Student debt mounts to scary levels, but America just shrugs

Total student loan debt in our country has hit $1.5 trillion.

I read somewhere that most people have a hard time relating to big numbers without putting them in context. So, here’s some context:

• In the five minutes it takes you to read this article, student loan debt in America will have increased by $1.2 million.
• The total U.S. student loan debt exceeds the GDP of 95% of the countries on Earth.

To paraphrase the immortal Jay-Z, if millennials had 99 problems, student loan debt would comprise at least a third of them.

For someone who hasn’t stepped foot on a college campus in recent years or doesn’t have any student loan debt of their own, this may not seem like a problem that should concern them. But with each person who defaults on their student loans (right now there are 4 million of those people), the negative impact on our economy — and society — is huge.

Look at discretionary spending habits: millennials today spend $20 a day less than young adults did ten years ago. Throw in the stark downturn in homeownership rates among millennials and the realization that 40% of all student loans — most of them government backed — have the potential to default by 2023, and one can see the economic impact that will be or already is being felt by us all.

“Free” college tuition for everyone just isn’t a solution. If anything is going to work, it must be centered around lowering the cost in the first place.

Since 1997, tuition rates in the United States have increased by 197%. It’s certainly not because the quality of education has improved. Scroll through the average college course catalog and you’ll be sure to find offerings like ‘Demystifying The Hipster,’ ‘What If Harry Potter Is Real?,‘ or ‘Queering The Bible.’