Keep in mind the ultimate total…
So, if you’re borrowing $15k per year, then you’re going to owe more than $60k per year at the end of 4 years because of interest. And possibly even $75k-100k+ if the student needs a 5th year to graduate.
I know at least 3 people in their 60s with debt for graduate or professional school student loans. One of them has about $250,000. He decided many years ago to not make more than $40,000-50,000 per year and also decided to not pay back the loans. Second person has been unemployed for two years but would like to return to work, if she can find a job. Third person was laid off from an engineering job when he was in his 40s, went back to school to get a master’s degree, became a teacher, went back to school for a Ph.D., and now is a tenure-track professor at a public university. In my mind, only the third person’s debt was worth incurring.
I started seeing a new counselor a few weeks ago. She told me that she does not have a single client under the age of 45 who is not still paying off school loans!! Ack.
It would be better to use articles from sites that do not have reputations for conspiracy theories.
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/older-americans-increasingly-taking-on-student-loan-debt-020419.html
https://www.cutimes.com/2019/02/05/student-loan-debt-burdens-boomers-as-well-as-millennials-413-155558/?slreturn=20190107204253
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/seniors-too-are-drowning-in-student-loan-debt
https://www.wsj.com/articles/over-60-and-crushed-by-student-loan-debt-11549083631 (paywall)
https://press.aarp.org/2018-9-13-Rising-Student-Loan-Debt-Prevents-Saving
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/14/more-older-people-are-bringing-student-debt-into-their-retirement.html
https://www.creditkarma.com/insights/i/student-loan-debt-growing-among-older-americans/
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/06/07/student-loans-debt-aarp-000666
However, this person’s debt should be much less than $250,000 or similar eye popping number, right? (The PhD should have been funded, leaving only debt for the master’s degree 20 years ago and undergraduate 40 years ago.)
Yes, I think the third person’s debt is much less than $250,000. (I hope so!) I’m not sure if his Ph.D. program was fully funded, and I don’t think he has any undergraduate debt; he went to college on a basketball scholarship, I think.