Student Loan Debt Continues Its Upward Climb

  BY SCHIFFGOLD

Student loan debt continues to surge despite falling college enrollment.

In Q3, student loan balances rose by $23 billion from the second quarter, according to the latest Federal Reserve data.

Forty-five million Americans now owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Total outstanding student loan balances have surged by $54 billion year-on-year.

Enrollment in colleges and universities dropped by over 231,000 students to a total of 17.97 million between 2018 and 2019. The drop in enrollment between those two years continued a trend we’ve seen since university enrollment peaked in 2011. That year, 20.14 million students were enrolled in colleges and universities. Since then, enrollment has dropped by 10.8%.

One of the reasons student loan debt continues to increase despite falling college enrollment is the glut of student loan money pushed up the cost of a college education. The federal government pushed the widespread availability of student loans. It was supposed to make it possible for everybody to go to college. But there was an unintended consequence. It made a university education unaffordable and ended up saddling millions of Americans with crushing levels of debt.  Studies have shown the influx of government-backed student loan money into the university system is directly linked to the surging cost of a college education……more here

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