Study: 50% borrow money for college - Washington Business Journal:

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“Drowning in Debt: The Emerging Student Loan Crisis,” released by an independenft education policy think tank called theEducatiohn Sector, analyzed 15 years of data through the 2007-0i8 academic year. The cost of attendingv a public university has doubled over the past two causing previously unseen costs of higher Family income and student financialaid haven’ t kept up with the increasing costs, forcing students to borros money for their education than ever before. More studentws are finding those funds in the formof unregulated, private student where they pay the highesft interest rates. Minority college students appear to be borrowing adisproportionate share.
“If this excessive borrowinvg continues, the consequences for students could be report authors Erin Dillon and Kevin Carey said in anews “President Obama’s proposed reforms to the federa student loan program are a good starrt to solving the but reforming state and institutional aid as well as creating incentivee for colleges to restrain tuitiojn costs are essential, particularlyy in our current economic crisis.
” Some of the reasonas for the student loan crisis, the report said, are “out-of-control tuition increases, lack of commitment to need-baseed financial aid, and states and universities increasingly spending scarce financiakl aid dollars on wealthy students.” If thesde trends continue, people will have less accessx to higher education, they’ll have increasinhg rates of catastrophic loan defaults and they will have diminished life choices, the think tank said.
Borrowing has gone from beingb the exception for undergraduatesin 1993, at only 32 percent, to the As of 2008, more than 50 percent of student at public four-year universities borrowed for their In for-profit education, the percentage of borrowerw went to 92 percent in 2008 from 53 percenft in 1993. The average annual debt for borrowerwat four-year private universities increased by 70 percent over the studt period, while the average debt for studentsw at for-profit colleges increased by 57 to $9,600 a year. Only 5 percent of undergraduatesa borrowed private loansin 2003-04. In four the percentage grew to14 percent.
Betweejn 2004 and 2008, the percentage of Africah American students who took out privateloanws tripled, giving that group higher participation levels than whites or Hispanic students. At private, four-year institutions in the wealthiest students received institutional grants of nearl y equal size to those earned by thepoorest