It's well known that student loan debt has gone up astronomically in recent years—and as
the graph above makes clear, it's increasing in ways that other kinds of debt aren't. The cause is not just recession, in other words.
Well, too many people are paying extortionate for-profit college tuition, and tuition is rising at public and non-profit private colleges as well. There are a lot of reasons for that—for one, per-student public higher education funding has fallen dramatically; for another, colleges have become increasingly top-heavy, with more administrators paid more money. The end effect is that, once again, lower-income people are screwed. A college degree is increasingly necessary to earn a middle-class income, but if you're not already middle class, the price is long-term debt:
As a result, student debt—incurred partly because of declining per-student public higher education funding—becomes something that locks people into whatever crappy jobs are on offer, creating an incentive not to fight back against abusive employers. And the truth is, while there are
several plans that would make the situation a little better for many or a lot better for some by adjusting interest rates, we need a bigger solution. If a college degree is a near-requirement of successful participation in the current economy, paying for it can't be luxury for the wealthy and a lifetime burden for everyone else. We need much, much greater investment in public higher education.