Graduates Face Tidal Wave of Debt
As another crop of students graduates from colleges and universities across America, they face uneven job prospects and the reality of massive student loan debt. You can see below that student loan debt has reached $1.23 trillion dollars, and while delinquencies have come down somewhat from their peak in 2013, they’re still very high historically 11.5% of loans more than 90 days late on payment.
40% of Borrowers Aren’t Making Payment
Survey Says….One in Five Students Not Responsible with Loan Money
The website StudentLoanHero.com surveyed students graduating in 2016 and found that 20.2% had spent borrowed money on things other than education.
Did you use student loans to pay for things other than educational expenses, such as vacations, dining at restaurants, or entertainment?
- No: 79.80%
- Yes: 20.20%
The overwhelming majority of Class of 2016 graduates used their student loans responsibly and only for educational expenses. But one in five respondents did admit to using their student loan funds on non-educational expenses such as entertainment, meals out, and vacations.
It’s a stat that’s concerning, considering what a burden student debt has become for so many people. Many of these grads will undoubtedly regret that decision when it comes time to pay those loans back (more on that next).
Quotable on College:
“I would get my student loans, get money, register and never really go. It was a system I thought would somehow pan out.” – Ray Romano
“There’s a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans.” – J. Maarten Troost
“Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education – I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“I turned down a scholarship to Yale. The problem with college is that there’s a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you’ll never be successful.” – Shia LaBeouf
“The new American dream is one of responsibility. What is the bottom-line number that you’re going to be able to pay back toward a student loan responsibly if you’re doing it yourself after you have a job? That dictates the amount of money you can borrow. That dictates the school you can go to, if you can even go to a four-year college at all.” – Suze Orman