The Mounting Student Loan Crisis

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Federal student loan debt has ballooned in recent years. In 2007, debt totaled $642 billion dollars. Fourteen years later, this number has risen to nearly $1.7 trillion. More than 43 million Americans have student loan debt, with the average person owing around $39,000.

With payments on student loans expected to restart early next year after an almost two-year freeze due to the pandemic, will more people struggle to pay back what they’ve taken out? What should students know before heading to college? How do we address the looming student loan debt crisis as a whole?

People are taking longer and longer to pay back their debt. Because they owe so much on the front end, it’s taking them so much longer to pay it back. And so…what’s happened is student loans have become…like a 30 year mortgage, where instead of paying it back in ten years, you’re spending 20, 25, 30 years, even longer sometimes to pay back your student loans. So, what used to be a ten year obligation is now an obligation that is going to stick around for many people’s adult lives and into retirement.

Josh Mitchell, Wall Street Journal

Josh Mitchell, a reporter who covers student loan debt and economics for The Wall Street Journal, explains the current state of affairs: “People are taking longer and longer to pay back their debt… They owe so much on the front end, it’s taking them so much longer to pay it back.”

“And so…student loans have become…like a 30 year mortgage, where instead of paying it back in ten years, you’re spending 20, 25, 30 years, even longer sometimes to pay back your student loans. So, what used to be a ten year obligation is now an obligation that is going to stick around for many people’s adult lives and into retirement.”