Scott Cohn, senior correspondent with CNBC, reports:
In 2009, the most recent data available, 67 percent of graduates had debt, averaging $24,000 per student, up 6 percent from the previous year, according to the non-profit Project on Student Debt. The numbers are even higher at private institutions.
The figures do not include the growing number of loans taken out by parents, and only limited data on for-profit colleges, where student debt is typically much higher, but relatively few institutions report it.
Americans now owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards—a first, according to FinAid.org, which has created what it calls the Student Loan Debt Clock.
The organization figures America’s student loan debt is growing at a rate of $2,853.88 per second. At this pace, it will surpass $1 trillion in 2012. And there is no sign of the pace letting up. On the contrary.
Read the whole thing.
The explosion of student debt is investigated in a CNBC Original documentary, “Price of Admission: America’s Student Debt Crisis,” premiering Tuesday, December 21 at 9pm ET/PT, but can now be viewed here:
HT: Derek Melleby