Quicksand of Debt for U.S. College Students

Posted on Sep 7, 2011

Flickr / Chris Devers

According to the Project on Student Debt, the average arrears for graduating U.S. students is $24,000, but that figure is low for many who are entering a state of sustained debt peonage during the wonder years of young adulthood.

Since February of last year, HuffPost College has been telling the stories of graduates and students struggling in the mire of obligations to the banks financing their high-priced professional educations. This latest installment shows more of those students displaying the dizzying amount they owe. —ARK

The Huffington Post:

For many students, that figure is modest. Take Aleesha Nash, a graduate of New York University. “Logging into the Federal Student Aid website,” she writes on the Huffington Post, “I see that today my balance is $104,104.63 for a percentage of the information in my head.”

And there’s Jaclyn Cabral, too. Jaclyn chose to attend Elon University in North Carolina because it’s “regarded as one of the most affordable private educations.” Still, she graduated $90,000 in debt.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.