To a staggering degree, nearly all college grads in debt (Fed student loans near mortgage bubble)

Star Tribune ^ | 05/13/2012 | ANDREW MARTIN and ANDREW W. LEHREN

[SeekAndFind]

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is working two jobs and will soon move in with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her.

"If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also," said her mother, Marlene Griffith.

Griffith, 23, wouldn't seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams.

"As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it," said Griffith, a marketing major. "But when I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that."

With more than $1 trillion in student loans outstanding in this country, crippling debt is no longer confined to dropouts or graduate students. Now, nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor's degree is borrowing. As prices soar, a college degree statistically remains a good lifetime investment, but it often comes with an unprecedented burden.

Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor's degree borrow to pay for higher education -- up from 45 percent in 1993, said a New York Times analysis. This includes loans from the federal government, private lenders and relatives. For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

At Ohio Northern, recent graduates with bachelor's degrees are among the most indebted of any college in the country.

[Freedom4US]

She didn’t, apparently, learn much about business however. The whole “...like, $900 a month...” thing tells me all I need to know.

Not that I was any great scholar at that age, but knew enough not to give any interviews. Scary.

[RC51]

http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_5499.html

“In number, we issued 715,000 student, exchange, and vocational visas ...” in 2011

The same year the US had 20.3 million students in higher education. So if on average the US issues 715k NEW student visa’s each year. Then at any time there would be approximately 3.5 million foreigners attending US Colleges and 16.7 million US citizen student.

Therefore roughly 21% of the demand of higher education in the United States comes from non-US citizens imported abroad.

Since the H1B Visa cap is set at roughly 100k a year, we we can conclude that roughly 85% - 90% of these foreign students return to their native countries after graduation.

So the story is this: Foreigners come here, drive up our cost of education, then leave.

In my opinion our Public Colleges would rather do away with American students all together. They’d rather get fat off the foreigners.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/how-chinese-students-pay-u-s-tuitions/

[freeangel]

“It is pretty obvious that her parents assume that the government will take care of them as employees and will take care of their offspring as well.”

And I’m afraid they will be correct as the taxpayers and those kids who worked their way through school at reasonably priced colleges will be stuck once again paying for people’s poor choices.

[SgtHooper]

My thoughts exactly! It’d also effect salaries and bennies.

[Moltke]

"As an 18-year-old, it sounded like a good fit to me, and the school really sold it," said Griffith, a marketing major. "But when I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that."

Any prospective employer of young Ms. Griffith *will* google her name and *will* come across this article (perhaps even this FR thread). I don't think she has much of a future in the marketing field.

Why would someone in her position go on the public record with such a stupid statement? She has now twice proven herself an idiot.

[hoosierham]

You are correct. I would like to see the government follow the Constitution.Of course the powerful interests ignored the restrictions from the day the ink dried.But mostly the Constitution was followed until the 1860s when the will of those in Washington, D.C. began to control the nation.In the early 1900s even more of the power shifted to D.C. elies.

And most Republicans would be aghast if anyone seriously proposed to abolish the thousand-and-one federal programs that violate the original intent and words of the Constitution.

For the great majority of the people you could edit the Constitution down to this:

“...promote the general welfare...”

[Bibman]

You know it. Time got the cover right.