Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden

For a country that relies as heavily as ours on the development of human capital for our economic growth, it is absolutely appalling that ANY student has to pay this much money. That kind of debt will keep future generations unable to save, invest, spend as consumers, or advance our society if all we are doing is paying away debt. At the same time, we need to get away from a culture of spending now, saving later. Our generation, according to the article, has $730 billion in student debt - something is clearly wrong.

3 comments:

Jordan Benner said...

I agree with Kevin and this article. A lot of us take for granted the fact that our parents can pay for our entire education and that we will graduate debt-free. However, as we have learned in Systems so far, it is our investment in human capital, like Japan, that sets us apart from others countries. It also worth it to point out that this investment in human capital, while seemingly unfair at the time, has been paying off in the long-run.

Kendra said...

I also agree, it's necessary though for us to get help in some way or another. Gaining higher education now is a lot more difficult than while our parents were growing up unfortunately. I hope students here don't take that for granted! We are all very lucky.

craisdegy said...

Not every student is fortunate to have family cover their education debt. Anymore it is almost impossible to find a good job without receiving further education past high school. In this article what really stands out is that she graduated in 2003 with $250,000 debt, and now seven years later she owes over double that amount, $555,000! Clearly there is a huge problem here and this is where I believe that government should step in. I feel it is their job to establish and enforce low interest rates on school loans. Nobody should have their debt doubled in seven years time.