I thought I'd offer some elaboration on how someone gets massive college loan debt. I was hardly a straight A student in college but rather a solid B-A student who took challenging courses and did student newspaper, concert band, and marching band along with other extracurricular activities. I was an Advanced Placement Scholar with Honor at a very diverse, semi-urban high school in the Los Angeles area. Out of high school I got accepted to several University of California campuses including Berkeley in the spring. The average cost to attend UC-Berkeley per year according to their website is $25,308 to live on campus with board, transportation, books, and necessities, and about an estimated $4,000 less to live on campus. I chose instead a highly regarded private liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest instead because I liked the small class sizes and the greater opportunity to interact frequently with professors. I was offered a $10,000 grant to defray what was then an overall cost of approximately $36,000. None of the UC’s offered me any substantial financial aid beyond non-subsidized student loans. So the cost was roughly similar and I thought I would be getting more bang for my buck. The only problem was that I was from California and my father and stepmother had acquired several residences over more than 30 years of professional life as middle management for an oil company and as an occupational therapist. They both are from non-privileged backgrounds and pulled their way up by their own bootstraps. They have multiple mortgages, but the property values and thus the rental incomes that form the bulk of their retirement savings increased exponentially over the course of the last 10-15 years. My second year in college I was offered no grants and only non-subsidized federal loans. Tuition and living expenses increased significantly and so soon I was looking at needing to borrow $40,000 dollars per year to remain at my chosen college. Today, I’m on leave for one year to earn some money to begin to cushion the fall and to help my parents during my younger brothers first year at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. I’m taking classes at Kapiolani Community College, which is technically a satellite campus of the University of Hawaii System. I’m gathering my thoughts, maturing, and preparing to complete my senior history thesis and enter the workforce as a journalist, history grad student, or political worker. We’ve paid the interest and some of debt off over the last three years. But with approximately $90,000 dollars in student loan debt at about 6.5% it will not be easy and like the Obama’s I will probably be paying my loans off into my late 30’s unless I somehow hit an economic jackpot. So that’s how you get massive student loan debt. Too illustrate how this is fast becoming a significant problem for many of the brightest young college graduates I would refer you to the following USA Today articles:
"In debt before you start"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2006-06-11-debt-cover-usat_x.htm
"Students suffocate under tens of thousands in loans"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/general/2006-02-22-student-loans-usat_x.htm
