November 17, 2015

What Was Missing From The GOP Debate? Student Loan Debt

Jared Meyer ,
Sep 17, 2015 @ 12:37 PM

The second Republican debate covered many topics—from foreign policy, to immigration, to the drug war—but student loan debt, another major problem facing the country, only received a cursory mention from Ted Cruz at the end of the three-hour marathon. At $1.3 trillion , outstanding student loan debt is indeed a crisis, and it deserves the attention of those aspiring to lead Washington.

The job market for millennials remains weak, college costs continue to rise, and the government has yet to take meaningful action to reform higher education financing. As I argued in my testimony before the House Budget Committee last week, talk from Democratic presidential candidates of “free ” or “//medium.com/@HillaryClinton/the-new-college-compact-73652df9543c">debt-free” college does nothing to address the underlying reason why student loan debt is increasing—the perverse incentives created by federal student aid programs.

Over 40 million Americans carry student loan debt. Student loan debt is the only household debt that continued to rise during the recession, and young Americans owe more of it. About 70 percent of the undergraduate class of 2012 needed student loans, and average debt at graduation approached $30,000. These recent graduates differ drastically from the class that graduated college in 1993, when less than half of students needed loans before they could walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. In constant dollars, these loans averaged below $10,000 —one-third of today’s average debt load.

Paying for college without loans is no longer possible for most people. College tuition has increased by 1,200 percent since records began in 1978—while food costs have risen only 250 percent over the same period.

Click on Link:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaredmeyer/2015/09/17/gop-debate-student-loan-debt/