Gerri Willis
Fox Business
10/25/2011
One-hundred billion dollars in new debt. Total debt? A trillion dollars.
No, I’m not talking about credit card debt or mortgage debt or even the debt of our federal government. I’m talking about student loan debt – money owed by students and former students to the federal government to pay for college.
At a time when Americans have been rolling up their sleeves and paying down credit card and mortgage debt, student loan debt stands out as the one category growing by leaps and bounds. That debt has doubled in just the past five years – and it’s pretty easy to see why.
Colleges charge students more and more to attend school. The published tuition charges – $7,600 for in-state students at public four-year colleges and $27,000 thousand at private schools way understates what students might pay. After all, you’ve got to live somewhere – then there’s the pizza and the beer. And, books.
