Real Women Speak Out: How Student Loans Have Affected Me

Alden Wicker:

You can't help but notice the dire chatter surrounding student loans these days.
In fact, student loans are one of the hottest topics here at LearnVest, whether in LV Discussions, your comments or stories we write. Some are calling it the newest lending crisis, equal in scope to the subprime mortgages that torpedoed the economy in 2008.

No wonder-a record one in five households now holds student debt. Increasingly, this debt burden is altering lives, and not in the way students imagined when they first took out the loans. Enrollment in graduate programs has dropped, as students face mounting undergraduate loans. 44% of graduates are delaying buying a home, and 23% will delay having children because of their debt burden.

Defaults on student loans are at a record 13.4%, and there's no clean slate in sight-student loans are rarely dischargeable in bankruptcy.

One NYU professor has even said that student loans are immoral.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 4, 2012 1:07 AM
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