debt

Many times — maybe too many — high school seniors are just so happy to be accepted to their dream school that they don’t give a second thought to the financial implications of their college choice. Then reality sinks in when they start digging into the details of college award letters. At College Parents of America, […]

  images via Educational Policy Institute Average student debt levels for the graduating 2012 class is up over historical debt levels. In these graphs from the Educational Policy Institute (which relies on data from the Project on Student Debt), one can see both the historical student debt trend as well as the current state of average debt levels for those graduates with debt. Average debt for graduates with debt, predictably, varies by sector:Public: $25,550Private: $32,300Private For-Profit: $39,950

   GWEN IFILL: Americans are now carrying student loan debt of over $1 trillion, $125 billion of it added just in the first three months of this year...So what, if anything, could this approach do to help ease the growing problem of student loan debt?For that, we turn to Deanne Loonin, who leads the student borrower program at the National Consumer Law Center. And Richard Vedder, professor of economics at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

  image by flickr user Sal Falko, cc license Today, the New York Times published the topline results of a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. The report, The One Percent at State U: How University Presidents Profit from Rising Student Debt and Low-Wage Faculty Labor, details how public universities that pay a top-25 salary for their president have experienced a faster increase in student debt levels than other public universities.

The Federal Student Aid office in the Department of Education recently updated their materials on loan forgiveness for public service employees (known as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program). In fact, you may have received their new version of the Dear Borrower letter about the program. While this can be a lengthy process, it can provide a lifeline to students who incurred a large amount of debt for school, but have chosen to pursue a career path that’s beneficial to society at large.

  

   Earlier today, the White House released a fact sheet detailing the need to curb college costs and some proposed methods that may achieve such a goal.  

 (public domain comic from 1902's A Harvard Alphabet) 

  Sallie Mae's How America Pays for College 2013 came out recently. Like previous years (the report has been published annually since 2008), it shows interesting trends on both the cost of college and how families are responding to dealing with costs. Below, we've compliled a few highlights. Sallie Mae Graphic on Sources of College Payment for 2012-2013 Academic Year

   The findings from Fidelity Investments' study of recent college gradiates was just released. The study covered graduates of the classes of 2011, 2012 and 2013.