Student Finance Student Debt Crisis - 1663 Words

Executive Summary: A decade ago, student loans barely existed. Today, however, American students borrow up to couple million dollars a year to attend college. An entire generation is burdened with debt, and affected by the modern phenomena known as the â€Å"student debt crisis.† In recent years, student loan borrowing rates have risen notably, leading to concern about the public financial risks associated with the financial challenges faced by many students. Of late, the United States government has given out about $170 billion in financial aid annually in an effort to encourage students to attend postsecondary education. Such funding are usually supported by research that consistently finds positive and growing average economic benefits of†¦show more content†¦In fact, in the past, even if you were a college graduate, you were considered to be in the minority of the society; however, today, a college degree is fundamentally a requirement for any majority of careers. As the need for a college degree increased, the less affordable it became, therefore, student loans became a must. Although student loans do help students with a higher education, they can also get those individuals into tons of debt. Even though we can all benefit from a college education, the future looks pretty barren for those with student loans. The future of college tuition, and in another word, student loan; seems to be going only up with no release in sight. In order to get a better understanding of why, this might be a good time to look back at when the first federal student loan and grant programs were established and how it has fueled the rising tuition costs. Back in 1940, the number of graduates numbered only 186,500. And by 1950, the number of college graduates nearly tripled to 432,058. For the population during that time, this meant that less than 5 percent of adults 25 and older in the U.S. only had a college degree. Of that total, about 109,546 of them were just men. However, by 1970, the number of college graduates just receiving a bachelor degree had increased to 839,730. By this time, 68% of federal aid to college students was in the form of