"… Seventy percent of college students graduated with debt in 2019 – on average, US$30,000.
Some of those graduates will still be paying off their student loans decades later, when they get Social Security checks – either voluntarily or by having those checks garnished. Of Americans over 60, 2.8 million have student loans. While 73% of those are cosigners paying for children or grandchildren, the rest are students paying off their own education loans.
Additionally, a growing number of aging Americans have college debt that they will not pay back before dying.
Default rates for borrowers over 65 are nearly 40%, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Pell Grants, which are federal grants to help low-income students to pay for college, once covered 79% of tuition and fees in 1975 but only covered 29% by 2017 – a downhill slide caused by escalating costs and easy loans." …