The curse of student loan debt: owe while you're young, live when you're old

Helaine Olen:

Once upon a time, we invested in our young people so that they could enter the world without debt. Now, we turn them into deadbeat debtors before they're old enough to legally buy a drink, left far behind their financial betters.

The truth this week came courtesy of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Wall Street Journal, whose data parsing revealed that about one in five college graduateswho borrowed for tuition via the federal direct loans program are not paying the money back.

In other words, a lot of people who recently attended college are in deep financial trouble. This should come as no surprise.
The United States is suffering from a massive jobs shortfall. For years, we've parroted the line that more education will somehow buttress the economy, as if we expect the good jobs fairy to shower magic, well-paying employment sparkle over the land when she sees how many of our young people attended college.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 11, 2013 1:58 AM
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