Running head: HORROR OF DEBT

Makayla Wylie
Horror Of Debt
Wriing in a Digital World 1313.06
February 17, 2016

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Horror Of Debt
Student loan debt is starting to become a huge problem in the United States. There are
more than one point two trillion dollars in student loan debt. And there is an average balance of
twenty nine thousand dollars among forty million borrowers. A student loan debt is starting to
affect students, socially and economically. It has people asking if graduating college is even
worth it if people will be in debt for the rest of their life.
People are raised now to graduate from high school and then go to college. In 2012, fulltime workers with bachelors degree earned sixty percent more than workers with just a high
school diploma (Holland, 2015). The evidence suggests that any given individual does make
more pay by going to college. The question is whether that bigger salary will outweigh the cost
of school.
During the last years the cost of both public and private college degrees have gone up.
Colleges room to raise prices has pointed to inelastic demand for higher education. And inelastic
demand means that when the price goes up, consumers buying habits stay about the same, and
when the price goes down, consumers buying habits also remain unchanged. This means that
colleges and universities will continue to raise the prices because, either way, students will
continue to pay to attend school. According to Holland (2015), average tuition, fees, and room
and board at a private, non-profit, four- year college 42,419 for 2014-2015, up from 30,664 in
real dollars in 2000-2001. At public, four year schools, costs for the 2014-2015 school year, at
18,943 dollars, were up from the 11,635 price tag in 2000-2001 (Holland, 2015).
One way that student loan debts are affecting people is socially. One of the biggest
moments in a persons life is buying a home. People are having to wait longer before buying a

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house because they have to pay off their loans. According to the Census Bureau, homeownership
has decreased among Americans under the age of thirty five, from forty three point three percent
in the first quarter of 2005 to thirty four point six percent in the first quarter of 2015 (Holland,
2015). It is hard for people to save for a down payment when they still have a lot of student loan
debt to pay back. And in some cases the mortgage lenders look at all debt obligations, and
student debt would count toward that which means the person; has to downgrade their housing
expectations, and take out a loan lower than what they intended.
After graduating from college and getting on a career path, many people decide to start a
family. People are starting to putt off starting a family because they are too far in debt. The
median age for the first birth has been increasing for years, at most recently at the age of twenty
six. And the birth rate among women aged twenty to twenty nine is now record low and has been
declining since at least 2008, according to data from the centers for Disease Control (Holland,
2015).
Economically student loan debts are adding on to debt of America. There are also fewer
small businesses being formed. People do not have the money to start a business because they
are too busy paying back loans.
Student loan debts are affecting a lot of people. If the cost of colleges and universities
would go down, then people would not be in debt.

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Reference
Holland, K. (2015, June 15). The economic and social costs of student loan debt
Retrievedfrom http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/15/the-high-economic-and-social-costs-ofstudent-loan-debt.html