Shocking news, millennials: when you're not being trolled by national publications, you're probably being trolled by the invisible hand of higher education. Student debt is a real thing, and it's really bad, you guys. Like, economy-crushing bad, just ICYMI!
As everyone's been pointing out for years, student debt is climbing, recently overtaking a $1 trillion milestone, while overall income and the job market has become less and less promising. And (DUH) being beleaguered by the weight of many, many thousand dollars owed to the government or a private bank means you're probably less inclined to further your debt by taking out more loans for things like houses and cars. "Sometimes I think: ‘What if I were to buy an apartment?’" Shane Gill, a 33-year-old teacher who owes $45,000 in federal student loans, told the Times. "It is like asking: ‘What am I going to do when I first land on the moon? What’s the first thought that I will have when I see Earth from outer space?'"
Yes, it is hard to consider taking out a mortgage when Sallie Mae cruelly rips $500 or so from your grasp every month. When your Roth IRA account's really just the loose change that's gathering at the bottom of that backpack you use as a briefcase, considering other financially draining life events—like marriage and starting a family— becomes daunting as well. According to a survey from the American Institute of CPAs, 15 percent of respondents said they were putting off marriage because of their debt. "There’s this anxiety: what if I decided I wanted to get married or have children?" Gill said. "I don’t know how I would."
Unsurprisingly, all of this debt will likely hamper the economy's recovery in the future. "We are concerned that unmanageable student loan debt may be harmful to recovering consumer markets and may be dragging down borrowers' lives," Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau said yesterday, after releasing a study focusing on private college loans. "We learned a hard lesson in the wake of the mortgage meltdown. We cannot just sit by and watch this happen to people again."
But if you were thinking you could avoid debt by skipping out on college, just remember that having a college degree means you'll probably earn 80 percent more on average than if you didn't have one, giving you 80 percent more money to pay back your loans than you'd have if you didn't have to take them out in the first place! Oh, what vicious, tangled web of 450 credit scores have we created? If only there was a school founded on the belief that education should be free, and didn't shackle its students to a lifetime of debt. Oh, right.
