<p>Above the words New Member (where yours says Registered User)</p>
<p>This is all it shows (cut/pasted below):</p>
<p>CCadmin_Lydia
Posts: 11
New Member</p>
<p>Sorry. It must be my mod (google) glass. 
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<p>Well, it’s not worthless. It just has limitations. Besides, I think the proportion of recent college graduates living in their parents’ basement because they cannot afford their educational debt is also overblown, and much smaller than the media has portrayed it to be. The Census Bureau says that 13.6% of Americans aged 25 to 34 live with their parents (2012 figures). The oft-repeated “nearly half” or “45 percent” in the media comes from the 18-24 age group, but the problem with that is that it includes all of the college students who live at home and commute to university and those who live on campus but return home for breaks. (There’s unfortunately no 22-28 figure, but that’s because the Census takes into account that it often takes 5-6 years for people to graduate with a BA).</p>
<p>2. Second, the average amount of time it took to repay student loans. The authors note that they are only dealing with monthly payments, not total loan amount. The study states “the repayment time for many loans has become longer.” Oh my goodness, what a statement to gloss over.</p>
<p>Well, yes, because the study was about the debt burden vs. income of students. The question they wanted to address was whether students had more loan than they could afford to repay every month - in other words, are students forced to live at home with Mom and Dad because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford the monthly payments? The total time to repayment is less relevant to that than the monthly payments, which is why they chose to focus on that.</p>
<p>But if average indebtedness is around $26,000, I can’t imagine that significant proportions of students are taking longer than 10 years to repay their loans. If you look at the distribution of debt pie charts, three-quarters of households with educational debt have $20,000 or less. Only 4% of households have $75,000 of debt or more. Other charts also make it clear that BA average debt is pretty low - right around $15,000. It’s graduate debt that drives up the average - the average graduate degree holder has nearly $45,000 in debt.</p>
<p>3. The study only included people actually making payments. What about the folks in deferment?</p>
<p>They’re also less relevant. Again, the study is talking about whether or not these Millennials can afford the costs of living on a monthly basis. In addition, people in deferment are probably also a small proportion, since in order to be deferred you either have to be serving in the military or in school - perhaps for a graduate degree.</p>
<p>4. Bad sample. The study itself was only on 1800 people and it included people who were well into their 30’s.</p>
<p>1,800 is not really a bad sample. Statistically speaking, that’s quite a large sample, and likely to detect small differences. The federal government conducted the original survey, and they chose a cross-section of U.S. families that was roughly representative of the makeup of the U.S. Many scientific conclusions have been drawn with much smaller samples.</p>
<p>And yes, it did include people well into their 30s, but why is that a problem? If we’re talking about college graduates, it’s important to follow age-related trends. If Millennials really are moving back into their parents’ basements, isn’t it important to know at what point they move back out? (Moreover, that’s not the report’s fault - it’s the way the Census Bureau collects data.)</p>
<p>@juillet - Well analyzed, and I would also add under point #1 that of course when
that means all 25-34 year old people, not just those that are going/went to college. So included in that smaller-than-media-hyped number would be high school dropouts, high school grads as highest degree, and college dropouts. Obviously the last could still have some debt, so even leaving them in the pool, the 13.6% figure has to be adjusted downward for those that fall into the first two categories. I know you knew all that, of course, but thought it should be made explicit.</p>