dynamic that helps keep more recent graduates out of the labor market.” This has a negative impact on the economy because they are not productive consumers since they are trying to conserve all the money they have to help their kids pay off their student loan debt. This means that these parents and students have no savings because of their student loans. Also, student loan debt decreases homebuyers because they have no savings to pay for the down payment which affects the housing market and the rest of the economy (Woolley). Overall the student loan debt crisis is not just an issue for struggling students. This is an issue for the whole country because student loan debt ultimately affects our economy. Rick Rieder, the BlackRock's Global Chief Investment Officer of Fixed Income, best put it when he said, “The high costs of college and the mounting student debt are stunting the normal saving, investment, and consumption habits that ultimately

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